EPIS Report on Security Policy and Defence - Issue I

Dear reader,

During the last decades, security policy and defence have mainly been associated with counterinsurgency operations that happen far away from the borders of the European Union. With the desire to reap the peace dividend of geopolitical stability and Western hegemony, European states have not only scaled back their defence budgets but also pushed the issue of national defence from the public discourse. The result of this geopolitical negligence is a continent unsure of its geopolitical position in the world, which is currently lacking the necessary structures and capabilities to present a credible deterrence against its geopolitical rivals.

This geopolitically vulnerable Union has now been confronted with the most severe security crisis in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The war in Ukraine has entered its third year since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, with mounting civilian and military casualties. At the same time, Europe's long-time ally, the United States, has become increasingly unreliable as a security guarantor, with a mercurial President in the White House, who openly questions the US commitment to NATO's Article five.

However, this changing geopolitical environment not only presents a challenge to Europe. It is also an opportunity for the EU to move forward, to integrate more closely and to become a more resilient Union. Forced by external pressures, we now have the chance to reshape our security posture and become the independent security actor that one of the wealthiest and politically influential groups of states in the world should be. As Jean Monnet said, “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises."

This report analyses different facets of the European security architecture and explores possible future concepts that can guide European security in a time of geopolitical conflict.

In the first section of the report, Laurenz and Césarine analyse the influence of the Westphalian state system on the normative aspects of Europe's security policy and the historical ties between the United States and Europe in the realm of security.

In the second section, Denisa, Julia and Anton present existing capability gaps in Europe's security architecture and discuss ideas on how to address these gaps.

In the last section, Duncan and I explore different initiatives that could shape the European security architecture in the coming years.

This report would not have been possible without the hard work of all the writers and the support of the EPIS board and our graphics designer, Cira.

A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this first report of the report group on Security Policy & Defence!

We hope that you will enjoy the read!