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British politicians often argued that Britain maintained its navy only in order to secure its own survival by keeping sea communications open, while Germany in no real need of a powerful navy, threatened this legitimate British policy-goal by pursuing expansionist politics. German leaders, emboldened and a little dazzled by the tremendous industrial and economic success of the newly unified Reich, held that Britain was maintaining its economic dominance in the Empire by military means and thus blocking the progress Germany hoped to make in its aspiration to parity status and economic prosperity, with all that that entailed. This paper will explore the underlying rationale of the arms race between Britain and Germany shining through in those different positions on legitimate (military) policy aims. It will go beyond the visible symbols, as it were, of the Dreadnought and the Two-Power standard. These very concrete matters will also be dealt with here but, more importantly, this essay is meant to give some answer as to whether an archetypal differentiation between survival on the one hand and domination on the other can be made out as the predominant logic that led the two countries to embark on the road to the Great War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the prospects for trilateral concord among Britain, France and Germany in terms of defence policies? Would more institutionalised links among them lead to more convergence of their defence policies? To answer these interrogations, this article investigates the relation between policy convergence and institutionalised cooperation, in particular by studying whether and when one is a prerequisite to the other. First, this article examines the extent to which these countries' defence policies have converged since the end of the cold war based on several indicators: their attitudes towards international forums, their defence budgets, the structure of their armed forces and their willingness to use force. Second, we study each of the bilateral relations between the three states to qualitatively analyse their degree of institutionalisation and the convergence of their defence policies. This article concludes that contrary to the arguments of many discussions, think-tank reports and political actors, there is no evidence that institutionalised cooperation leads to policy convergence as far as defence is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the triangle of relations between major EU powers, the relationship between Germany and the UK remains historically under-examined. Its implications for the future of European defence cooperation are, however, vital and gradually more decisive. The article examines indices on the direction of this relationship to model the shape and impact of this missing link among the more thoroughly investigated relations of Germany-France and UK-France. As both the UK and Germany were forced to formulate clear positions during the Brexit process, their pronounced interactions offer a unique insight into the development of their bilateral defence cooperation, both present and future, and its impact on multilateral UK-EU defence relations. The central question that arises is whether sufficient progress has been made towards a stronger bilateral defence relationship between these two actors to warrant the designation of a trend towards new bilateralism. The article explores this within three major sectors: (1) official defence cooperation; (2) military cooperation; (3) defence industrial cooperation and finds that overtures and initiatives launched in the examined period are insufficient to alter the relationship toward new bilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union member states split over the military intervention in Libya with France, Germany and the UK voting differently in the United Nations Security Council. This article compares news media in France and Germany to better understand the foreign policy decisions of these key actors. Using a newspaper analysis of 334 articles, it shows that the German domestic debate started very late and was much less stable than the French debate. This supports arguments that Germany's decision-making was erratic. The analysis, however, also shows that the German debate was comprehensive and included an extensive discussion of the legitimacy of intervention. This fits in well with the traditional reluctance of German foreign policy elites to support military action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The brief war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 provoked vigorous international reactions among the European states as consequence of the sudden shift in the strategic balance. This article argues for a focus on the great powers France, Germany and Britain as crucial actors for understanding the policy reactions towards Russia. It argues furthermore that reactions must be explained from the perspective of experience based on past geopolitics which translate the external pressures into concrete foreign policy: France oriented towards the creation of a strong EU as global actor, Germany influenced by her self-imposed restraint in foreign affairs and Britain influenced by Atlanticist commitments in her balancing behaviour. Beyond the Russo-Georgian war, the article points to an interest-based foreign policy approach towards Russia in the longer term driven by a great power concert with the Franco-German axis as stable element but increasingly with backing from Britain, thus contributing to transatlantic foreign policy convergence on the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]