Europeans have been spending increasingly less on defense. This trend is puzzling on two accounts. Empirically, 30% of defense spending cuts correlated with a net increase in military capacity, contradicting conventional predictions of military degradation under budgetary pressures. Theoretically, it is unclear why cuts happen and whether conscious policy choices can translate spending cuts to favorable military capacity outcomes. Is the decline in defense spending a strategic choice to demilitarize, or is it intentionally managed to improve military capacity? I evaluate three conditions under which reductions in military expenditures can lead to favorable outcomes in military capacity: defense reform, defense collaboration and buck-passing. I investigate 30 defense spending cut periods (DSCP’s) in the 27 European states between 2000 and 2012. This group of states presents a hard case for my argument: decline in European military resources is most-likely intentional. Through Qualitative Comparative Analysis, I group DSCP’s by military capacity outcomes. I then evaluate presence of the three mechanisms by operationalizing necessary but insufficient conditions, and determine whether these potential explanations are sufficient by process-tracing select case studies. I find that defense reform presents the most compelling, collective collaboration less compelling and buck-passing least compelling explanation of a potentially non-detrimental relationship between DSCP’s and military capacity. Under declining defense spending, governments routinely chose to produce savings by eliminating redundancies, consolidating structures, and reinvested savings in operational readiness and quality of military forces. States increased defense collaboration in 47.3% of the DSCP’s, but initiatives still appear divorced from affecting robust military improvements at the national level. Under declining defense spending, buck-passing increased only modestly (8%-13%), with ongoing deployments supporting continued investment in the military. These findings imply that defense spending decline does not mean a European choice to demilitarize, but a choice to reform, sometimes in tandem with defense collaboration or buck-passing.

Diploma thesis "European collaborative defense projects and the military capacity of the EU" is dealing with the realization of cooperative projects and with their influence on the development of military capacities of the European Union member states. The author examines the economic and military advantages of international defense collaboration. The optimal way of collaboration leads to lower development and production costs, higher quality of the product and better competitiveness on the market. The author uses selected European programs to test how the results are achieved in reality. Further author identifies the goals of the European Defense and Security Policy as they were set up by the European Union. Mainly the so called Petersberg Tasks. The author examines which military capabilities the European Union needs to build in order to realize the full scope of the Petersberg Tasks and whether the realized collaborative projects enhance the capabilities of the Union for these tasks.