Security Policy in the European Union and the United States through the issue of their Defence Expenditures

Abstract

This article aims to clarify how the level of defence expenditures affected security poli-cy in the post-World War II Europe and the United States till the present day. We first analyze theoretically the issue of a nation’s power through its defence outlays. We then proceed to the examination of how security policy was formulated during Cold War and afterwards for both Europe and the United States through their defence ex-penditures. By comparing European to United States defence budgets ceilings we found that the European military capabilities are undermined by the low level of the defence budget which is provided by the European Union member states as a whole, as well as by the lack of homogeneity in military means. By contrast, we noticed that the historically large US defence expenditures were one of the major reasons for the US global hegemony during Cold war and afterwards. We also examine the implica-tions that defence expenditures have on military industry, macroeconomic perfor-mance and geopolitics and the correlation that arises among them.

Keywords

• Security Policy
• Defence Expenditures
• European Union
• United States
• Defence Industry
• Public Economics.