The Union’s strategic culture at times of war

I. Introduction

Europe has long been a laboratory of strategy. From the Italian city-states’ balance of power to Machiavelli’s reflections on virtù to Bismarck’s realpolitik, strategy has evolved beyond the art of survival into a means of actively shaping and commanding the world. After 1945, the cataclysms of war and the disintegration of empires forced the bigger players in Europe to rethink their place in the world. In that postwar re-imagination, strategy took different forms: Charles De Gaulle pursued ideas of sovereignty whereas Konrad Adenauer envisaged reconciliation through integration.

The 1951 Coal and Steel Community and the 1957 Economic Community were more than economic projects; they were moral instruments designed to build peace through law and institutions and make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible. Hence the central paradox of the EU’s relationship with strategy today: can a political community designed to escape the logic of power evolve into one capable of exercising it and of acting strategically in a world increasingly defined by conflict?

As Lawrence Freedman observed, we are entering an era of ‘forever wars’, where conflicts grind on towards indecisive outcomes, and where societies live uneasily with permanent insecurity.¹ With the fragile ceasefire in Gaza wavering towards conflict, and as war in Ukraine becomes a war of attrition, the dividing lines between war and peace have become ever more blurred. Hard security concerns aside, war is also waged through proxies, cyberattacks, disinformation, election interference and economic coercion. As German Federal Chancellor Merz warned, ‘Europe is no longer at peace.’²

Even the language of power is shifting. The White House has recently renamed the Department of Defense the ‘Department of War’ by means of executive order – a tribute to the US’s ‘unbelievable history of military victory’.³ After 1945, France’s Ministère de la Guerre and the UK’s War Office pivoted towards connotations of ‘defence’ rather than offence. The linguistic shift now seems like wishful thinking. Tariff wars, sanctions, armament finance, tech and information remind us that power today is exercised using many instruments. Everything from trade to words can be a tool of power.

II. The culture of strategy or the strategy of culture?

Strategy is as much about imagination, foresight and culture as it is about governance and institutions. As Prussian strategist Carl Von Clausewitz noted, ‘In war, everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is difficult.’⁴ Thus, strategy depends on the capacity to link means to ends in uncertain circumstances, and that capacity is shaped by history, memory and temperament. Strategic culture is then the habit of thought and practice through which states interpret threats, define interests and imagine the use of power.⁵

The concept of ‘strategic culture’ was coined during the Cold War in attempts to explain why states, even when facing similar threats, behave differently, and to determine which factors impact decision-making. American analysts at RAND in the 1970s studied Soviet writing and behaviour, searching for the cultural logic behind Moscow’s strategic choices.⁶ Their conclusion was that strategy is not a universal science, and nations are not rational actors that are easy to ‘predict’.

For instance, with Russia’s long history of invasion from Napoleon to Hitler, territorial insecurity and deep-seated narratives of state survival have influenced its thinking on nuclear deterrence. As a result, during the Cold War, the Soviets were more willing to take risks with offensive postures, emboldened by a highly centralized chain of command. This defied US expectations of USSR responses and led the Americans to fail to anticipate their opponents’ responses correctly. Although both were superpowers with similar capabilities, they pursued fundamentally different strategies. Cultural norms shape both threat perception and strategic behaviour. This realization, however, was thought to be static and failed to account for evolution in culture. The state was assumed to be a monolithic entity; national differences were reduced to mere caricatures.

Subsequently, a second generation of scholars recognized ‘strategic culture’ as dynamic and extended the concept beyond the military to include economic, political and social tools of statecraft.⁷ Strategy scholar Colin Grey asserted that ‘all strategy is cultural’⁸, meaning that strategic choices reflect the collective mind of societies, and what a state perceives as worth defending is often due to historical experience. This school of thought veered towards the justification of strategic choices that bubble up from the internal dynamics rather than solely external threats. For instance, Sweden’s shift from post-Cold War neutrality to NATO accession in 2023 illustrates how national cultures adapt to changing levels of threat.

The third generation of strategic culture research thrust strategy into the sociological sphere and expanded the concept beyond chains of command and the use of force.⁹ Competing groups within a society, such as political leaders, bureaucracies, military chiefs and even publics, can all influence the evolution of strategy and push for change. This explains why strategic cultures differ across time and contexts, even within the same state.¹⁰ It involves understanding that strategy also reaches into economics, technology and many other non-military domains.

Although views on historical dynamism and the actors driving the plot diverge, the common thread of these various understandings of strategic culture is that rationale depends on context and is not universal. Hence the relevance of the notion of ‘culture’.

III. Strategic cultures in flux

For the European Union – a club of 27 states each with their own distinct histories, geographies and threat perceptions – the stakes of these debates are particularly high. If national strategic cultures were immutable, the Union’s attempt to foster more unity vis-à-vis external actors would be highly challenging, if not doomed from the outset. And if strategic cultures could be articulated only by monolithic states, the EU, a polity without the trappings of statehood, would ultimately have no role to play.

For much of the post-war era, Europe’s strategic reflexes were effectively frozen. The Cold War ensured that the US answered the continent’s ‘security question’, enabling Europe to outsource defence while it focused on integration and prosperity. This reality no longer holds as Washington has lost interest in the continent, so Europe needs its own independent security culture – or it risks letting other powers decide its fate.

Geography and history may limit options for change, but real-world events accelerate adaptation and force states to revise longstanding assumptions and behaviours. Germany’s Zeitenwende (‘turning point’) was a paradigm shift from its postwar pacifism, and committed Berlin to higher defence spending, charting a new strategic course towards deterrence. Even Finland and Sweden, with their longstanding policies of neutrality, voted to join NATO, reflecting their perception of Russia as an imminent threat. This goes to show that national cultures can adapt under the pressure of real threats, even when traditions of restraint are deeply embedded.

Adaptation, moreover, extends beyond conventional military concerns. The very meaning of ‘strategy’ is evolving. Economic statecraft, technological innovation, energy resilience and cybersecurity are now inseparable from national security. The European landscape of threats, whether hybrid, cyber or informational, demands a broad understanding of strategic behaviour. Denmark’s longstanding pragmatism and opt-outs from the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy reflected its minimalist EU security posture, preferring the NATO framework. Yet as Russian drones penetrate European airspace, even traditionally cautious states have revised their assumptions. Consequently, Denmark has moved towards more assertive engagement with the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and taken a strong position on counter-drone and air-defence coordination across Europe. Its strategic culture is therefore not a static inheritance from the past, but a living process with habits and assumptions that are evolving.

IV. The role of the Union

The European Union is cultivating a pan-European strategic culture. It does so within certain limits. Unlike China, for example, whose strategic culture draws on centuries of centralized statecraft and continuity, the EU remains a patchwork of historical identities and political cultures. Nor does the EU rely on a single hegemonic actor, a role played by the US within NATO, who is in a position to enforce strategic alignment upon allies.

But through its institutions, the Union spurs member states to develop their own strategic cultures. Implicit traces of an EU strategic culture in the making are embedded in the Union’s treaties from Maastricht to Lisbon. The slow, institutionalized habits of cooperation in foreign security and defence policy teach states the practice of working together and sharing interests. The many vehicles and instruments of EU foreign policy, from the post-Lisbon machinery to the Commission’s sprawling defence-industry remit, all suggest its strategic culture is maturing through crisis. Each institutional innovation, from the European Defence Agency to the European External Action Service, makes strategic cooperation a routine practice and builds a framework for it.

An explicit expression of its will to become a strategic actor is to be found in the Union’s successive strategic documents since Javier Solana’s European Security Strategy in 2003, which already called for the EU ‘to develop a strategic culture’.¹¹ Later doctrines, like the EU Global Strategy 2016, updated Europe’s ambition in the face of new crises. But they suffer from genuine weaknesses; they are not real strategies, as they lack geopolitical analysis. For instance, the Eastern Partnership established in the late 2000s sidestepped the Russian question; in Mediterranean states, there has been no concerted effort in thinking about the type of dialogue that should be developed with the region’s main players (Egypt, Algeria, Morrocco). It is an approach that floats in a political and strategic vacuum.¹² Even the 2022 Strategic Compass, for all its ambition, was more of an out-of-date wish list than a hard-nosed strategy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Faced with the two obstacles to a European strategic culture – the presumed immutability of national cultures and the central role of state authority – Brussels has traditionally been betting on overcoming the latter, framing the EU as a new kind of supranational actor. This thinking was in tune with the third generation of strategic culture literature and with ideas on multilevel governance and interdependence more broadly. Today, however, these postmodern assumptions have started to feel outdated, as the nation state has returned as the classic provider of security in the new era of geopolitics. Capitals decide their own fate and position in the world order.

This is why the EU would be well-advised to watch the profound changes in strategic culture taking place right now, and to consider how to harness that change. Across the continent, national strategic cultures are shifting in real time. Poland’s rearmament programme has accelerated faster than that of any other country in Europe, with a defence budget reaching a historic 4.7% of GDP. Other states are also rediscovering that sovereignty and security are inseparable. Europe’s mission is to transform this diversity into a shared purpose. Its value lies in facilitating the convergence of national strategic cultures, providing strength through collaboration.

Here member states can provide the impulse for more convergent thinking. Finland’s national strategic culture, its history of wars and occupation, its harsh climate and geographical isolation have led it to develop a model of readiness. This has been codified in the Niniistö Report – written by Finland’s former president Sauli Niniistö – integrating civilian and military preparedness into a whole-of-society model.¹³ The experience of living on Russia’s doorstep has been turned into a blueprint for broader European preparedness, and it contributes to the mainstream thinking adopted by other EU states.

In fact, Europe’s differences may be a strategic asset. Strategic pluralism – the integration of distinct national traditions into a shared framework – allows Europe to learn from experience. Paris, Berlin and Warsaw each bring historical instincts about power; the Baltic and Eastern states have become security entrepreneurs, encouraging the Union to adopt deterrence as part of its vocabulary. Leadership at the national level drives this process: the Czech-led shell initiative, which mobilized European states to supply millions of artillery rounds to Ukraine, demonstrates how initiative can catalyse collective action.¹⁴ At the heart of sharing this language of strategy lies the European Council, where national leaders reconcile domestic concerns with the collective interests of Europe. It is the forum where strategic direction is broadly defined and translated into a common vision for the member states and other institutions.

V. Conclusion

Europe cannot delegate the work of strategy to the EU institutions alone as its strategic culture is being written in real time. An EU security revolution begins with culture,¹⁵ with rediscovering what Europe stands for and what it is prepared to defend. The strategic imaginations of Madrid, Tallinn or Sofia will never converge perfectly; they must, however, listen to each other to be effective. The role of the EU is to bring their worldviews together, to inject a shared threat perception, to combine unique state experiences and best practices.

The EU has recently evolved through decisions made during crises, taken by leaders or ministers with their backs against the wall, at the risk of ending up with nothing more than a ‘fix’ rather than a vision for future stability. There is a clear need for long-term strategic thinking at Union level, albeit in a different vein from Machiavelli, Bismarck or past imperial postures. A new form of intra-EU diplomacy is required. One that involves all member states informing a Union-wide strategic culture with a broader view of security and of threats. One that transcends the immediate crises.

EU strategic culture is always going to be a work in progress. Just as national strategic culture evolves in step with time and history, so too will a pan-European variant. With the continent under pressure from all sides, now is the time to deepen this strategic conversation.