U.S. attitudes evolve about EU security ambitions.

• Author: Oudraat, Chantal de Jonge

When it comes to U.S. thinking about the development of a security policy by the European Union, there are three main schools of thought that can be discerned in the policy community. The spectrum is always present, but dominance has evolved among the three currents. All the Americans concerned with the issue have a grounding in strategy, so they posit U.S. interests as a starting point for their evaluation of European objectives.

The first group can be called "the skeptics," who dismiss or belittle the development of an EU security policy. They argue that security issues remain in the hands of national policy-makers and insist that European states are unlikely to concede sovereignty on these issues any time soon. The skeptics point to the widely divergent views of Europeans on the big strategic dossiers, notably the future course of a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). They cite the gap in this area between small and big European countries and the division between those that emphasize the development of more muscular, military instruments in ESDP and those that, on the contrary, emphasize the development of civilian...