What European army? Alliance, security community or postnational federation

Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal to create a ‘European army’ stood at the beginning of a process of revitalising the CSDP. Although it is too early to establish empirically based understanding of this development, theoretical thinking should be able to offer an interpretation of what the possible and desirable objectives of this development are. The concepts of alliance and security community provide such an interpretation. However, this article argues that their views on the state and defence integration did not adequately reflect the current project of the European Defence Union (EDU). Instead, Habermas’s conception of postnational federation is proposed as a better framework for understanding and critical assessment of the European military and defence integration in general, and the EDU in particular.