Over the last decade, EU policy has employed both an
indirect, context-shaping approach to climate security, which focuses more on process than output, and a protective-autonomy approach, which focuses on multiple defensive approaches to safeguard the EU’s geopolitical interests.
In putting these approaches into practice, the EU has advanced a rich profusion of climate security initiatives; diplomats certainly do not need to be told that “climate policy is foreign policy,” as they have been working on this assumption for more than a decade. Moreover, the EU’s approach has positioned the bloc well to play a constructive role in climate geopolitics. However, the union’s overall approach to climate security has been relatively narrow. It has built select climate elements into its existing security strategies rather than rethinking what security itself entails in a world challenged by widespread ecological disruptions.
EU touts paradigm shift in defence as it inaugurates new fund
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The Case for EU Defense
A New Way Forward for Trans-Atlantic Security Relations
June 1, 2021, 7:45 pm Getty/Carl De Souza/AFP
The Dutch warship used by the EU Naval Force is pictured at the French military base in Djibouti in May 2015.
Sam Hananel
The state of European defense is not strong.
The level of Europe’s defense spending and the size of its collective forces in uniform should make it a global power with one of the strongest militaries in the world. But Europe does not act as one on defense, even though it formed a political union almost 30 years ago. Europe’s military strength today is far weaker than the sum of its parts. This is not just a European failure; it is also fundamentally a failure of America’s post-Cold War strategy toward Europe a strategy that remains virtually unchanged since the 1990s.