Defending Europe
LONDON – How gratifying for Europeans listening to Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin’s Tiergarten to hear him affirm that «America has no better partner than Europe,» and to speak about how allies must «listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.» And how unsettling to hear him talk of the need for «shared sacrifice» in the war against al-Qaida. The next American president, whether Democrat or Republican, will be politer to Europeans than the current incumbent; but he will also be more demanding – and harder to fob off. For the EU’s new French presidency, with their priority of boosting «l’Europe de la Defense,» this can only be encouraging. And they will need all the encouragement they can get because the European defense enterprise – launched at the famous Franco-British summit at St-Malo nearly 10 years ago – has made depressingly little progress. Twenty EU crisis-management operations to date sounds like a lot. But three-quarters of them have involved deployment of policemen or legal experts, not troops; half have comprised less than 100 personnel; and four of the five main military interventions, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Congo (twice) and Bosnia, have ridden on the coattails of either UN or NATO peacekeepers. Meanwhile, efforts to make Europe’s militaries fit for purpose – the purpose in today’s world being expeditionary, multinational operations, not stopping invaders at the national frontier – have been even less productive. The original vision of a 60,000-strong rapid-reaction force has been quietly shelved, in favor of 1,500-man «battlegroups.» Seventy percent of Europe’s land forces simply cannot operate outside national territory. Europe’s 10,000 main battle tanks would be fine for a rerun of the Battle of Kursk, but are of little use in Chad or Afghanistan. Figures such as these highlight the extent to which Europeans’ combined annual defense spending in Europe of some 200 billion euros is simply money down the drain. From the decade of wasted opportunity, however, some important truths can be distilled. First, there is no need for (unattainable) increases in defense spending – the money just needs to be spent on the right things, like support helicopters. Second, Europeans have no choice but to pool their efforts and resources; even the UK and France have had to accept that increased mutual reliance is the only way either can hope to make their defense books balance. Third, points one and two are, for defense establishments, profoundly counter-cultural. They hate change (their rationale, after all, is to protect the status quo), and they hate depending on others. So both ditching those tanks and cooperating with others on the next generation of combat radio will require external pressure. Fourth, Europeans are a heterogeneous lot, and efforts to develop European defense need to recognize and accommodate this diversity. This last point is especially relevant in the aftermath of the Irish «No» to the Lisbon Treaty. For some, this latest failure to get 27 runners and riders into the starting gates at the same time has only confirmed the need to accept a «multispeed» Europe. Whether or not this is true for the future of the Union as a whole, there is no room for dispute in defense – multispeed is the reality, and will remain so as long as 27 member states reserve the right to set their own defense policies, and make their own decisions about sending their young men and women into danger. So the model for European defense has to be «variable geometry» – some member states pooling their efforts on defense research, others setting up joint air transport commands, and so on. This approach – the concept of the «pioneer group» – appears in the Lisbon Treaty in the provisions on «permanent structured cooperation.» But, with Lisbon in balk for the foreseeable future, the principles should be introduced as far and as fast as possible into the existing practices and institutions of European defense – most obviously, into the workings of the European Defense Agency. Beyond that, the presidency’s agenda looks to be much on the right lines. The chronic problems over mounting and running European Security and Defense Policy, or ESDP, operations need urgent attention. There needs to be a better shared understanding of where and when European interests and values may require interventions – and a greater readiness to share the burden, both through cost-sharing and through more member states keeping more of the right kind of units on standby. It is high time, too, for the much-discussed European civilian reserve corps to become a reality. And the current improvisations for the planning and conduct of operations must be replaced by a proper EU Operational Headquarters in Brussels. The EU’s claim to be uniquely capable of blending hard and soft power in crisis management will remain hollow as long as «civilian» and «military» operations are quite separately handled at the strategic level of command. On capabilities – the tools to do the job – the effort to get member states to focus on the real, as opposed to the convenient, deficiencies must be pursued. At long last specific action is under way to make more support helicopters available – it is time that equally urgent attention was given to rationalizing the plethora of incompatible national communications systems that bedevil all operations. This is a top priority for NGOs operating in crisis areas, too. Mainly, though, the way forward has to be a hard slog to get member states to pool their efforts and resources – all the way from the research laboratory, through equipment procurement programs, to joint forces. The European Defense Agency was set up precisely to catalyze such cooperations – it makes no sense to cap its staff numbers at a mere 100. Heads of government need to lend a hand and encourage defense establishments to do what does not come naturally by attaching strings to defense budgets – spend it jointly or lose it. And the same goes for the defense industry – consolidation needs to be re-energized, especially in the land- and sea-systems sectors, by «summit» meetings of defense industrial chiefs and government ministers. Time, then, to pay attention to the noises off – and to reflect that it is not just Europe’s role in the world or the security of Europe’s citizens that depends on a stronger European defense – it is also the health of the transatlantic security relationship. Nick Witney is senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (www.ecfr.eu) and former chief executive of the European Defense Agency.
