Conference Agenda

The February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia triggered a series of cascade effects in the field of European defence, ranging from NATO expansion to EU financial and military support to a party involved in an active conflict (Marsh 2023). Critically, the current war in Ukraine has led to a sea change in European countries’ attitude to arms production. European states and the EU have sought to dramatically improve their own military readiness and capability and concomitantly provide Ukraine with the arms and ammunition needed to fight against Russia. However, both governments and the European Commission rapidly discovered that their defence industries lacked the capacity to produce arms in the quantities needed for the first high intensity war in Europe for almost 80 years.

Since March 2023, in response to this problem, the then EU Commissioner for defence industry, Thierry Breton, and other policy entrepreneurs have regularly invoked the need for European defence industry to move to war economy mode. While the use of the term has not always been appreciated by member states (Schulz, 2023), the idea is materialising into more concrete proposals, such as Breton’s proposal of a €100 billion fund to boost EU defence industry production, with the aim of equalling or outstripping Russia’s military industrial capacity within 18-24 months (Wax and Kayali 2024), and a new EU defence industrial strategy worth €1.5 bill. Exceptional measures like this would co-exist with the general commitment across all European states to significantly increase their defence budgets to NATO’s 2% goal, and beyond. But what would this mean for European economies, industries, and societies? Is preparedness for war understood consistently? How are defence industrial priorities being imagined, negotiated and contested among different European countries, where NATO and EU membership now largely overlaps but not without consequential exceptions? What is short is the political sociology of these contested discourses?

The paper aims to theorise the dual role of future-thinking and future-making in European foreign and defence policy. It is concerned with the future-thinking as a social fact that can help us to understand how actors think about risk, uncertainty, threat, opportunity and strategy. Assumptions or expectations about the future are not always explicit and conscious but theories of foreign policy or the evolution of the EU's security and defence policy need to adquately and explicitly set-out their assumptions about how future-thinking matters. The paper draws on five partly intersecting bodies of literature even though all of them have shortcomings: the literature on the evolution of the EU’s CFSP and CSDP; the strategic surprise literature in the field of intelligence studies and foreign policy analysis; the literature on the role of expert knowledge and learning in public policy; the literature in International Relations around forecasting, temporality, and the challenge of the future; and finally, the multi-disciplinary and multi-domain field of future studies. Drawing on these five lieratures the paper develops a theory of how future-thinking matters to understand change and continuity in the core assumptions and ideational underpinnign of foreign policy. It also an indispensable anchor for evalutions and critique of foreign policy in terms of being short-termist/mypic, vulnerable to wishful-thinking and denial, or being overly optimistic or pessimistic.

The paper illustrates the explanatory and normative potential of this theoretical approach with reference to the evolution of the EU’s Strategic Compass and discussions about the EU's approach to Ukraine and Russia prior to and post Russia’s aggression against Ukaine in 2014 and 2022. This will be based on document analysis as well as interviews in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw and Stockholm.

From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Putin and others in the Russian elite used alarmist language implicitly threatening escalation to a direct war with NATO, including the use of nuclear weapons. Western leaders also feared this possibility, with President Joe Biden warning of a potential World War Three. Western critics of military support for Ukraine and of the lack of a diplomatic track warned that the West and Russia risked being trapped in an escalatory cycle that would end in a nuclear war. So far, escalation to a wider war between Russia and the West has not happened. Against this background, this paper will explore escalation dynamics in the Russia-Ukraine War. The paper will draw on existing literature on conflict escalation and crisis and intra-war behaviour. The paper will argue that, notwithstanding Russia’s unprovoked aggression and war crimes, both the West and Russia have behaved with important elements of restraint. In particular, this has included: the West’s decision not to become directly involved as a combatant; Russia’s decision not to target NATO states militarily, especially supply routes for Western military assistance to Ukraine; the non-use of nuclear weapons by Russia; and cautious responses to incidents which might have triggered escalation (such as Russia missiles falling on the territory of some NATO states). The paper will explore the possible reasons for the limited escalation of the war to date, including: the overall balance of power between the West and Russia; nuclear deterrence; the likely consequences of a conventional war between Russia and the West; the maintenance and use of channels of communication between the West and Russia. The analysis will suggest reasons for cautious optimism about the prospects for continued great power peace in the 21st century.

This paper critically examines the extent of militarism in European Security Studies (ESS). Through a qualitative analysis of journal articles within ESS since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I argue that the field risks normalising militarism by merely assessing the operational outcomes of defence policies without considering ethical concerns about coercive capabilities and tools of organised violence. This is not only the case for the mainstream scholarship within ESS, which often addresses ‘questions of functionality’ such as improving military efficiency, achieving strategic objectives, and coordinating national defence policies. Most ESS research that is critical about militarism also tends to be around more effective, efficient, and legitimate ways of developing coercive capabilities and tools of organised violence, asking how military tools should be used rather than whether they should be used in the first place. To move beyond this normalisation of militarism in the field, I suggest a reflective approach that critically engages with the normative aspects of defence research. This approach also provides a response to recent calls for greater awareness of which research themes are prioritised in the broader European Studies and which debates are marginalised in the discipline.

Of the many ideal type conceptions of EU actorhood, civilian power has been among the more prominent. Whereas most debates have centered on whether or not the EU conforms to such a description, this paper argues that the concept ought to be embraced as an ambition to strive for, as this is where the EU can make the greatest contribution to European security, indeed to achieving its much-vaunted ‘strategic autonomy’.

The purpose is not to argue against the development of European military forces, nor to dismiss the limited extent that the EU has developed expeditionary capabilities. These developments will continue, but NATO will (hopefully) remain the primary organization for military security. Rather, the argument is that building civilian capacity will play to the EU’s strengths, not least its economic muscle and broad range of soft security policies.

Debates over an ’EU military’ tend to fizzle fast, and cause no end of confusion as to what it actually talked about. The EU initiatives that have contributed the most to European in recent years have been civilian, whether by achieving energy independence, helping political stabilization in the Western Balkans, holding out the prospect of membership to applicants, sanctioning Russia, supporting Ukraine’s wartime economy or developing Europe’s military-industrial base. These are the building blocks of true strategic autonomy. Yet, even in its civilian roles, the EU often remains hamstrung and indecisive.

The civilian power concept never precluded purposeful or self-interested action. Yet, the EU still has far to go before it is a fully effective civilian power. Rather than undertaking lengthy discussions of military integration – which remains controversial for most members – the EU must focus on developing its civilian roles. Achieving greater cohesion as a civilian power will not only contribute greatly to European security, but also aid the quest for strategic autonomy.