The idea of a collective European security and defence architecture first arose from the ashes of World War II and was driven by the Cold War. The forerunner of the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), was primarily designed to pacify France and Germany, and virtually make war between the two major European powers impossible by tying them economically (Vandersmissen 2018, 16-17). Politically, however, they had different ideas on how such a community might cover security concerns. The very issue of the remilitarisation of West Germany hindered the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC). Ultimately, the project was struck down by the French National Assembly in 1954 to retain sovereignty over France’s armed forces (Trybus 2016). The ratification of the Treaty of Brussels that same year solved the issue by creating the Western European Union (WEU), and approving the creation of the Bundeswehr, which was envisioned as a self-defence force, dependent upon allied support for any meaningful military operation. Indeed, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation enjoyed exclusive competence over the defence of Europe for most of the remaining years of the 20th century (Vandersmissen 2018, 30; and Trybus 2016). But while Germany seemed satisfied with such an accommodation, France grew increasingly suspicious of American political and military influence over the continent. It left the Organisation’s military command and, in 1966, asked NATO and US troops to leave its soil. It wasn’t until 2009 that France re-joined the security framework (Gjevori 2019).