European Security and Defense Policy: Objective Interests Hampered by Subjective Interests?

Since 1998, one of the most remarkable developments in European integration has taken place in the defense field. On paper, all member-states but Denmark now support the idea of a common European security and defense policy (ESDP). Political-military structures have been created and new initiatives are launched almost every month, but the nature of the beast remains unclear. Should it become the independent defense arm of the European Union or a subsidiary of NATO? Should it remain an intergovernmental political forum or move towards the multinational integration of armed forces? And what should it do? Rational-choice theorists usually explain the difficult emergence of a European defense identity by focusing on supposedly conflicting state interests. On the contrary, I argue in this paper that the ?objective? (i.e. material and geopolitical) interests of European states dictate that a strong version of the European security and defense policy be put in place. However, ?subjective? (i.e. organizational and ideal) interests slow down the process of military integration because the most important member-states, for organizational and historical reasons, differ substantially in their perceptions of what the ?military? should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]