The Political Economy of the European Military-Industrial Complex in the Making 1997-2007.

The EU has been repeatedly called ‘a civilian power’ since 1970s. The latter denotes a new type of global political actor that is without a military arm or declines out of principle to use brute force in world politics. If this was ever the case, it has become less and less so in the last ten years. The Amsterdam Treaty introduced an EU military capability in 1997. Helsinki Summit agreed on a 50-60,000 strong Rapid Reaction Force (to be replaced by battle groups decided about in 2004). A crisis management capability was created and an EU Military Staff declared operational in 2001. The EU sent troops to Bosnia and Macedonia and adopted its first Security Strategy in 2003. As a turning point, the European Defence Agency was created in 2004. The European Security Research Advisory Board was established in 2005. The EU Gendarmerie Force was launched in 2006. Finally, as increasingly significant fund (PASR) (65 millions euros as a starter) has been created to select and underwrite pan-European security research proposals since 2004. The literature explains this recent change of attitude towards ‘war as politics by other means’ by two main factors. The external factor refers to changing environment of, first, post-Cold War and second, post 9/11 international system. The internal factor means the proactive involvement of some leading European policy makers. What is largely ignored here is the role of the European military industry. This industry strives â€"with only a limited success- to gain from lucrative military market in the US. Hence, it demands more military Keynesianism in Europe in order to survive and grow. This paper aims to examine the impact of a transnational European capitalist faction on the making of the EU as a global security and defence actor. The faction consists of leading European transnational corporations such as EADS, BAE, THALES, FINMECCANICA, ERICSSON, INDRA, SIEMENS and DIEHL. It established close connection to the leading policy-makers in Brussels such as Commissioners Busquin and Verheugen, MEPs von Wogau and Brok, Council representative Javier Solana and some think-tanks like EU ISS, EPC. This closed circle has regularly met and produced a number of influential policy papers including Strategic Review for the 21st century in 2002, Research for a secure Europe in 2004, and Meeting the Challenge in 2006.The paper, methodologically speaking, focuses on the now institutionalized feedback mechanism between the economic and political actors. It explores how the economic actors self-organised themselves into a more or less coherent group with a general interest, how this group approached the policy-making circles and how it made itself listened. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]