John Helferich writes on the evolving relationship between NATO and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy.
Final year DPIR DPhil student in International Relations John Helferich has had an article published in the journal International Politics in which he analyses the evolving relationship between NATO and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).
In ‘Trapped in the grey zone: NATO-CSDP relations in a new era of European security governance’ John focuses on potential reforms to meet the challenges of institutional overlap and strategic ambiguity in European security governance.
The article analyses three scenarios—abolishing the CSDP, integrating it into NATO, or pursuing European strategic autonomy—highlighting the constraints imposed by material and psychological factors.
It argues that the current levels of duplication and ambiguity are manageable, if Europeans and the US navigate the institutional grey zone they have created whenever the transatlantic security partnership is again caught in the crossfire of European identity construction and geopolitics.
The crucial point of this analysis is to demonstrate that NATO-CSDP relations are characterised by an absence of rational institutional design, but that these institutional questions are not central to effective European security governance in the 21st century.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the alliance has sought to bracket institutional questions, pursuing instead a “compartmentalised geographic approach” to strengthening European security. This approach can be effective, but only if supported by resources beyond those presently provided.
John said:
“I thoroughly enjoyed developing this forum piece, which originated from our workshop on the future of the European security architecture at the EUI.
“It’s rewarding to see how the ideas discussed during those sessions have evolved and taken shape in this publication.”
John is currently in the final months of his DPhil, which examines the psychological drivers of EU defence cooperation and its relationship with NATO. Looking ahead, he plans to begin a new project exploring Western over-optimism in engagement with Russia since the turn of the 21st century.
