National defence and European security integration: An illusion inside a chimera?

The history of European integration since 1945 is indissociable from the history of attempts to create a relatively autonomous European security and defence identity (ESDI). This assertion requires four important clarificatory comments. First, the notion of ‘European integration’ embraces all bilateral and multilateral activities between and among the states of (for the moment mainly Western) Europe. It is much more than the history of the EEC/EC/EU; but it is much less than the advent of something many British commentators call ‘federalism’. Second, ESDI is ‘indissociable’ from that history in that the desire to secure the peace internally as well as externally was the primary motivation for European integration in the first place, and also in the sense that most of the landmarks of the integration process have been accompanied by a security dimension. Third, the ESDI concept itself requires several comments. Pressure for its gestation has come overwhelmingly from France. The delightfully equivocal notion of ‘identity’ is a semantic attempt not to tread on any institutional toes. ESDI is an assertion by the European states of the desirability and legitimacy of their quest for more concerted influence over issues affecting European security. This was perhaps most concisely stated in article 4 of the October 1987 ‘Platform on European Security Interests’ agreed by the WEU members at The Hague.