Dying for the union?
Military officers and the creation of a European defence force

Abstract

In spite of the vagaries of the common foreign and security policy and the enduring domination of NATO, there now exist a fairly large number of West European military structures. Recently, European countries pledged substantial units towards the creation of a 60,000-strong EU Rapid Reaction Capability, due to be fully operational by the mid-2000s. What did military officers in France, the United Kingdom and Germany think of ‘European defence’ before recent political developments took place? This paper attempts to assess the level of support for military integration among officers as well as the reasons and causes underlying their opinion. In particular, I demonstrate that, beyond cross-national variation, speaking foreign languages, having few soldiers in one’s family, belonging to a ‘support’ unit, being highly ranked and believing in the virtues of international missions are significant predictors of support for European armed forces.

Keywords:

• European security
• European defence policy
• public opinion
• political identity
• armed forces
• officer corps