| Abstract [eng] |
Donald Trump and PESCO: Influence of Individual to Transatlantic Defence Structure In this study I defend the thesis that US President Donald Trump had a negative impact to transatlantic defence structure that is NATO, which led to the PESCO agreement ratification in late 2017. This agreement increases integration of most of European countries in defence sphere by allowing to cooperate in fields of military equipment purchase and various strategic defence capabilities projects, as well as requires member states to regularly increasing defence budgets in real terms and to increase defence investment expenditure to 20% of total defence spending. The PESCO agreement is entirely European project and US is not a part of it. In this research I made a statement that election of Donald Trump and his rhetoric towards NATO allies had a negative impact to whole transatlantic defence structure and forced European leaders to ratify PESCO agreement. In order to defend my statement, methodological individualism approach to this problem was used. I used Karl Raimund Popper’s and Joseph Agassi’s institutional individualism theory as a base of my research and created 4 subpart analysis structure, which was used in order to defend my thesis. In the first subpart, the institutional background and history of NATO was analysed. The domination of US in NATO, while European partners were less concerned with defence led to the situation where European countries were accused by United States of not participating enough in burden sharing. In the second subpart, the impact of structural situation to individual’s (that is Donald Trump) circumstances and his behaviour was analysed. The European so called “freeride” in NATO was and still is a major problem that is highlighted in Trump’s “America First” strategy that was used during his presidential election campaign and presidency. In the third subpart, Donald Trump’s rhetoric towards NATO allies, in respect to “America First” strategy, during his presidential election campaign and during his time in office, was analysed. Donald Trump regularly criticised Europeans countries for not fulfilling their agreements and not spending 2 percent of GDP for defence. In institutional individualism view this criticism of European countries are Donald Trump’s “cry” for “reform” inside the NATO. In the final subpart, the transatlantic defence structure’s, that is NATO, response to Donald Trump’s “reform” was analysed. NATO European leaders did not agree with D. Trump’s terms and “reform” of NATO and were not willing to drastically increase defence spending. This led to situation where European leaders could not “punish” United States nor could trust US to keep their commitments to NATO anymore, therefore pushed European leaders to ratify a PESCO agreement. This research shows how agent has impact to changes in various international structures and focused primarily on Donald Trump’s influence to structural changes of NATO which led to PESCO agreement ratification on the other side of Atlantic. It was done in a way in which Donald Trump is considered to be one of many individuals that belong to transatlantic defence structure and was just a part of the agent/structure influence triangle. Therefore, the main goal of this research was not to show why Donald Trump had an impact to transatlantic defence structure and PESCO, but rather to answer how he could done such impact in the agent/structure relations. However, this master’s thesis can be a basis for any researcher that is willing to do so: to answer the question why during Donald Trump’s presidency and not Barack Obama’s, for example, the PESCO agreement was ratified and trust issues between US and European countries rose again. |
