The EU and Nato: Two Competing Models for a Common Defence Policy

Abstract

European integration in security and defence was for a long time seen as impossible or at least highly unlikely. Even otherwise contradictory theories of European integration shared the assumption that the specific character of this field explained the absence of integration. Recent developments challenge this assumption. Maintaining instead that security and defence are amenable to integration, one can, drawing from the same integration theories, see two alternative models of a common defence policy emerging. A wholly new type of supranational defence may become reality within the EU, possibly challenged by the EU's close co-operation, or ‘fusion’, with the intergovernmentalism of Nato.