Keywords

Introduction

This chapter was originally prepared for a roundtable in Fulda, Germany. For a roundtable on war and European Studies, Fulda is a most suitable choice of venue. Suitable because of a well-known concept in military history examined by historians: the significance of the ‘Fulda Gap’ or, if they speak German, of the ‘Fulda Lücke’. This notion refers to an East–West passage in the landscape of Hessen that has played a continuous role in the context of war. The Fulda Gap was used in 1813 by Napoleon when he retreated from defeats in the East. In 1945, General George S. Patton used the passage to move towards the East. During the Cold War, it was assumed among NATO planners that Soviet military forces would use the passage to reach Frankfurt and subsequently the Rhine. NATO’s response included plans to employ tanks and helicopters as well as exploiting the beneficial features of the landscape, in much the same fashion as reports describe on an almost daily basis for the war in Ukraine.

European Studies has been around for as long as European integration; by now 60+ years. However, the significance of the Fulda Gap has never been considered and that might well be unproblematic. However, European Studies has, in general, been eminent in excluding research on war as such. It is a field of research that is most uncomfortable with war. This chapter aims at challenging this comfort zone yet argues that the research taboo will, most likely, prevail.

In the following sections, the chapter first examines how linkages between war and European Studies morphed into the sphere of mythology, in both theory and practice. Subsequently, the chapter outlines the four main reasons why it is unlikely that the war in Ukraine will prompt a Zeitenwende in European Studies: (i) previous wars did not cause much reflection about EU Studies and war. This general pattern includes the wars in Yugoslavia, which instead of research on war were accompanied by the introduction of Comparative Politics (Sbragia 1992; Hix 1994), a sub-discipline which became an increasingly strong dimension of European Studies; (ii) a Zeitenwende is unlikely because academic path-dependencies are simply too strong. Most academics in the root-disciplines—Economics, Law and Political Science—of the interdisciplinary field of study never consider the role of war; (iii) European Studies is predominantly characterized by a distinct liberal worldview, a version of liberalism that does not acknowledge the use of force and thus has little in common with the worldview of the so-called Cold War Liberals; (iv) War Studies and European Studies exist in separate worlds and simply do not match well.

European Studies and War, or, How War Morphed into a Role in Mythology

Whereas peace and war traditionally belonged to the heartland of the discipline of International Relations (see the chapter by Costa and Martinez Blanc in this volume), European Studies tends to shy away from research on war, power politics and even the employment of coercive means in the conduct of foreign policy. It follows that the Algerian War, colonial wars in general, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Falklands War, The Kuwait War and the wars in Yugoslavia are largely not considered in reflections on the dynamics of European integration.

In countless speeches from the 1950s and 1960s, the topic of war was not absent. War was presented as the main reason for European integration. Subsequently, war morphed from being the prime reason for European integration to being the anti-thesis to the achieved European zone of peace; quite opposing views. War became a key aspect of the mythology or the narrative concerning the genesis of the construction of Europe. War and the use of force were relegated to being part of a past that was unwarranted in the present and the future. Due to the outsourcing of military alliance politics, to first the Brussels Treaty and subsequently to NATO, the European Community could be presented as completely civilian in nature and thus as an enterprise whose nature was in stark contrast to the dirty power politics of the superpowers and of NATO (see the chapters by Smith and Wiesner, in this volume). The European Community was also presented as entirely unrelated to the colonial wars fought by key founding members of the European Community, specifically France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Finally, the European Community was presented as a project distinctly unrelated to the creation of France’s nuclear Force de Frappe.

If such excises in carving the European Community out-of-context were prevalent in discourses of political and diplomatic practices, they were mirrored in scholarly reflections, including the emerging theoretical perspectives and schools of thought. In scholarly studies, political mythology was rationalized. Just as engrenage became neofunctionalism, interdependence became transnationalism. Theoretical debates were about where to put the emphasis: on the supranational political community or on the governments of Member States. Excluded from the analytical equations was power politics par excellence, the Cold War, and also the dynamics of war as an institution in international society. The theoretical tradition that is supposed to be able to handle power politics—realism—was profoundly tainted by its prescription of appeasement and the total failure, during the 1930s, to balance power politics (Bull 1972). By contrast, the idea of war as an institution of international society could have been an option, were it not for the almost total neglect of European integration by the founders of the English School.

In European Studies, the traditional set-up is a focus on EU-domestic factors and actors (neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, Europeanization, normative power Europe, indeed most varieties of ‘power Europe’). All share the feature of excluding international variables from the analytical frameworks. Admittedly, exceptions do exist, including literature on the external federator (Zimmerling 1991), literature on the second image reversed (Costa and Jørgensen 2012) and, to a degree, aspects of the civilian power Europe literature that highlight the emerging international environment of increasing interdependence.

Why a Zeitenwende Is a No-Go

Outside the orthodox confines of poststructuralist axioms, it is common to make a distinction between politics and science. With such a distinction, it is possible to make a derived distinction between discourses of practice and discourses of theory and analysis. This is not to reject the possibility of certain overlaps between the two spheres of discourse but, without the distinction, we would be unable to identify both the overlaps and the separate spheres. Actually, the overlaps are highly relevant for European Studies as it is a field of study in which scholars appear eager to adopt the discourses of practice and to avoid the scientific discourses of theory. What else can explain why research on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is done as if the CFSP is a policy and not an institutional design (procedures, rules and norms) that shapes processes of decision-making? Moreover, European Studies reflects to a high degree the old official narrative, specifically that the EU is a peace project. The EU’s self-image was seemingly validated by the European Union winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But war? War is presented as the anti-thesis to the peace project; war is relegated to be an atavistic form of social interaction that belongs to history; not even as a fundamental institution in international society was war accepted as an option within European Studies (Bull 1977).

Despite these overlaps and, thus, the immature development of the field, it seems reasonable in the present context to make a distinction between a Zeitenwende in the practices of politics and in European Studies. While an analysis of a European Zeitenwende in politics is outside the scope of this chapter, preliminary research suggests that it is occurring (Jørgensen 2022). The following sections examine whether something similar is happening in European Studies. In other words, will the war in Ukraine cause a Zeitenwende? In the following, four reasons explain why a Zeitenwende in European Studies is unlikely.

Previous Wars and EU Studies

The first reason an impact seems unlikely is that previous wars did not cause much reflection, in theory or analysis. EU Studies was born under the conditions of the Cold War, yet, as described below, that condition was neatly parked in the corner of neglect. During the first decades of European integration, the prime theoretical perspectives included neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, each characterized by a limited interest in the explanatory role of international factors. Similarly, the colonial wars of the 1950s and 1960s were seen in European Studies as irrelevant for the construction of Europe. Hence, there were no references to the French defeats at Dien Bien Phu (1954) or Suez (1956), and no references to the significant change of the boundaries of the European Community that was caused by the French defeat in Algeria (1962).

The end of the Cold War and the wars in Yugoslavia also did not cause much reflection within European Studies about the linkages between European integration and war. Indeed, the opposite happened; as we witnessed how Comparative Politics (Sbragia 1992; Hix 1994) became an increasingly strong analytical perspective within EU Studies. In this context, it is not the states-make-war-and-war-makes-states literature (Tilly 1975; Kaspersen et al. 2017). I have in mind but literatures on party politics, parliaments, electoral politics and political attitudes; that is, more or less all political phenomena that are analysed in ways that systematically neglect potential foreign or international dimensions. It follows that studies of possible linkages between the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new institutional framework (CFSP) are in short supply. It was left to news media headlines—for instance claiming that the CFSP was born in Kuwait—to suggest a connection. Academic studies could have focused on how the end of the Cold War functioned as an enabling variable that contributed to explaining why the CFSP was not launched before but shortly after the end of the Cold War and the accompanying reunification of Germany.

Paradoxically, as European Studies gained speed and recognition, the field became so compartmentalized and focused on micro-studies that the tiny compartment of strategic European Studies was able to develop without disturbing the prime assumption of all other compartments: the international environment, including war, is a variable that distorts our analytical frameworks, hence, let us assume it does not exist.

Against this background, it is difficult to imagine that the war in Ukraine, no matter its significant regional and global dimensions, will be able to influence the trajectory of EU Studies. The war in Georgia did not cause much attention. Moreover, as documented by the programmes of all the major EU-focused conferences, the Russian invasion in 2014 caused little attention and even less critical self-reflection. At best, the invasion was seen as a challenge to some of the administrative programme projects under the auspices of the EU’s eastern neighbourhood policy.

The Enduring Consequences of Path-dependencies

Second, a Zeitenwende is unlikely because academic path-dependencies are too strong. Academics do not play in the league of free thinking but are obliged to build on existing knowledge and carefully explain in which way they add new knowledge. Hence, scholars tend to take a position and then entrench themselves in it, sometimes throughout an entire career and sometimes it even amounts to building part of a personal identity. One of the unintended consequences is the rejection of learning and the subscribing to path-dependencies that have lost traction. Indeed, the absence of learning is among the main mistakes of the past. While the EU faces new realities, segments within the scholarly community insist on rejecting the idea that anything has changed.

In political and diplomatic practice, most EU Member States (and thus also the EU) did not make much of Russia’s occupation of parts of Moldova or Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of the Donbass region. The occupation prompted EU-leaders to adopt (limited) soft sanctions and a handful of principles for their lifting. After a few years, the policy was even challenged by several leaders in the EU, who pointed out that sanctions are costly, that the principles (in the view of then German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sigmar Gabriel), could be bent and that policy towards Russia, according to President Macron, should be reset. Karin Kneissl, the Austrian Foreign Minister, found it appropriate to invite President Putin to her wedding in 2018; and subsequently joined oil giant Rosneft’s board of directors (Connolly 2021). There were many Italian “friends of Russia” even during Russia’s war in Ukraine (Roberts 2022). Corporate Europe has always had its own preferences concerning the EU’s foreign relations, subscribing to the ‘change through trade’ axiom, possibly better known in its German version “Wandel durch Handel”. Germany Inc. might also be the best-known part of corporate Europe and thus is fairly representative (Karnitschnig, Matthew and Nette Nöstlinger 2022; Herzinger 2022).

Concerning academic practices within European Studies, they tend to reflect political and diplomatic practices. Hence, war and the use of force are relegated to a small corner and have no significant impact on the acquis of theoretical development or empirical studies. Most academics in Economics, Law and Political Science never consider the social role of war. Some engage in legitimizing the concepts Putinversteher or Putinversteherin, neologisms invented to characterize those who understand Putin in an apologetic fashion. John Mearsheimer is probably the best-known scholar who understands Putin and blames the West for the war in Ukraine. While Mearsheimer can hardly be placed within European Studies, he has repeatedly and persistently defended his take on the war. On the European side of the Atlantic, Asle Toje (2022) and several Italian academics feature among those who, in the case of Toje, argue that we should leave Ukraine to its own fate, “It is not our war”. As a self-declared political realist, Toje continues the realist tradition of being critical of major wars, as seen for instance by Morgenthau’s critique of the Vietnam War, and Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s (2003) critique of the Iraq War. It is more of a challenge to explicitly acknowledge the realist tradition of appeasement, inaugurated by E.H. Carr (1939), and de-legitimize realism in post-World War II Europe (Bull 1972). In the case of Italian academics, some argue that the concept Putinversteher is misunderstood. Its meaning is not about apologetic politicians or scholars but simply those in, for instance, Russian Studies who aim at building scientific knowledge about Russia.

A Distinctly Liberal Outlook

In an eminent and frequently cited article—Goodbye to Bismarck? The Foreign Policy of Contemporary Germany—Gunther Hellman (1996) reviews the foreign policy discourse of the then recently reunited Germany. He observes how the discourse predominantly focuses on multilateral strategies and, how scholars are multilateralists by heart, that is, they take a normative position in favour of multilateral strategies.Footnote 1 This identified linkage between analytical outlook and normative preference leads me to the third reason for the likely limited impact.

If the EU represents liberal power Europe (Wagner 2017), EU Studies largely equals a liberal outlook on research on Europe. The discourses of practice and theory are closely intertwined, yet intertwined in a distinct fashion. Research within EU Studies is predominantly characterized not by liberal worldviews in general but by a distinct liberal worldview, a worldview that has very little in common with the worldview of the so-called Cold War Liberals or other liberal orientations that do not depend on a principled exclusion of the use of force. The significant difference between the two orientations becomes visible in scholarly assessments of the EU’s general overarching policy paradigm.

On the one hand, we have studies concluding that the EU has left liberal internationalism behind and that the EU is retreating from liberal internationalism (Youngs 2010). Richard Youngs detects a trend towards “a more defensive and illiberal approach to global challenges” (Youngs 2010), contends that “the EU’s policies are increasingly illiberal” and concludes that the EU’s role in the world is a retreat from liberal internationalism. However, Youngs’ diagnosis is not particularly precise and the conclusion not particularly compelling. Thus, we can mine Youngs’ book for the observation that the EU’s foreign policies were adapted and became more defensive of, and possibly also more detached from, the reigning policy paradigm(s) (on the notion of policy paradigm, see Hall 1993; Schumaker 2008). Other scholars argue the opposite of Youngs, claiming that EU foreign policy is as liberal as it gets. Among them, Alex Prichard (2013) suggests that liberalism equals imperialism, for which reason Kant possibly is the worst intellectual Godfather the EU could find for its foreign policy. Still other scholars highlight, similarly to Youngs, the trend of the EU becoming more defensive, arguing that the EU’s international influence could be past its peak (Bretherton and Vogler 2013). The war in Ukraine might even strengthen the already strong liberal traits of European Studies. While scholars of a realist or geopolitical orientation try to find cracks in the liberal wall, they seem unable to change the existing configuration within European Studies of theoretical orientations or within the vast landscape of more or less a-theoretical empirical studies. The incapacity for realism-oriented scholars to change the analytical outlook also applies to scholars of a critical orientation. The recycling of Brexiteer slogans, for instance of colonial or imperial power Europe, has so far not left much impact on research, at least not beyond a relatively small clique.

On the other hand, if a change away from a liberal orientation seems unlikely, changes within the liberal tradition seem not only likely but indeed already underway. If we apply Ole R. Holsti and James N Rosenau’s (1990) vocabulary, the ongoing change is a move from accommodationist to internationalist, two positions in favour of international cooperation (multilateralism) but having contesting attitudes towards the use of force. Within European political and diplomatic practices, accommodationists used to dominate but no longer. Russia’s war in Ukraine has made the accommodationist orientation increasingly weak. From this perspective, the EU might be on a journey that is similar to the one the United States underwent during the twentieth century, travelling from a liberal internationalism that excluded the use of force to a version where international cooperation and the use of force is perfectly possible. Within European Studies, it is more difficult to detect a similar change.

War Studies and European Studies

War Studies and European Studies do not match well. It is as if they are from Mars and Venus, respectively. During the early processes of European identity-formation, war as a social phenomenon was relegated to an imagined atavistic past, a temporal ‘Other’ of the European enterprise. In European mythology, war became the prime reason for political initiatives that aimed at cooperative solutions, which in turn were considered the conditions for peace. In parallel to these processes of identity-formation, war fighting capabilities were conveniently delegated to NATO and could thus be left out of the equation, at least in the narratives designed to legitimize European integration.

Although the overlap of the Western European Union (WEU) and European Community membership respectively was very significant, the cognitive compartmentalization of EU Studies implied that the WEU, at best, was a niche area of research interest. The post-World War II European military alliance, the Western European Union, was, for 30 years, a more or less empty organizational shell, based on the foundations of the Brussels Treaty. If any successes can be claimed, the prime success would be that the creation of the WEU enabled West Germany’s membership of NATO. The reactivation of the WEU during the 1980s was caused, not by threat perceptions about the East, but West European fears of being de-coupled from global security dynamics and was related to severe doubts about the US commitment to the defence of Europe. Despite the reactivation of the WEU during the 1980s, EU studies typically make the St. Malo Declaration the kick-off moment for European defence endeavours. This resulted in a limited attention to the endeavour to keep sea lanes open, and it would take a Barry Posen to examine whether policies within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-umbrella represent efforts at balancing the hegemon of the unipolar international order.

After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the problems in the Western Balkans brought war back to the European continent but these were considered outlier cases that represented atavistic politics, a temporary black swan. During the 1990s, social leaning among EU policymakers prompted them to cautiously bring back the military dimension but only for military missions that could be categorized as optional in nature and thus not existential. Even NATO, whose reason d’être is territorial defence, engaged in cases of optional crisis management and those increasingly situated out-of-area. In most EU-member states, the three-decade long temptation to cash in on the peace dividend was fully embraced.

If War Studies and European Studies are not a match, the same can be said about European Studies and Strategic Studies. While endeavours at bringing the two together exist (Fiott 2021; Järvenpää et al. 2019; Dupre 2020) there are considerably more examples of studies that inadvertently demonstrate a fair amount of lack of mutual understanding. In this, scholars are not alone. As clearly demonstrated by the EU announcing in 2007 that the EU’s strategy towards Russia had expired. This is the language of a fonctionaire, not a strategist.

Given the predominant political and diplomatic reluctance about military means and the compartmentalization of scholarly research, it is easy to understand how War Studies and European Studies could be kept separate. What is more difficult to understand is how military intelligence and Russian Studies could, for 15 years, miss the gradual changes in Russian identity, interests and policies.

It is also difficult to understand why the gradual changes in EU worldviews and policy paradigms, represented by concepts such as Global Strategy, strategic autonomy, strategic compass (2022), global gateways and the like, have been given such a negative reception by a branch of scholars within European Studies. While critiques of Eurocentrism can be seen as interventions of ideological identity politics in academia, it is considerably more difficult to understand the fierce critiques of concepts such as resilience, civilization and strategic autonomy (Bargués-Pedreny 2020; Balfour 2021; Youngs 2021; Tallis 2021). Given the complexity and diversity of the issue, one should not expect simple answers. However, five tentative answers stand out. First, scholars’ approach might be shaped by a sort of ‘principles first’ orientation. This implies that principles are precious and should not be bent, no matter the circumstances or consequences. It follows that the principled pragmatism of the Global Strategy is too much pragmatism and not enough etched-in-stone principle. It also follows that scholars seldom reflect on the dilemmas facing policymakers, that is, dilemmas of equally valuable yet contending principles. Second, if research is based on a negative attitude to the use of force, then the CSDP is bound to be evaluated in a negative fashion. The same applies to strategic autonomy in the field of defence and security. The use of the European Peace Facility to finance deliveries of weapons to Ukraine is by default a no-go. Third, if belief in interdependence is strong, then the objective of strategic autonomy is bound to be evaluated in Fortress Europe terms and, differentiation between strategic infrastructure and production of, for instance, chocolate is defined as unwarranted. Fourth, the odd estrangement towards European civilization has its own unintended, or intended, consequences. While the shadows of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1992) have turned out to be long and enduring, Peter Katzenstein’s contributions (2010) did not get the reception they deserve. Hence, instead of critical appraisals of European civilization, default critiques of even employing the term are trending. Fifth, the critical imperative can be traced back to Max Horkheimer’s essay Traditional and Critical Theory (1937). While the essay has its qualities, subsequent readings tend to turn ‘critical’ into an empty signifier, perhaps most pronounced in studies with postmodern or post-structural underpinnings. Actually, Horkheimer paved the way with his gloomy Dialectics of the Enlightenment (1947), a devastating critique of the European enterprise, published a decade before the Rome Treaty. Here, we have both the implosion of liberalism (in a book) and its revival in social and political action (the Rome Treaty). For both forms, war played a role as a triggering factor, yet was then transformed into a thing of the past. What applies to war also applies to an interest in power politics and not even realists in Europe perform well in the European heartland of their theoretical tradition: hence the studies of poor performance of realists in Europe (Jorgensen and Jørgensen 2021).

Conclusion and Wider Perspectives

The main conclusion is that it is unlikely that the war in Ukraine will prompt a Zeitenwende in EU Studies. Previous wars, including the wars in Yugoslavia, did not cause much reflection about EU Studies and war. Instead, Comparative Politics became an increasingly strong sub-field. Moreover, a Zeitenwende is unlikely because academic path-dependencies are too strong. Most academics in Economics and Law never consider the role of war. Furthermore, EU Studies is predominantly characterized by a distinct liberal worldview and this worldview has not much in common with other liberal worldviews. Finally, War Studies and EU Studies do not match well and the same applies to EU Studies and research on power politics. Not even realists in Europe perform well in the heartland of their theoretical tradition.

However, the conclusion about an absence of impact should prompt a serious conversation about scenarios for a potential and desirable impact. In other words, if the hour of reckoning is when one confronts past mistakes and decides what to do next, then we have witnessed such an hour in the world of policy-makers. By contrast, most scholars within EU Studies largely soldier on as if nothing has happened. This chapter argues that EU Studies would be wise to confront past mistakes, engage in social learning and take prudent decisions about what to do next. Russia’s war in Ukraine has the potential to unravel some of the most important milestones in the construction of Europe. The future research agenda and paradigms are closely connected to, if not dependent on, the degree to which past mistakes are acknowledged. I will therefore briefly revisit the foundations of Liberal Peace Theory and focus on three themes that stand out as being particularly worthwhile to address (Doyle 2005).

The first theme concerns how a union of liberal democratic states conducts relations with non-liberal states, including authoritarian regimes, autocracies, dictatorships and theocracies. According to Liberal Peace Theory, for liberal states (and presumably also a union of liberal states) such relations are bound to be conflictual. However, in political discourse, terminology such as ‘strategic partners’ is commonplace and in academic discourse economic interdependence and globalization are assumed to singlehandedly reduce, if not erase, political conflict. Neither policymakers nor scholarly studies have fleshed-out principles for dealing with the non-liberal world. Given that membership of this part of the world is currently on the increase, the task of adopting principles is urgent.

The second theme concerns issues related to trade, globalization and strategic autonomy. The challenge is to develop ideas about a continuous harvest of the benefits of interdependence and globalization while making sure that interdependence does not morph into patterns of existential dependence (Marjory et al. 2022). Moreover, where exactly should the balance be between strategic autonomy and global Europe? What are the pros and cons of nearshoring production? (Tocci 2021; Lagarde 2022; Ondarza and Overhaus 2022).

The third theme concerns the configuration and transformation of cosmopolitan norms, for instance concerning migration. How many times are critical academics prepared to risk the kingdom to save the constitution? What should principled pragmatism mean in a range of policy fields?

Given the political and academic magnitude, significance and complexity of the three themes, it will take a long, yet necessary, conversation to answer these questions.