Given the Ukraine crisis, Russia’s resurgence and the burning crises in the South there has never been a better time to discuss European defence. From November 2014 to March 2015, the online magazine European Geostrategy published a number of excellent essays on the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), all from a national perspective. You can now read all of the essays in this one neat publication. Indeed, in this essay collection jointly published by European Geostrategy, the Egmont Institute and the Institute for European Studies, a host of leading experts give their national perspectives on the present state and future of the EU’s CSDP. Each of the thirty-four essays focuses on the continued relevance of the CSDP when compared to the security challenges facing Europe today. Some essays give a bleak picture of the future, whereas others see grounds for optimism. Either way the essays are bound to provoke reactions of all kinds.

This book examines how the European Union can pursue a grand strategy and become a distinct global actor in a world of emerging great powers. At the grand strategic level, its sheer economic size makes the EU a global power. However, the EU needs to take into account that many international actors continue to measure power mostly by assessing military capability. To preserve its status as an economic power, therefore, the EU has to become a power across the board, which requires a grand strategy, and the means and the will to proactively pursue one. The authors of this book aim to demonstrate that the EU can develop a purposive yet distinctive grand strategy that preserves the value-based nature of EU external action while also safeguarding its vital economic interests. The book analyses the existing military capability of the European Union and its bottom-up nature, which results in a national-based focus in the member-states, impeding deployment capability. A systematic realignment of national defence planning at the strategic level will enable each member-states to focus its defence effort on the right capabilities, make maximal use of pooling and specialization, and contribute to multinational projects in order to address Europe’s strategic capability shortfalls. A stronger Europe will therefore result, it is argued, a real global actor, which can then become an equal strategic partner to the United States, leading to a revitalized Transatlantic partnership in turn. This book will be of interest to students of military studies, European Union policy, strategic studies and International Relations generally.

Just like after WWI and WWII, we are now facing the dawn of a new strategic era, a "Zeitenwende” in Europe. We need to assess what metamorphosis the European Union needs to undergo in terms of defence and security to become a relevant actor in crisis situations when size and defence matter. WeThis paper focuses on the “non Art. 5” EU crisis management policy, which now also needs to be expanded , in particular in terms of specific capacities required for this purpose. The maxim “Qui peut le plus (territorial defence) peut le moins (peace-keeping and peace-enforcement operations)” does not apply here.

In 2003 already, the draft constitutional treaty elaborated by the European Convention included several articles that amounted to a move from an entirely intergovernmental European Security and Defence Policy to a Common Security and Defence Policy. These articles found their way, unchanged, into the Lisbon Treaty. But, they have hardly been used, including the clauses on Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO).

Panta rhei – everything flows (Heraclitus). Once again, geopolitics is in transition, and a new crossroads is being approached. While we already knew that global leadership is beyond any single country, now it appears to be beyond even any single continent – beyond an alliance of two continents even. This means that the old strategic truth, that the power that has Europe on its side has the potential to dominate the world, no longer holds. Europe no longer is the kingmaker. And that changes a lot, for the EU, the US, and the world.