French President Emmanuel Macron told France’s overseas ambassadors gathered in Paris on Monday that Europe can “no longer rely” upon the US for its security. While it is true – and has been for a while now if we haven’t been wasting time daydreaming – that the EU needs a much higher level of independence when it comes to Security, let me also suggest Mr. President that Security should also be considered the last layer of defence NOT the first goto proposition as an instinctive reaction every time we uncover vulnerabilities. What Europe needs is an integrated framework that deals with a set of policies among them areas like Foreign Policy, Trade, Immigration/Integration as well as of course Security – a template that has a basic set of agreed principles/guidelines and develops into advanced policies that allow opt in/out for individual countries based on their own situation – a template that is practical/viable to all members. The alternative would be to continue engaging in reactionary rather than proactive politics which has to a large extent been the main cause of the many vulnerabilities we face today across Europe. The bottom line in my perspective is that focusing on Security alone without coordination on other policy areas where vulnerabilities exist is a flawed/short sited approach. We really need to become smarter when it comes to policy formulation by understanding among other things the interdependence between the different policy areas rather than dealing with each in isolation; an approach that follows the methodology I call the “Strategic Policy Framework”.
Hope this helps.