Description
Any process of disintegration in social life by necessity produces something new, including through re-encounter between disintegrated parts. Despite to a great extent sharing challenges and threat perceptions, the UK and the EU did not manage to agree on a comprehensive security and defence relationship during the Brexit negotiations, and the situation remains as such to this date. This article sets out to explain why the emergence of a new security and defence partnership between the EU and the UK post-Brexit has been difficult and is likely to remain as such. In so doing, the article uses the EU/UK-case to theorize the effect of previous disintegration processes on the ability to develop new security and defence partnerships that speak to current challenges. In so doing, the article explains the limited function of shared threats, rather highlighting how successful processes of diplomatic re-encounter are contingent on successful social relations.
