This contribution to the Occasional Papers series of the WEU Institute for Security studies emerged from a report undertaken into the state of the transatlantic security relationship and the respective positions of the two candidates on key US-European issues in the run-up to the general election in November.
The first session focused on threat perceptions and threat assessments. The key question was whether a threat exists that justifies NMD deployment. Do the so-called ‘countries of concern’ really intent to threaten the US homeland and, even more importantly, do they have the financial and the technological means to scale up their existing arsenal to true intercontinental range?
For decades, the question of European defence had the dual and somewhat strange quality of being both a necessary condition for and an obstacle to political deepening of the European Union. It was a condition because only the possession of a minimum of military means would ensure the credibility and effectiveness of any international action by the Union, something that, in French rhetoric, was often epitomised as a demand for a Europe puissance.
Immigration is certainly not a risk in itself: European countries need the contribution made by immigrant workers, and it is desirable that Europe’s doors remain open in a concerted, controlled way. On the other hand, illegal immigration presents a double risk to the stability of European countries and the security of the clandestine immigrants, who often undertake this adventure at the risk of their lives.
What was of particular interest in this seminar was that it combined both a discussion of the technical, immediate aspects of European defence and a more general reflection on developments in American policy and the direction being taken by European construction.
Over the last two years, two processes have considerably modified the European strategic landscape: the development of a common security and defence policy within the European Union on the one hand, and accelerated restructuring of defence industries on the other.
The transatlantic defence community drew divergent conclusions from NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Many observers asserted that the operation showed the European allies to be irremediably behind the United States in applying decisive new forms of advanced technology warfare.
Among the institutions which emerged during the crisis management phase in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the so-called Balkan Contact Group turned out to be the innovation with the greatest impact on European institutional structures.
The more headway the Europeans make in the setting up of a true European Union defence capability, the more voices are heard in the United States that analyse, question, challenge or fear this new European ambition. Nothing, moreover, could be more natural, given that, in their serious intent, their scope and their unanimity, the decisions taken at Cologne and Helsinki signal a clear departure from the EU’s long tradition of politico-strategic non-existence.
This paper is about the potential consequences for European security of extending EU border policies to central and eastern Europe (CEE), a process currently taking place as the European Union moves towards eastward enlargement. Its central argument is that an inherent tension is growing between EU internal and external security policies in the region to its East.