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"Western Europe's armed forces - both biggish and small - are at a strategic crossroads. With some forces radically cut and lacking both key military capabilities and capacities, even Europe's most powerful forces are rapidly falling behind China, Russia, India and other emerging or resurgent powers. If Europe's much vaunted soft power is to work, it must be underpinned by credible hard, military power. Western European defence strategy and the armed forces it generates desperately need reform. However, the profound friction between the strategic cultures of the three major European powers - Britain, France and Germany - is reinforcing defence-strategic paralysis. Only a European Joint Force Concept will enable Europeans to be effective in the Future Operating Environment." (author's abstract)

"All Britain's strategic relationships will change over the next decade with 2015 as dose to a defence-strategic year zero as is possible. With the withdrawal of the overwhelming bulk of British combat forces in Afghanistan in December 2014 barring shocks Britain will for the first time in a generation contemplate its place in the world without the backdrop of committed operations. The run-up to the 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will see a profound re-assessment of Britain's national interests. As such 2015 will represent Year Zero for British strategic planning when many of the assumptions concerning strategic interests must and will be considered in the light of the exceptional change that is taking place in Europe and the wider World. Strategic planning never takes place in an entirely free space, as Hew Strachan has pointed out. There are always a host of enduring commitments that must be upheld. However, with Britain's future place in the European Union now in doubt and questions as to the future interest of the US in NATO the strategic choices Britain makes over the next five years or so will represent the most profound re-orientation of British foreign, security and defence policy since 1945. The principal aim of British strategic policy is the same as that of any other leading state - influence. The retreat from strategy that has affected much of Europe including London has seen the British political class adopt a series of political clichs that reflect more their own strategic fatigue than fact. In spite of the undoubted change that is taking place in the world London routinely exaggerates the capability and ability of the emerging powers to shape the strategic landscape and under-estimates its own. Britain is today no superpower, nor indeed a global power. However, with an economy worth some 1.81 trillion euro, serving a population of 63.5 million, with a 2012 defence budget of 57.9bn euro Britain remains a global player with interests the world over distinct from those of the European Union. Indeed, Britain remains firmly one the world's top ten economies with a diplomatic and military machine amongst the very best. Brazil may in 2012 have nominally overtaken the UK in terms of the global size of its economy but the Brazilians will be the first to admit that they face deep internal contradictions. By contrast Britain's many problems pale into insignificance and in terms of power and weight Britain is and will remain a major player for much of the twenty-first century if the London elite can break out of their obsession with managing an exaggerated decline. Indeed, 'strategy' so much as it is considered in a British government machine deeply suspicious of 'les grands dessins' has for a long-time been the search for the common ground between the United States, France and Germany. However, that common ground is likely to erode as the United States necessarily 'rebalances' towards Asia-Pacific and France and Germany deepen European political union around the Euro in the possible enforced absence of the UK, which may well leave the EU as a consequence of such historic and from the British perspective deeply unwelcome change." (author's abstract)

As one of Europe's major powers, Germany has both the capability and the responsibility to contribute to Europe's hard-pressed defense effort. But Berlin has consistently neglected its commitment to the Common Security and Defence Policy, exemplified by the newest plans for cuts to the Bundeswehr. (DGAP-IP/GE)

"In November 2009 the Lisbon Treaty changed the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) into the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) whilst in November 2010 Lisbon saw the launch of NATO's new Strategie Concept. Both the EU and NATO face a profound set of questions as they seek a credible security role in a rapidly changing world in which the place and prestige of Europe is diminished. This places smaller European countries in a particular dilemma for in the absence of a truly European strategic culture defence planning is fraught with complexity. What role to play and with whom? Where is the centre of gravity of the security and defence effort? What to buy and what to plan for? This article considers the defence planning challenges of smaller European powers in the context of the two Lisbons. Critically it considers how smaller European countries best achieve a critical commodity - influence. The influence over events, allies, partners and adversaries is in most instances the only reason why a smaller European country may wish to invest in some or other military capability." (author's abstract)

The crisis of the euro currency, together with the economic convergence of the countries of the Eurozone, is profoundly disquieting to the United Kingdom; it discerns potential threats both to a European free-trade zone, and to the vital national interest represented by the London financial market. Are its only alternatives the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world? There are strong British objections to continental Franco-German convergence.

Afghanistan still poses a real threat to the UK but this is not the moment to cut and run. New – big – thinking is required if Britain is to help break out of the current cycle of doom and defeatism that is afflicting too much of the Coalition effort, says Julian Lindley‐French