Negotiating European Security within (Post-)hegemonic Coalitions: What can we learn from IR and negotiation theories?
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, coupled with the U.S.’s increased focus of on its own hemisphere, has fundamentally altered European security and defense policy. The academic disciplines that address these issues are in a state of flux. However, theories of international relations and concepts from negotiation research can help us understand our current situation and how to move forward in light of the clarification of Europe's geopolitical boundaries.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, surprised experts and exposed the limitations of social science forecasting. Former U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House eroded the authority of security experts who had celebrated the revival of NATO and the West. The groundbreaking Davos speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney provides guidance in this precarious environment, offering a theoretically sound assessment of the collapse of the liberal world order based on American power and double standards. At the same time, Carney pointed the way forward, suggesting more and flexible cooperation between middle powers united by pragmatism and common principles—i.e. international law.
The Comeback and Retreat of the Benevolent American Hegemon
Before looking ahead, let's first reach into the theoretical toolbox of our profession and roughly reconstruct the most important changes in the European security order over the past four years. Realistic approaches explained the revival of the transatlantic partnership after 24 February quite well, with their focus on states pursuit of power and the importance of deterrence. Under U.S. President Joe Biden, Europe experienced the rapid return of the benevolent American hegemon. The EU’s 2022 Strategic Compass formalized NATO's responsibility for the collective defense of the continent. At the same time, European military spending skyrocketed, largely due to increased arms deliveries to Ukraine. However, most European countries primarily rely on U.S. weapons systems for their procurement. This deepened their military dependence, particularly in the areas of air defense, missiles, and fighter jets and C4I. Even in terms of escalation management and risk reduction, Washington retained full control.
Europe's blind devotion to American power proved fatal for the continent during the first year of Trump's second term. The shift of U.S. strategic interests to the Indo-Pacific, coupled with the President's apparent willingness to divide the world into regional spheres of influence and largely withdraw conventional reassurance from European allies, has created a delicate power vacuum in Europe. No single hegemonic power on the continent could replace the U.S.’s military and strategic capabilities and establish structures comparable to NATO.
The Limits of Functional Institutionalism in Europe
Institutionalist approaches offer no plausible answer to the question of how the European security order can be maintained in a post-hegemonic era. Established institutions and regimes do not seem capable of ensuring adequate security policy cooperation. Although EU institutions and bodies have acquired their own agency and agenda-setting competence in various policy-areas, the struggle for national control over military affairs has prevented further supranational delegation or institutionalized, multilateral cooperation on security and defense matters. Despite its extensive authority over the economy and the internal market, the EU has not been able to establish itself as a central coordination platform for procurement, the integration of the defense industry, or larger multilateral armament projects. It merely demonstrated a considerable degree of institutional agency in creating investment incentives, such as the European Peace Facility (EFF), the ReArm Europe Plan or the European Defense Industry Program (EDIP).
How can we move forward after the demise of American hegemony if, as Carney said, ritualistic commitments to a rules-based liberal international order and to the strength of the EU and NATO are of no help to us? How can we achieve European strategic sovereignty on security, as French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly demanded since his Sorbonne speech in 2017? In the absence of a capable hegemon or a functioning international defense policy institution, alliances of relevant European states come to the fore.
Emergence of Hegemonic Coalitions
Important group of states, such as the Weimar Triangle (Germany, France, and Poland), seem to be in the best position to help achieve greater strategic sovereignty and act as a hegemonic coalition. They represent a wide range of security policies, traditions and ways of strategic thinking among EU member states. This allows them to develop a high degree of connectivity and binding force through an agreement. An expanded hegemonic coalition could include the seven states that stood up to the U.S. with their joint declaration on the Greenland conflict, including Italy, a current bridge power. This expanded coalition would involve the militarily strong Nordic states and non-EU member UK. These European core groups could form flexible, enlarged formations, including non-European states, to deal with specific security policy issues and collaborate on shared concerns for limited periods, similar to the Coalition of the Willing during the Ukraine war.
Strategic Sovereignty Becomes a Matter of Negotiation
The forming of “hegemonic coalitions” among European forces is complicated by the divers and occasionally conflicting security policies and strategic mindsets of potential coalition partners. Rather than one leading nation setting the direction, several heavyweights must agree on a strategy and a common approach. Thus, the creation of European strategic sovereignty becomes a matter of negotiation. Members of the Franco-German tandem, the Weimar Triangle, and the Group of Seven bring different experiences, threat perceptions and prioritization of capabilities to the negotiating table.
Research on negotiation provides mature concepts and empirically saturated insights for investigating and developing negotiation techniques under difficult and complex conditions. Two fundamentally different strategies can be employed for this purpose. In distributive negotiations, the goal is to divide up a set amount of bargaining chips and maximize one's own profit (claiming value). In contrast, integrative negotiations increase the amount available for negotiation, thus enlarging the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA) and the profit for all negotiating partners (creating value). While distributive negotiations focus on sharing resources, integrative negotiations focus on creating resources that can ultimately be divided up as a win-win outcome. To negotiate integratively, it is crucial to shift from positions to underlying interests, redefining and broadening the scope of common ground. Thus, the ability to change perspectives and mobilize empathy is an important key to successful negotiation.
Intensive research has examined the successes and failures of negotiation strategies in the context of virulent armed conflicts. However, there is a lack of analysis informed by negotiation theory on the emergence of common security policies or a new security order. This would require the systematic mapping of positions and interests in key strategic areas, such as military deterrence and defense capabilities, the further development and interaction of existing security policy structures, and the embedding of European security policy in broader (ad hoc) alliance formations (e.g., Coalition of the Willing), the international global order (e.g., UN) and organizations in other regions (e.g., AU, ASEAN, CELAC). The Harvard Method of Principled Negotiation offers a useful analytical framework for such a mapping endeavor.
Seizing the Diplomatic Opportunity for Europe's Emancipation
The future of European security and peace will require negotiation. Our discipline provides the necessary theories to understand the situation and proven methods to implement solutions. For dogmatic reasons, European governments have missed the diplomatic opportunity to help determine its own geopolitical demarcation lines and their security during the ongoing Ukraine negotiations over the past year. Europe should not miss its second chance, which is opening up now with the American withdrawal from the continent.
Dr. Sascha Hach is Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Managing Director of the Arms Control Negotiation Academy (ACONA) and teaches at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. His research interests include European security, disarmament and arms control, nuclear order, France and the United Nations.
Photo by Ron Lach
