The First Step
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Common Security and Defence Policy
17 min read
The article discusses Europe's need to develop independent strategic thinking and defense capabilities. Understanding the EU's existing defense policy framework provides essential context for why this 'strategic atrophy' occurred and what institutional structures already exist that could be strengthened.
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NATO
15 min read
The article centers on Europe's dependence on the USA for security guarantees. NATO is the primary institutional mechanism through which this dependence has operated for nearly 80 years, and understanding its history and structure illuminates why European strategic autonomy atrophied.
Hi all,
One of the most difficult tasks that European states and the EU institutionally have is learning to think on their own. They have over decades of inactivity, mostly lost the ability to think strategically on their own behalf; to judge what they need to do with their own resources to defend their own interests. You might think of it as European strategic muscles having atrophied from lack of use.
As Europe’s strategic muscles have atrophied, what replaced it was reliance on the USA to do much of Europe’s strategic thinking. Europeans could sit back, enjoy their welfare states, early retirement ages and social benefits, snug in the knowledge that if anything truly dangerous happened, big daddy USA would be there to keep the bad guys at bay. Yes, Europeans might chafe at this inferiority, might even comfort themselves by saying that they were very clever and had outsourced their security for little cost, but ultimately they were happy to accept this strategic infantilization.
Until now that is, when the enormous danger of that infantilization is staring Europe squarely in the face. As such institutions and governments across the continent are asking themselves questions that they have avoided for decades—for almost 80 years in some cases.
I’m delighted to say that I am actually playing a small role in discussing these questions, having recently joined
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