European Union grand strategy and defense: strategy, sovereignty, and political union

Abstract

In its purest essence the European Union (EU) is a political project with a commitment to reaching a finalité politique of a federal Europe. The paper focuses on EU Grand Strategy with special reference to defence co-operation in Europe in a transatlantic context. The paper analyses the prospects for an EU strategy in the defence field and also at ways to explain this using suitable theoretical lenses' as frameworks for analysis including concepts drawn from the fields of comparative strategy and international relations. The EU is a political project and the paper will also ask how far the defence field is a necessary and contingent part of the drive towards political union in Europe and what this tells us about the prospects for an EU Grand Strategy in a transatlantic context. The paper will in particular focus on a series of case studies to analyse the prospects for a coherent EU politico-military culture, how such a culture operates and what it means for EU Grand Strategy in a transatlantic context. What does this tell us about the defence area in terms of strategy and also about the state of the European integration project itself?