Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper uses an interpretivist methodology to examine British, French and German responses to recent European defence dilemmas, to shed light on the extent to which a more unified strategic culture is or is not emerging. Much work on strategic culture has used the process of Europeanisation to show how institutional adaptation and changing discourses might reveal a European rather than national strategic culture. However, policy outputs in response to defence dilemmas appear to show the residual strength of national traditions. This paper investigates this seeming paradox. The increasingly dysfunctional trilateral relationship between Britain, France and Germany on defence matters is thought key to the emergence of both a viable CSDP and/or a strong European pillar within NATO. These states' policy responses to the contrasting dilemmas posed by missile defence, the Libyan conflict and the BAE-EADS merger proposal are considered in the paper, and the consequences for a European strategic culture analysed.