Wednesday, August 6. 2008
Posted by Nanne Zwagerman in
European Issues on Wednesday, August 6. 2008
European defence integration is little discussed, chiefly because it does not really show progress. The last major news was a dust-up a few years ago over the question of having an independent headquarters from NATO in Brussels, between the USA and UK on one side, and a batch of continental countries led by France on the other side (Sarkozy has recently won over the USA, the UK still has to be wood). Or, if you have really been paying close attention, the recent missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chad. For those who are interested why there has been so little progress, Nick Whitley has written a very useful policy paper for the European Council on Foreign Relations on Europe's security and defence policy.
As Pat Patterson wrote in a previous post, the report is long and not always readable if you are not familiar with the lingo. So here's a short overview.
In the 1990s, the EU agreed to form what the media called a 'rapid reaction force'. This was a plan to have a force of up to 60,000 troops capable of deploying within sixty days. These troops would be drawn from national armies. Little has come of this capability, and the EU has since shifted its policy towards developing 'battlegroups'. These are units of around 1500 troops to be deployed on very short notice. Whitney estimates that two are now actually operational.
Whitney's policy paper is marked by a post-cold war strain of thought that sees current security threats mainly in failed, failing or recovering states, in which intervention has to take place. It is odd to place this in the context of a struggle against Russia, as Simon Tisdall does in the Guardian, since Whitney specifically lambasts Europe's excessive capacities to fight war in Central Europe, and questions expensive projects like aircraft carriers. Europe's current manpower is too large, in Whitney's view, and at the same time not enough of it can be deployed abroad.
The reason for the failure of EU defence policies is that some Member States are simply unwilling to put in any effort, according to Whitney, and the solution to this would be to form a 'pioneer group', which allows those Member States who are willing to move forward to do so without being held back. Legally speaking, his move would however be very difficult if the Lisbon Treaty is not implemented.
Whitney has a certain level of bias towards the EU as the locus of European defence integration as a former head of the European Defence Agency. If there are no legal means for some Member States to move ahead without the others, it might however be opportune to think about doing this in a new context, or in the old extra-EU context of the Western European Union.
The policy paper also includes an excellent overview of the current military capacities and commitments of the Member States, although some of its composite statistics have to be approached with caution, as accounting and defence spending are still structured differently in the EU.
Capabilities is one area in which the EU is in for harsh criticism. Whitney also criticises the lack of a common, coherent strategy, inability to learn from past missions, poor interoperability, and fragmented command and control. He favours centralisation of planning, through a headquarters in Brussels and incorporation of civilian elements in the procedure, to ensure better coordination with civilian reconstruction and aid efforts.
I've raised the issues of the lack of a coherent strategy and the politicised nature of current and past missions on my blog in the post 'European Geopolitics'
European defence integration will become more of a topic during the current French presidency of the EU. It is quite possible that some bold moves towards further integration will be announced. Whether they will actually be implemented is more questionable.
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