The common security and defence policy shall be an integral part of the common foreign and security policy. It shall provide the Union with an operational capacity drawing on civilian and military assets.

This is how the clause starts.

It is explicitly a military alliance. That said, Ukraine is a sovereign state, and they are the sole authorities on what military alliance they want to join, Russia has no seat in the Ukrainian parliament. Of course, Putin has no excuses.

I’m just being a dick about this because it’s actually an Eurosceptic Russia-friendly narrative that the EU is nothing but a trade deal, and has no bearing on common foreign policy, common defence policy, or the creation of a common geopolitical proxy. It is. The end goal explicitly is that - while inside the EU, member states may have their own politics - from the outside of the EU, it is one country, one partner.

So when Trump or Xi or Putin come over to talk, their counterpart is representing 420 million people and an economic capacity rivalling that of the US, and member states can’t be played against each other. I know realistically we are not quite there, but Trump really hated to talk to the EU instead of individual member states. There was a reason for that.