“Sleeping Beauty” Unleashed: Harmonizing a Consolidated European Security and Defense Union

Summary:

Notwithstanding Europe’s historic heritage, a fully harmonized and independent ‘European Security and Defense Union’ (ESDU) is a prerequisite for the European Union’s (EU) mainstay as a capable and influential international actor, its own security, and ultimately that of the United States (US). As the world’s single most cohesive military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has traditionally been the sole legitimate medium through which the EU and US ensure security throughout Europe. European defense and security have thus been deeply entrenched in a longstanding US-centric power structure through the security guarantor of NATO. In the ensuing assessment of blockages to forging such a ESDU, one can first envision a ‘triangle of European integration’ with a political apex at the top representing the commanding capacity of politics to shape and often override legal and economic aspects of integration, and with one legal and one economic base point at the bottom of the triangle.

With politics as the greatest obstacle to European defense integration, a fully operational defense union will be stillborn until member states come to terms with one another politically while applying the permitted legal foundations and convincing economic rationale to the debate on defense.

Never has there been a more exciting and opportune time for European defense with the recent activation of PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), so it is high time for this discussion.