When a doctor calls for a thorough examination of the state of a patient’s health, he hopes that everything will turn out to be alright, but it really means that he fears there is a serious problem. Likewise, when Herman Van Rompuy called for the European Council of which he is the President to examine “the state of defence in Europe”,1 he was asking for more than a routine check-up. In this joint Egmont Paper, the Institute for European Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Egmont Institute offer their diagnosis. In the opening essay, Claudia Major and Christian Mölling cannot but conclude that “the state of defence in Europe” is nearing the state of emergency. The “bonsai armies” that they fear we will end up with are nice to look at – on the national day parade for example – but not of much use.
In addition to the diagnosis though, we also want to propose a treatment. The method of examination proposed by Van Rompuy already hints at an important part of the cure. The fact is that we never examine “the state of defence in Europe”. We assess the state of the EU’s CSDP, of NATO’s military posture, and of course of each of our national armed forces. But we never assess Europe’s military effort in its entirety. In fact, we are unable to, simply because there is no forum where we set capability targets for “defence in Europe”.
On the one hand, we pretend that it is only a specific separable (and, in the minds of many capitals, small) part of our armed forces that can be dedicated to the CSDP and the achievement of its Headline Goal, the capacity to deploy up to a corps of 60,000.2 That is of course a theoretical fiction: in reality any commitment to either the CSDP or NATO or both has an impact on our entire defence budget and our entire arsenal. A decision to invest in an air-to-air refu- elling project through the European Defence Agency for example implies that that sum cannot be spent in another capability area of importance for the CSDP or NATO or, usually, both, whereas once delivered the resulting air-to-air refu- elling capability will be available for operations in either framework. Schemes to encourage states to join capability efforts, like the EU’s Pooling & Sharing and NATO’s Smart Defence, obviously can only make the most of opportunities to generate synergies and effects of scale if all arsenals are taken into the balance in their entirety. On the other hand, the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) supposedly does encompass (nearly) the whole of our forces, but it sets targets for individual nations in function of the targets of the Alliance as a whole, and does not separately define the level of ambition of NATO’s European pillar even though it becomes increasingly likely that the European Allies will have to act alone.
We are thus confronted with a curious situation. In political terms it continually is “Europe” that we refer to and expect to act. Even the US has sent a clear message to “Europe” that it should assume responsibility for the security of its own periphery and initiate the response to crises. “Europe” for Washington can mean the European Allies acting through NATO, or the EU acting through the CSDP, or an ad hoc coalition of European states. Washington really no longer cares under which “European” flag we act, as long as we act and the problem is dealt with without extensive American assets being drawn in. As Luis Simón points out in his essay, the US is ‘geared towards figuring out how to get the most “bang” out of a “low cost” and “light footprint” approach to European security’. In terms of defence planning however, “Europe” does not exist. If he succeeds, Van Rompuy is to be congratulated for bringing it into being.
Defining Europe
A call to look at “the state of defence in Europe” thus implicitly is a call to define a level of ambition for “Europe”, against which the existing capabilities can be assessed, shortfalls identified, and priority objectives defined. As the High Representative, Catherine Ashton, states at the outset of her Final Report Preparing the December 2013 European Council on Security and Defence, this ‘warrant[s] a strategic debate among Heads of State and Government. Such a debate at the top level must set priorities’.3 Put differently, the key political ques- tion that the European Council needs to address, before it can address any mili- tary-technical question, is for which types of contingencies in which parts of the world “Europe”, as a matter of priority, commits to assume responsibility, and which capabilities it commits to that end. On the basis of the answer to that question all other dimensions of the European Council’s broad defence agenda can be tackled – absent that answer, Europe’s defence effort will still be left hanging in the air. It is often said for example that “Europe” needs its own strategic enablers, such as air-to-air refuelling and ISTAR. But to be able to do what? Air-policing in the Baltic? Air-to-ground campaigns in the Mediterranean? Or even further afield? And at which scale? Without an answer to such questions, it is impossible to design a sensible capability mix and decide on priority capability projects.
Yet, who is “Europe”? Who can define the level of ambition that serves as polit- ical guidance for operations undertaken and capabilities developed by Euro- peans through both NATO and the CSDP? Again, we are facing the same problem that there is today no institutionalised venue where Europeans can take decisions about their posture in NATO and the CSDP simultaneously – it is always either/or. Under these circumstances, the European Council is the best option. It is of course an EU body, but they are our Heads of State and Govern- ment, meeting in an intergovernmental setting, adopting not binding law but political declarations, and that by unanimity. Surely they, if anybody, have the legitimacy to declare that they will consider the political guidance which they agree upon to guide their governments’ positions in both NATO and the CSDP?
Politically, “Europe” can either mean each and every European state, or an ad hoc coalition of some of these states, or, when they make foreign and security policy together (which alas they do not do systematically enough), the EU. In political terms, “Europe” neither means the CSDP nor NATO: these are instru- ments, at the service of the makers of foreign and security policy. Instruments, moreover, both of which “Europe” is more likely to use in the near future than the US, in view of the “pivot” of its strategic focus to Asia. If Washington no longer takes the lead in setting strategy towards Europe’s neighbourhood, the only alternative actor is Europeans collectively, i.e. the EU (for individually, no European state can defend all of its interests all of the time). The European Council thus really is the best placed to address “the state of defence in Europe”.
This does not in any way prejudice how, in a real-life contingency, “Europe” will undertake action: using NATO, the CSDP, other EU instruments, the UN, ad hoc coalitions or a combination thereof. Indeed, if action entails larger-scale combat operations, “Europe” will need the NATO command & control struc- ture, which is its main asset. According to Jamie Shea, ‘NATO’s choice, there- fore, will be to focus on high-end operations built essentially around a conventional military core structure and organised through an integrated command system’. The best way to make sure that all instruments are put to use in an integrated way, from the planning of any type of action to the post-action and long-term involvement, is to politically put any intervention under the aegis of the EU, even when acting under national or NATO command in the case of military involvement. The fact is that in almost every scenario, the European Commission and the EEAS will either from the start or eventually have to take charge of the political, economic and social dimension, regardless of how we address the military dimension – better to integrate all from the beginning thereunder the political aegis of the Union. Furthermore, that flag still is much less controversial whereas there always are countries and regions in which it is advised not to operate under specific national flags or the NATO-label.
Egmont Institute, 2013, No. 62 (edited with Sven Biscop)
Daniel Fiott 