On September 10, 2019, incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, along with her team of nominees for Commissioners, presented her ambitions for the next five years. In her Mission Letter to High Representative of the Union for Foreign Policy and Security Policy Josep Borrell, von der Leyen stated that she wanted her team to be “a geopolitical Commission” that would be more “strategic, more assertive and more united” in its foreign policy approach. In a speech on the state of Europe two months later in Berlin, she stressed that “[s]oft power alone won’t suffice today if we Europeans want to assert ourselves in the world. Europe must also learn the language of power”.
Hard power
While the term “geopolitical Commission” is new, von der Leyen’s call for a more muscular EU follows a clear impetus in EU security and defence since 2016. The previous Commission, led by her predecessor Jean Claude Juncker, made significant efforts to relaunch the EU’s security and defence project. Among these were the 2016 EU Global Strategy, the launch of the process of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the introduction of a single military headquarters in Brussels – currently used for three EU Military training missions but soon to be leading one EU military operation – and a new European Defence Fund (EDF) of approximately €13 billion for research and development in armaments and defence equipment between 2021-27. These initiatives were prompted by a widespread concern in Brussels with the EU’s ability to act in an increasingly ‘dangerous’ world. Developments in and around Europe, such as the so-called migration crisis at Europe’s Southern borders, a resurgent Russia in the East, Brexit, and criticism of NATO from both US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron (who recently called the alliance “brain dead”), all invoked a sense of crisis that increased support for a more muscular, masculine, and more militarised EU. As Juncker demanded, “Europe needs to toughen up”.
While the EU assumes that a more militarised approach to foreign policy is the right and rational course of action to counter these threats and the multiple crises Europe is facing, critical reflection is gravely needed. First of all, what we are witnessing today in Brussels is a normalisation of militarism – defined here as “the social and international relations of the preparation for, and conduct of, organised political violence”[1] – and the extension of militarism beyond the military proper. This allows for the transfer of military strategy, equipment and funding to other policy domains, such as migration or development.
