EUROPEAN SECURITY DIMENSION-FROM IDEA TO REALIZATION

Abstract

The issue of building the strategic autonomy of the defense of Europe, i.e. the European Union, has been developing since the Cold War. During this period, the greatest proponent was the President of France, Charles De Gaulle. When the Cold War ended, several attempts appeared for the strategic autonomy of the European defense mechanism, mainly in the Paris-London-Bonn relationship. However, the European Union was a great hostage of the American military and security leadership, so that every attempt was dismissed by the United States as an "unnecessary attempt to duplicate the NATO Alliance". We wonder what the role of the collective defense of the EU is at this moment, the answer is simple: the European defense and security dimension has a secondary role in this domain. Otherwise, the term defense-security dimension encompasses all military capacities of the EU member states to which they belong individually or jointly in coordination and operability in the territory of the EU or outside it. The modest parameters in the development of the European defense-security dimension could not compete with the superiority of the United States in this field, let alone threaten its supremacy. In interpreting this "success" of the Europeans, which seems to have been first seriously brought to awareness by Donald Trump when he demanded a greater financial contribution from NATO members from Europe plus Canada to increase their participation first to 2% of the national budget and later to an increase to 4-5% annually. The second factor in Europe's awareness was the war in Ukraine and the "potential threat" from Russian aggression towards the Baltics, Poland and the rest of Europe. How to explain Europe's delay in this domain? History was not very kind to the idea of building an autonomous European defense dimension. The idea failed at the first step. The Franco-British rivalry and the personalities who led France (Pierre Mendès France) and Great Britain (Winston Churchill) did not find a consensus on the establishment of the European Defense Community (EDC). The project did not pass the French Parliament on 30.08. 1954, due to the rejection of the Gaullist and Communist currents who believed that France should not give up its sovereignty but also out of fear that Germany would start arming again nine years after the capitulation. Thus, the idea of creating a "European army" failed. Otherwise, the Treaty of 27.05.1952 envisaged the supranational "European Security Community, for which unified institutions, armed forces and a budget were envisaged". This military-operational capacity, under NATO command, was supposed to realize the disarmament of defeated and divided West and East Germany. The deeply buried idea of creating a European army was so unpopular that no one thought of resurrecting it until the fall of communism and the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The implosion of Yugoslavia and the interethnic wars at the end of the 20th century and especially the 21st century threats that Europe faced on its borders, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the most recent war between the United States and Israel against Iran, especially the geopolitical consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, mobilized the expert and military-political public in Europe towards returning to the idea of the autonomous defense of Europe. The European Security and Defense Peacekeeping Mission was first inaugurated after the tensions in North Macedonia (2001) under the name EUFOR Concordia starting on 31.03.2003. With the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump's new policy of "First the US and then the rest", the Europeans responded with the slogan "First Europe and then the rest". It seems that Donald Trump's unexpected critical attitude had an educational and mobilizing effect towards the "inability", "stinginess" and lack of interest of Europe to build a "self-sufficient security and defense system" financed by the EU.