Worldwide, liberal democracies are a minority. Juan Linz wrote as early as in the 1980s that the 21st century would be an authoritarian one. Freedom House's latest "Freedom of the World" report attests to a negative trend in global freedom for sixteen consecutive years now. In percentage terms, more people live in non-free countries today than at any time since 1997. Only about twenty percent of the world's population lives in free countries. The decline of democracy has many causes. At the very latest since the Russian war against Ukraine, it has become clear that we must not only strengthen our liberal democracies from within, but explicitly protect them from external threats. In order to live in freedom, we must be able to defend ourselves. In the EU in particular, we must face the fact that our ideal of living in a liberal democracy is not shared everywhere. Authoritarian states join forces to achieve common interests - just as we Europeans, together with our transatlantic partners, are working together for prosperity, human rights and democracy. By contrast, the interests of autocratic governments will be, in case of doubt, enforced by force of arms.
In order to protect our liberal democracy, we need a security and defence policy that can keep up with the realities of realpolitik. At the national level, we must massively increase our defence capability, at the European level we must deepen the Common Foreign and Security Policy, and at the transatlantic level we must strengthen NATO through close coordination in defence planning and targeted investment in deterrence. This also means that we must enter into alliances with less free states – however always in close coordination with our democratic partners. In doing so, dependencies must be minimized and every cooperation must be continuously evaluated. Beyond the European and transatlantic context, we need closer cooperation with strategically important partners such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. In Europe, perhaps with the exception of France and the United Kingdom, we have never really thought of a security architecture that goes beyond the nation-state or, at best, considers a European or transatlantic perspective. However, in order to prevail in the systemic rivalry with China and to protect our liberal democratic values globally, we must also think more globally about our security policy. This starts with regular military-diplomatic exchanges and explicitly includes industrial cooperation, armaments projects and joint security guarantees. Culturally, Germany and many other European countries have a lot of catching up to do in terms of security perception and defence policy implementation. Lengthy military procurement projects, intelligence exchanges and diplomatic negotiations that are heavily influenced by industrial policy complicate security policy reform. Therefore, in addition to reform processes on the national and European level, an overarching security strategy of liberal democracies is needed.
This is what the interactive workshop “The EU as a Force for Freedom – Europe’s Security and Defence Policy in a New World (Dis)Order” seeks to address. How does a new security architecture for Europe look like? Who are essential security partners and how can existing alliances with liberal partners be fostered?
Theresa Winter is Theme Manager Networked Security & Defence Policy at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.