Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

The European Union has often been described as an economic giant but a political dwarf. It has a security and defence policy, but it is not a military alliance. Despite this, the defence industry has been on the EU’s agenda for years. This development reached a new phase in 2021 when the EU budget included almost 8 billion Euro in a European Defence Fund, strengthened when the EU in 2022 acted decisively to supply Ukraine with arms and ammunition, and strengthened yet again in March 2024 when it presented a comprehensive European Defence Industrial Strategy and European Defence Industry Programme. At first glance the developments may seem counterintuitive. What makes a mainly civilian organisation develop into an actor in defence industry policy? Departing from four dilemmas arising from the specific challenges with ownership of the defence industry and efforts to create a European defence market, this article identifies the challenges that different EU initiatives try to solve, analyses economic, political and strategic rationales of the development, analyses the four dilemmas in light of the development, and discusses how it relates to the EU’s raison d’être with regard to European defence.

This chapter analyses if the EU is developing a defence union, and what that would imply for the EU. In order to analyse the development of EU defence policy since 2016, this chapter first discusses what measures would need to be in place in order for the EU to have a defence union, given previous literature on defence union. Then it analyses the development from 2016 to 2022. The conclusion is that the EU so far has not developed a defence union, even though the traits of union in EU security and defence policy have increased. In particular, three aspects found are of importance. The first is the European Defence Fund, the second the common capability development, that in combination with islands of specialization increase future possibilities of specialization and burden sharing; and the third some of the PESCO-projects which indicate defence of the member states within their own territory.

Departing from Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, this article analyses the OSCE-based security order that prevailed since the Cold War and that later was formalised in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The first conclusion is that the OSCE-based European security order was successively weakened, and at the longest can be said to have functioned until 2014. The second conclusion is that this security order will not reappear even if the OSCE survives the consequences of the war. The article then analyses the partially parallel development of the EU as a security actor in Europe, and the potential of the EU to become a node in a new European security order. The third and fourth conclusions are that the EU has the potential of being a node in a new European security order, but that it will also need to become a node in a larger global order.

Den här artikeln identifierar och analyserar tre olika reaktioner, i artikeln benämnda »strategisk respons», på amerikansk strategisk återhållsamhet sedan 2017 och mot bakgrund av Brexit: »Liberal övervintring», »Ett starkare Europa» och »En bredare koalition». Analysen kopplar strategisk respons, strategiskt aktörskap och strategisk autonomi och leder till två slutsatser: För det första att Brexit snararare har gynnat än hindrat det europeiska säkerhets- och försvarssamarbetet, såväl inom ramen för EU som mellan EU och stater som står utanför EU, däribland Storbritannien. För det andra att den framväxande säkerhetsordningen innebär nya och annorlunda förutsättningar för det säkerhets- och försvarspolitiska samarbetet i Europa, inte minst i Norden. 

This paper describes and analyses three types of European strategic response since the year 2017 by European governments and the EU in response to US strategic restraint and conditioned by Brexit. The three types of response we label “liberal wintering”, “a stronger Europe” and “a broader coalition”. The paper links strategic response to strategic agency and strategic autonomy leading on to two main conclusions: First, that Brexit has done more to promote than to restrain the development of European common security and defence, both within the EU and when involving nations outside of the EU, such as the UK. Second, that the new broader European security and defence structures open the door to new forms of cooperation, for example between the Nordic countries.