Towards an autonomous European defense? A comparative analysis of French, Polish and German perspectives in the post-Brexit era

ABSTRACT

This article discusses why the EU has failed to become a defense actor independent from the US in the post-Brexit era. Applying the “supporter/spoiler/shirker” trilogy to the European context, the article highlights persistent divergences towards European integration in the defense sector in the post-Brexit EU. Accordingly, first, the article discusses the key differences between supporter, spoiler and shirker roles in world politics. Second, it focuses on France that tends to act as a persistent spoiler of NATO, while remaining an ardent supporter of an autonomous Europe of defense. Third, the article discusses the case of Poland that remains a loyal supporter of NATO and acts as a spoiler of the European defense initiatives. Finally, the article concentrates on Germany which acts as a shirker that is oscillating between NATO and the EU.

KEYWORDS:

• France
• Poland
• Germany
• NATO
• defense
• autonomy

Acknowledgements

We thank Knud Erik Jorgensen, Aslı Ergul Jorgensen and anonymous reviewers for helping us develop this article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Didem Buhari Gulmez (Phd, University of London) is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Izmir Katip Celebi University. She is the author of Europeanization in a Global Context: Integrating Turkey into the World Polity (Palgrave, 2017) and her most recent article is “The resilience of the US-Turkey alliance: divergent threat perceptions and worldviews” (Contemporary Politics, 2020).

Seçkin Bariş Gülmez (PhD, London) is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Izmir Katip Çelebi University. His recent publications focusing on diplomacy and Turkish foreign policy appeared in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Middle Eastern Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and Uluslararası İlişkiler/International Relations.