Strategic Culture and Small States: from Norm Breakers to Norm

Strategic Culture and Small States:

From Norm Breakers to Norm Takers to Norm Shapers

Jan Niklas Rolf

Abstract

When Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania followed suit in 2004, commentators warned that the former’s non-aligned status and the latter’s pro-American stance would act as a brake on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Looking at the years since their accession, this chapter shows that Austria, Finland and Sweden covertly redefined their neutrality and that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cautiously realigned their loyalty. But the new member states not only downloaded European strategic preferences; they also uploaded domestically identified threats and strategies to the EU level, influencing the CSDP’s agenda and course of action. This indicates that strategic culture – both on a domestic and European level – is rather fluid and that – at least in the field of security and defence policy – there does not have to be a trade-off between widening and deepening.

Keywords strategic culture, small states, European integration, ESDP/CSDP, NATO, security, defence

1 When Austria, Sweden and Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, commentators feared that the countries’ neutrality would obstruct the newly created Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). “Further enlargement”, Christopher Hill and William Wallace (1996, p. 9) warned, “would only widen the diversity of national assumptions and interests to be reconciled, within a process which has not yet learned how to begin to redefine the interests and assumptions of its present members.” Notwithstanding, in 2004, ten more countries acceded to the EU, among them the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that have traditionally strong ties to the United States (US). Scholars such as Karen Smith (2004, p. 204) worried that “divisions within the EU over relations with the US will deepen after enlargement”, hampering the just established Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).1

The voiced concerns bear witness to the widely held belief that a country’s strategic culture, that is, deeply ingrained views about the country’s role in matters of security and defence, exhibits a high degree of resilience and that, as a result, a wider EU will be a shallower one. The fact that all named countries are small in terms of population, that all but Sweden and Finland are small in terms of territory and that all but Austria are peripheral member states only adds to the scepticism about the adaptability of these countries: Given their relative weakness, Austria, Sweden and Finland reasoned that not taking sides with warring powers was vital to their security, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania determined that aligning with the greatest of these powers is the best strategy to ensure their survival. As the strategic cultures of small states tend to have an existential character, these states can be expected to firmly hold on to them.

This chapter examines whether the concerns that were expressed during the enlargement rounds of 1995 and 2004 have proven true. To this end, the concept of strategic culture is introduced in the first section. The second section, titled “norm breaking”, shows that the strategic cultures of the accession countries were in fact largely incompatible with the CFSP and CSDP. In the third section, titled “norm taking”, it is argued that the new member states downloaded European strategic preferences by covertly redefining their neutrality and cautiously realigning their loyalty. In the fourth section, titled “norm shaping”, it is suggested that the new member states also uploaded domestically identified threats and strategies by influencing the CSDP’s agenda and course of action. This leads to the conclusion that strategic culture – both on a domestic and European level – is rather fluid and that – at least in the field of security and defence policy – there does not have to be a trade-off between widening and deepening.

2 The concept of strategic culture

Strategic culture, a concept first used by Jack Snyder (1977) in his study of Soviet nuclear strategy, has been defined as “an integrated system of symbols […] which acts to establish pervasive and long lasting grand strategic preferences by formulating concepts of the role and efficacy of military force in interstate political affairs” (Johnston 1995, p. 46). Another widely cited definition stems from Kerry Longhurst (2004, p. 17): “A strategic culture is a distinctive body of beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding the use of force held by a collective and arising gradually over time through a unique protracted historical process.” Building on these two and other definitions, Craig Greathouse (2008, p. 9) eventually came to define strategic culture “as identity derived norms, ideas and patterns of behavior which are based on long lasting and pervasive strategic preferences about the role of military force which shape the institutional options available for achieving security and defense goals.”2

Even though there does not exist a jointly accepted definition of strategic culture, scholars tend to agree that strategic culture is relatively resistant to change. This, after all, follows from the two terms strategy and culture that imply a certain endurance: Unlike tactics, a short-term method of operation, strategy refers to a long-term plan of action (Baylis and Wirtz 2007, p. 5). Culture, referring to “persisting (though not eternal) socially transmitted ideas” (Gray 1999, p. 131), seems to be long-lasting, too. That strategic culture is fairly robust, however, does not mean that it is set in stone:

A strategic culture is persistent over time, tending to outlast the era of its original inception, although it is not a permanent or static feature. It is shaped and influenced by formative periods and can alter, either fundamentally or piecemeal, at critical junctures in that collective’s experiences. (Longhurst 2004, p. 17)

Theo Farrell (2001), Jeffrey Lantis (2002), Christoph Meyer (2005) and Colin Gray (2007) agree that strategic cultures can alter in light of critical events. However, as these cultures are deeply rooted in history, it needs a profound external shock for change to occur. Japan’s shattering defeat in World War II and America’s traumatic experience of 9/11 are two frequently cited illustrations of such significant external shocks that led to a reversal of the countries’ strategic cultures (Katzenstein 1996, Hyde-Price 2004).3 Against this, I will argue that change does not require an all-out war or a full-blown attack. As I will demonstrate in section three, the “fundamental” (Longhurst 2004, p. 17) change in the strategic culture of

3 Austria, Sweden and Finland, as well as the “piecemeal” (ibid) change in the strategic culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was largely conditioned by the rather small-scale conflicts in the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo) and Black Sea region (Georgia and Ukraine), respectively, that none of the countries was a direct party of. At first, though, I will have to outline the strategic cultures of these countries.

Norm breaking

The strategic culture of Austria, Sweden and Finland

The bedrock of Austrian, Swedish and Finnish strategic culture has been the countries’ neutrality that prevented them from joining the EU during the Cold War. Since the formative moments of their common strategic culture differ quite fundamentally, I will treat the three cases separately.

Whereas the early stages of the Cold War saw the division of Germany into a capitalist West and a communist East, Austria was left intact on the condition that it would adopt a posture of “permanent neutrality”. In 1955, non-alignment was approved by the Austrian parliament and enshrined in the constitution. Austria’s neutral status allowed the country to become an international meeting ground and its capital, Vienna, to become home to the headquarters of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as the third major office site of the United Nations (UN). Austria’s foreign minister and later federal president Kurt Waldheim even came to serve as UN Secretary-General. In light of this, it does not surprise that neutrality became a key pillar of Austria’s national identity (Bruckmüller 1998, p. 84). In 1990, 82 percent of Austrians preferred forgoing EU membership rather than neutrality if the two proved incompatible, and in 1995, the year of Austria’s accession, 78 percent were still proud of non- alignment (ibid, pp. 84-85).

Sweden’s non-alignment dates back even further. In 1814, Swedish king Karl XIV Johan adopted neutrality in order to safeguard Sweden’s territorial integrity after the country had already lost its empire. Its neutrality also came to save the country from involvement in World War I and II, making Sweden the only EU member state to have enjoyed undisturbed peace since the Napoleonic Wars. During the Cold War, Sweden was yet another neutral country to

4 install a national, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dag Hammarskjöld, as UN Secretary-General. While Austria used its neutral status to attract a number of international organisations into the country, Sweden utilised its non-aligned position to pursue an active foreign policy based on cosmopolitan values. Taking a clear moral stand on global issues such as human rights, development assistance and arms control allowed the small state to become a “moral great- power” (Nilsson 1991). Accordingly, neutrality had the vast support of the Swedish people. In the early 1990s, 71 percent reported to be in favour of Sweden’s non-alignment (Devine 2011, p. 349).

If Austria is committed to neutrality by constitution, and Sweden by conviction, Finland is devoted to it by caution. Its non-alignment was borne out of the bitter experience of two military defeats by the Soviet Union and the subsequent desire to prevent Finland from yet another Soviet invasion. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance of 1948 guaranteed Finland’s independence in return for the country’s neutrality. Finland’s impartial position between East and West enabled the country to host a couple of internationally acclaimed conferences such as the 1975 Helsinki Accords with a clear focus on human rights. In comparison with Swedish neutrality, though, Finnish neutrality has been more instrumental than ideological (Tiilikainen 2006, pp. 52-54), as a result of which Finnish people tend to be less attached to it than their Scandinavian neighbours. In 2004, 61 percent were in favour of Finland’s non-alignment (Herolf 2006, p. 70).

The strategic culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

While Austria’s, Sweden’s and Finland’s path to neutrality has been very different, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not only share the same strategic culture, but also the same formative experience.4 This is why the following discussion will not differentiate between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but commonly refer to them as the Baltic countries.

Like their northern neighbour Finland, the three Baltic countries are driven by a deep scepticism over the military intentions of Russia. This anxiety is conditioned by their very own past. In 1944, the Baltics were annexed by the Soviet Union and they did not regain independence until 1990. Unlike Finland, though, the Baltic countries had come to the conclusion that the best way to safeguard their territorial integrity was not to adopt a neutral position but to seek an external security guarantee. Traditionally, their preferred security guarantor has been the US. Latvia

5 states in its National Security Concept (2002 cited Tromer 2006, p. 378) that “co-operation with the United States of America is one of the priorities of the foreign policy of Latvia which should be further the resolution of security problems of Latvia”. Likewise, Lithuania identifies the US (and Poland) as its strategic partners (National Security Strategy of the Republic of Lithuania 2002 cited Miniotaite 2008, p. 157) and for Estonia the US is the “cornerstone of European security”, with US-led NATO being the “only effective international defence and security organisation” (National Security Concept of the Republic of Estonia 2004 cited Tromer 2006, p. 377). Entrusting their security to the US, the Baltics have made every effort to prove their loyalty to America. This became particularly obvious in 2003 – shortly before the dual enlargements of NATO and the EU in 2004 – when they aligned themselves with the US over the question of a possible invasion of Iraq. This was interpreted as a clear sign against the EU, whose driving forces, France and Germany, had positioned themselves against a war with Iraq.

The strategic cultures in comparative perspective

In his study of security cultures, Jolyon Howorth (2002, p. 89) uses seven dichotomies to highlight the differences between European strategic cultures: neutral vs. allied, civilian vs. military, Atlanticist vs. Europeanist, power projection vs. territorial defence, nuclear vs. non- nuclear, large vs. small states, and weapon providers vs. consumers. However, as Meyer (2005, p. 531) points out, not all of these dichotomies, “especially the last two, can be linked clearly to norms, ideas or beliefs as cultural components.” With power projection vs. territorial defence becoming important at a later stage in this chapter, and nuclear vs. non-nuclear playing no role at all (since no state under consideration has a nuclear capability), we are left with the first three dichotomies. Since Austria, Sweden and Finland used their neutral status to position themselves as civilian powers, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania their allied status to side with military power, the first two dichotomies can be blended into one, leaving us with “civilian power” vs. “military power” and “Atlantic solidarity” vs. “European integration” (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan 2008, p. 9). Projecting these two dichotomies onto the graph in Figure 1, one can situate the six countries and the CSDP as follows:

6 Figure 1: Norm graph for situating the countries under consideration (own illustration)

Atlantic solidarity

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Civilian power Military power (Neutral) (Allied) Austria, Sweden, CSDP Finland

European integration

While Austria, Sweden and Finland are in favour of European integration, but rather in civilian than military terms, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania seek to further defence structures, but rather in an Atlantic than European context. This puts them on opposite ends of both the civilian power vs. military power and the Atlantic solidarity vs. European integration spectrum. A Common Security and Defence Policy, on the other hand, requires a military element, as the S and D in CSDP indicate, and a European dimension, as the C and P in CSDP signify. Accordingly, a CSDP can only become a reality if Austria, Sweden and Finland are prepared to use coercive means, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are willing to pursue security under the European umbrella.

As the security policies of these small states are firmly embedded in their strategic cultures that tend to have an existential character, for the above-mentioned writers on strategic culture there is little reason to believe that such re-orientation will occur. Unless the countries experience a profound external shock, their cultures and, hence, policies are likely to persist. Against this, I will argue in the next section that a country does not have to directly experience war or to become subject to an attack for its strategic culture to change. As my analysis of the small states’ reactions to the conflicts in the Balkans and Black Sea region hopes to demonstrate, it suffices if conflict occurs in the distant neighbourhood.

7 Norm taking

The adaptation of Austria, Sweden and Finland

The negotiations over the accession of Austria, Sweden and Finland in the early 1990s fell in a time when the EU was moving towards the CFSP. Early on, the European Commission (1992 cited Devine 2011, p. 348) identified “the compatibility of [Austria’s] permanent neutrality with the […] obligations entailed by the future common foreign and security policy” as a “problem” and suggested a “re-definition” of neutrality as a possible “solution”. Like the Irish government before it, the Austrian government (1994 cited Devine 2011, p. 343) replied that “there was no contradiction between the obligations of an EU member-state and the core elements of neutrality”, with the latter only preventing the country from joining military alliances. Later, when the CSDP was established as the military arm of the CFSP, the Austrian parliament responded with a constitutional amendment that allowed for the country’s participation in peacekeeping missions. Ever since, Austria has made extensive use of it, serving in ten of the thirteen CSDP military operations to date. Remarkably, it has seconded the last seven Force Commanders to Operation Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Additionally, the country has been a keen supporter of the EU Battlegroups, participating in three of them.

The Swedish government (1991 cited Devine 2011, p. 343), too, sought to reduce non- alignment to its “hard core” of “non-participation in military alliances”. After dropping references to neutrality in its security doctrine and lowering constitutional thresholds on the use of force, the door was open to Swedish participation in the CSDP. Since then, the country has been a major contributor, taking part in ten military operations. Notably, Sweden provided the Force Commander for Operation Atalanta in Somalia and succeeded in installing another national, Ulf Hammarström, as a Director of the European Defence Agency. But Sweden has not only made disproportionately large personnel contributions to EU military operations and agencies; it has also participated in two EU Battlegroups, in one of them even as a leader.

After the termination of the Finno-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in 1992, Finland was eager to water down its neutrality. Similar to the Austrian and Swedish governments, the Finnish government (1992 cited Devine 2011, p. 348) declared that “the core of Finnish neutrality can be characterised as military non-alignment”. On an operational level, Finland has made substantial contributions to the CSDP, volunteering for

8 seven military operations. Besides, the country has been a driving force in setting up EU Battlegroups, participating in one with Austria and another one with Sweden. Lately, Austria, Sweden and Finland have also opted in to enhanced cooperation on the industrial level of the CSDP by taking part in the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO).

Even though a majority of Austrians, Swedes and Finns were in favour of continued neutrality, their governments managed to lead the countries into the EU by redefining the meaning of non- alignment. In a textbook case of down- and cross-loading, “militarily non-aligned” became the new buzzword, preventing the three countries from joining military alliances such as NATO. Given that the CSDP is only one pillar of the EU, and considering that it does not define a robust collective defence ambition (yet), military non-alignment was widely perceived to be compatible with it. In any event, the three countries do not seem to be big enough for the EU to have serious concerns about incompatibility. After this “implementation by stealth” (see chapter 2), Austria, Sweden and Finland came to support the CSDP more openly. As Karen Devine (2011, p. 141) pointed out in 2011, the three countries “have been unusually active in the EU’s military endeavours.” Had they only done what was expected of them, we would have to conclude that they more or less reluctantly aligned their policies with the CSDP in order to become part the EU. However, the three countries wholeheartedly engaged in the CSDP’s military operations, which can only be explained with a change in their strategic cultures. In order to understand when and why this change occurred, one has to identify critical junctures, that is, points in time when an old path is abandoned and a new path is entered upon.

The Bosnia conflict in the early 1990s and the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s are often cited as critical events for the establishment of the CFSP and CSDP, respectively. What is less established, though, is that the two events also left their mark on the neutral countries’ strategic culture. Only a few EU member states were as affected by the Balkan wars as Austria and Sweden, where many displaced people came to seek refuge. It was, however, not so much a concern for stability in their direct (Austria) and indirect (Sweden and Finland) neighbourhood that challenged the neutral countries’ strategic culture, but frustration over their weakness and reliance on the US in face of a humanitarian catastrophe in their own backyard. As Meyer (2005, p. 35) points out, “[t]he Bosnia experience of European impotence to prevent the massacre of Srebrenica was widely interpreted in political speeches, academic writing and media coverage as a moment of collective shame and a ‘wake-up’ call for Europe to become serious on defence”. The fact that NATO’s military intervention in 1995 drove Milosevic to the

9 negotiation table seemed to prove the point that sometimes diplomacy needs to be backed up by military force.

Holding its first European Council presidency in late 1998, Austria was at the centre of EU diplomatic efforts to prevent another explosion of ethnic violence, this time in Kosovo. Its alleged failure pointed, once again, to the futility of trying to pursue diplomacy without some military capability. Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh (1999 cited Heiselberg 2003, p. 18) captured the point well when she claimed: “Let us now add to the insights, Never again Auschwitz! […] and Never again Srebrenica! one more: Never again Kosovo! But what is the most important is for these painful experience [sic] for Europe to be turned into political action”. In Austria and Finland, reports about mass rapes, concentration camps and ethnic cleansing raised memories of the countries’ inglorious role in World War II and awareness of their special responsibility in the present. Eventually, all three neutral countries came to endorse the EU’s statement that NATO’s military intervention in 1999 was “necessary and warranted”. Their dependence on the political will and military capability of the US (American planes flew 90 percent of the attacks) and their discontent with the way the US conducted its air campaign (targeting not only military but also civilian infrastructure) only accentuated the neutral countries’ perception that an own capacity in military and civilian crisis management was needed. With NATO membership not a permissible option – even though Russia’s recent activities in the Baltic and Black Sea region have led Sweden and Finland to reconsider that option and, with it, their military non-alignment – they turned towards the CSDP.

The adaptation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

For Karlis Neretnieks (2006, p. 363), “[t]he only reason for the Baltic states to put their trust in the CSDP would be if they came to the conclusion that they could no longer trust the USA as a guarantor of their security.” And in fact, after the terror attacks of 9/11, the transatlantic link started to crumble when the US began to transform NATO from “being very clearly a defence organization to something more involved in global security” (Edwards 2006, p. 160). Although the Baltics had little interest in the “global war on terrorism”, to uphold America’s security guarantee, they had little choice but to accompany their NATO allies “out-of-area”.5 All three Baltic countries made disproportionately large force contributions to NATO’s ISAF mission in Afghanistan. Estonian armed forces even served in Helmand province, one of the deadliest areas in the country, which made the country suffer the second-highest number of deadly casualties per capita of all NATO members. 10

In light of this, the Baltic countries saw it as a betrayal of their solidarity when Donald Trump (2016), being asked as a presidential candidate whether he would live up to America’s treaty obligations should the Baltics come under attack, turned the question around by asking “[h]ave they fulfilled their obligations to us?”, implying that the protection of the Baltics was conditional upon their financial contributions. This represents a tectonic shift in US post-Cold War foreign policy. Even though the issues of burden sharing and free riding had already been raised by Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush and Barack Obama had moved America’s strategic priorities away from Eastern Europe to the Middle and Far East, respectively, all presidents stood firmly by their Baltic allies. During his 2002 visit to Lithuania, Bush (2002 cited Paulauskas 2006, p. 31) declared that “anyone who would choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an enemy of the United States of America”, and during his 2014 visit to Estonia, Obama (2014) reassured the Baltic countries that “the defence of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defence of Berlin and Paris and London”. When Trump (2017 cited BBC 2017) took office, however, he disturbed the Baltics by declaring that NATO was “obsolete”. Lately, he has even made headlines by suggesting that he wants the US to leave the transatlantic alliance (Trump 2019 cited New York Times 2019). All of this – together with the Trump administration’s assumed connections to Russia – made the Baltic countries questioning the resolve of the US to come to their defence in case of a Russian attack – a scenario that after Russia’s military activities in Georgia and Ukraine under the pretext of protecting Russian minorities has become more likely.6

For Elzbieta Tromer (2006, p. 385), “Russia is the litmus test for the relevance of ESDP to the national security of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. If the ESDP is to be useful for the Baltic states’ national security, it must be able to address their major security concern.” How then did the CSDP perform in the case of Russia’s interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, and vis-à-vis NATO?

When Russian armed forces intervened in Georgia in August 2008, the presidents of the parliaments of the three Baltic countries expressed their “deep concern and anxiety” over Russian aggression and called on NATO and the EU to take immediate action (The Parliament of Estonia 2008). While NATO increased its naval presence in the Black Sea, according to a NATO spokesman, this was not linked to the conflict in Georgia. Since Georgia is not an alliance member, there was, in fact, little that NATO could do, as the presidents of Estonia,

11 Latvia, Lithuania and Poland criticised in a joint declaration that held NATO indirectly responsible for the Russian intervention: “We regret that not granting […] NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia was seen as a green light for aggression in the region” (President of the Republic of Lithuania 2008).

The EU, on the other hand, quickly initiated peace negotiations with the two parties. “NEVER has the European Union enjoyed such diplomatic prominence”, The Economist (2008) wrote, as when the president of the European Council, Nicolas Sarkozy, led an EU delegation to Moscow to mediate a ceasefire only five days after the outbreak of the war. On the request of the Baltic countries, the EU also deployed an EU Monitoring Mission (EUMM) to oversee the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia under the auspices of the CSDP. Whereas the Eurobarometer of early 2007 reports that 75 percent of Lithuanians, 78 percent of Estonians and 81 percent of Latvians were in favour of the CSDP, in late 2008 approval increased to 81 percent in Lithuania, 84 percent in Estonia and 83 percent in Latvia (European Commission 2007, p. 121, 2010, p. 226).

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Lithuania’s president (2014 cited The Moscow Times 2014) urged NATO to deploy troops in the Baltic region to avoid repeating a “Crimea-style scenario”. Even though the deterrence measures agreed upon at the Wales Summit in September 2014 were largely welcomed by the Baltic countries, they did not include a permanent military presence on the Eastern Flank. After much pressure from the Baltics, the Allies ultimately agreed at the Warsaw Summit in July 2016 to position one combat-ready battalion in each of the three Baltic countries. However, in order not to violate the NATO- Russia Founding Act of 1997, which forbids the continuous stationing of troops, these forces are deployed on a rotating basis. NATO thus eventually did what it was able to do within the scope of its possibilities, but in a hybrid war as it is fought by Russia, this scope turned out to be extremely narrow. With NATO’s instruments being “neither the most efficient, nor the most easily used” (Molis 2008, p. 26), the Ukrainian government turned to the EU to request a CSDP mission. While the subsequent EU Advisory Mission (EUAM), headed by the Lithuanian Kęstutis Lančinskas, was mandated with providing strategic advice to the civilian security sector only, dispatching an operation to a European country in which armed conflict is ongoing was a precedent for the EU. In late 2014, support for the CSDP further increased to 87 percent in Lithuania and to 85 percent in Estonia and Latvia, and in early 2015, Lithuania and Latvia

12 even became the two most CSDP-prone countries in the EU with approval rates of 86 and 89 percent (European Commission 2014, p. 190, 2015, p. 163).

Although NATO continues to be the preferred provider of hard security for the Baltics, the EU has carved out a niche for itself in the field of soft security, which tends to become ever more important in an age of hybrid warfare where Russia, eschewing direct confrontation with NATO, is resorting to a combination of “political, military, economic, social, and information means” (Glenn 2009). Ironically, NATO’s very strength (its deterrence capability) plays directly into the hands of the EU that, with a large number of instruments at its disposal – ranging from diplomatic channels (Geneva format, Normandy format) to peacebuilding missions (EUMM Georgia, EUAM Ukraine) to economic sanctions (imposed on Russia in response to its activities in Ukraine) to legislative actions (taken to combat the discrimination of Russian minorities in the Baltics) to cybersecurity capacities (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) – seems to be better equipped to counter the Russian hybrid threat.7 The growing alienation between the Baltics and the US/NATO in the recent past is therefore likely to be followed by an even greater acceptance of the EU/CSDP in the future.

Norm shaping

The input of Austria, Sweden and Finland

Austria, Sweden and Finland not only adapted themselves to the requirements of the CSDP, but also managed to securitise their nationally identified threats internationally. The two Scandinavian countries played a particularly pro-active role, using their presidencies in the European Council in late 1999 and early 2001 to shape the CSDP in their own interest (while Austria supported most of the Swedish-Finnish initiatives, its presidency in late 1998 came too early to leave more than a footprint on the CSDP). After the EU had embraced the British- French St. Malo declaration of December 1998 at the Cologne Summit in June 1999, it was up to the Helsinki Summit in December 1999 to spell out the content of the CSDP. On the joint initiative of Sweden and Finland, the European Council adopted the Helsinki Headline Goal which foresaw the creation of a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) that would militarily support the Petersberg Tasks.8 After the Swedish-Finnish success in getting these tasks – namely “humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making” – against the initial opposition of Britain (Romsloe

13 2004) inserted in the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997, art. J.7), Sweden convinced the other member states at the Gothenburg Summit in June 2001 to add conflict prevention to that list (Treaty of Lisbon 2007, art. 28 B). Having imported norms regarding the legitimate use of military force, Sweden and Finland also put their historically strong preference for civilian crisis management on the agenda. As such, the two Scandinavian countries not only determined the programmatic (Petersberg Tasks) and operational (RRF) direction that the CSDP would take, but also contributed to the integration of military and civilian instruments that has become the “hallmark” (Jakobsen 2008, p. 92) of the EU’s approach to crisis management.

The input of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

While the two Scandinavian countries defined the agenda of the CSDP, the three Baltic countries, together with Poland, determined its actual course of action by seizing and securitising the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The ENP was a product of the enlargement in 2004 that turned a number of unstable post-Soviet states into direct and indirect EU neighbours. Sharing a deep suspicion of Russia with most of these states, the Baltic countries made the ENP a foreign policy priority. This “served a double purpose: first, addressing geopolitical concerns over Russia’s dominance in the post-Soviet region and, second, finding a niche in EU foreign policy where the Baltic states could make use of their own transition experience” (Haukkala et al. 2017, p. 31). While it is up to debate whether the ENP served the purpose of containing Russia’s influence in the region, it certainly helped to increase the Baltics’ influence in the CSDP. After Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003, the Baltic countries successfully lobbied the EU to extend the ENP to the Caucasian state. According to Gwendolyn Sasse (2010, p. 103), this raised unwarranted expectations about EU and even NATO membership that “contributed to Saakashvili’s misconception about the extent of Western support for his regime”, encouraging him to pursue an aggressive policy towards Russia. After the ensuing Georgian-Russian war of 2008 that propelled the CSDP into a “much more prominent position” (ibid), the Baltic countries continued their expansionist neighbourhood policy under ENP’s newly founded eastern dimension, the Eastern Partnership (EaP). It is not by chance that the by now famous Association Agreement (AA) between the EU and Ukraine was supposed to be signed at the EaP summit in Vilnius. Seeing another opportunity to not only consume but also produce security, Lithuania was pushing for the signature of the AA during its first EU Council presidency. Viktor Yanukovych’s suspension of that agreement, triggering the massive protests and eventually the armed conflict in Ukraine,

14 made the ENP, once again, “at best a bystander, and at worst a naively managed catalyst” (Hadfield 2017, p. 184) for war that, once more, forced the CSDP into action.

Towards a EUropean strategic culture?

So far, it has been shown that the small states under consideration not only downloaded European strategic preferences, but also uploaded their national strategic preferences to the EU level: In the case of the Scandinavian countries and, to a lesser extent, Austria, this has been a preference for global security, spelling out the S in CSDP; in the case of the Baltic countries and, to a lesser extent, Finland, this has been a preference for territorial defence, filling with life the D in CSDP. This puts them on opposite ends of both the international vs. national and the security vs. defence spectrum, as illustrated by the graph in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Norm graph for situating the countries under consideration (own illustration)

Security

Austria, Sweden, Finland International Solid arity National (Global) Cla use (Territorial) Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Defence

The question that is left to answer is whether these very different preferences can be brought together into a distinct and cohesive whole to form a EUropean strategic culture. The “comprehensive” (Council of the European Union 2009, p. 10) approach of the European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003 seems to be of little help, as it merely lists a number of national preferences, although with a clear Scandinavian handwriting. Calling for both greater “responsibility for global security” (ibid, p. 28) and – in the 2009 report on its implementation

15 – “greater engagement with our neighbourhood” (ibid, p. 23), the EES tries to meet Scandinavian and Baltic priorities, with the effect that it is not able to define a priority for itself. The EU’s Global Strategy of 2016, depicting “five broad priorities” – among them, to “act globally to … promote human rights” and to “enhance the resilience of our eastern neighbours” – , represents little progress in that regard (European External Action Service 2016, p. 8, 18, 33).

If the EU wants “to develop a strategic culture” (Council of the European Union 2009, p. 39), as the ESS asks it to do, its member states need to compromise, as they did before when Austria, Sweden and Finland covertly redefined their neutrality and when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cautiously realigned their loyalty. The solidarity clause, introduced in the wake of the 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks and enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2012, art. 222), is what such a compromise could look like:

The Union and its Member States shall act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is the object of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. The Union shall mobilise all the instruments at its disposal, including the military resources made available by the Member States.

With the domain being neither international nor domestic but “intermestic” (Sundelius 2001), and the goal being neither human security nor state defence but “societal” safety (ibid), the solidarity clause dissolves the boundaries between international and national as well as between security and defence (Ekengren 2006, p. 286). For it to become adopted, Austria, Sweden and Finland had to narrow their globalist, security-driven agenda to (re)focus more on territorial defence, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had to broaden their statist, defence-minded agenda to encompass non-state (and non-human) security threats. Unlike the mutual defence clause, whose incorporation in the Treaty on European Union (2012, art 42.7) was initially resisted by the neutral countries (for the fact that it undermined their military non-alignment) and the Baltic countries (for the fact that it undermined NATO as a collective defence organisation), the solidarity clause seems to represent a fair compromise on the basis of which a truly common EUropean strategic culture could be build (Konstadinides 2011, p. 21).

16 Conclusion

Since their accession, the countries under investigation have made the journey from 1) norm breakers to 2) norm takers to 3) norm shapers. This tells us something valuable about 1) strategic culture, 2) European integration and 3) small states.

When Austria, Sweden and Finland joined the EU in 1995, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania followed suit in 2004, concerns were expressed that the new member states’ non-aligned status and pro-American stance would hamper the EU’s ambitions to move towards a CFSP and CSDP, respectively. Looking at the years since their accession, these fears have not materialised. While the neutral countries have been supportive of the EU taking on a military vocation, both in words and in deeds, the traditionally strong Atlanticism of the Baltic countries has been softened by negative experiences with the US/NATO and positive experiences with the EU/CSDP. These findings contradict the common view that strategic culture is fairly constant, with change only occurring in light of profound external shocks, such as an all-out war or a full-blown attack. As I have argued, the “fundamental” (Longhurst 2004, p. 17) change in the strategic culture of Austria, Sweden and Finland, as well as the “piecemeal” (ibid) change in the strategic culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was largely conditioned by secessionist conflicts on the territories of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), respectively, that none of the countries was a direct party of.

But the new member states not only downloaded European strategic preferences; they also uploaded their domestically identified threats and strategies to the EU level, with the Scandinavian emphasis on global security and the Baltic focus on territorial defence the greatest values added. Indeed, many of the CSDP’s humanitarian and peacekeeping missions are unimaginable without the programmatic and operational input of the Scandinavian countries. Likewise, the CSDP missions in Georgia and Ukraine, if not the conflicts themselves, are hardly conceivable without the pressure of the Baltic countries. Together, they were able to provide the ingredients of an emerging EUropean strategic culture and prove that widening and deepening must not contradict each other. On the contrary, by actively contributing to the development of the CSDP, the new member states managed to deepen the EU’s integration efforts. In recent times, in which the Visegrád group, another set of mostly small EU member states, tends to be overly protective of its cultural identity, effectively preventing the

17 development of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS), this finding seems to be of particular importance.

Irrespective of whether they act as norm shapers (Scandinavian and Baltic countries) or norm breakers (Visegrád countries), in both cases small states are more than just norm takers. Through enabling and disabling deeper integration, they gain a weight that has traditionally only been ascribed to the heavyweights of France and Germany. And yet small states are treated as objects rather than subjects by most scholarly accounts (see chapter 1). The current standstill in the European integration process has consequently been attributed to the disagreement between Paris and Berlin, with Macron’s reform proposals meeting the firm resistance of Merkel. While this might be a correct analysis as far as social and economic policy is concerned, it does not apply to security and defence policy – and, apparently, migration and asylum policy – where Europe’s destiny, for better or worse, is no longer the domaine réservé of its greatest powers.

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1 The CSDP was initially known as European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). For the sake of convenience, I will use the term CSDP throughout this chapter. 2 While being a sub-set of culture, some would argue that strategic culture is in need of another adjective, such as nuclear or military, to further limit the subject and give it a specific meaning (Howlett and Glenn 2005, p. 123). Here I am following the established practice of equating strategic culture with beliefs about a country’s role in matters of security and defence. 3 Strategic cultures may also change slowly over time due to “social learning” (Farrell 2001, p. 80) and “institutional socialization” (Meyer 2005, p. 536). As this study considers a very short time span, I will not engage with incremental change. 4 This is not to say that they also have a common culture: Confessionally, Estonia and Latvia are predominantly Protestant, while Lithuania is predominantly Catholic. Linguistically, Estonian is part of the Finno-Ugrian family, while Latvian and Lithuanian belong to the Indo-European family. Accordingly, Estonia and Lithuania are not only geographically but also culturally the two Baltic countries furthest apart. 5 At the same time, NATO’s SFOR mission in Bosnia, which was much closer to the security concerns of the Baltics, was transferred to the CSDP. 6 Around a quarter of the Latvian and Estonian population are ethnic Russians. While the number of ethnic Russians in Lithuania is comparatively small, the country’s location between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kalinigrad has been a matter of grave concern. 7 This became particularly evident in 2007 when Russia launched a month-long cyberattack on Estonia in retaliation for the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn. With NATO having little to no expertise in cyber defence at the time – it was only in 2008 that it established a Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, largely in response to the cyber campaign of 2007 – it was up to the EU’s Agency for Cybersecurity to come to Estonia’s aid. 8 In 2004, the RRF was replaced by the more quickly deployable EU Battlegroups.