We appreciate your spending your time with us. My name is dan hamilton, im a professor here at Johns Hopkins, Foreign Policy institute fellow. We have a post doctoral fellows. We are delighted today help publicize it in the first public release of the book. So shes here as a post doc fellow has this new book. Pretty timely. And shes been working on it with her colleagues in europe on those questions. We thought the context of the book would be good to talk about very timely issue now, which is whats going on with brexit. What does it mean, not only for the uk and the e. U. Member states, but also for broader Security Issues, which will start to affect, of course, the u. S. Interests quite intensely. So what well do is i will just briefly introduce the speakers. Youve had an invitation and so on, more about their backgrounds. But just to keep it brief, ive got cornelia to tell us briefly about the book. Then were going to go to two colleagues, the assistant professor here who does work on these issue and teaches courses on the issues, and john denny, a Research Professor with the u. S. Army war college who works on Security Issues and has specialized in this topic. And the fellow, who is two doors down working on europe will offer a further perspective. Were delighted to have the ambassador of ireland to the United States. He also was an investor in the uk. He can convey some of the reality from his time there. Welcome back, mr. Ambassador, were so delighted you can join us here. Without further ado, let me turn to cornelia who is going to tell us about the context and well go from there. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this book launch on brexit, European Security and Transatlantic Relations. Thank you very much professor for this very nice introduction. So as we mentioned, this is book were launching today. I would like to say a few thi s things i just wanted to check my time. The book is an academic project. Its a collective project with different contributors to various universities in europe. And in relation to the genesis of this book, the idea of the book has materialized at the university of hamburg during the ecpr conference. European conference for Political Research last summer. This is where we have started and we decided to put together this contribution to have a greater understanding of the subject matter. And before coming to telling you something some of the major findings, i would like to say a few to put this in a broader context, so like the role of the research and researchers in the 21st century in a broader context so you can better understand how we reach the conclusions of this book. Uncertainty, insecurity and crisis, as we know are some of the major hazards in the 21st Century International security order. And in this context, the role of Academic Research is to generate a body of knowledge, which can help us to understand, to explain or predict crisis and unsecurity. And of course its not easy to predict uncertainty or to know uncertainty. Because yeah, the question is how do we know if its uncertain. And a professor of mine during the talk this year has made actually a very interesting point referring to a picture which probably most of you or many of you have seen this year, that of a black hole. So to know something, which was previously unknown which was difficult to know and how did they do it . They put together several telescopes. And this is what we tried to do in this book as well. We tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle in order to estimate more complex variables. Which can help us better predict and understand. So the objective now coming, the objective of the book was to fill a crucial scientific gap and to contribute a better understanding and management of the challenges associated with the Brexit Process for European Security and transatlantic cooperation. And the big is based on understanding of peace and security going on resilience, anticipation, and integration of aspects of daily life which are important for predicting uncertainty. So now i think ill come to the findings which we can categorize in four major themes or sections. The first finding is related to the e. U. uk collaborative potential. So here we the findings suggest that there is a mixed track record of e. U. uk military cooperation. And reaching an agreement in the area of Security Defense has proved more difficult than expected. Because maybe because of diverging interests of the uk on one side and the e. U. So interestingly, security and defense was an area where we would have expected an easy agreement. However the development after the brexit vote, as i said have made reaching an agreement increasingly difficult. Another major category of findings relates to the future of europe. When we talk about the future of europe, we need to talk about the future of csdp, the Common Security and defense policy. And to har our findings suggest, or a highlight draw of policies entrepreneurs such as france and germany, in making advancements for csdp and but still challenges are expected to continue in the future because of the difference in the strategic preferences of this major policy entrepreneurs, but also e. U. 27. We can expect increased cooperation for lifting obstacles in the future for csdp. Another aspect also in this category and the future of europe is related to peace. And because when we talk about the future of europe, we need to think about this essential aspect. Peace is a major attribute of european integration. Its a pr the findings have highlighted how the Brexit Process can or brexit can undermine or undermines the Peace Process and good friday agreement. Because the good friday agreement was possible due to the e. U. Membership of both companies, the uk and ireland. And open ended nature of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland. Im sure the ambassador will say more about this later on. Another important thing was related to which we found was relate to bilateralists. We could anticipate the uk would individual Member States will be strepngthened ona bilateral basis. We had a section in our book based on estonia. Individual Member States in a difficult strategic environment or in exposure such as estonia can have an increased yult for the uk particularly because corporation on a bilateral basis can constitute avenues of influence for the e. U. Policy or on the e. U. Policy. Then we have a third category of findings, which relates to new sources of power and legitimacy. Here we assessed whether and how new and emerging Security Technology things can be turned or can turn into a competitive advantage for the e. U. Another thing we looked at was the potential of collaborative defense, security and defense regimes and procurement. And European Defense fund. And also we looked at the future of the European Nuclear deterrents. And finally there was a fourth category related to prospects of strategy. Here we find a greater need for we find the need the findings suggest the need for a more holistic e. U. Agenda. Holistic in the sense that these two cooperative strategy should aim at fulfilling or this will increase interdependence at all government structures, and and, yeah, so i i would say in conclusion that that the findings of the book suggests a greater need for increased eu xe tipsies and for the uk it emphasizes the importance of bilateral and mini lateral or multilateral structures, particularly in the scenario of a no deal. To conclude, feature eu uk relations, we can probably expect to depend on the uks ability to normalize its relations with European Partners and also on its level of commitment or ability to show commitments to csdp, and it also depends on the preferences of the u27. So i think thats from my side, and were now going to move on with the beginning of our panel. Our first speaker is alice pannier who is assistant professor in ir and European Security here at Johns Hopkins university, school of advanced international studies, and she will talk about brexit or the uk bilateral relations with the European Partners, particularly with france. Thank you. Can you hear me . Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much, cornelia, for the invitation and congratulations for putting together this event in such a short time. So, again, im going to talk about the uks bilateral defense and security relations with European Partners, in particular france, but by talking about france i hope to draw conclusions that apply to other eu Member States and so it could be of interest to other partners as well. So indeed as cornelia pointed, bilateral defense relations have taken a particular importance during the Brexit Process. There will be potentially even more important after brexit is effective, but they have always been extremely important and that indicated the ten past years working on bilateral defense and security relations in europe and in particular the uk French Defense relation, and hopefully well have a book coming out on the subject in about a year, so when it comes to the uk in france, even though conclusions can be applied to other cases, there is something quite special about the uk french bilateral relationship. They done joy a special relationship even though the term is connoted and terms to relate to the uk u. S. Bilateral. It can also apply to the uk french relationship. Its unique according to the French Embassy in london pause it refers to all domains of security, and it is special according to the uk director for general strategy in a tweet he posted in march 2019 because it applies to Nuclear Deterrents as well as through the uk and frances military expeditionary capacities that other european states do not necessarily have. The Bilateral Partnership in the past ten years has been rooted in a bilateral treaty whereby france and the uk have committed to enhance their bilateral cooperation across the spectrum of defense and security ranging from joint armament projects and including crossborder industrial integration, and thats an important part of their cooperation that im going to go back to, because its probably the one thats been the most affected by brexit. They have endeavored to integrate their missile industry in particular around the company and mbda coowned by french and British Industrial groups. France and uk have talked about the interoperability of their arm forced. They have jointly led operations in libya in 2011, this together participated in the u. S. Led cooperation in syria and have worked together under french leadership and under uk leadership in eastern aeurope ad they have built a force which is a nonpermanent military force involving all three services, that is going to reach full operational capacity next year in 2020. France and the uk have also been collaborating in the Nuclear Domain, Nuclear Deterrents domain which makes their partnership indeed quite special, sharing facilities for the maintenance of their Nuclear Stockpile as well as test simulation on their nuclear warheads. France and the uk are obviously both members of the un security council, an as such they engage on a lot of international Security Issues, and they have a common approach on current affairs, including on iran, russia, or syria. So thats for if you like the the background of what im going to say now is going to build. So based on this bilateral strong allencompassing partnership that has been working for us in the past decade. What happened in 2006. This microphone, i dont know if i should speak close or far. Should i speak like this . Okay. What i said for the past three minutes was not that the interesting anyway so its okay if you didnt hear anything. So what has happened since 2016 . So obviously when you have such a partnership that has no equal in europe and you have a bilateral treaty, what you come up with something after brexit is first disbelief on both sides as well as public declarations that support the maintenance of the partnership and try to create a political atmosphere of continued trust and support and mutual support, so in 2016 when Francois Hollande was still president he said france would work with a big friend country and the close relations in the defense field will be preserved. Theresa may similarly in july 2016 suggested that the intelligence and Security Cooperation between our countries is something that will always endure and that they will even strengthen the wider Strategic Defense Partnership between the two countries. So a lot of goodwill was showed at first. Then since 20172018, we have some sort of fatigue. We have macron taking a hard line on brexit to preserve the different pillars of the eu and and maintain unity of the eu, and we face the fact and the problem that defense indeed is not as important or is only secondary to economic and social issues, right, so you have defense coming. If you like it more to the back of the bilateral declarations and french posturing, same on the uk side. Then with the rejection of theresa mays deal, there is an increased fatigue and disbelief on the french side of what the uk is up to. And then you have an increased governmental instability in the ek and with the coming into power of boris johnson, the question is is it even worth working with johnson and how long is he going to stay in power anyway, and the talks and the constant postponing of brexit make any kind of focus on defense and security very, very difficult. So in the meantime you do have the collaboration that continues at the working level, political military cooperation, competition continues and is affected by military events. Deployments in the indian oceans of combined Aircraft Carrier groups continue. Collaboration in sahal and Eastern Europe and syria continue. However, on the industrial side, things have started to take a different turn. The big project of a future combat air system, uk french air system was abandoned, not only due to brexit. There were already many disagreements on the industrial side. Differing needs between the two countries but it was acknowledged in all the research and interviews that ive done a brexit presented a sort of window of opportunity to just abandon a project that they no longer had an incentive to maintain because of bad political context and difficulty economic context as well, and now there are many doubts about other projects including this very ambitious industrial integration in the missile sector that i was mentioning earlier that is now put into question by brexit. Meanwhile cooperation in the Nuclear Domain continues. So then that was if you like for the past three years, and now we can wonder whats going to happen after brexit, and this indeed begs the question that you raised, cornelia, about resilience and i have only two minutes and im very late. Im going to speed up. My point, and thats something that i write about in the book that i will hopefully be able to publish soon is that even for partners and neighbors that enjoy such special relationships and very deep partnerships, those partnerships they need a minuteth maintenance, they need effort, and when we think about whats going to happen next we can think about four lines inquiry. First is how are the two partners going to construct common interests, decide on things they want to do together, and this is going to be difficult, first, because of brexit representing two opposing political visions, first you have on the one hand you have france thinking of its future in the european context and almost only in a european context and on the other side you have the uk thinking of its future individually around this idea of Global Britain, so you have different political visions. You also have political tensions because of the brexit negotiations which creates diminished incentives for negotiating common positions, common interests and finding areas and ways in which to work together. Then in the longer term, if the uk does not participate in the eu, in the European Defense fund, the common policy meetings, there is a chance that there is not going to be able to converge on many issues that concern eu diplomacy, but maybe my colleagues will talk more about that. So thats also going to make it more difficult to reach common positions for procurement choices and military procurement, especially as eu moves forward to become an actor in that field. Then there is the broader question of how willing and able the uk is going to be as a military actor and the root of the partnership between the uk and france is that they both share the Expeditionary Defensive and Strategic Partnership and if the uk is indeed still struggling with brexit, has lower defense spending and just a general loss of leadership, is it still going to be a very attractive partnership for france . Theres also the risk that maybe if the uk has to negotiate trade deals with great powers including the us, including china and including russia, then maybe thats going to create some edge anaheim angelmen