Playing defence by Sophia Besch
Prime Minister Theresa May considers Britain’s contributions to European defence to be one of her best moves in the Brexit negotiation chess game. But how could it help her win a favourable Brexit deal from the EU? Crude blackmail would not work, and thankfully seems unlikely in any case. It is true that some Brexiters are asking why British troops should risk their lives for EU member-states that want to impose a ‘punitive’ Brexit deal on the UK. But May knows that any open threat – for example to withdraw troops from NATO deployments in Central and Eastern Europe if Poland or the Baltic states dig in their heels over freedom of movement for their citizens – would not just be unhelpful, but would also lack credibility. Britain, unlike Donald Trump, knows that the value of collective defence and security is greater than the sum of its parts. During the EU referendum campaign, ‘Brexiters’ and ‘Remainers’ alike stressed the value of NATO as the bedrock of British security. And the UK government will continue to invest time and resources in Europe’s defence, not only to protect its own national interests, but also to generate goodwill abroad as the Brexit negotiations unfold. Britain wants to show other allies (not least the US) its enduring or – as Brexiters argue – renewed ambition to be a global player. Thus, in her ’Brexit speech’ at Lancaster House in January, May said she was optimistic that Britain and the EU would come to “the right agreement”,
because the EU needed the UK as a partner in matters of security and defence. May knows that her negotiating position depends on the support of allies in the EU, so she has invested a lot of political capital in bilateral security and defence relationships lately. Following a Polish-British summit in December 2016, she announced that from April 2017 Britain would station 150 troops in Poland, near the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. During the summit, Poland’s prime minister, Beata Szydlo, sounded very positive about London’s efforts to conclude a free trade agreement with the EU. But some EU capitals frown upon the British pursuit of bilateral agreements and partnerships. Berlin, Paris and others worry that the focus on exclusive deals between governments will undermine EU cohesion at a critical time. May also wants to use the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States to gain political capital: she is offering to act as a bridge between the US and the EU. On a visit to Washington she managed to wrest a – reluctant – commitment to NATO from Donald Trump, while in Brussels she conveyed Trump’s message that Europeans need to invest more in defence spending through NATO.