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Most countries put significant amounts of time and effort in writing and issuing high-level policy documents. These are supposed to guide subsequent national defence efforts. But do they? And how do countries even try to ensure that they do? This paper reports on a benchmarking effort of how a few "best of breed" small- to medium-sized defence organisations (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) deal with these issues. We find that most countries fail to link goals to resources and pay limited attention to specific and rigorous ex-ante or post-hoc evaluation, even when compared to their own national government-wide provisions. We do, however, observe a (modest) trend towards putting more specific goals and metrics in these documents that can be - and in a few rare cases were - tracked. The paper identifies 42 concrete policy "nuggets" - both "do's and don'ts" - that should be of interest to most defence policy planning/analysis communities. It ends with two recommendations that are in line with recent broader (non-defence) scholarship on the policy formulation-policy implementation gap: to put more rigorous emphasis on implementation (especially on achieving desired policy effects), but to do so increasingly in more experiential ("design") ways, rather than in industrial-age bureaucratic ones ("PPBS"-systems). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most interesting phenomena of the past decade in the field of international relations has been the gradual emergence of collective effort of 27 sovereign states to construct and implement a collective European Union (EU) security and defence policy (ESDP). The overall question that this study seeks to answer is that how could the emergence and rise of the ESDP be interpreted: as an act of burden sharing that seeks to support US-led defence initiatives in its neighbourhood in terms of finance of operations, military capabilities and personnel? Or as an act of balancing that is assumed by the traditional wisdom in the IR as the primary instinct of any state when faced with the greater power in its area of influence? Since the ESDP has emerged overwhelmingly as a series of empirical reactions to historical events, the ESDP as a variable can be traceable over the course of history. The positioning of the EU member states (specifically Germany, France and the UK) in critical junctures such as Afghanistan War under the guise of NATO, the Iraq War that have been carried out by the US-led "coalition of willing," 2008 Russo-Georgian War and recent Libya Crisis would highlight the possible venues in the evolution of the ESDP. By picking these four cases, the aim of the study is to pinpoint the promises and pitfalls of the ESDP and the positioning of EU member states (specifically European trio) vis-àvis the US. Furthermore, this study hopes that these four cases could help provide sufficient insights to the evolution of the ESDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement forwards a Common European security and Defence Policy (CESDP) in the contemporary European Union (EU), and the possible creation of a European army, capture the leitmotiv of contemporary European political integration. The movement towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in western Europe transatlantic relations about the very nature of European foreign and defence policy, transatlantic relations and, most most significantly, the core meaning and destination of European union. Defence therefore takes on a salience not just in its own field, but in the entire European integration process. The culmination of interstate security cooperation would be the formation of an integrated security community in which identities and policy-making capacities have been consolidated or unified at the European level. Defence policy forms the spine of broader European security policy and a security strategy can only exist with a strong military spin. This is especially prescient following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on New York and Washington, DC. Washington expects Europe to follow its lead in international politics and terrorism policy. Since 1998, the Europeans have developed new plans to gain greater political and military independence from Washington and NATO. To what extent, therefore, does the EU want to go beyond being a mere 'civilian power' consequences of such a transformation for western Europe, the United States (US) and transatlantic relations? To what extent will the US remain involved in European security and in what form? The present analysis begins with an analysis of key issues in European defence and security after 11 September 2001. The article then goes on to consider options for transatlantic relations and European security. The article then considers the positions of the major western European powers towards the so-called CESDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that rather than being an emancipatory step for the EU, the Common Security and Defence Policy in its current format represents a continuation of US strategic hegemony. Using a neo-Gramscian model of hegemony, by considering both civilian and military aspects of CSDP, the article shows how US ability to export its strategic doctrine to EU member states is undiminished. It argues that respect for US military achievements is a key reason for this, but that this may lead EU states to make poor strategic decisions, which moreover may lack political and public legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the United Kingdom faces a defence review, most probably in 2010, it needs to clarify an agenda befuddled by human-security needs and the publicity given to international terrorism. The war in Afghanistan rests on the assumption that the 'special relationship' with the United States remains the central pillar of defence thinking. Another assumption is that major inter-state war is unlikely. Such an expectation suggests that deterrence continues to play an important if under-recognised role. Britain remains ready to use war to pursue its policy goals, but the wars in which it has engaged since 1982 have been limited. Defence reviews should be conducted regularly, as in the United States. Moreover, the creation of defence policy needs to be more central to party political debate, not least so that the electorate is more directly engaged in and informed about the issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article surveys the responses to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) of two important external actors: the United States and Russia. It explains the motivations behind these responses and the effect of the latter on the development of the ESDP. The survey finds that both the Clinton and the Bush administrations in the USA have expressed cautious support for the initiative while insisting on NATO's salience in Europe. Russia's enthusiasm for the project is an effort to ensure its participation in European and global security affairs. The conclusion of the article briefly explores the implications of the empirical observations in the light of the future development of the ESDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the erosion of the conditions which supported Germany's emergence as a ‘Civilian Power’, in particular fundamental changes in the US perspective on the transatlantic relationship and international security, but also the increased sensitivity of German foreign policy to domestic circumstances. It explores Germany's so far ambivalent and inconsistent role in the pursuit of a post-hegemonic order for Euro-Atlantic security, focusing in particular on the emerging European Security and Defence Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the paradoxical reasons for the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Issue of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP); Arguments of the proponents of ESDP; Ways in which U.S.-European security relations are viewed in the U.S.

Presents information on the Common European Security and Defense Policy (CESDP) of the European Union (EU) and highlights the emergence of third country problems. Concerns of the United States, Turkey and Russia regarding the necessity of associating states outside the EU with CESDP; Reasons behind the need to enhance the Common Foreign and Security Policy; Ways to ensure that North Atlantic Treaty Organizations and the CESDP remained closely linked.

Examines the atomic defense employed by former French president Charles de Gaulle in February 1960. Document confirming the Anglo-American trigger theory about the French bomb; Reasons for the adoption of the defense strategy; Issue of the military strategy between the U.S. and Europe.

Studies the role of civilian scientist-advisers in U.S. defense policy-making in 1966-1968. Effect of the McNamara Line, an electronic barrier or fence aimed at stemming the infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam, on the importance of scientist-advisers; Dynamics of science-military relations.

Presents the role of the United States in British defense policy between 1919 to 1939. Naval equality between the two countries; Threat that a neutral U.S. might break a British maritime blockade; Anglo-American cooperation and the London naval treaty in 1930; American economic and diplomatic support in opposing totalitarian powers.

This paper explores the content of the Australian foreign and defence policy agenda over the past 50 years, finding evidence of both continuity and change. Australian political leaders have generally committed to cooperation with international institutions, wealth creation through engagement with Asian economies in particular, and security through the American alliance. In this period, changes in foreign policy approach either concerned marginal issues or were driven significantly by exogenous factors: by changes in the international environment or by global events that propelled a reconsideration of Australian foreign and defence policy interests. However, periods of policy change and significant public attention in - particular around the Vietnam and Iraq wars - illustrate the continued relevance of political choices and agency. Both conflicts and debates around them ushered in changing foreign and defence policy considerations, and both raised fundamental questions about Australian security and independence in the context of the American alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1987, Donald Trump has constantly considered in a critical manner the U.S. foreign defence policy that he understood as the use of the U.S. military for advancing the interests of foreign states. In the context of the 1988, 2000, 2012 and 2016 election campaigns for the U.S. presidency, he strongly argued that this military support should not be provided for free but only in exchange for a fair price to be paid by the states which benefit from it. This paper points out that Trump's position on the exact structure of this price is less clear and that three contrasting views on this issue could plausibly be attributed to him, with the last two ones being more prominent and explicit: firstly, the price includes both the costs for employing the U.S. military and a mark-up, secondly, the price covers only the costs for employing the U.S. military and finally, the price is made up exclusively from a share of the costs for modernising the U.S. military. A possible way of integrating all three views into the U.S. foreign defence policy is also suggested by this paper which concludes that Trump's perspective on this policy is complex and thus resistant to a simple characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an interpretation of the US capacity to force North Korea to abandon the development of nuclear weapons, based on the analysis of the conventional balance between the U.S. and North Korea. It is also an attempt to evaluate the impact of the US military transformation on defence policy decisions of the potential opponents of the US. The first (theoretical) part of the article presents the assumptions of theoretical interpretation as well as the fundamentals of evaluating the conventional balance between the US and North Korea. The second part of the article highlights the key moments of the US and the international community's so far unsuccessful attempts to force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and explains the reasons for such unsuccessful policy. The third part of this paper analyzes the conventional balance between the US and North Korea, taking into account the conventional forces of those countries, their long range conventional strike programmes as well as the missile defence programmss - this analysis presupposes the failure of the US to prevent North Korea from nuclear weapon development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Obama administration's attempt to rebalance U.S. strategy towards the Asia-Pacific region with special emphasis on Southeast Asia. It argues that America's regional pivot is occurring at a time of unprecedented domestic fiscal austerity caused by a staggering level of national debt. The U.S. domestic budget crisis, the current "declinist" debate, concern over the rise of China, and the impact of sequestration on American defence spending are analysed and their implications for Southeast Asia are assessed. The article suggests that the most serious aspect of the U.S. debt crisis may be its impact upon American strategic resilience and geopolitical confidence. Thus, while many ASEAN nations have welcomed the U.S. strategic pivot as a valuable reinforcement of their security, they remain unsure that it is a sustainable policy. In the future, it is likely that reassuring ASEAN of the longevity of the U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific will require of Washington a skilled blend of budgetary reform, military presence, and sustained diplomatic effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to review and refine the notion of 'liberal militarism'. It is based on the assumption that no society, even a democratic one, can do without militarism as all of them consent to considerable budgetary efforts to provide for their defence. But this consent and the ways in which it is expressed are prone to variations. More than an exceptional use of force at the international level, or an exaltation of servicemen or of the military within society, the notion of liberal militarism denotes here the social representations ascribed by the political and social actors to defence policy in liberal democracies. Over the past 30 years, defence policy has seen a number of changes towards economic and/or political-cultural liberalisation both in terms of their objectives and in terms of their means. This twin liberalisation process, which took on different forms according to the national cases considered, has given rise to different 'varieties of liberal militarism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how key actors within the US defence policy community realigned their interests to forge a new consensus on the redirection of US defence strategy following the 'peace shock' they faced with the collapse of bipolarity. This consensus centred on the idea that achieving US security in the 'age of uncertainty' demanded overwhelming US military power, which was widely interpreted as necessitating military capabilities to fight multiple major theatre wars simultaneously against regional 'Third World' adversaries. This helped to preserve many of the principal pillars of US Cold War defence policy through deflecting calls for more radical organisational changes and deeper cuts to defence budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reappraises the two most-studied country cases of military outsourcing: the USA and the UK. It argues that the contemporary wave of military contracting stretches back to the beginning of the cold war and not only to the demobilisation of armies in the 1990s or the neoliberal reforms introduced since the 1980s. It traces the political, technological and ideational developments that laid the groundwork for these reforms and practices since the early cold war and account for its endurance today. Importantly, it argues that a persistent gap between strategic objectives and resources, i.e. the challenge to reconcile ends and means, is an underlying driver of military contracting in both countries. Contemporary contracting is thus most closely tied to military support functions in support of wider foreign and defence political objectives. Security services in either state may not have been outsourced so swiftly, if at all, without decades of experience in outsourcing military logistics functions and the resultant vehicles, processes and familiarities with public-private partnerships. The article thus provides a wider and deeper understanding of the drivers of contractualisation, thereby improving our understanding of both its historical trajectory and the determinants of its present and potential futures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

(emphasis added) 74 In suggesting that, "throughout its 60-year existence, NORAD has been Canada's 'defence against help,'" Dawson unabashedly invokes the idea that "NORAD is just as much about protecting Canada from the United States" as it is about defending against other adversaries. VOLUME 20, ISSUE 2 ©Centre of Military and Strategic Studies, 2021 ISSN: 1488-559X Journal of Military and Strategic Studies "Defence Against Help" Revisiting a Primary Justification for Canadian Participation in Continental Defence with the United States Whitney Lackenbauer Nils Ørvik first identified the concept of defence against help as a security "strategy for small states" in the early 1970s. "Defence Against Help" Revisiting a Primary Justification for Canadian Participation in Continental Defence with the United States. In a 1981 paper framing how defence against help represented one of the fundamental tenets in post-Second World War Canadian foreign policy, Donald Barry articulated that: One of the most frequently debated questions in Canadian defence policy vis-à-vis the U.S. is the extent to which the military actually serves Canada's national security interests. [Extracted from the article]

Australia, like most other developed democracies, is often alleged to suffer from ‘casualty phobia’. The perception that the Australian public will not tolerate casualties in foreign conflicts has shaped the decisions of both civilian and military policy makers. Measures taken to protect Australian forces from casualties may, for instance, also serve to increase the risk to civilians in the country to which they are deployed. The USA underwent a similar debate some years ago. Innovative public opinion research techniques—especially ‘survey experiments’ which allow researchers to establish causal relationships by consciously manipulating one variable while holding others constant—have established that the American public are not reflexively casualty-phobic and that the impact of casualties on public opinion can be outweighed by other factors, such as the public's confidence in the mission's overall success. In this article, the author replicates one of the key survey experiments from the US debate, suitably adapted to Australian conditions, with a nationally representative sample of Australian voters. The author finds that the same pattern holds in Australia as in the USA: casualties do lower public support for a given mission, but the mission's chances of success matter more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides a comparative analysis of the sales of the Trident nuclear missile system to Britain by the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations. Both governments viewed the Anglo–American nuclear partnership as a tool within their wider foreign policy kit and utilised the sale of Trident to influence British defence policy. For these reasons, each administration saw the Trident sale as part of an Anglo–American transactional defence relationship. This exegesis deepens understanding of the United States perspective on Anglo–American nuclear co-operation. Moreover, it is relevant to current debates on the replacement of Trident because it highlights the ramifications of Britain’s technical dependence and raises questions about the concessions that may have been made, or will need to be made, to the United States in exchange for the latter’s assistance with replacement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As framed here, the key question regarding the larger debate about the European approach(es) to the United States after the end of the Cold War is: are the Europeans bandwagoning or balancing? And in that context, how should the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) be interpreted? Both articles provide valuable insights into the dynamics of transatlantic relations, yet they both miss important (although different) parts of the larger picture. First, this response to the two articles argues that the CSDP can be understood neither as balancing behaviour nor as an attempt to bandwagon with the United States for the simple reason that the CSDP is little but a paper tiger. For all practical purposes there is no common European security and defence policy. Second, it is argued that the structural realist tendency to see the Europeans' behaviour aseitherbalancingorbandwagoning is futile. Some European nations clearly bandwagon; others are pursuing a more independent and autonomous approach to the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a close US ally, Australia is often seen as a recipient of US extended deterrence. This article argues that in recent decades, Australian strategic policy engaged with US extended deterrence at three different levels: locally, Australia eschews US combat support and deterrence under the policy of self-reliance; regionally, it supports US extended deterrence in Asia; globally, it relies on the US alliance against nuclear threats to Australia. The article argues that in none of these policy areas does the Australian posture conform to a situation of extended deterrence proper. Moreover, when the 2009 White Paper combines all three policies in relation to major power threats against Australia, serious inconsistencies result in Australia's strategic posture—a situation the government should seek to avoid in the White Paper being drafted at the time of writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the frame of postmodernism, the main theoretical bases of the traditional Geopolitics started to be strongly questioned by a new current group of researchers identified with the Critical School of this discipline. However, the different shades in the relations between Russia and the United States of America seem to revalidate the basic premises of the traditional Geopolitics: Halford Mackinder's Heartland, George Kennan's Contention and The Spheres of Influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union and the United States are on the verge of agreeing to a transatlantic free trade agreement. The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is aimed at boosting EU and US economic growth, but the negotiating partners have not excluded the defence sector from negotiations. Europe is at a tipping point regarding the rationale for its defence-industrial integration efforts. Any TTIP extending to the defence sector will raise questions about the nature of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, and, crucially, how it impacts the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Common Security and Defence Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Infrastructures are central to processes of state formation. The revival of materialism in International Relations has made an important contribution to our understanding of states through careful analysis of the politics of infrastructure and state building. Yet, to date, engagement with the state-theoretical tradition associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Bob Jessop has been absent. Through comparison with the external-relational ontology of Bruno Latour and actor-network theory (ANT), this article argues that state theory and its internal-relational ontology avoids reifying the state while providing an analysis of infrastructure and state formation sensitive to the historical reproduction of social orders over time. Developing Gramsci's concept of the 'integral state', it emphasises the necessary interpenetration between civil society, the state apparatus, and the creation of infrastructure. These conceptual arguments are illustrated through an analysis of the United States' development of nuclear infrastructures during the early Cold War period, in the internal relations between infrastructure and the integral state are explored through Civil Defense Education programmes. Clarifying the internal relations of past, present, and potential future forms of socio-technical order is an important task for rethinking the politics of technological design in International Relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United States’ foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific region is set to be fundamentally altered by two developments in Washington's defence policy. The first is the so-called pivot towards the region in terms of overall defence strategy. The second, occurring at roughly the same time, is a move towards a far greater role for advanced conventional weaponry in the US defence posture. We analyse the interaction of these two trends and discusses a central tension between short and long-term challenges, suggesting that, contrary to current developments, either a freeze in the deployment of these weapons programmes or a return to a strategy underpinned by traditional notions of deterrence may well be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Beginning in late 2011, successive US defence policy documents and official pronouncements explicitly depicted American strategy in Asia in Indo–Pacific terms. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was the first top US official to frame expanding US partnerships with Australia, India, and Indonesia in the broader Indo–Pacific context. Subsequently, President Barak Obama reaffirmed Clinton's vision in his November 2011 speech to the Australian House of Representatives. Two months later, the Pentagon published its strategic guidance that directed the US military to ‘rebalance toward the Asia–Pacific region', declaring that American interests are ‘inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia'. The ‘pivot’ to the Indo–Pacific has since become the driving force behind the US regional strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the foundations of the ‘rogue states’ security narrative in the United States developed prior to the declaration of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Global War on Terror’ and President Bush’s representation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’. The article argues that the puzzle of how US post-Cold War foreign and defence policy came to be focused on ‘irrational’ — but militarily inferior — adversaries can be understood through analysing how actors within the US defence community discursively constructed discrete international crises as the trigger for a major shift in US threat scenarios. This is developed through an examination of two crucial episodes in the construction of post-Cold War US national security interests: the crisis in the Persian Gulf in 1990–1 and the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993–4. The article suggests the importance of historicizing contests over the interpretation of international crises in order to both better understand the process through which a country’s national security interests are defined and to gain greater analytical purchase on how security narratives are reconstructed during processes of systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The French return to NATO has been met with standing ovations in the alliance and perceived as France finally returning to the fold. This article traces the evolution of the French process and suggests that it does not entail a major change in French policy, nor is it taking place at the expense of the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy. The French have been given central positions within the Command Structure that will enable them to influence NATO's transformation and achieve the ultimate goal of developing a European Union strong enough to be considered an equal partner to the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United States, Jefferson's Empire of Good or just plain empire, claims to be the defender and guardian of world order and freedom. But America is also a destabilising force because its activism and military interventionism in the world undermine other societies and their sovereignty. America, rather than politically seeking good-neighbourly relations with sovereign countries, prefers to respond to its vulnerabilities by endlessly building up its military capacities, expanding its security perimeter by garrisoning the world with a global network of bases. Analysing a metaphor used by former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (2001–2006) paralleling America to a besieged house in a rowdy neighbourhood, J.C. Barry reconstructs, behind the post-Cold War paradigm shift in American defence policy, from threat-based to capacity-based, the underlying historical continuity of America's identity and strategic culture. Behind its security-driven discourse lies the structure and values of liberal society. Violent political conflict, i.e. war, is criminalised, overshadowed by economic rationality on the one hand and morality on the other. From an insular power projecting its forces beyond its homeland borders to ensure its safety and its interests, America's mission is also that of a Chosen People with a Manifest Destiny to lead the world, by example or by force of arms. In the beginning was the fence.    Jost Trier quoted by Carl Schmitt in The Nomos of the Earth Of course our whole national history has been one of expansion.    Theodore Roosevelt, 1899 Our frontiers today are on every continent.    John F. Kennedy, 1960 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US strategic defence policy has undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades, with more recent changes having placed increased demands on members of the reserve components. Rapid and often unexpected call-ups of reserves for operational missions, both domestic and international, required meeting standards for mobilization and deployment. Standards were in place but not necessarily met. Mobilizations pointed to several areas of unpreparedness; at first, obvious areas, such as members being physically unfit, inadequately trained and improperly equipped and less than competent unit leaders; and later, less obvious areas, in particular, emergent personal adjustment problems. During these mobilizations, unique consequences of stressors on individual reservists were evident, including worries about family and civilian job during deployment, adjustments to returning and reintegration, post-deployment post-traumatic stress disorder and related symptoms, and now suicide. Some have explained these findings, though lacking is a broad explanatory framework. Reserve identity is offered as a preliminary concept to interpret reservists'' deployment experiences, post-deployment adjustment, and associated mental health needs, providing a basis for preventive intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration is commonly credited with contributing to a significant alienation of Europe from the United States, possibly unprecedented since the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. The sources of estrangement cited are both manners of style, in the administration's often bellicose or messianic rhetoric, and matters of substance, in its casual disregard for multilateral policymaking in principle, accompanied by its explicit embrace of preemption in the National Security Strategy of September 2002. However, this article argues that the sources of strategic drift between Europe and the United States are structural and wholly predictable, if regrettable, products of post-Cold War change. Although strained transatlantic relations ought in theory to have stimulated the development of a European Security and Defence Policy, substantive progress in this area has been surprisingly modest. Indeed, it is as reasonable to talk of a measure of strategic drift among European states as it is to note the political widening of the Atlantic Ocean. The early evidence from a new administration in Washington testifies less to its hostility and more to its indifference to a global role for Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The new constellation after the elections in France, the USA and Germany offer a window of opportunity for restructuring the transatlantic relations. Washington has become more multilateral and supportive to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) provided it contributes to its global agenda. The Lisbon Treaty provides for a better framework to the Europeans to act together in this field. Paris has realised that the best way to reach its traditional goal of Europe becoming an autonomous global actor in the field of security is to become more 'atlanticist'. France may have altered its tactical approach but its strategy regarding EU and NATO remains strongly path-dependent. From a German point of view, the best-case explanation is the preferred outcome: France's return into the military integration of NATO leading to an enhanced ESDP and improved transatlantic relations based on a shared security culture and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]