"This agreement does not cede or share sovereignty ; does not create a European army ; and does not aspire to pool the nuclear deterrent forces of our two countries." Rarely was a treaty preceded by so many provisos as to what it doesn’t mean. So much does it overuse the term "historic," one wonders at David Cameron’s emphatic denial of the historic character of a treaty that no doubt contains some.
Subject to this deliberately defusing rhetoric, many observers have reacted negatively to the treaty by which the United Kingdom and France will synchronise the periods of service of their aircraft carriers, so that at least one will always be active, even with the other country’s planes aboard ; cooperate in nuclear warhead design ; develop joint industrial armament programs ; and significantly improve the interaction of their armed forces.
At first sight, the agreement is a step backward in the establishment of a common European defence force. There is no reference to the Lisbon Treaty’s European security and defence policy, which provides for "pioneer" countries creating their own permanent defence cooperation structures, something like the first monetary cooperation agreements, that later gave rise to the euro, or the Schengen agreement, which also began as an extra-treaty initiative but led to the suppression of frontiers and a common visa policy.
The agreement not only disdains the European Union ; worse yet, for a country like the UK, whose idea of the EU is seen through the filter of nation-states’ sovereignty, the disdain for other nation-states is conspicuous in a treaty that (so far) appears closed to third parties. Germany, which is undertaking a radical reform of its armed forces, could have contributed ; Poland is not hiding its frustration, having long tried to enter into the Franco-German axis’ defense initiatives ; and Spain, a firm defender of taking small pragmatic steps toward common capabilities, would surely have liked to partake in the accord, as it also possesses an aircraft carrier, as well as similar interests in the production of unpiloted airplanes, in-flight refuelling and so on.
However, the treaty allows room for a second reading. Not unironically and out of sheer necessity, Cameron has agreed to do all the things that are indispensable if we really wish, some day, to have a common European defence system. The British Conservatives have repudiated the European Defence Agency as the implementing organ of these agreements, vitiated as it is with two original sins : "European" in its name, and its seat in Brussels. But in practice, they have bought into its agenda of industrial cooperation, which will allow the Europeans to stop squandering money on duplicating costly armament programs and maintaining armies whose operational rigidities render them useless for deployment where important crises occur, ever more frequently outside Europe.
Anyone familiar with the history of European integration knows that Europe has always done things this way, the reticence of the states being an ultimate option in the face of the inevitable, and leaders being dragged along by challenges bigger than they were. Fortunately, Cameron being a Euro-sceptic, he does not know that European construction is the unintended consequence of decisions that, like his, are aimed at safeguarding sovereignty by other means. Cameron may fool himself and his country’s Euro-sceptics. But the agreement signed last Tuesday, though it attempts to save Europe’s pocket superpower from the European fever, contains a germ that, under the right conditions, will finally affect the patient. The financial crisis has served to us on a platter the deeper economic unification of Europe. Will crisis-driven budget cuts be the beginning of a European defence system ? In politics the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line.
