Strategic cultures between the EU member states: convergence or divergence?

ABSTRACT

Given the push to strengthen European defence cooperation, the topic of whether a European strategic culture is emerging has become widely contested. Since convergence between member states is the key that would unlock the way to a European strategic culture, this paper examines how they perceive crucial aspects of strategic culture and in what aspects they have converged and diverged. This study selected Germany, Poland, and Ireland as cases of the EU-27 member states. It compared the three national strategic cultures in three aspects: strategic environment, cooperation patterns, and strategic goals and means, by conducting a computer-based content analysis of strategic documents and official speeches of high-level national policymakers between 2000 and 2020. This study found that despite the persistent divergence in strategic goals and means, the three countries have shown greater convergence in their perceptions of the strategic environment and that while their preferences on cooperation patterns are largely unchanged, they seem to be accepting the EU as a legitimate and favourable platform for security and defence cooperation. These findings suggest that the prospects for the emergence of a European strategic culture and further developments of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy are both challenging and promising.

KEYWORDS:

• European strategic culture
• convergence
• Germany
• Poland
• Ireland
• EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Prof. Wolfgang Wagner for their valuable feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ireland is the last EU neutral state that has accepted its “partnership for peace” with NATO and has not been actively involved in NATO-led operations as its Scandinavian counterparts.

2 In this study, discourses related to Russia were placed in the set of “Eastern Dimension”.

3 Ireland’s deployment of Defence Forces to any overseas operation will be strictly subject to a legislative procedure called “Triple Lock” enshrined in the domestic law, including Dáil approval (parliamentary approval), an official government decision, and an explicit UN mandate in line with international law.

4 The “rally-around-the-flag effect” describes a human trend to rally together and unite when they feel threatened by external forces like crises and wars.