Proxy Warfare in a Post-Covid World
Written by Alberto Rizzi At first glance, defence would rarely be seen as a domain affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the disruption brought by the virus into our societies…
Written by Alberto Rizzi At first glance, defence would rarely be seen as a domain affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the disruption brought by the virus into our societies…
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on most of the world, and Europe is no exception. The European economy was deeply affected in several sectors. Business-related to defence, security, and European defence cooperation was one of the hardest-hit sectors.
In the era of the information revolution and the dominance of big data, ensuring full communication security is not an easy task. The major world powers have therefore begun to invest more resources in the field of quantum physics, exploiting its enormous potential to make unprecedented progress in several strategic areas, including cybersecurity, logistics, communication, healthcare, and others. The European Union also decided to row in the same direction. Indeed, on 31 May 2021, the European Commission finally selected a consortium led by Airbus and composed of several companies and research institutes, including Leonardo, PwC France and Maghreb, Orange, Telespazio, the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (Inrim) and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) to study and design the future EU quantum communication network (Airbus, 2021). Through the new European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI), the EU aims to ensure ultra-secure communication between government institutions and critical infrastructures across the Union.
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).
Written by Daniela Cotelea, Alberto Pineda Alcántara, Cristina Tempera, Medeleine Brach, Cedric Foisseau and Giuseppe A. Ira In the last decades, military justice systems have been subject to numerous reforms…