Dr. Kenneth McDonagh:

I will come in first if that is all right, Chair. I think the Chair was right to highlight neutrality as an emotional issue. There was a statement by Josep Borrell, probably about two years ago at this point, where he talked about Europe separating out the basis of its economic prosperity and its security and even to bring those two back together. That is where neutrality has played a useful role because we have not thought about security. It is that uncomfortable position of asking, "If we are aligned politically and we are aligned economically, does our military alignment follow from that?" That creates some awkward questions about where we might fit. The public debate on that is very far away from thinking about closer alignment, similar to our political alignment and economic alignment. It may not ever get there. We need to think, as a country, what that means for our own capabilities and what we can and cannot engage in.

I also think the Chair was right to mention the effect of the UK on the cohesion of European security and defence policy, but that obviously came at a credibility cost. We lost huge capabilities. That is something that is more recognised now.

One thing I would pick up is in relation to the common defence market and the relationship between the United States and European security. It is probably worth highlighting that of the many ways in which the Trump administration was unique, in this particular area it was more about his communication style. The message of Europe doing more for itself was there under the Obama administration and under George W. Bush and Clinton. It is a bipartisan position, essentially. At the very minimum, it is prudent for the EU to start thinking about how it deals with these defence industrial capabilities on its own, even though a Trump administration would represent a particular challenge. It is also worth noting even if he is unsuccessful in the current election cycle, we have seen in Congress that the Republican Party is by and large a Trump party now. It is certainly going to take a certain period of time before that unwinds itself in terms of who the rising stars of that party are. We would not expect a huge policy shift, even if Trump is unsuccessful.

The one caveat I will raise is that it is all very well for the EU to talk about this as a defensive step and that developing our own capacity is about securing what we have. As Professor Tonra and I know from studying foreign policy for quite a long time, we need to deal with how that is perceived externally as well and to think seriously about what the EU would do if faced with opposition to these developments. One of the issues that is playing out in regard to the war in Ukraine was a failure by the EU to think through the consequences of what Russia meant when it said way back in 2013 that if Ukraine signs an association agreement, there will not be any guarantees of the future territorial integrity of Ukraine. The EU has kind of sidestepped that and said that is not what it is about, that it is about raising everybody's boat and that it is about bringing Ukraine in but not pushing anybody out in that context. Frankly, Moscow just did not believe it and were explicit in not believing it and in threatening consequences.

The EU and its member states do need to get better at understanding how we are perceived externally. Even though we may have the best intentions in engaging in certain steps, that may not be the kind of reaction they provoke. What do we have in place to respond to those negative reactions?