Recently AKK advocated the EU build its own aircraft carrier. This is not as harebrained as it appears on its face. Per a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), post-Brexit, the European Union would struggle to execute a humanitarian disaster response in its near abroad due to a lack of naval assets.

An aircraft carrier, I am not talking a behemoth like the American nuclear-powered floating cities with 80 aircraft and a crew of 5,000, but the typical modern carrier closer in size and capability to a flattop for VSTOL aircraft like an American Wasp-class amphibious assault ship (LHD), is an important asset to have in order to execute that kind of mission. This is not, as AKK said, “[A] symbolic project.” Rather, it addresses a real capability shortfall.

However, must it be European? For the following reasons it makes sense for a German to go the multilateral route:

1. France is the only member of a post-Brexit EU with experience in naval aviation. Naval aviation is a hard capability to develop and Germany’s startup costs would be high and learning curve steep. Germany gets capability sooner, while paying the price of policy constraints imposed by the multilateral approach.
2. The German public would likely never support a German independent naval aviation capability. Germany struggles with maintaining land and air capability to deter invasion today, let alone developing capability with offensive power projection potential.
3. Any European aircraft carrier would still benefit Germany’s industry.

However, a European aircraft carrier would fail as a project for the same reason that an independent Chapter VII military failed to materialize at the UN. The EU is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) and as such most be looked at through the lens of principal-agent analysis. Member states delegate issue areas to the IGO and maintain constraints on the independence of the IGO (ask the southern members of the EU about the control Germany exercises on the European Central Bank viz. monetary policy). It is one thing for states to cooperate on security in the European Union, offering their own troops and materiel for collective defense and sharing intelligence, always retaining an implicit veto via withdrawal. It is another, to build the first ship of an independent European navy, which makes the EU more of an independent third-party actor than any member state would wish. Even if theoretically a veto still existed at the level of the Council of Ministers.