Int Polit

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0129-6

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

What European army? Alliance, security community

or postnational federation

Tomas Kucera1

 Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2017

Abstract Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal to create a ‘European army’ stood at the

beginning of a process of revitalising the CSDP. Although it is too early to establish
empirically based understanding of this development, theoretical thinking should be
able to offer an interpretation of what the possible and desirable objectives of this
development are. The concepts of alliance and security community provide such an
interpretation. However, this article argues that their views on the state and defence
integration did not adequately reflect the current project of the European Defence
Union (EDU). Instead, Habermas’s conception of postnational federation is pro-
posed as a better framework for understanding and critical assessment of the
European military and defence integration in general, and the EDU in particular.

Keywords European defence integration
Common Security and Defence Policy

Alliance
Security community
Postnational federation
European Defence Union

Introduction

‘A common European army’ became one of the most remarkable programme points
with which Jean-Claude Juncker commenced his presidency of the European
Commission. ‘A common European army’, said Juncker in March 2014 and
repeated as a European Commission President a year later, ‘would help us to better
coordinate our foreign and defence policies, and to collectively take on Europe’s
responsibilities in the world’ (Welt 2014a, 2015b). The regional instability and
disorder provided Juncker’s proposal with a level of urgency and relevancy. Yet, the
vision of a European army inevitably raised heated and polarised public debates.

& Tomas Kucera

tomas.kucera@fsv.cuni.cz
1
Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies, Charles University, U Krize 8,
158 00 Prague, Czech Republic
 T. Kucera

What became a battle colours for European federalists to rally round, the
Eurosceptic camp perceived as a red rag. The concept of European army has been
employed more often than not to highlight one’s emotional stand towards the
European integration.
Despite the ridicule and categorical opposition that Juncker’s call received, it
marked the beginning of serious discussions about a further development of the
Common Security and Defence Policy (e.g. Blockmans and Faleg 2015; EPSC
2015). The British decision to leave the EU provided momentum to the effort to
revitalise the European military and defence integration. The EU was finally
allowed to establish its own permanent military command, though for training
missions only (Military Planning and Conduct Capability, MPCC), and the
Commission launched the European Defence Fund. The Permanent Structured
Cooperation in Defence (PESCO) is to commence in December 2017.
It is too early to tell the trajectory of this development with any degree of
certainty. Nonetheless, theoretical thinking should be able to offer an interpretation
of what is possible and desirable with regard to defence integration. It is the aim of
this article to examine the prospect and possibility of European military and defence
integration from a theoretical perspective. What forms of military and defence
integration are envisioned in the theoretical literature and what normative
proposition these theories stipulate? While the prospect of military and defence
integration is quite a challenge for the traditional theories of European integration,
general IR theories seem better equipped to talk about this matter. In particular, the
concepts of alliance and security community, which are examined in detail below,
project strong and mutually antithetical views on the prospect and possibility of
defence integration.
The alliance, as one framework for military and defence integration, is one of the
prominent strategic instruments that European states have been employing
throughout the twentieth century in order to face security challenges. On the other
hand, the term ‘European army’ may imply a transfer of national sovereignty onto a
supranational institution and a transformation of national identity into identification
with transnational European community. A European army thus would be an
expression of Deutsch’s (1957) ‘amalgamated security community’ or, at least,
‘tightly coupled security community’ as defined by Adler and Barnett (1998).
Comparison of these two concepts highlights the question concerning the nature of
the state and the purpose of integration. For the concept of alliance, the military and
defence policy is ‘the last bastion of state sovereignty’ (Mérand et al. 2011, p. 124).
In contrast, the concept of security community conceives defence integration as a
possible advance guard of transnational integration.
This article argues that the dialectical view on the state and defence integration
that the alliance and security community concepts provide does not adequately
reflect the ideational background of the ongoing defence integration projects, here
referred to as the European Defence Union (EDU). This article proposes
Habermas’s conception of postnational federation1 as a better framework for

1
The term ‘postnational federation’ is here employed to represent Habermas’s thinking on European
integration. Admittedly, he has used this very term only in a few occasions (e.g. Habermas 2001, p. 108).
What European army? Alliance, security community…

understanding the current trajectory of the European military and defence

integration. Moreover, as an explicitly normative concept it allows critical
assessment of this development.
This introduction is followed with a review of the European integration theories’
prospects of the military and defence integration. Since the traditional European
integration theories are largely dismissive of a deeper defence integration, the
following section introduces the alliance and security community concepts and
explicates their main claims about defence integration. These two perspectives
radically diverge in its ontological understanding of the state and, consequently,
about the possible character of military and defence integration. Habermas’s
conception of postnational federation, which is unpacked afterwards, defies the
antithetical discourse created by the alliance and security community narratives.
The last section before conclusion illustrates the presence of these three concepts in
the current discourse on the European army and the European defence integration.
This section demonstrates that the concept of postnational federation is more
consistent with the current proposals on CSDP reforms and the project of European
Defence Union in particular.

European integration theories and defence

Deepening of European integration in the domain of military and defence has

recently turned into a relevant political option with numerous policy entrepreneurs
and proponents at the European as well as the national level. Yet, such a
development may seemingly fly in the face of one of the common wisdoms about
European politics. As Howorth put it, the European Common Security and Defence
Policy ‘is destined to remain strictly voluntary, consensual and intergovernmental
for as long as the Union remains a body which falls short of fully fledged
federalism. All talk of a ‘‘EuroArmy’’ is little more than politically motivated
chatter’ (Howorth 2007, p. 42).
The traditional mainstream theories of European integration fully support
Howorth’s claim. Both intergovernmentalists and mainstream neofunctionalists
converge on the assumption that defence policy is beyond the reach of European
integration. The realist foundations of intergovernmentalism postulate that national
security and defence is the very raison d’être of the state. Therefore, nation-states
are unlikely to loose their grip over the matters of national security, since this would
effectively mean bargaining away their own souls (Bickerton et al. 2011, p. 8).
‘What a nation-state cannot provide alone—in economics, or defense—it can still
provide through means far less drastic than hara-kiri’, insists Hoffmann (1966,
p. 866). In a similar vein, the neofunctionalist concept of integration spillover is
commonly considered applicable exclusively onto the fields of ‘low politics’,
whereas ‘high politics’, national defence first and foremost, is expected to be

Footnote 1 continued
Nonetheless, similar terms are used elsewhere: ‘federation beyond the nation state’ (Habermas 2012,
p. 13) and ‘federation of nation-states’ (Habermas 2004, p. 25).
 T. Kucera

immune against the spillover mechanism (Haas 1961, p. 373; Rosamond 2000,
p. 62). In the perspective of the traditional integration theories, the state continues to
be the most important player in the military field. Cooperation rather than
integration is thus a term more fitting to the nature of the CSDP (Jones 2007, p. 11).
From the perspective of the mainstream theories of European integration, the
CSDP has done little to justify systematic examination of the possibility to perform
defence policy or organise armed forces beyond the nation-state’s control. Yet, the
security governance turn in the research of European security institutions, in a sense,
undermines the idea of defence policy being the last bastion of the sovereign nation-
state. In this research perspective the CSDP is an outcome of a European security
governance in which variety of state and non-state actors interact. On the one hand,
one has to agree with Mérand et al. (2011, p. 140) that the positions of gatekeepers
within this security governance are occupied by actors representing the member
states and the state actors hence seem to ‘keep the upper hand’. On the other hand,
as Howorth’s concept of ‘supranational intergovernmentalism’ proposes, socialisa-
tion of the national representatives transforms the formal intergovernmental
political structure into an informally supranational decision-making processes.
Howorth (2010) and Bickerton (2011) demonstrate this by analysing the Political
and Security Committee (PSC). Similarly, Davis Cross (2013) describes the EU
Military Committee (EUMC) as a coherent epistemic community that effectively
exercises influence in the decision-making of national governments. Although the
CSDP has preserved its formal intergovernmental structure, socialisation of state
representatives in Brussels affects the articulation of preferences and interests on the
national level (Norheim-Martinsen 2010, p. 1357). Moreover, as Bickerton (2011)
argues, it is the nation-state itself that undergoes a transformation which sees
bureaucratic rationales dominating over ideologically driven political narratives.
The CSDP is thus depicted as a ‘process driven by the steady bureaucratization of
the European nation-state’ (Bickerton et al. 2011, p. 17). As a consequence of these
sociological processes, a certain degree of normative and ideational convergence
around the European strategic culture is recognisable (Meyer 2006).
Concerning political designs of military and defence integration, the field seems
rather undertheorised (cf. Kurowska and Breuer 2012, p. 1). The exceptions may
represent works by Selden and Ojanen in which the exclusion of defence policy
from the spillover effect is challenged. According to Selden (2010), the US federal
government’s consolidation of power over domestic affairs in the 1890s was an
outcome of a spillover processes that the EU is likely to imitate in the near future. In
a similar vein, Ojanen (2002, 2006) challenges the assertion that the field of military
and defence would be immune to the integration processes. On the contrary, if this
field is specific in any way, Ojanen (2002, p. 9) suggested shortly after the inception
of the ESDP, ‘it could paradoxically be that defence is the simplest field of all to be
integrated’. The EU is thus argued to possess the potential for supranationalisation
of the defence policy.
What European army? Alliance, security community…

Defence integration in IR theory

In comparison with the European integration literature presented above, general IR

theories seem better equipped to postulate propositions about the development of
military and defence integration. The neorealist approaches take a dominant
position (see, e.g. Paul 2005; Posen 2006; Dyson 2013; Dyson and Konstadinides
2013; Schoen 2008). The predominantly intergovernmental nature of the CSDP
renders relevant identification of the European defence integration with the concept
of alliance. In opposition to the neorealist interpretation stands the constructivist
concept of security communities (see, e.g. Bremberg 2015). It is the aim of this
section to introduce these two concepts and explicate their main claims about
defence integration. In particular, these two perspectives radically diverge in its
ontological understanding of the state and, consequently, about the possible
character of military and defence integration. It is these diverging issues we shall
focus on right now.

Alliances

Walt, as the major proponent of the neorealist alliance theory, defines alliance as ‘a
formal or informal arrangement for security cooperation between two or more
sovereign states’ (Walt 1986, p. 12). This definition treats ‘alliance’ as a generic
term for any international security and defence cooperation between sovereign
states. Others, however, distinguish between various types of defence cooperation
(e.g. Kann 1976; Morrow 1991; Singer and Small 1966; Snyder 1990). Distinctions
can be made between formal alliances and informal alignments. Snyder, for one,
defines alliances as ‘formal associations of states for the use (or non-use) of military
force, intended for either the security or the aggrandisement of their members,
against specific other states, whether or not these others are explicitly identified’
(Snyder 1990, p. 104). Small and Singer differentiate formal alliances along three
types of obligations: defence pact with the obligation of military assistance;
neutrality and non-aggression pact; and entente, which commits its members to
consultations and/or cooperation in a crisis (Singer and Small 1966, p. 5; Kann
1976). Leeds and Anac (2005) differentiate alliances according to the intensity of
their peacetime military coordination. Pre-integration, convergence of doctrines,
training and supplies, and pre-positioning for joint action signify the highest degree
of joint military preparation and are expected to bring the greatest efficiency in
military efforts of the alliance.
Regardless of the intensity or commitment, the alliance is always intended to
serve the interests of the sovereign states which temporarily participate in it. It is
this ontological primacy of the state that imposes limits on defence cooperation and
integration. The security benefits of alliances are evaluated against their costs ‘in
terms of the autonomy which must be given up in order to form the alliance’
(Altfeld 1984, p. 526). There is a clear trade-off between political autonomy and
security in the process of alliance formation (Morrow 1991; Johnson 2015).
Furthermore, one’s foreign policy can be diverted from rational pursuance of one’s
 T. Kucera

self-interest due to two dangers. On the one hand, the state may act out of fear of
abandonment by its allies. On the other hand, it may become entangled or even
entrapped in a conflict over ‘interests that one does not share, or shares only
partially’ (Snyder 1984, p. 467; see also Mandelbaum 1981, pp. 151–152; Liska
1962, p. 74; cf. Kim 2011).
Moreover, since the purpose of alliances is to counter specific external threats, an
alliance is expected to last only until the original balance of power—or balance of
threat, as Walt (1986) asserts—shifts. High degree of institutionalisation, however,
may create a considerable incentive to preserve the alliance even when its original
purpose vanished. Yet, such endurance of institutionalised alliances entails a grave
danger that a confusion about ally’s willingness to honour their obligations may
produce a false sense of security (Kann 1976, p. 618). Or as Walt (1997, p. 168) puts
it, ‘the alliance may be dead long before anyone notices, and the discovery of the
corpse may come at a very inconvenient moment’.
To sum up, in the realist view the European military and defence integration
would be little more than a form of alliance. Alliances are conceived as important
instruments that may benefit the state; nonetheless, such benefits come with a price
tag and potential risks. A prudent realist would neither expect nor recommend the
CSDP to go too far down the road of military integration, institutionalisation and
interdependency. Too deep integration would mean a sacrifice of political autonomy
of the participating states while exposing them to the twin danger of abandonment
and entrapment.
The realist prudence is founded on the ontological exclusivity of the state and its
identity in international relations. The state would always relate to its ally merely as to
‘an object to be manipulated for the gratification of the self’ (Wendt 1994, p. 386).
Although alliances are formed for the benefit of all its members, it is always
instrumental reasoning of individual states that makes them cooperate. Individual self-
interest brings a state into an alliance, keeps it inside and makes it leave the alliance
once the original purpose vanished. This received wisdom of political realism
contrasts starkly with the perspective of social constructivism, for which the state’s
identity is not ontologically exclusive; ‘an identification with the fate of the other’
(Wendt 1994, p. 386), including other states or societies, is possible and expectable.

Security communities

The realist alliance theory views military and defence cooperation merely as a
contract that lasts as long as it advances individual national interests of participating
states. For the social constructivist research project, an alliance is merely a
beginning on the path to integration. In this sense, defence integration may be
conceived as a process in which national identity and self-interest are being
transformed into collective identity and interest. ‘As the ability to meet corporate
needs unilaterally declines, so does the incentive to hang onto the egoistic identities
that generate such policies’, suggests Wendt (1994, p. 389).
It was the endurance of NATO after the end of the Cold War, in particular, that
stimulated this way of sociological thinking in the study of international relations.
NATO’s persistence, in spite of radical changes in the security environment, has
What European army? Alliance, security community…

been put forward as a demonstration of ‘the continuing impact of the shared

democratic identities upon which the Alliance is based’ (Williams and Neumann
2000, p. 358). Or as Thomas Risse proposes, NATO ‘represents an institutional-
ization of the transatlantic security community based on common values and a
collective identity of liberal democracies’ (Risse-Kappen 1996, p. 395; cf. Deudney
and Ikenberry 1993).
The concept of security community was developed by Karl Deutsch and his
colleagues as early as the 1950s. Deutsch’s security communities stand for ‘a group
of people which has become ‘‘integrated’’’. The constructivist turn in IR in the
1990s brought new attention to Deutsch’s concept. Most prominently, Adler and
Barnett define the security community as ‘a transnational region comprised of
sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful
change’ (Adler and Barnett 1998, p. 30). These mutual expectations are developed
in a gradual socialising process. Functional needs for collective action and security
cooperation may produce mutual trust among participating actors and eventually
result in developing common identity, or, in Deutsch’s words, ‘sense of
community’.
Security communities may vary in the intensity of their institutionalisation.
Deutsch distinguished two basic forms of security communities: amalgamated and
pluralistic. Previously independent polities may ‘amalgamate’ under a common
government into a single entity. The USA is an example of the amalgamated
security community: ‘It became a single governmental unit by the formal merger of
several formerly independent units. It has one supreme decision-making centre’.
The pluralistic security community may exist without a supreme decision-making
centre and other characteristics of a federal structure, and the involved states
formally retain their sovereignty (Deutsch 1957). Adler and Barnett distinguish
between loosely and tightly coupled variants of security communities. In the latter
form, the level of institutionalisation approximates ‘a post-sovereign system,
endowed with common supranational, transnational, and national institutions and
some form of a collective security system’ (Adler and Barnett 1998, p. 30).
Tightly coupled security community represents the final stage of transnational
institutional integration. Military and defence integration may become possible due
to the transformed nature of the state. At the final stage of the security community
development, Adler explains, ‘states can express their agency insofar as they meet
and reproduce the epistemic and normative expectations of the community’ (Adler
1997, p. 266). The state effectively becomes an agent of the transnational security
community. It is no longer the nation-state, but the community who possesses the
right to use force in the international context.
Adler and Barnett’s notion of community development gives weight to the
critical suggestion that such a security community ‘resembles little more than a
‘‘state of states’’, or a regional government designed on the blueprint of a modern
state’, notes Ditrych (2014, p. 351). Yet, as Walt’s criticism points out, the ‘sense of
community’ could hardly approximate the integrative power of nationalism and
national identity. According to Walt, loyalty to the idea of national interest would
surpass loyalty to any transnational political community and pragmatic politicians
know that their careers depend on their domestic electorates, not on the
 T. Kucera

transnational community as a whole. If tension occurs between the interests of

transnational and national communities, ‘most leaders will give greater priority to
national preferences than to foreign ones… the level of solidarity and mutual
identification is not strong enough to prevent states from pursuing an independent
course once their interests begin to conflict’ (Walt 1997, pp. 168–170). The military
and defence integration under the security community thus runs the risk that the
depth of institutional integration is not commensurate with the strength of common
identity.
To sum up, it is characteristic of the social constructivist way of thinking that the
sovereign nation-state is not an ontologically constant entity in international relations.
Transformation of the sovereign state and the system of states is held possible and not
at all unlikely. The process of establishing security community may demonstrate how
independent states set on the journey towards federal structures. Admittedly,
proponents of the concept declare that institutional integration and supranationali-
sation of decision-making is not essential and inevitable for security communities.
Nonetheless, if a security community is expected to facilitate collective actions,
common institutions, including military integration, will be its natural companions.
It is important, however, that the process of collective identity building drives the
institutional integration and not vice versa. Amalgamated or tightly coupled security
communities contain in themselves a seed of conflict owing to the fact that the depth
of institutional integration may get out of sync with the intensity of collective
identity. It is questionable if a transnational community can develop a political
identity approximating the strength of nationalism. After all, Deutsch’s example of
the USA may be only one of a kind.

Habermasian postnational federation

The concept of alliance may explain deepening of military and defence integration
as long as it protects and serves the vital interests of the nation-state. If understood
according to the concept of security communities, supranational defence integration
would follow the process of extending political identification with one’s nation onto
a regional transnational community. The example of the USA indicates that the
amalgamated security community, as the most integrated form of security
communities, can be conceived as a nation writ large and the supranational
institutional structure would not significantly differ from classical federations. In
contrast, Habermas’s conception of postnational federation reflects the specific
nature of European integration and offers a perspective that overcomes the
dialectical relationship between the alliance and security community (cf.
Castiglione 2009, p. 32). The concept of postnational federation is, on the one
hand, open to supranational defence integration and, on the other hand, addresses
concerns about the democratic sovereignty at the national level.
Concerning the latter point, the globalisation of military risks is, in the view of
Habermas, just one among many global trends that undermine the national
sovereignty and ‘necessitate the founding and expansion of political institutions on
the supranational level’ (Habermas 1998, pp. 398–399; cf. McCormick 2007,
What European army? Alliance, security community…

p. 184). It is important to Habermas that the process of building postnational

federation is not conducted at the expense of the state’s sovereign power; on the
contrary, only by embedding itself more firmly in a supranational system the state as
a democratic polity might regain its old strength (Habermas 2001, p. 81; cf.
McCormick 2007, p. 205). For the most pressing issues of the globalised politics—
be it climate change or management of major international crises—independent
unilateral action is not an option. International cooperation becomes a necessity;
yet, the imperative of international consensus may effectively emasculate parlia-
mentarian way of democratic ‘will-formation’. Habermas warns that international
cooperation based on intergovernmental negotiations may result in ‘a kind of post-
democratic, bureaucratic rule’ (Habermas 2012, p. 52).
Habermas’s project of European postnational federation requires that ‘opinion-
and will-formation’ be also enabled at the supranational level. Management of
global risks and challenges would thus require the democratic participation of the
‘European people’. Yet, the meaning of ‘European people’ distinguishes postna-
tional federation from any conventional understanding of federalism. Whereas
federal nation-states are constituted ‘by the entire national citizenry alone’, the
citizens involved in the postnational federation can be conceived in their dual role—
as European citizens and citizens of the member states (Habermas 2012, p. 38). The
postnational federation is not to possess a supreme constitutional authority, and the
existence of postnational democracy does not require a cultivation of nation-like
identity. The European people is not imagined as a nation writ large (Castiglione
2009). Political participation in the role of European citizens is not to weaken one’s
identification with the member states. On the contrary, it is in their role of citizens of
the member states that people agree ‘to transfer the sovereign rights of their already
constituted states in part, and only one by one, to the new polity’ (Habermas 2012,
p. 38).
To reiterate, the build-up of supranational democracy should only aim to restore
democratic sovereignty over areas and issues which globalisation placed outside the
effective power of the state. Nonetheless, this transfer of sovereign rights aims to
preserve states in ‘their proven role as guarantors of law and freedom also in their
role as member states’ (Habermas 2012, p. 41). The member state needs to preserve
all necessary powers to guarantee rights and freedoms of its citizens, including its
monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within its territory. Yet, as the following
paragraphs are to argue, the concept of postnational federation also allows for
communitarianisation of some military roles and functions.
It is the concept of nation-state—as described in Habermas’s ‘The European
Nation-State’ (1998)—that justifies the belief that the area of military and defence is
inextricably connected to state sovereignty. Yet, the European nation-state is argued
to undergo a process of transformation into the welfare state in the second half of
the twentieth century. Arguably, this transformation has rendered a transfer of some
military functions on the supranational level possible.
Habermas acknowledges that nationalism and the nation-state performed an
important historical role by halting the process of social disintegration that was
brought about by modernisation. The integrative idea of culturally and ethnically
exclusive national community made it possible ‘to re-embed a population uprooted
 T. Kucera

from traditional forms of life in an extended and rationalized lifeworld’ (Habermas

1998, p. 407). However, nationalism’s integrative power relied, to a certain extent,
on its ability to divert internal social conflicts outwards. This particularistic
conception of the ethnic-cultural nation therefore defined ‘the freedom of the nation’
as ‘its ability to assert its independence by military means if necessary’ (Habermas
1998, p. 405). Freedom and sovereignty of the nation-state is founded on the
military power.
In Western Europe, nationalism is said to have exhausted itself in the two world
wars. In the post-war European context, the ‘imagined ethnic-cultural nation’ and
the nation-state had to give way to the welfare state which through guaranteeing
social and cultural rights could rely on ‘the real nation of citizens’. Instead of the
cultivation of national consciousness in the nation-state, it is the implementation of
basic social and cultural rights of citizens and real improvement of their material
wellbeing that effectively pacified class and ethnic antagonisms, and created
‘solidarity among strangers’ in the welfare state (Habermas 1998, p. 409).
Important for us, this transformation of the internal legitimacy of the state
affected the relationship with the outside. In contrast with the nation-state, the
welfare state with its ‘nation of citizens’, insists Habermas, ‘construe the freedom of
the nation—following Kant—in cosmopolitan terms: namely, as the authorization
and obligation to enter into cooperative agreements or to establish a balance of
interests with other nations within the framework of a peaceful federation’
(Habermas 1998, p. 405). Without the need to sustain social cohesion in opposition
to other nations, the universalism of welfare state weakens the imperatives of power
politics and shifts the military policy out of the defining core of state sovereignty.
Such a decline of the military policy’s national significance is described in the
process of ‘denationalisation of defence’ which Matlary and Østerud (2007) observe
in varying degrees throughout Europe since the early 1990s. Since the enemy
invasion radically dropped down on the list of relevant security risks, the imperative
of territorial defence had to be radically redefined throughout Europe. The purpose
of national armed forces could no longer focus predominantly on denying hostile
occupation of national territory; instead, European militaries were assigned a wide
range of tasks. As the versatility of military tasks became wider, ‘the national
entrenchment of these tasks is weaker’ (Matlary and Østerud 2007, p. 5). The
concept of denationalisation of defence thus describes transformation of the military
from an essential instrument for preserving national sovereignty into ‘a diplomatic
and alliance building institution’ (Matlary and Østerud 2007, p. 9).
Importantly, the process of denationalisation of defence renders the field of
military and defence accessible to the neofunctionalist logic of supranational
integration. Neofunctionalism traditionally considered defence policy as an issue of
high politics and thus beyond the reach of integrational spillover effect (Haas 1961,
p. 373; Rosamond 2000, p. 62). Yet, the notion of denationalisation of defence
indicates that defence policy has left the carefully guarded perimeter of high
politics. Moreover, Ojanen argues that ‘the specificity of the process of European
integration lies in its capacity to transform policy fields, to render previously ‘‘high-
political’’ sensitive areas ‘‘normal’’ and low-political’ (Ojanen 2006, p. 62).
Defence, too, may become an issue of normal or even low politics, as defence is less
What European army? Alliance, security community…

and less considered a defining part of national identity. Ojanen (2002, p. 12) insists
that there is nothing special about defence that would impede its supranational-
isation from happening. She even claims that this changing field is—because of its
focus on practical results, quest for cooperation of large industries, and the need for
efficiently run armed forces—the one with a particularly strong integrative potential
(Ojanen 2002, pp. 8–9).
To sum up, in the Habermasian notion of postnational federation the state is not
an obsolete or redundant entity. The European member states continue to play and
ought to preserve its crucial role of ‘guarantors of law and freedom’, which includes
continuation of its monopoly on the use of violence within the state. Yet, the
military and defence no longer define national sovereignty and do not need to be
considered key parts of national identity. Therefore, it is possible to respond to the
globalising military risks and challenges with founding a supranational military
organisation which would be more suitable than national militaries to deal with
these risks. Important for this process is a functional justification of supranation-
alisation of some military functions on the one hand; on the other hand, it is the
democratic and constitutional nature of so-established postnational federation.
This concept offers an interpretation of the current trajectory of defence
integration and understanding of its potentials. The project of European Defence
Union, which is presented below, shall prove the usefulness of this interpretation.
Nonetheless, the postnational federation is also explicitly normative concept. It
cannot be claimed that the EU has become or is set to turn into a postnational
federation. Rather, this concept should function as an instrument for critical
evaluation of the EU’s constitutional development.

Political narratives of the European defence integration

The question concerning European defence integration was powerfully reopened by

Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014 when, as the leader of the European People’s Party,
included the creation of the ‘European army’ among his long-term priorities (Welt
2014a). The subsequent political discourse on European army is illustrative for
several reasons. Besides the Atlanticist/Europeanist divide, one of its most visible
faces has become a controversy over the federalist advocacy of defence integration.
The issue of defence integration thus turned into a rhetorical battlefield over the
attributes of the nation-state sovereignty and the appropriate role of the EU. In this
sense, the European army discourse may resemble the dialectical relationship
between the concepts of alliance and security community. To show that these
concepts match the major political narratives on the European defence integration is
the objective of this section. Yet, as argued in the latter part of this section, this
dialectical discourse tends to distort the nature of the so-called ‘European Defence
Union’—an integration project that was first proposed in a report called ‘More
union in European defence’ in February 2015 and has become actively promoted by
Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and
Security Policy, in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
 T. Kucera

Brexit removed a powerful political obstacle preventing further development of

the CSDP. British political representation in London as well as in Brussels is the
strongest proponents of the narrative that views the CSDP as an alliance and
assesses its utility and development strictly from this particular perspective.
Expressions and views of British politicians may therefore illustrate how the
alliance narrative reflects the European defence integration. As for the other side of
the dialectic, the narrative resembling the concept of security community is clearly
identifiable among Germany’s defence-policy elites. Deepening of European
defence integration became a long-term objective of Germany’s defence policy.
For example, the outgoing government of CDU/CSU and SPD declared in their
coalition agreement: ‘We strive for an ever closer alliance of the European armed
forces, which can evolve into a European army controlled by the Parliament’ (CDU,
CSU und SPD 2013, p. 16).2 Moreover, the ongoing integration of the German
Bundeswehr with the Dutch armed forces is explicitly referred to as ‘a concrete step
towards a European army’ (Welt 2014b).
The British opposition to the CSDP has been largely fuelled by their Atlanticism.
It is the suspicion of balancing the USA that is being reiterated through the alliance
narrative. Thus for Geoffrey Van Orden, defence and military spokesman for the
ECR faction in the European Parliament, it is the motivation ‘to create autonomous
European military structures and decision-making processes in which the United
States is not involved’ that strengthens his opposition (European Parliament 2016a).
Nonetheless, the alliance narrative is not a priori hostile to the CSDP. An alliance-
like defence cooperation among European states may positively contribute to their
security. David Lidington, the UK Minister for Europe, thus defended the CSDP by
insisting that ‘we should look to the CSDP within the European Union as…
mechanisms by which we can enhance and strengthen the United Kingdom’s
security and defence and take forward our global security objectives’ (UK
Parliament 2014, col. 179). Moreover, rising threats and risks put further pressure
on mutual cooperation within Europe. ‘[W]e must work with others’, said
Lidington, ‘because the threats and opportunities are global and our own action
will be more effective when working in partnership with likeminded countries’ (UK
Parliament 2016, col. 5).
The concept of European army, as Juncker introduced it into the discourse,
represents an antithesis to the alliance narrative of the CSDP. Rather than a strategic
instrument, the European army is promoted as a means in the process of foreign-
policy integration and security community building. ‘An army like this would help
us to better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on
Europe’s responsibilities in the world’, said Juncker (2015). Moreover, it would
advance and complete the process of internal pacification of the European
community of states. In Juncker’s words, ‘A European army would show the world
that there will never again be war between its member states’ (Mahony 2015; Welt
2015b). This is not to say that external security threats would play no role in this

2
Such a statement is by no means a novelty in German political discourse. In fact, similar proclamation
was made also by the previous CDU/CSU-FDP coalition government in 2009 and by the then opposition
SPD in 2010 (see CDU, CSU und FDP 2009, p. 118; SPD 2010).
What European army? Alliance, security community…

narrative. On the contrary, Juncker’s proposal was triggered by the Russian

menacing behaviour. Nonetheless, it is the EU as an autonomous actor that needs to
be reinforced. ‘With its own army, Europe could credibly respond to any threat to
peace in an EU Member State or in its neighbourhood’ (Welt 2015b). This brings
the narratives of defence integration into an irreconcilable incompatibility. From the
alliance perspective, deepening of the European defence integration would create a
European federal state by stealth. ‘The EU motive is not to create additional military
capability’, insists Van Orden (ERC), ‘but to achieve defence integration as a key
step on the road to a federal EU state’ (Kern 2016).
Admittedly, in the security community narrative the EU becomes an autonomous
or even sovereign actor playing on the world stage and protecting the values and
interests of the European community. In their common declaration the Foreign
Ministers of France and Germany proclaimed their aim ‘to promote the EU as an
independent and global actor able to leverage its unique array of expertise and tools,
civilian and military, in order to defend and promote the interests of its citizens’
(Ayrault and Steinmeier 2016, p. 4). The concept of European security community
may expect a development of a kind of postsovereign system in which member
states no longer preserve their sovereignty over foreign and defence policy. This
way of thinking is reflected in the seemingly radical assertion by Hans-Peter Bartels,
German Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, that Germany should
renounce its sovereignty in order to advance towards the European army (Welt
2014b). In a similar vein, Norbert Röttgen, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the German Bundestag, views the association of the military to the
nation-state as an ‘anachronism’ (Welt 2015a). If the EU is perceived as a tightly
coupled security community, it becomes natural to consider the nation-state being
merely an agent of this community.
In contrast, it is essential for the alliance narrative of the CSDP that the sovereign
nation-state preserves its ontological primacy. Greater efficiency may warrant
certain deepening of institutional integration in defence; nonetheless, an alliance is
always assessed on the ground whether it serves the interests of the sovereign states.
It is the intergovernmental nature of the European defence cooperation that is seen
essential. An ECR Member of European Parliament thus acknowledged that ‘when
there are multiple threats facing Europe it is right for the EU to look at improving its
level of intergovernmental cooperation in terms of the Common Security and
Defence Policy’ (European Parliament 2016b). Similarly, the security and defence
cooperation between nation-states was greeted by Prime Minister Cameron. Yet, he
added that ‘it isn’t right for the European Union to have capabilities, armies, air
forces and all the rest of it. We need to get that demarcation right’ (Telegraph 2013).
It is essential for the alliance rhetoric that the member states are the only actors on
the stage, while the CSDP or EU is considered merely an instrument.

The European Defence Union as a way towards postnational federation

As long as the military and defence integration under the CSDP was limited to a
strictly intergovernmental and voluntary cooperation of the member states in
capability development projects, such as the Military Headline Goals 2003 and 2010
 T. Kucera

or the battlegroup initiative, the concept of alliance adequately reflected this policy.
Following Brexit, concrete steps have been made to revitalise the CSDP and
transform it into so-called European Defence Union (EDU). In December 2016, the
European Council approved the High Representative’s Implementation Plan on
Security and Defence, and Commission’s European Defence Action Plan. Conse-
quently, a permanent military headquarter for training missions, officially called the
Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC), was formed under the EU
Military Staff (part of the EEAS) and the Commission launched the European
Defence Fund, both in June 2017. Moreover, 23 member states signed a joint
notification on the Permanent Structured Cooperation in Defence (PESCO) in
November 2017. Arguably, the adequate framework for understanding and critical
assessment of the EDU is neither the alliance nor the security community, but the
Habermasian concept of postnational federation.
The project of EDU was proposed in February 2015 in a CEPS report edited by
Blockmans and Faleg and endorsed by the European Parliament in November 2016.
In line with the concept of postnational federation, the state is conceived, according
to the EDU project, as neither obstinate nor obsolete, to use Hoffmann’s (1966)
words. The ultimate objective of the EDU is to strengthen the member states in their
role of security providers. Yet, this does not mean that the states should obstinately
resist involvement of the European supranational institutions in the military and
defence field. On the contrary, the EDU proposes more intensive engagement of the
EU institutions in order to help the member states. Last but not least, the EDU
project understands that investing the EU with a role in the military and defence
field should not weaken the democratic control over this field.
Concerning the role of member states and the relationship of the EU towards
them, the European Parliament proposes that the EDU ‘has to offer guarantees and
capabilities to Member States beyond their individual ones’ and must be ‘flexible
enough to satisfy Member States’ individual security challenges and needs
(European Parliament 2016c, paras 3 and 8). In a similar vein, the High
Representative Mogherini see the role of the EU in helping, supporting and
accompanying member states in defence and in making it ‘more effective, more
constructive and easier for Member States to work effectively in defence’ (European
Parliament 2016b).
The EDU proposals thus suggest a role for the EU in complementing the national
military capabilities. In terms of territorial defence and deterrence, the EU is
recommended to develop ‘capacity to support NATO and Nordic, Baltic, Central
and Eastern European countries’. A more autonomous role for the EU is suggested
with regards to conducting ‘intervention operations in order to respond to or deter
crises’. The inability of the European national militaries to acquire sufficient crisis
management capabilities is said to require the EU ‘to boost the quality of its military
enablers for comprehensive operations’ (Blockmans and Faleg 2015, p. 11). Besides
a permanent military headquarter, specific propositions for common strategic
enablers include, for example, strategic and tactical airlift, a European logistics hub,
and a European medical command (Blockmans and Faleg 2015, p. 12; HRVP/Head
of EDA 2016, p. 23).
What European army? Alliance, security community…

In line with the EDU approach also comes the European Defence Fund. The
European Commission is for the first time invited to play an important role in the
European defence. The Commission is supposed to ‘strengthen European citizens’
security’ by co-financing member states’ spending in the research and development
of military technology (European Commission 2017). Such an engagement of
supranational institution in the defence domain in no way undermines and, on the
contrary, may only strengthen the role of member states in providing security to
their citizens.
The EDU aims at improving the EU-level decision-making and cooperation
between member states. Yet, empowering the executive branch of government in
expense of democratic parliamentarian control can be an unintended consequence of
such a process. To counter this adverse effect, the EDU proposals call for an
increased involvement of the European Parliament. It is suggested that the
Parliament ‘should play a prominent role in the future European Defence Union,
and considers, therefore, that the Subcommittee on Security and Defence should
become a fully-fledged parliamentary committee’ (European Parliament 2016c,
para. 42). Moreover, the European Parliament is expected to ‘strengthen the
consultation procedures’ on defence matters with national parliaments (Blockmans
and Faleg 2015, p. 15).
As demonstrated, the concept of postnational federation is applicable onto the
project of European Defence Union. It may give us a framework for understanding
the nature of the ongoing revitalisation of the European military and defence
integration. Admittedly, it is too early to determine what trajectory, if any, the
military and defence integration will take. The concept of postnational federation
remains relevant as a tool for critical assessment of this development anyway.

Conclusion

Juncker’s European army proposal should be given credit for triggering a discussion
on the future of CSDP and the EU as a strategic actor in a highly volatile and
challenging security environment. Concrete measures have been agreed and acted
on in order to move the CSDP forward. Although it is too early to know empirically
what direction this process will take and what will be the end station, the time is ripe
for theoretical thinking about the prospect of European defence integration.
Both theoretical and political reflection of the defence integration and the
‘European army’ tend to get polarised over the role of sovereign states in
international politics and the importance of the military and defence for the
preservation of the state sovereignty. Yet, such an antithetical discourse diverges
from the project of the European Defence Union. The EDU project suggests deeper
integration of member states’ defence capabilities and greater involvement of the
EU in military and defence policy. The role of the Union is, nevertheless, confined
to support the member states in their role of security guarantors and to complement
the member states’ capacities when functionally desirable. Moreover, it emphasises
the need for parliamentary control over these processes.
 T. Kucera

The EDU approach is consistent with the vision of European integration

advocated by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s conception of integration, here referred
to as postnational federation, respects the sovereign state as a guarantor of rights and
freedoms and its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Yet, it is the need to
preserve the sovereign power of democratic polities in a globalising world—under
postnational constellations, as Habermas (2001) puts it—that may require member
states to advance with European integration and to establish transnational
democratic institutions. The debate on the European military and defence
integration would tremendously benefit from the insight and normative propositions
that the Habermasian conception of postnational federation offers.

Acknowledgements Author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Czech Science
Foundation under the standard research Grant No. GA 16-02288S.

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