Strategic autonomy and EU-NATO cooperation: threat or opportunity for transatlantic defence relations?

The EU's common security and defence policy was launched in the 1990s as a quest for 'autonomy.' Fifteen years of efforts failed to deliver. The coherence of the EU member states in their security dealings with the US was always vulnerable to the incompatible objectives of the UK and France. But as EU leaders post-Brexit re-launch CSDP, as the European Global Strategy rediscovers the virtues of 'strategic autonomy,' and as Europe juggles with a US president who questions the basis of NATO, it is time to re-think the relations between the EU and NATO. Brexit has the potential to strengthen the coherence of the EU member states in their quest for autonomy. This might seem to weaken the transatlantic bond. This paper will argue that, in the longer term, it is through the transcendence of the EU-NATO relationship that a genuine strengthening of that bond will emerge.