Diverging interests driving a shared strategic culture in Europe through the European Intervention Initiative

Abstract

The European Intervention Initiative (EI2) is a European defence framework that was proposed by France in September 2017 and formally established in June 2018. The EI2's ultimate goal is to develop a shared strategic culture in Europe. How this objective should be achieved, however, is barely described by the EI2's participant countries. This research used the concepts of strategic culture and national interest to analyse how the EI2 and its ultimate objective came into being. While the participant countries had different national interest for joining the EI2 and different understandings of strategic culture, the ambiguity surrounding the EI2's ultimate goal in fact provided an outcome. It was concrete enough to get behind, but also allowed participant countries to interpret and explain the objective the way it suited their own national interests and understandings of strategic culture. As such, the two concepts did not oppose, but rather facilitate each other in the EI2's development.