Military Cooperation Around Framework Nations: A European Solution to the Problem of Limited Defence Capabilities

This study examines two European defence collaborations that involve the pooling of military capabilities around a framework nation: the Framework Nations Concept (FNC) led by Germany and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) led by the United Kingdom. The study assesses the significance of this collaborative format for security and defence in Europe, with a particular focus on Sweden and the Baltic Sea region. The potential benefits of these collaborations are manifold. They may promote quicker decision making while contributing to fairer burden sharing within NATO. Additionally, they may strengthen regional security ties and improve interoperability between national armed forces. However, the FNC and the JEF also risk contributing to a fragmentation of defence efforts in Europe and wasting scarce resources allocated to national defence. This could ultimately undermine the cohesion of multilateral institutions in Europe. Given the limited defence capabilities of many European states, including Sweden, the study recommends an overall coordination of collaborations such as the FNC and the JEF in order to avoid fragmentation and a duplication of efforts. Moreover, Sweden needs to prioritise those collaborative formats which are determined to have the greatest outputs and which benefit the national military capability.