Great expectations: The Brexit moment in EU security and defence and the return of the capabilities–expectations gap

Abstract

This article re-examines the capability–expectations gap in the European Union’s foreign policy in light of recent developments in this field. Our point of departure is the observation that the expectations being placed on the EU’s foreign and security capabilities in recent years have been steadily increasing, in response to a number of external and internal developments, including the Arab Spring, the Ukraine crisis and America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia, as well as the Brexit vote. We argue, however, that the institutional changes introduced as a result have not succeeded in fulfilling the lofty ambitions held of the Union either by itself or by other actors since they suffer from many of the same failings that have persistently bedevilled EU security initiatives. The result is a mismatch between the EU’s ambitions and its ability to deliver on these, which threatens to reopen the capabilities–expectations gap, which has been steadily declining since the late 1990s. Existing scholarly approaches have missed this problematic dynamic since they have focused more on the institutional changes (the supply side) rather than the increasing expectations (the demand side). While pronouncements regarding Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ and such like offer clear gains for European leaders in the short term, they may come back to haunt them in the years to come.

When politics trumps strategy: UK–EU security collaboration after Brexit

“…But these discourses also distort, to some extent, the underlying connection between globality/autonomy and the question of UK–EU security and defence collaboration. While they are intended to highlight the value of independence for both sides, analyses of the UK’s globality generally show this to have been a function of the multiplier effect of EU membership (Hill, 2018), while similar assessments of strategic autonomy posit that close collaboration with the UK would be a necessary facilitator of a more independent European posture (Biscop, 2016; Howorth, 2019; Martill and Sus, 2019).…”

The European Geopolitical Space and the Long Path to Brexit (TheGovernment and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2020)

“…But this kind of analysis generally begins with the EU's institutions and judgements about the EU and Britain's security capabilities; it is less concerned with Europe as a geopolitical space that includes an EU-NATO fault line in a larger geopolitics in which European countries have an external energy dependency. Certainly, some scholars have recognized that Brexit's meaning goes beyond Europe and is part of a bigger geopolitical picture where the American, Russian and Chinese governments have consequential perspectives on Brexit (Oliver 2017) and where, over the past decade, the EU has confronted greater geopolitical uncertainty (Martill and Sus 2019). But, again, energy is absent in a story in which it plays a substantial part.…”

Shadows of Empire: Hard Brexit, Commonwealth Revival, and UK-Canada Relations

“…22 Second, Brexit undermines European solidarity and makes less credible the prospect of European strategic autonomy. 23 Since Ottawa's foreign policy preferences are arguably far closer to those of the EU than they are of the United States, the fragmentation of the European 'pole', such as it is, should prove concerning. Third, far from enhancing NATO, Brexit has actively undermined the broader project of Western solidarity, introduced a raft of political tensions between the EU members of NATO, led to concerns that the UK would walk away from its commitment to European security, and resulted in decreased support in the UK for NATO commitments.…”