A critical evaluation of the EU Defence and Security Procurement Directive 2009/81/EC in its legal, economic, military, and political context.

Using the European Defence Community (EDC) as a case-study, this book examines the competing and often conflicting view of the British and American governments towards European integration in the early 1950s. The British, fearing an 'agonizing reappraisal' of the American defence commitment to Europe if the supranational EDC failed, went to great lengths to ensure the success of the scheme. When, despite these efforts, the EDC finally collapsed in August 1954, NATO was plunged into arguably the most severe crisis in its history. The crisis also possessed an Anglo-American dimension, with London and Washington badly divided on how it should be resolved. In the end, the British were instrumental in the creation of the Western European Union as a successor to the EDC. Their crisis management, however, had been rooted in fear of the 'agonizing reappraisal', a danger dismissed by many historians as exaggerated but which the British, in 1954, were perhaps right to take seriously.

This book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis by a leading authority of the EU's recent emergence as a security and defence actor and the implications for transatlantic relations.

This volume provides a comprehensive understanding of the European Defence Agency (EDA), the leading EU armaments policy institution. Despite its critical role in European strategic and military affairs as the key hub of European policy-making in the field of armaments, the Agency has hitherto received very little attention by the academic and research community around Europe. To fill this gap in the literature, the book covers a multitude of inter-related themes and topics. Not only does it provide a detailed analysis and assessment of the Agency’s record as the first institution dealing solely with EU armaments policy, but it also links these findings to international relations and European integration theory. Thematically, the contributions go beyond the mere description of achievements, gaps and risks, elaborating on novel themes such as space, offsets, pooling and sharing, and transatlantic armaments relations. The book combines an interdisciplinary approach to the study of European defence with theoretical and ontological pluralism, and seeks to unveil the strategic, industrial, institutional and ideational sources of armaments collaboration and capability development under the aegis of the EDA. The multi-faceted orientation of the book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU institutions, defence studies, arms control and international relations in general.

​This book explores the multilayer nexus among inter-related international and regional security parameters that critically define the EU’s rapidly changing security environment. In terms of intensity, complexity and urgency these changes constitute challenges that threaten the very core of European security – both internal and external. In a fluid and transitional international environment of diversified needs and polymorphic threats the space dimension acquires a novel unified meaning. The book closely examines the EU’s current strategic, organisational and defence capabilities regarding global, regional and domestic challenges such as terrorism, systemic instability, global order and a number of crucial hindrances to transatlantic cooperation. The chapters offer not only valuable theoretical insights, but also unique perspectives on operational and organisational elements of EU applied policies based on the testimonies of field experts. The combination of theory-based approaches and the demonstration of the EU’s operational capabilities and weaknesses as externalized through its global strategy choices provide an overall evaluation of adopted policies and their effects. This is crucial in a global transition period that will define the EU’s role and its potential to produce desired outcomes through synergies with its strategic allies.

Future War and the Defence of Europe offers a major new analysis of how peace and security can be maintained in Europe: a continent that has suffered two cataclysmic conflicts since 1914. Taking as its starting point the COVID-19 pandemic and way it will inevitably accelerate some key global dynamics already in play, the book goes on to weave history, strategy, policy, and technology into a compelling analytical narrative. It lays out in forensic detail the scale of the challenge Europeans and their allies face if Europe's peace is to be upheld in a transformative century. The book upends foundational assumptions about how Europe's defence is organised, the role of a fast-changing transatlantic relationship, NATO, the EU, and their constituent nation-states. At the heart of the book is a radical vision of a technology-enabling future European defence, built around a new kind of Atlantic Alliance, an innovative strategic public-private partnership, and the future hyper-electronic European force, E-Force, it must spawn. Europeans should be under no illusion: unless they do far more for their own defence, and very differently, all that they now take for granted could be lost in the maze of hybrid war, cyber war, and hyper war they must face.