Ukraine is the central state now on European security

“Ukraine, to me, is, the central state now on European security, the most important state in Europe's international relations or European order.”

 

Interview with Richard Whitman

 

Professor Richard G. Whitman is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the Conflict Analysis Research Centre, University of Kent. At present he is a Senior Fellow on the Economic and Research Council’s UK in a Changing Europe initiative. He holds the role as a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

His current research interests include the foreign and security and defence policies of the UK and the EU. He is the author and editor of eleven books and published over sixty academic articles and book chapters on European integration and UK foreign and security policy. His book The UK and the War on Ukraine: Status seeking after Brexit is due for publication in mid 2025.

Professor Whitman is a regular international media commentator. Recent coverage has included BBC radio and television, Sky, ITV, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC and he has been quoted by print publications including The Economist, The Financial Times, Newsweek, Reuters, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. He has regularly been called to give evidence to the UK Parliament on UK and EU foreign and security issues.

He was an Associate Fellow and former Head of the Europe Programme at Chatham House. He held the British Academy and Leverhulme Michael Dockrill Senior Research Fellowship in British Foreign Policy in 2022. Elected as a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2007 he is a former Chair of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and was lead editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) between 2017 and 2022.

 

O. Kandyuk: In your 1998 article “From civilian power to superpower? The international identity of the EU”, you explored the EU’s evolving external identity. Would you say that 2022–2025 marks a qualitative shift in the EU’s self-conception from a ‘normative’ to a more ‘geostrategic’ actor? Or is this still an aspiration rather than a transformation?

R. Whitman: I think the language of “geopolitical Europe” was already well established even before Russia’s war against Ukraine. This shift builds on a long-term process, beginning with the Lisbon Treaty, the creation of the High Representative role, and the establishment of the European External Action Service. It continued with the development of what became the Strategic Compass, rooted in the 2016 Global Strategy, which was launched just as the UK voted to leave the EU.

The way the EU talks about itself has changed significantly. This is particularly clear toward the end of Josep Borrell’s term as High Representative. In his discourse, the EU increasingly presented itself in more assertive terms.

However, this shift is largely rhetorical. Structural constraints on the EU’s capacity to act as a more capable international actor remain deeply embedded. There is still a strong sense within the system that the EU is “the good guy,” aiming to make the world a better place. The spirit of normative power remains, though now with a sharper edge.

That’s probably the most accurate description of the shift: a normative power with more ambition and assertiveness. Still, the EU’s actions — particularly in terms of speaking with a single voice — remain cautious. I’m also quite skeptical about the defense industrial push, but that’s a separate discussion.

 

O. Kandyuk: Just following your answer: you have often referred to the EU’s “capability–expectations gap.” Has that gap widened or narrowed in the post-Brexit, post-pandemic, post-Ukraine-invasion environment?

 

R. Whitman: Surprisingly, in many areas, the EU has become more capable. Across the broad spectrum of international influence — particularly in the political economy — the EU has made significant strides. Its regulatory power, often described as the “Brussels Effect,” has allowed it to exert influence globally. This extends into areas like social media and the digital economy, where the EU is using regulation as a tool of strategic power.

However, if we measure capability in more traditional foreign policy terms, the EU is not much further ahead than it was when it began taking collective foreign policy seriously under the CFSP. Member states have not significantly transferred national capacity to the European level. While there is now more at the EU level — a diplomatic service, a better-resourced High Representative — this hasn’t come with a fundamental shift in the balance between national and EU-level foreign policy instruments.

Member states still maintain national foreign policies, and the ability to defect from common EU positions remains intact. This is particularly true in foreign policy areas relating to the neighborhood or to major international players like Russia, China, and the US.

That hasn’t changed. Outsiders increasingly recognize the EU as a collective actor, but their views can be quite schizophrenic. Donald Trump is a good example: he could simultaneously express hostility toward the EU as an institution and cultivate ties with individual member states. That reflects the enduring duality in EU foreign policy.

Ultimately, the real test is whether Europeans have organized themselves in a way that allows them to be recognized — consistently and credibly — as a foreign policy actor. That doesn’t diminish what has been achieved, but it does show the EU hasn’t reached the level of coherence that the most ambitious visions for its foreign policy once hoped for.

 

O. Kandyuk: More broadly, what institutional or political conditions do you consider critical for enabling the EU to shift from a reactive to a proactive global actor?

R. Whitman: Well, I think what’s really interesting about the EU’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine is that, in many ways, Europeans have actually moved beyond their traditionally reactive posture. The war has forced them to think about how to build a long-term policy to sustain Ukraine — and that’s a political and collective security challenge unlike anything the EU has faced in the modern era. It has required doing things differently.

For me — and I know there’s a lot of talk about resources — the most important shift has been the development of a real capacity to think in concrete, strategic terms about how to support a country in such a situation in the long term.

We’re on the 19th round of sanctions against Russia now. The fact that creative ways are being found to use the EU budget to support Ukraine — that tells you something. These are signs of both institutional capacity and political will that weren’t always present in the past. And I think that’s where we’re seeing a perhaps unexpected, but very real, change.

That said, I’m not sure this necessarily translates across to other areas of EU external relations. Ukraine remains a very particular, distinctive case — one that the EU might learn from, but also one that may simply remain a unique circumstance that the Union felt compelled to respond to.

And one thing I haven’t yet mentioned, but that’s really significant, is how much the composition of states and the internal balance of power within the EU has shifted. Ukraine has shown, more than anything, that we now have new actors, new coalitions, and more assertiveness from states that previously weren’t seen as leading voices in EU foreign policy. These states are now willing to push the system in directions the larger member states traditionally controlled.

To me, that’s one of the most important developments in EU foreign policy. So even though I’ve been talking about collective capacity and coordination, what really matters is this emergence of new caucusing groups — informal coalitions of states that are actively shaping EU foreign policy today.

And here’s the paradox: it's precisely because some of these states have the capacity to conduct national foreign policy that they’ve actually strengthened the EU’s ability to act collectively — at least in some areas.

So maybe some of the older assumptions — that the EU needs to possess a certain fixed set of capabilities as an EU — may not be the most helpful way to think about where the Union currently stands.

 

O. Kandyuk: You’ve been also critical of the idea of “capability without strategy.” Would you say that instruments like PESCO, the EDF, and the Strategic Compass are now producing a meaningful European strategic culture — or are we still seeing shallow coordination driven by crisis?

 

R. Whitman: Yes, that’s a great question because it really gets to the heart of what the EU’s contribution might be to European security.

All those initiatives — PESCO, the European Defence Agency (EDA) — they were interesting experiments. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but they weren’t essential to European security as such. They were opportunities for Europeans to experiment with cooperation in ways that were, frankly, quite cost-free.

The big shift now, though, is how Europeans actually deliver more for their own security and defence — and as we know, this challenge is driven by external actors, notably Russia and the US.

The difficult question is whether the experimental infrastructure that the EU has created so far is really the best setup for what it needs to do in the long term. And honestly, I don’t think we know yet.

The European Commission is now a major player in this space — something new compared to the past — leveraging its capacity to raise and spend money to have influence. It has always wanted to engage seriously in security and defence, and now it has the means to do so. But the arrangements remain quite clunky.

As far as I can see, just offering loans — even cheap ones — while important, isn’t going to be a game changer. Allowing states to spend more nationally by tweaking fiscal rules is somewhat more significant, but we also know those rules have been bent before for national policy reasons.

And so long as NATO remains widely seen as the only viable vehicle for European security and defence, I suspect these EU initiatives will remain useful but marginal — nice to have, but not game changers.

 

O. Kandyuk: In the light of what you're saying, how do you assess the current transformation of transatlantic relations in light of recent geopolitical shifts? Does the EU now have a coherent long-term vision vis-à-vis the United States, or is it still largely reactive?

 

R. Whitman: I think this is an interesting question because the EU always assumed that the US was a partner committed to maintaining a particular international order.

During the Cold War, it was clear who the “good guys” and “bad guys” were, and that clarity shaped the alliance.

In the post Cold War period, the belief was that the existing institutional architecture only needed some tweaking, but could continue to deliver prosperity and security. Europeans, to varying degrees, accepted the US as the primary guardian of the international order — especially during expeditionary missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, we’ve reached an inflection point. The US clearly wants a different kind of international order, but it’s not fully clear how traditional allies fit into that vision.

Nobody believes the US wants to maintain the status quo anymore. The US feels it was taken advantage of and that the existing order allowed China to rise as a challenger to its hegemony.

Europeans are now trying to hedge their bets — hoping the US returns to some form of continuity, or at least refrains from the worst short-term moves.

They know they need to do more themselves but have not yet formulated a clear vision of the kind of international order that suits them, especially if the old order is truly fading.

That’s their biggest problem: Europeans use the language of geopolitics but struggle to allocate resources in ways that would give them real capacity to shape the system, certainly beyond the political economy.

They can’t yet imagine a world where the US might be at odds with European interests. There were minor differences before, but I essentially, there were no profound differences.

Partly, this is because Europeans don’t want to acknowledge that possibility — it’s too unsettling. And also because they don’t quite know how to deal with China.

They’ve tried all sorts of formulations and classifications, which, to me, feel like group therapy — attempts to talk themselves into a cure.

The reality is they face an authoritarian, communist regime which wants global dominance, is challenging the US for global dominance, and is not really that interested in the role that Europeans might play, because it doesn't see Europeans as a partner in its long term ambition. And then obviously, the US is not quite sure how it thinks Europeans fit into how it wants to secure its position as a global hegemon.

 

So the European challenge, in a way, is to avoid irrelevance, to try and maintain a role in system ordering. But at the same time, they're going to struggle to go beyond that, just because they don't have the political infrastructure to make it possible for them to articulate something that might be stronger than that.

In other words, Europeans once wanted the world remade in their image: rules-based, institutionalized, predictable, liberal.

Now, that vision is slipping away.

So what to how do Europeans respond? Do they double down on that? Do they go into a defensive crouch, to try and preserve what they've got, and look for partners to help them do that? Or do they strike out on their own, in some way and become a sort of third pole, if you like. And again, none of this language is language they would use, because it's too difficult for them to think in those terms.

 

I mean, we can unpack what we mean by Europeans, but I think I'm really talking about Brussels-based elite, and a lot of member state capitals.

 

O. Kandyuk: You have written that “strategic autonomy” is both conceptually underdeveloped and institutionally fragile. What advice would you give to EU policymakers on how to implement strategic autonomy without undermining NATO or transatlantic relations?

 

R. Whitman: First of all perhaps my answer is going to be a very British answer, for a reason that will become apparent in a minute. I think the EU has to learn the language of alliances.

It has seen itself as part of a Western alliance, but if that’s fragmenting, then who does it want to build alliances with, and who are the best partners? That means the EU needs open strategic autonomy rather than closed strategic autonomy. One interesting possibility of strategic autonomy—this relates to the UK’s approach with AUKUS—is that you want to create a circle of trust, not just for yourself, but with those you really value being allied with. For the EU, there’s an obvious group of countries: Canada, Japan, and I would include the UK in that group.

The EU has not yet figured out how to build such relationships with third countries in ways that don’t just treat them as fitting a particular template. Essentially, these relationships have been about more access to the EU market and some symbolic gestures, rather than tangible collaboration. This is especially clear in defense. The UK partnering with Australia and the US on AUKUS, focused on future technologies, and Italy partnering with Japan and the UK on GCAP, a future aircraft project, show a model the EU could learn from. It could leverage its knowledge base and technological capabilities through similar alliances.

But the EU has not yet made the leap to building these kinds of partnerships, remaining focused mainly on cooperation between member states. This may be beneficial or not, but they are not thinking enough about the future or about alliances that fit the 21st century. Meanwhile, China has made major investments in key technologies, directing its economy toward those goals.

Europeans lack a similiar approach. They are under-investing, spending inefficiently, and losing ground. Because in some key respects, like key research institutions, they just haven't got the infrastructure that works for them.

So that was more of a sermon than an answer. the EU’s current approach to strategic autonomy is rooted in a 20th-century mindset, rather than the 21st-century reality of building autonomy through partnerships.

 

O. Kandyuk: Let's talk about enlargement. Almost In every interview we are speaking about differentiated or staged integration. What is your assessment of the "staged accession" model? Do you see it as a viable means to sustain political motivation among candidate countries over time?

R. Whitman: The EU is in a funny place on enlargement. Rhetorically, it remains committed to enlargement, but whenever a case arises — whether Macedonia, Montenegro, or Albania — the process stalls. Each individual country’s accession would not be problematic in terms of population or economic size, yet the system allows member states to veto.

The enlargement tool as a foreign policy instrument has become very degraded. Despite political enthusiasm about enlargement to Ukraine, if the EU fails to deliver, that poses a serious problem. Because Ukraine, to me, is, the central state now on European security, the most important state in Europe's international relations or European order.

The EU faces a choice: either absorb Ukraine through a Big Bang enlargement including all candidate states at once, or proceed incrementally. They have committed to incremental enlargement but have not delivered on it, continuously delaying decisions.

For example, Macedonia meets all EU demands but is blocked by the Bulgarian veto. Montenegro could join tomorrow if the EU chose to. Serbia is a more complicated case. The hardest cases now are Bosnia and Serbia, which are linked, as well as Kosovo. Moldova and Ukraine are treated as a package, which may disadvantage Moldova but reflects reality. Other countries could be considered individually if the EU decided to do so.

Overall, enlargement as a tool for influence has weakened, which is disappointing for the EU’s international standing. This reflects the lack of a grand strategy for its neighborhood. The current approach essentially centers on Ukraine alone, which is not a comprehensive strategy.

But it's ended up degrading this as a tool where it can have capacity for influence.

 

This is really quite disappointing in terms of the signal it sends for the EU's capacity for influence. It is a reflection of the fact that the EU doesn't really have a grand strategy for its neighbourhood. And it's ended up now having one by default, which is what it does about Ukraine. When that's as good as it gets, I would say. But it's not really a strategy or a grand strategy for enlargement.

 

O. Kandyuk: You’ve noted that the EU demonstrates varying degrees of foreign policy maturity in different regions. In your view, which areas remain the least mature — and why?

 

R. Whitman: In terms of its foreign policy relationships? In some parts of the world, the EU is essentially a non-player.

Take Central and South America, for example. Despite all the issues around Mercosur and the trade deal with Mercosur, the EU remains a non-player there.

In the Indo-Pacific, the EU has an Indo-Pacific strategy, but it lacks a meaningful and coherent approach because its policy is fragmented by the way it handles individual countries.

Previously, the EU had a fairly strong approach, for better or worse, through development policy, which effectively defined its relationship with sub-Saharan Africa in particular. To my mind, this approach seems to have broken down. Although the model is still formally in place—for example, the Tomorrow agreement and similar frameworks—and the EU talks about initiatives like the Global Gateway, there is no coherent overall strategy.

Even more troubling, and to me the least explicable part of the EU’s foreign policy coherence, lies in its neighborhood policy, including the Mediterranean basin and North Africa. The idea was that this neighborhood policy would integrate everyone into a free trade area and single market, as seen in the Barcelona process and related efforts.

However, the Eastern Partnership was separated out because of its complexity, and all of this has now essentially stalled. There is no clear, persuasive, or engaging offer from the EU to the countries in that region. Moreover, the EU has allowed its policy to become overly dictated by migration concerns and migration management.

When considering the EU’s capacity to influence internationally, it is quite depressing. The EU is punching much below its weight. Except for a few like-minded states such as Canada and Japan, it is difficult to point to significant foreign policy successes where the EU has a clear sense of how to move things forward.

It is not that the EU lacks the language of geopolitics, but I see very little evidence of a coherent, meaningful project. This contrasts with the situation at the end of the Cold War, when I could see how the different parts of EU policy fit together, and I don't get that sense anymore.

 

O. Kandyuk: But, do you think that this change in foreign policy is possible without the changes within the structure, without reform?

R. Whitman: Yes. That’s been the traditional answer, hasn’t it? When you think about the EU’s foreign policy, the focus has often been on improving decision-making arrangements—making decisions more effectively, streamlining the process, and improving how the system is resourced. These discussions have been ongoing for quite some time. Historically, if you look at how foreign policy cooperation has evolved, you can’t avoid these questions.

But I think the difficult thing for Europeans is it keeps butting it up against that same ceiling. For instance, if you compare it to Economic and Monetary Union—there, a clear decision was made to create a single currency, and the institutions and mechanisms to make that happen were built.

In contrast, there has never been an equivalent project for a collective or common foreign policy. And while it’s not impossible to design common institutions for foreign policy—I actually think that part is relatively straightforward, and we already have some foundations—the bigger issue is a lack of creativity among member states in thinking about how to make it work effectively.

They were incredibly creative when designing the single currency and the Schengen area. These were major public policy innovations. And there was a remarkable level of compliance and commitment from member states in implementing them. So, while we can argue that the Economic and Monetary Union isn’t perfect, the fact remains: we have a functioning single currency, and a system that operates.

But with foreign policy, we’ve never seen the same kind of push or ambition. Whether such a transformation is possible, I don’t know—but it’s likely the kind of shift that would be necessary if the EU really wanted to build a coherent and effective foreign policy.

 

O. Kandyuk: I couldn't ask you about the Brexit. In your 2016 article you warned that Brexit could erode the EU’s foreign policy capacity. Nearly a decade on, would you say Brexit has weakened the EU’s global influence — or has it opened space for more strategic clarity?

 

R. Whitman: I was completely wrong—honestly, I think I was entirely wrong on that point. Looking back, one of the most remarkable EU foreign policy successes, in my view, has been how the EU handled Brexit. It pursued a foreign policy towards the UK, both during the withdrawal process and after 2019, that was remarkably coherent, unified, and successful.

That really astonished me. On one hand, the EU showed a surprising capacity to act collectively and decisively towards a third country. But the problem is that this approach—this clarity, unity, and strategic direction—hasn’t been replicated across its broader foreign policy. It’s as if Brexit revealed the EU’s potential to be strategic and even ruthless when necessary, but that lesson hasn’t translated into how it deals with other actors globally.

In some ways, the EU’s effectiveness was helped by a UK government that didn’t handle the situation particularly well. But still, the EU's response stands out.

As for whether Brexit has affected the EU’s broader foreign policy capacity towards third countries, that’s a harder question. And it’s harder because of Ukraine. I actually think the EU’s policy towards Ukraine would have been broadly the same even if the UK were still a member. Some nuances might have differed, but the overall direction would have remained consistent.

That’s in part because other member states stepped up and assumed leadership roles on Ukraine and on wider foreign policy issues. So, in that sense, the UK’s departure didn’t result in the kind of strategic vacuum we might have expected. The loss wasn’t as significant as I once feared.

In fact, in certain areas, I wonder whether the EU’s response to the Trump administration—both the first and potentially the second—has been more coherent with the UK at the table. I’d need to reflect more on that, but it’s a real possibility.

 

O. Kandyuk: Finally, a question I always ask: What scenarios do you see as plausible for the future of EU–Ukraine relations in the short to medium term? Could you outline three or four options that you consider most likely?

 

R. Whitman: What’s surprising is how the EU has maintained unity of purpose. It hasn’t managed outlier countries very well, but overall, the coherence has been remarkable.

I would say the EU’s policy on Ukraine has been about 60% successful. It has done things it previously considered impossible. But it continues to fail in some areas—particularly in still buying Russian hydrocarbons, which is pretty difficult to understand for many outsiders. It has also been too timid in advancing Ukraine’s integration into the EU.

For me, the real test is whether the EU can move beyond the binary of member and non-member. Ukraine should not be treated merely as a candidate or transitioning country. The relationship needs to be reimagined.

There is some room for optimism, especially in how the EU has handled defence industry cooperation with Ukraine. In that area, it treats Ukraine as a special case, which is a welcome development. But more creativity is needed in other domains.

For me, the real test is breaking the idea that a country is either a member or a non-member. Or that it's a candidate in transition. These categories have been built up over time, but Ukraine needs to be treated differently, and the relationship with Ukraine needs to be pursued differently.

In that sense, I’m somewhat optimistic about the EU’s capacity — for example, in how it’s handling defence industry cooperation. There, Ukraine is being treated as a special case, which is absolutely right. But more creativity is needed in other areas.

Even political language matters. In its public diplomacy, the EU should always refer to Ukraine as part of its own future. Strategic communications should consistently express that the EU and Ukraine are one. That should become commonplace. If the EU is serious about its commitments to Ukraine, that message must be reflected in its language.

Strategic communications are weaker than they should be. The same goes for the willingness to bear the costs of the energy transition away from Russia. In my view, that effort remains too weak.

The defence industry cooperation has been better than I expected. But the EU has not yet begun a serious internal conversation about the long-term resources required to make Ukraine a successful member. On that front, I’m more pessimistic. The way agricultural trade has been handled is one example. I think there needs to be more thinking.

So my tweet answer would be: change the language, change the resourcing, and establish demonstrable milestones to show that, this time, enlargement will be different — especially for Ukraine. Those elements aren’t yet in place.

I don’t think the political commitment to Ukraine will disappear anytime soon. But we may see dramatic changes in EU member state governments. We also don’t know what will happen in Russia, which remains the real wild card. If there were regime change in Russia, would that alter the EU’s strategic calculus on Ukraine?

Because Europeans have no long-term vision for Russia. For understandable reasons — it’s hard to build one for a country that has torn up the European security order. But at some point, in line with your earlier questions about the EU and the international order, the EU will need to ask itself whether its long-term vision includes Russia in “our camp” 

That sounds far-fetched now — even crazy — but it’s the kind of strategic question the US asks, when it talks about Greenland, Canada, and the High North. Behind the rhetoric is a vision of how the US wants to shape the 21st century.

If the EU wants real international influence, it has to consider where Russia fits into its vision. This is a real deep Chatham House rule type question, but it's not good for Europe if Russia becomes a surrogate of China. Nor would it be good if it became, more controversially, a surrogate of the United States — which seems to be what the Trump administration might be hoping for. Neither scenario benefits the EU.

This may sound speculative, but it’s a question that deserves discussion in closed settings. It is a multi-decade issue and has the potential to disrupt EU policy toward Ukraine. If Russia becomes a different kind of strategic challenge, its future could start to be discussed in the same context as Ukraine’s. That could be harmful to Ukraine’s trajectory.

We’re currently addressing the Russia problem in one way, but if the nature of the problem changes, if Russia presents a different kind of problem in the future, that could shift how people think about the broader European and global order.