From Aspirations to Aspirin?

The recent literature dealing with the European security and defense policy tends to paint a bleak picture, basically telling a story of decline or complacency; it describes an ESDP/CSDP that started with high aspirations, and now “fades out” with a “headache” after it “died over Libya”. This paper acknowledges the seriousness of the situation. Challenging these “declinist” approaches, however, it considers the case of Afghanistan and proposes to think about a European “role by default” with quasi-strategic effects. Thus, the paper accepts the lack of convergence between Europe’s national strategic cultures as a given. After showing substantial and enduring differences among the EU’s national strategic cultures, it explains the paradox of a convergence that takes place around a « role by default ». This results from a desire for US leadership (or a complacency towards it) as well as a kind of inertia that is shared globally and aims at preserving a modicum of strategic autonomy from the US. This notion of a role by default is a more adequate description of Europe’s security role than attempts to think up a “European strategic culture”