Faced with the return of
Donald Trump as U.S. president in early 2025, the European Parliament debated on
November 13, 2024 how the E.U. should respond and, if needed, protect its
strategic interests with respect to Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine. “In
their debate, MEPs considered hw to engage with the new administration to address
challenges and leverage opportunities for both regions as the E.U. seeks stable
transatlantic relations.”[1]
The possibility of the incoming U.S. President pulling back on NATO and with
respect to contributing military supplies and money to Ukraine, and issuing protectionist
tariffs on imports from the E.U. had added urgency for the E.U. to come up with
ways of countering those external threats from the West just as Russia’s latest
forays into Ukraine were external threats from the East. On the same day, Josep
Borrell, the E.U.’s secretary of state/foreign minister/foreign policy “chief” “proposed
to formally suspend political dialogue with Israel over the country’s alleged
violations of human rights and international law in the Gaza strip.”[2]
This alone put the E.U. at odds with Israel’s stanchest defender/enabler, the
U.S., and with its incoming president, Donald Trump. From a human rights
standpoint alone, both with respect to the governments of Russia and Israel, the
trajectory of the E.U. in incrementally increasing its competencies (i.e.,
enumerated powers delegated by the state governments) in foreign policy and
especially in defense (given the new post of Defense Commissioner) was in
motion. The question was perhaps whether the E.U.’s typical incrementalism
would be enough to protect the E.U.’s strategic interests, which includes
protecting human rights at home and abroad. Fortunately, on the very same day,
Kaija Shilde, Dean of the Global Studies school at Boston University, spoke at
Harvard on the very question that I have just raised. I will present her view,
which will lead to my thoughts on how viewing the E.U. inaccurately as a mere
alliance harms the E.U.’s role internationally from within. That is to
say, the continuance of the self-inflicted wound, or category-mistake on what
the E.U. is, was compromising the jump forward in defense that the E.U. needed at
the time to more competently address the crisis in Ukraine.
Shilde began by noting the important
role that the private sector had been playing within the E.U. with regard to
providing Ukraine with military assets. Any state-actor has to harness markets
to generate defense items, and the fact that the states were still commanding
their respective militias, or armies, does not nullify this federal competency
(enumerated power) that has been difficult to fully recognize given the
contribution of the private sector. The E.U. and the U.S. both had been
regulating their respective markets and thus encouraging their respective
military-industrial industries. Therefore, both unions were more important than
NATO, which has only been an alliance since its inception, in pushing against
Putin who, in 2014 and again in 2022 invaded Ukraine militarily. In 2024, the
E.U. was in fact doing things to generate military power. Direct lethal and
nonlethal aid to Ukraine, enhancing defense integration within the E.U., and
coordinating a war economy have been just three of the contributions at the
federal level since the invasion of 2022. In 2024, the E.U. was the third
largest military spender in Europe. Combining financial aid and military
allocations, the E.U. allocated more money than did the United States.
Europeans have been in favor
of a role for the E.U. in defense. As of 2024, over 70 percent of Europeans in
a poll every year since 1999 have said that the E.U. should have a role—that it
shouldn’t be left up to the states. Only around 20 percent disagreed during
that interval. Asked which level of governance best addresses defense threats,
43 percent said the federal level, which is to say, the European Union. In
fact, the Europeans polled had specific ideas of what a E.U. army should do. Defending
the E.U.’s territory was number one on the list. Shilde concluded that there
must be something organic about pan-European defense, but would popular opinion
be enough for the E.U. to augment its defense competencies (powers) in time to
help Ukraine push back the Russian (and North Korean) army?
Since 1950, European
integration proceeded by occasionally taking back-steps, and has been pushed forward
by external threats. In the 1950s, the European Defense Community was prompted
by the Soviet threat. In 1956, during the Suez crisis, France proposed a federal
union for Europe rather than the extant Economic Community. Whereas the U.S.
began with an emphasis on defense, for obvious reasons, the E.U. took off from
an economic core of competencies (i.e., enumerated powers). Federal
governmental sovereignty can be at both poles, as well as in the incremental
powers that both unions have been able to add at the federal rather than state
level. To be sure, starting with defense is more typical of federal levels than
with economic regulations, which have traditionally been made at the local,
provincial, and state levels.
A plurality of Europe’s
military power has been due to the E.U.’s regulatory power; this is a modern
way of generating military power—a modern way of exercising governmental
sovereignty even if defense competencies are added later. The role of European
companies in the E.U.’s shaping of markets to deliver military goods should not
be minimized. In 2024, E.U. private firms spent 3 times that of American firms
on defense research and development. This is because of E.U. regulations. For
example, the E.U. facilitates some infant industries by means of protectionism.
To be sure, given the Russian military incursion into Ukraine, the E.U. needed
to become a large scale buyer of military goods and it needed a defense
industrial policy in 2024, according to Shilde, even if the upcoming U.S. President
were to decrease the American military support not only to Ukraine, but even NATO.
Should he make a retreating dent in these respects, Shilde predicted that the
E.U. would see a sizable enhancement of its role in defense, including in
regard to helping Ukraine. It may not make any difference, she said, whether
the federal level directly commands any military units; after all, the
Confederate States of America relied on the armies of its member-states in the
1861-1865 war between the USA and the CSA.
I contend that the comparison
between the E.U. and the CSA is not nearly as accurate as a comparison between
the E.U. and U.S., even in 2024, especially if you take account of time, and
thus development, by comparing the E.U. of 2024 with the U.S. of 1820—both
unions being around 30 years old. Even comparing the E.U. and U.S. as they were
in 2023 allows us to exclude the claim that one of the two was merely an
alliance or an international organization. Federalism had already come to
Europe within the E.U.’s borders, and, like case of the U.S., both the federal
and state levels of the E.U. already enjoyed some governmental sovereignty.
Hence both unions could be classified as having modern federal systems rather
than being confederations, in which the states hold all of the sovereignty.
Importantly, getting the
comparison right, and being realistic about what the E.U. was even as of 2024
is important to eliminating the self-inflicted handicap that had held the E.U.
back since 1993. Classifying the E.U. as a mere alliance, and thus like that of
NATO, has held the E.U. state governments back from agreeing to delegate
additional defense competencies to the E.U. so a stronger united and collective
defense of Ukraine could possibly tip the scales against Russia’s President Putin.
This would be as if to say, with action as well as words: invading another
country is no longer allowed. Such a twenty-first-century advance in
international relations would truly be a Hamiltonian feat. Perhaps it would
also be such a feat to get enough E.U. citizens to admit to themselves that the
E.U. had already become a federal system, and thus has not in fact been inherently
limited to the roles of an international organization or alliance. To put on a
united front with one arm tied up, and to be doing so unwittingly or at the
behest of an ideology is a self-infliction that the E.U. could have done
without, especially with American isolationism rising in the West and Russian
militarization intensifying in the East.
2. Shona Murray and Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrel Proposes to Suspend E.U.-Israel Political Talks over Gaza War,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.
