Cooperation between France and the UK has always been central to any European defense arrangements, despite decades of rivalry and misunderstanding. Notwithstanding Brexit, geo-strategic realities suggest that the two countries may increasingly find themselves developing similar responses to emerging security challenges.
In a new research paper by the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship (PETR), fellows Adrien Abecassis and Jolyon Howorthargue that with compounding challenges, including the emergence of COVID-19 as a security threat, the current problematic trajectory of transatlantic relations in the Trump and post-Trump era, the discussion around “strategic autonomy,” and the recent abandonment of attempts by the EU to engineer inclusiveness and unanimity in its collective defense policy, a new frame for French and British strategic thinking could converge.
The paper argues that the UK will find it increasingly difficult to avoid prioritizing Europe as the focus of its defense policy, while France, increasingly positioning itself as a “balancing power” in an emerging multi-polar world, is in effect embracing a strategy very similar to that traditionally played by the UK with respect to Europe.
The authors do not claim that Franco-British strategic convergence will take place, but they outline the circumstances under which it could take place. In particular, such convergence, in order to be both effective and realistic, can only occur within NATO through its progressive Europeanisation, profoundly recasting the Alliance.
Therefore, the possibility of joint Franco-British efforts to reshape a credible European defense both depends on the evolution of the transatlantic relationship, and will have a profound impact on it. Washington will have a key role in this process.
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