Thinking about the Unthinkable: Guidelines for a Euro-Defence Concept

Abstract

Ever since the failure of the European Defence Community (EDC) plan some 32 years ago, the issue of ‘European defence’ (which means here collective European self-defence) has been frozen into a kind of political and intellectual taboo. But, unlike another great European taboo — that of German reunification, which the Germans are supposed to think about always but speak about never — European defence is referred to in countless speeches and statements; only in general terms, though, rarely in detail.