Achilles, The Tortoise And CSDP: The Way Forward for Europe’s Defence

Last week, EU leaders gave their blessing to defence plans that should help them take the security of Europeans a bit more seriously. These efforts come from the right place. Europe does need to get its act together, and to do so on its own terms before President Obama steps down, and the EU becomes a noisy but ineffectual onlooker in the Donald Trump pantomime show.

On the whole, Brussels has done what it could to push Europeans to cooperate in recent years. Herman Van Rompuy, the former president of the European Council, put security and defence on the agenda of EU leaders back in 2013 – before the Ukraine conflict, the migration crisis, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, the Brexit vote and the Trump election. Since 2013, the European Commission has thrown its financial clout behind defence cooperation, and in doing so has broken an old European taboo: the fact that European money will fund research into defence capabilities is a key long-term development. The European Parliament has been pressing for proper European defence cooperation for many moons…