A Defense without a State Doesn’t Have a Sense, but even a State without Defense. Towards a New Form of European Statehood?

Domenico Moro
Board member of the Centre for Studies on Federalism, Torino, Italy

The perspective opened by Juncker with his initiatives about the European defense has a precedent only in the direct elections of the European Parliament and in the birth of the euro. Indeed, as happened after these two steps towards the process of European unification, even the way towards a common European defense can be an opportunity for a broad discussion on the next steps that will have to be taken in this direction, on the future of the European Union and on its institutional structure.

Generally speaking, the steps forward in security policy are also an opportunity to emphasize the problem of the emergence of a European defense in terms of the concomitant birth of a European “State”. In these cases, the model of State which we think of is, invariably, the bureaucratic and centralized national State as it has historically been affirmed in Europe. From this point of view, the most stimulating ideas are provided by some works which, in order of time, are the conference held by Robert Cooper at the Center for the Study of Democracy and the book “Difendere l’Europa” [“Defending Europe”] (2017).

Starting from the latter, in the introduction to the book it is noted that “[...] in a long-term perspective, if started immediately, European defense is not impossible. Indeed, it will become unavoidable when we finally begin to relaunch a clear and definite European State project, in boundaries that are certainly much more restricted than those of the current European Union. A defense without a State doesn’t make sense. But not even a State without defense [my italics]”. For his part, Robert Cooper, in his conference, argues that “Armies belong to States. If you want a European army you have first to create a European State. And that is not the direction we are going in either. The basic unit of political account in Europe remains the State – the nation State if you will – though I always hesitate to use that term in a country having today at least four nations – the State which has elections, parliaments, which taxes its citizens, provides them with health care, courts, police, prisons, education, street lighting and many other things, and which remains the primary focus of loyalty and identity of its citizens. It is this State which owns the armies too and which will continue to do so for the foreseeable future”.

Both authors just mentioned agree on the fact that defense and statehood go hand in hand, even if in the first case a time lag does not seem to be completely excluded. Cooper's observations, however, go further. He does not limit himself to argue that the defense and the creation of a European State are the same thing: "No State, no army" is the phrase with which he concludes his report at the Center for the Study of Democracy. Cooper also provides a description of what he believes is a State, that is, an entity that deals with all the public services a political community needs, including the provision of health services, courts of justice, police, prisons, up to education and street lighting. Since Cooper speaks about a country with four nationalities, which has also four national football teams – Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland –, with some hesitation does he identify the type of State which he refers to as a national State. In fact, the list of public goods he has compiled is well suited to a bureaucratic and centralized State, as are the European national States, but it certainly does not describe a federal union. In the latter, as can be the United States, and taking up the list of public goods mentioned by him, it should be noted that healthcare, before the Obama reform, was predominantly private and State-managed, while now it is private and it is in equal measure State-managed and federal; the courts of justice are State-managed and federal; education is a State competence; police departments are State-managed and federal; prisons are State-managed and federal; street lighting is State-managed and local. But above all, with reference to the defense, what Cooper forgets is that in the USA, at least until 1916, and formally still today, the "dual army" system (K. C. Wheare, On federal government, 1951), federal and State-managed, applies. The type of State which Cooper thinks of would ill adapt to the European situation and, as far as the defense is concerned, it will probably be necessary to think of the American model that prevailed at least until the US federal institutions began weakening.

With reference to the realization of a European defense, the problems that are raised by what has just been mentioned are two. The first is the gradual implementation of a European defense and, therefore, the gradual realization of a European statehood. The second is the type of State and defense that can be achieved with reference to the European Union. On the first point, Albertini's reflections can be helpful (M. Albertini, Tutti gli scritti, 1971-1975, 2008). They have been advanced as soon as the concrete possibility of promoting political initiatives for the realization of the European monetary union was at hand. He was well aware of the fact that, as mentioned before, the construction of the European federation "is more a political than an institutional fact". Albertini was able to take an innovative position that, from the point of view of an active political thinking, represents a radical step forward. In fact, he argued that "the decisive point seems to me this: we must accept and support, against any logic, a gradual operation of monetary unification preceding, and not following, the creation of a European political power, because the protagonists of the process as far as its execution is concerned[...], do not behave according to logical criteria”. Huntington did a similar sociological remark about the dual control, States and federal, of the U.S. militias and a regular army (S. Huntington, The soldier and the State, 1957).

As an aspect to be investigated further, we must ask ourselves whether, in the light of the progress that has been made in the last two years in the field of European defense, the observation made by Albertini for the European currency may still apply with reference to the defense. Compared to 45 years ago, when that reflection was made, the EU has made enormous progress towards a true European statehood. The direct election of the European Parliament has been obtained (what is a parliament, if not an organ of a State?); so did the doubling of the European budget; the realization of the European internal market; a single European currency. What are an elected parliament, an internal market and a currency, if not further federal institutions that have joined the previous federal institutions, such as the Court of Justice and the trade policy as an exclusive European competence?

If referred to European defense, Albertini's observation on the monetary union - whose realization may precede the creation of a European political power -, in the current European institutional context seems less abstract, even if we are only witnessing its first cautious steps. Certainly, achieving European defense presents different problems than the European currency. To achieve that, it was necessary to recognize the principle of the European Central Bank autonomy, without which Germany's consent would not have been obtained. This is not possible for European defense, which needs a strong control by a European democratic government and the European Parliament. In the case of European defense, it is not a question, however, of replacing the national armed forces with a single European army, but of gradually transferring to the European institutions a share of the national armies, similarly to when, at the beginning of monetary unification process, it was decided to share a portion of the national currency reserves. At European level, the institutions - European Council, European Commission, European Parliament - for the control of an initial core of European federal army already exist. It is a matter of accepting the fact that there will be two levels at which there will be armies, one national and one European, and that, for a long time, they will coexist, as it happened for the United States of America, for over a century of existence of that  federation. Perhaps more than in the American case, in the European case there will be a new form of statehood, a "State of States", as Albertini often stated when he was speaking of the European federation. A more suitable way of expressing this concept, as has been suggested recently, is to define the EU as a "federal union", an expression that better than others describes a union that is a “union of States and citizens”.

The American experience raises the problem of assessing whether or not it involves a clarification of the sound definition of State that Max Weber gave in its time (“the State is that human community which, in the limits of a given territory - this element of the "territory" is characteristic -, demands for itself (successfully) the monopoly of legitimate physical force "). This definition is certainly well-suited to the European centralized national States, but does not seem to conform to the American federal experience, whose constitution provides for the presence of armed forces at the federal and State level. The European federal union, when it will be born, will be, as Albertini argued, a "State of States" and this would already suggest two levels to which the "monopoly of legitimate physical force" will correspond. The European federal union will not have the "monopoly of monopolies", but more simply, as can be deduced from the American experience, the monopoly of the federal level, to be exercised outside European borders, and  States' monopolies to be exercised mainly within State borders.

Certainly, the monopoly of physical force is not limited only to the armed forces, since in a bureaucratic and centralized State there are also police forces. But the federal police, in the USA, was born at the beginning of the last century with the establishment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before then, there was only the State or local police and, in order to prosecute crimes on a federal scale, private agencies were employed, such as the famous Pinkerton agency which, at the end of the 1800s, had a number of agents that by far exceeded that of the members of the American federal army. In the American experience, the monopoly of physical force, more than being at a specific State level, is shared between the federal and State level and this seems to correspond more to the idea that the American federation, at least for over a century of its history, can be called a "State of States".

The current political thinking will perhaps have some difficulty in admitting a possibility of this kind but, as mentioned above, "in a long-term perspective, to be prepared right away, a European defense is not impossible". It goes without saying that starting to prepare immediately the road to European defense is tantamount to preparing immediately for a European statehood. However, in this regard it is necessary to clear the ground of an argument that could be an obstacle on this path, namely the idea that to create a European State, it is necessary to establish a single armed force in place of 27 national armed forces. The European institutions have already ruled out an outcome of this kind, but the EU as such needs a defense, and therefore the American experience can be a good point of reference. To date it is premature to say what the defense model that will inspire the EU may be, even if the American dual army model would seem the most plausible.