Bilateral defence and security cooperation despite disintegration: Does the Brexit process divide the United Kingdom and Germany on Russia?

Abstract

With wavering US support and Brexit unfolding, cooperation between Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, and the United Kingdom, Western Europe's prime military power, becomes crucial for Europe's overall ability to deal with a resurgent Russia. Does institutional and normative disintegration between states, such as the Brexit process, weaken bilateral security cooperation? This article argues that such cooperation persists if both states continue to jointly perceive a third actor as threatening while regarding each other as useful and reliable when it comes to ameliorating this shared threat. The argument is tested on a case of intrinsic theoretical, historical, and political importance: British-German cooperation towards Russia before and after the 2016 Brexit referendum. The article finds, against a wide pessimist consensus to the contrary, that cooperation strengthened during the Brexit process. As the Ukraine crisis had caused converging threat perceptions since 2014, Brexit incentivised both sides to signal ongoing reliability to each other and, consequently, to view each other as more capable allies. The article combines qualitative comparisons and congruence analysis, drawing data from British, German and Russian primary sources in their respective original languages, including foreign and security policy documents as well as interviews with stakeholders involved in policy formation.

Inertia and Reactiveness in Germany's Russia Policy

“…In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and fomented hybrid war in Donbass, Germany was instrumental in organizing joint eu and transatlantic sanctions and increasing nato deterrence in the Baltics. 67 Future research should map these patterns of inertia and reactiveness in German policy to theorize on generalizable causes and consequences. The findings of this study suggest that for Germany's Russia policy from late 2021 to early 2022, policy inheritance, continued influence of key figures across administrations, and public opinion played key roles.…”

Preference Constellations in EU–Russian Crisis Bargaining over Syria and Ukraine

“…EU conditionality on the sanctions shifted away from the issue of Crimea, making sectoral sanctions largely dependent on progress in the Minsk framework. Lukewarm efforts in terms of the EU's defence spending and ‘strategic autonomy’, even when US commitment to Europe became seriously dubitable during the Trump era, further support the proposition that EU member states did not value highly their ability to put pressure on Russia (Driedger, 2021).…”

“…Whilst these approaches contribute significantly to our understanding of EU–Russian relations writ large, our framework zeroes in on EU–Russian crisis bargaining and accounts for underappreciated aspects therein. Various studies have established that EU responses to Russian actions became more militarized the more EU member states felt themselves threatened and that EU ‘powerness’ changed depending on experience and context (Driedger, 2021; Sperling and Webber, 2019; Vanaga and Rostoks, 2019). Our framework and findings allow to identify and explain these variations of the ways in which the EU exerts power (both in terms of intensity and in terms of ‘style’, be it ‘civilian’, ‘normative’, ‘market’ or military) by uncovering the role of underlying preference constellations, mediated through institutional and organizational features of the Union.…”

“…Even then, the sanctions did not include major financial and energy sectors. This bears the handwriting of German interests in gas and energy and the role of Russian money in the City of London (Driedger, 2021, p. 101).…”