G7 Executive Talk Series
Brexit Authored by: Karlijn Jans
What Does Brexit Mean for European Defense? Brexit has created a window of opportunity for new defense initiatives that can transform European defense coordination.
T
he European Union has been in a state of crisis-management since the economic and monetary crisis in 2008. While the focus on security threats on Europe’s southern and eastern borders, as well as terror threats, has crowded out the political space to discuss new defense policies or integration, it is essential that European leaders prioritize measures to make the Union safer as a whole. Still, the Union’s loss of one of its highly capable military members, the United Kingdom, further complicates efforts towards common defense
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policies. In order to fill the post-Brexit defense gap, the European Union needs to get serious about strengthening and deepening European defense cooperation in a wide array of areas. Ironically, Brexit has created a window of opportunity for such a change in dynamics and new defense initiatives that can transform European defense coordination. The United Kingdom is one of the military superpowers on the European continent. Britain is a major contributor to NATO operations—it is one of the few EU member states that has maintained NATO’s 2 percent
defense spending pledge—and European Union missions under the Union’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) framework. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom, which recognizes NATO as the primary military forum to ensure the security of its territory, has often hampered proposed far-reaching EU security and defense initiatives by arguing that EU defense cooperation would duplicate and undermine the effectiveness of NATO efforts. Ironically, it was the United Kingdom (along with France) that took the initiative in 1998 to establish a European security and defense policy (the predecessor to the CSDP), which included a European military force capable of autonomous action. Now, with the United Kingdom out of the equation, the European Union has more space to forge new initiatives on defense cooperation and integration. While the United Kingdom has been a notorious opponent of deeper European defense cooperation, its role in CSDP