What is it about?
The article describes and explains two recent defence cooperation initiatives launched in 2014 by the United Kingdom and Germany. They are known, respectively, as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and the Framework Nations Concept (FNC). The JEF was to be a UK-led contingency force for short-notice operations, selectively incorporating forces from allies and partners. The FNC sought to coordinate capability development between groups of allies, centred on larger framework nations such as Germany, to develop coherent capability-clusters available to meet NATO’s force requirements.
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Why is it important?
All too quickly, it seems, European attempts at improving cooperation in the defence field are relegated to the metaphorical dustbins of history. This article argues that this fate has so far not befallen the JEF and FNC. For the time being, the UK and Germany remain invested in and committed to the development of the JEF and the FNC as new formats of multinational military cooperation. Furthermore, since multinational cooperation is a strategic necessity in today’s Europe, in an era of growing threats, tight resources and ever more vocal US demands for ‘burden sharing’, the JEF and FNC seem poised to become important new additions to the already rich plethora of overlapping European defence cooperation formats.
Perspectives
This article makes a contribution to the European defence cooperation literature by arguing that persistent leadership by major European states is a necessary recipe for successful defence cooperation. Past NATO and EU wide efforts to improve the capabilities of the European armed forces all ultimately suffered from being too broad and diffuse, and from responsibility for implementation being too fragmented. Initiatives such as the British JEF and German FNC were meant to rectify these deficiencies by way of having major European NATO states provide focused and persistent leadership.
Håkon Lunde Saxi
Norwegian Defence University College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: British and German initiatives for defence cooperation: the Joint Expeditionary Force and the Framework Nations Concept, Defence Studies, April 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14702436.2017.1307690.
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