Worth a Shot: A Note on the Explanatory Power of Bandwagoning in Transatlantic Relations

In the article ‘Bandwagoning, not Balancing: Why Europe Confounds Realism’, we advanced the argument that realism continues to be relevant to explain EU defence integration in the post-Cold War era. However, we contended that it is necessary for scholars to return to the concept of bandwagoning which is better suited than balancing to explain trans-Atlantic security cooperation. Writing in this same journal, Benjamin Pohl argues that the role of states’ relative power in foreign policy behaviour is misleading, since neither balancing nor bandwagoning are useful concepts to explain Europe’s security policy in the post-Cold War period. As Pohl asserts, ‘EU governments have followed an inductive and experimental approach’, thus emphasising the liberal basis of his counter-argument. While being an important alternative approach (which we also acknowledge as such in our article), liberalism tends to emphasise cooperative practices and ideologies. However, in so doing this, it can overlook the role played by international competition in shaping ESDP/CSDP