Cooperation and Conflict
http://cac.sagepub.com
ESDP and NATO: Wedlock or Deadlock?
Jolyon Howorth
Cooperation and Conflict 2003; 38; 235
DOI: 10.1177/00108367030383003
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ESDP and NATO
Wedlock or Deadlock?
JOLYON HOWORTH
ABSTRACT
The debate over NATO’s future intensified after the Prague summit in
November 2002 when the Alliance was deemed to have given itself a
global role in the war on terror through the creation of the NATO
Response Force (NRF). However, squabbles inside the Alliance over
Iraq and continuing uncertainties about the potential future role of
NATO forces ‘out of area’ re-launched the debate in the spring of 2003.
Experts remain bitterly divided between the ‘NATO is Dead’ school
and the ‘NATO Rides Again’ schools. One key to the future lies in the
viability of the NRF as a form of glue, which can hold the EU member
state, and the US together. Prague heralded a new honeymoon between
the two sides of the Atlantic, but both political and military problems
confront attempts to operationalize any matchmaking role for the NRF.
Meanwhile, ESDP continues to make steady progress towards its own
‘Headline Goal’ of military forces. Whether NATO as an alliance or
ESDP as an autonomous political-military project will become the priority concern of the individual EU member states depends in large
measure on the future course of EU-US relations and on unforeseen
‘events’, but in the current climate it is difficult to express optimism
about a renewed harmonious partnership between the two sides of the
Atlantic.
Keywords: Atlantic Alliance; ESDP; European Union; military capacity; military force; NATO; NATO Response Force
Introduction
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has regularly been pronounced moribund — or even dead. The Alliance nevertheless appeared to have sprung
back to life at its Prague summit in November 2002, announcing the creation of a new NATO Response Force (NRF) — with a global remit – and
welcoming into its ranks most of the countries of the former Soviet ‘evil
empire’. Yet it also appeared to have failed at the first hurdle in its new
global guise when, in January 2003, several European allies refused to
endorse American proposals to offer security guarantees to Turkey in
the event of a threat from Iraq (Gordon, 2003). During the Iraq crisis, the
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association
Vol. 38(3): 235–254. Copyright ©2003 NISA www.ps.au.dk/NISA
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Central and Eastern European accession partners found themselves caught
in an apparent zero-sum choice between allegiance to the EU and allegiance to NATO. Since then, officials and commentators on both sides of
the pond have been busy again with hammers and coffin nails. NATO will
survive. The EU needs NATO because, for the foreseeable future, it will
remain militarily impotent without it. The US needs NATO to legitimize its
ongoing presence and influence in Europe. However, the form in which the
Alliance will survive remains very unclear. Two opposing schools of thought
offer pieces of what is becoming a multi-dimensional puzzle.
The ‘NATO is Dead’ School
A wide range of analysts insist that the Alliance is, to all intents and purposes, already dead as a military instrument (Braithwaite, 2003; Gedmin,
2002; Krauthammer, 2002; Kupchan, 2002; Nau, 2002; van Ham, 2002). There
are four main sets of arguments underpinning this thesis. The first has to do
with the effects of enlargement. The more Central and Eastern European
countries (CEECs) NATO embraces, the more it will resemble the OSCE
and become little more than a talking shop. Moreover, Eastern enlargement abandons the initial raison d’être of NATO (strengthening Western
Europe) and creates a new Alliance challenge: that of managing tensions in
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and particularly between CEE and
Russia. The whole centre of gravity of the Alliance shifts eastwards, bringing with it many more problems than solutions. At the same time, these
same critics say, enlargement, on balance, (whatever NATO official propaganda might claim), weakens rather than strengthens the Alliance militarily.
The military considerations constitute the second set of arguments. The
capabilities gap grows wider every day and will worsen in 2004 with the
accession of the CEECs. Ever since Kosovo, the US military has preferred
to fight high intensity warfare alone or with the one or two allies capable of
interoperability. The NATO Response Force (NRF), which is in part geared
to bridging or solving that gap, is too small a force to make much difference.
Mechanisms for intra-Alliance force enhancement such as European
Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF)
and ‘Berlin Plus’1 had serious structural flaws from the outset. Although the
current EU defence spend ($160 billion) is by far the second largest in the
world, it will largely remain a waste of resources until it is spent collectively
and rationally. In any case, these critics stress, the US military is increasingly
marginalized from the Alliance. Does the US, they ask, really care about
NATO any more?
This leads to the third set of arguments which has to do with the nature of
alliances in general and of NATO in particular. The mass of US ‘realist’ literature argues that alliances do not outlive their historical function (Walt,
1987). NATO’s primary function (collective defence) is now neither necessary nor guaranteed, while its secondary function (collective security) has
become more ill-defined and diffuse. Attempts to keep the old NATO alive
since 1989 have been based on nostalgia, corporatism — or simply cynicism:
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‘keep the myth alive’ is the remark attributed to senior Pentagon official
Douglas Feith (now denied by Feith). Moreover, when, in the words of
Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz (2002), ‘the mission determines
the coalition’, there can be no such thing as a fixed or permanent Alliance.
The fourth — most substantial — set of arguments has to do with EU–US
divergence. These critics argue that, especially since 9/11, transatlantic differences have become so intense that the Alliance will not be able to stand
the strain. Whatever their shared interests in taming Al-Qaeda, the EU and
the US have very different ultimate global objectives and policy priorities.
They have different methods and approaches, considerable differences of
strategic or security culture and enormous — and growing — disparities of
power and capability. The EU has virtually no chance of exercising serious
influence over US policy (even through the deployment of military
power).2 Any prospect — however minimal — of ‘reining in’ a triumphant
and invincible US can currently only be attempted by nation states and not
by the EU collectively, still less by a hypothetical EU caucus within NATO.
The US — particularly, but not exclusively under the Bush administration
— has relatively little direct strategic (as opposed to commercial or economic) interest in the EU and certainly no interest in pandering to it, while
the EU has a major interest in emerging as a global actor in its own right.
For these critics, the Alliance in its traditional — predominantly military —
guise is simply riddled with holes.
The ‘NATO Rides Again’ Schools
Even the most optimistic, pro-NATO commentators recognize that the
above arguments constitute a major indictment of the current state of affairs
within the Alliance. Can NATO be ‘transformed’ (the buzz word
of Prague)? There are three separate schools of transformation. The first
aspires to recreate a transatlantic community akin to the old one forged in the
1950s and theorized by Karl Deutsch (1957) in terms of a ‘security community’ (Sloan, 2002). In a world of new and heinous threats, NATO will reinvent itself, based on norms, values and genuine greater sharing as well as
military adaptation to the post-Westphalian world. The US will develop
more soft instruments and the EU more hard ones and there will be a new
type of EU–US covenant or treaty to embrace NATO and broaden its remit.
The second transformation school sees NATO continuing to function as
a simple guarantor of regional stability in its classic (Euro-Atlantic)
regional zone. NATO will remain fixed on the European region and,
together with the EU, will continue to concentrate on stabilizing that part
of the world from which so much disorder has previously emanated, concentrating on collective security and stability rather than collective defence.
Gradually, the Europeans — via ESDP — will come to dominate this system (Yost, 1998; Forster and Wallace, 2001/02).
The third — by far the biggest — chapel sees NATO transforming itself
into a pseudo-global alliance reconfigured to tackle the challenges of international terrorism and the post-Westphalian order.3 There are many
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nuances and different agendas within this broad chapel, but it is united in
its belief that the two sides of the Atlantic will face the future shoulder to
shoulder and that there will be no geographical limits to the reborn
Alliance’s area of operations.
The merits and demerits of these various theses are difficult to weigh
since they appear to represent diametrically opposed viewpoints. The proponents of the ‘NATO is dead’ school focus overwhelmingly on the significance of the changes which have taken place within the Alliance since the
end of the Cold War and essentially argue that the NATO of that era has
passed into history. They also insist that the Alliance as an effective military
instrument will prove difficult if not impossible to reconstruct and that its
dominant future functions will be political and organizational. Those who
believe that the Alliance can be recreated around a transatlantic security
community base their argument on a fundamental belief in an underlying
identity or commonality of interests and values between the two sides of
the Atlantic. But the glue behind the original Deutschian security community also required the galvanizing existence of a massive external threat. It
is unlikely that the threat of global terrorism or the challenge of global
injustice can play such a role. The notion that NATO can be revived in the
guise of a European take-over of the Alliance’s original regional security
functions depends crucially on the progress of ESDP. Assuming the
enlarged EU succeeds in delivering on the original objectives behind the
ESDP project (an efficient institutional mechanism for decision-taking and
a credible military capacity for regional peace-keeping), then the objective
of burden-sharing or equalization of responsibility which has been such a
hot potato within NATO for decades could well lead to precisely such
a transformation of the Alliance. Whether, on the other hand, NATO could
— either in parallel or subsequently — be transformed into a global antiterror alliance depends on a host of crucial factors. The fortunes of the
NATO Response Force, created at the Prague summit, is one important key
to this particular scenario.
The NATO Response Force
The NRF emerged out of several parallel developments. The first was the
perceived need to give the military capacity of the alliance new impetus and
a new focus in the world of terrorism. The second was the desire to do
something to help EU forces to remain interoperable with their US counterparts and to avoid further strategic and force structure divergence
between NATO and the emerging European RRF. The third was the aim of
forcing EU member states to take more seriously the challenge of deploying hard power. The result was a plan which was first discussed at a special
meeting of NATO defence ministers in Warsaw (25 September 2002) and
launched at the NATO summit in Prague (21–2 November 2002). The
details of the NRF remain sketchy, but the basics are as follows:
•
Forces: from all NATO member states and from all three services.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
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Overall size: approximately 21,000 combat personnel drawn from: (a)
Land forces up to brigade size; (b) Maritime forces up to NATO
Standing Naval Force size and (c) Command and Control and Air
assets capable of carrying out up to 200 combat sorties daily.
Rotation: six-month periods among six ‘high readiness’ CJTF headquarters.
Deployable: within one week to one month.
Duration: operational for up to three months.
Range: anywhere in the world.
Equipment: state of the art weaponry designed for high intensity
combat.
Operational: initial capabilities by October 2003; fully operational by
2006.
After the November 2002 decision to go ahead with the NRF, both the
international community and NATO were massively distracted by events in
Iraq. As a result, little significant progress was made in answering the many
questions which analysts and journalists had posed. Reference was frequently made to the assumed role in NRF of the ‘niche capabilities’ available via the new accession states — highly specialized mountain troops
from Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia; explosive ordnance disposal (EOD)
skills from the Baltic states; chemical, biological and nuclear defence capabilities show-cased by the Czech Republic. But to make an impact, these
niche capabilities would have to be embedded in crack war-fighting forces
from the major alliance member states.
It is not without significance that the new Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe (SACEUR), General James L. Jones, appointed in January 2003, is
the first officer from the US Marine Corps to assume the top NATO post.
He immediately engaged in active promotion of the NRF concept. He gradually outlined a more structured vision of the NRF than was implicit in the
Prague texts. This involved a three-stage NRF. The first would be a small,
rapidly mobilizable, 2000 troop expeditionary force, potentially operational
in 2003. The second would be a larger deployable force, ready to take over
from the expeditionary force, should the latter prove inadequate, more
robust, slower to arrive in theatre, but capable of sustained combat. The
third would be for use in a major regional conflict and would involve the
mobilization of the entire NRF (Jones, 2003). None of this had, by summer
2003, been formally discussed within the North Atlantic Council (NAC).
Implementation of this scenario for the NRF posed a number of major
questions.
First, there is the question of joint training. Unless these forces train regularly together, their combat effectiveness will be in doubt. It is not clear to
what extent the US military has either the desire or the time to engage in
such exercises with a range of disparate EU forces. The US sees NRF as a
European contribution to US capabilities. The precise US commitment to
the force remains unclear. Second, there is the question of command rotation. The political rationale behind rotation is clear – the involvement of all
alliance members. But this hardly seems to square with the demands of
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military effectiveness. The model of the EU’s six-month rotating presidency
is hardly encouraging.
However, the biggest question mark of all has continued to hover over
the problematic relationship between the NRF and the embryonic
European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF). This is the major conundrum at
the heart of NATO’s future. One immediate issue had to do with hidden
agendas. Many analysts argued that the US objective was to kill off the
ERRF via the NRF. They are almost certainly wrong – just as those conspiracy theorists in the US who see the ERRF itself as a plot to subvert
NATO are wrong. Either might yet prove to be the — indirect — result of
current developments, but neither is the main objective. It is clearly in the
US interest to have a European capacity which can stabilize the European
area and thereby relieve US forces for duties in more urgent areas.
Compatibility issues exist at two distinct levels. At the political level, the
key question is whether the EU and NATO (meaning, essentially, the US)
can agree on whether the basic strategic interests of the US and the EU are
identical, merely compatible or actually divergent. The UK explicitly says
‘identical’ (Hoon, 2002). The US appears agnostic. France takes a more
sceptical view, but nevertheless assumes that core interests — especially
since 9/11 — are more compatible than contradictory. Other EU member
states have a range of nuanced views. On balance, core interests are generally seen as, at best identical, at worst compatible. However, even here, most
analysts assume that, from time to time (as over Iraq in 2003), there will be
serious differences of opinion over core interests.
The more significant problem has to do with methodology. How can the
Alliance best go about forging the world the two sides see in similar terms?
Are they agreed on adopting a new division of labour whereby the ERRF
will essentially play a Petersberg role in the European theatre and the NRF
will potentially play a high intensity warfare role globally? While there are
undoubtedly significant differences of nuance in the various responses to
that question, the answer is probably in the affirmative. However, France
would not wish permanently to limit the ERRF’s role to Petersberg and the
UK would not wish the ERRF role to be disconnected from NATO. The
two sides would seem to be in basic agreement on the division of responsibilities outlined above, as long as a modicum of rebalancing can take place
— the EU needs more hard power, the US more soft power (LindleyFrench, 2002). Far more difficult is the issue of the potentially global role of
the NRF. Would the EU collectively agree to swap US engagement in securing European order (the original raison d’être behind the Alliance) for
European engagement in securing US world order? Some nations would
probably agree (UK; Italy under Berlusconi and Spain under Aznar, but not
under other leaders; many of the new accession countries). Some would
definitely not — at least not if the stakes were couched in such terms:
France, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece, the neutrals. Despite the
hype of Prague, there is no clear agreement on transforming NATO into an
instrument of US global policy.
Beyond the overarching strategic principle involved, could the two sides
agree on the sort of strategic usage of the NRF which seems to be at the
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heart of US thinking: non-mandated, pre-emptive, frequent? In a general
sense, this is a debate about the use of force in the post-Westphalian world
(Everts and Schmitt, 2002). Initial French strictures spoke of a UN mandate, no out-of-area usage and no pre-emption (which essentially de-fanged
the entire project from the outset). Subsequently, this shifted to conditional
support based on equal access to the NRF for both NATO and the EU,
shared operational planning and priority usage in the European theatre.
Joschka Fischer insisted that German support would be predicated on three
caveats: (1) unanimity in the NAC; (2) the Bundestag to authorize German
involvement; (3) NRF and ERRF to be totally separate forces. The answer,
therefore, to the question as to whether the EU collectively would go along
with what is assumed to be the US approach to the strategic use of the NRF
is almost certainly that it would not.
Therefore, it is by no means certain that the politics of ERRF/NRF coordination can be made to work. At the military level, moreover, the difficulties continue to accumulate. A key issue is that of the source of the NRF
forces. Different ‘authorities’ argue that the forces will either draw on the
same pool or that they will draw on quite different pools. One assumption
is that some — probably most — nations will ‘double-hat’ their contributions, while a few might offer separate contributions. Given the limited
resources available in Europe and the difficulties in putting together even
the unambitious ERRF, a fair assumption would be that the force pool from
which NRF and ERRF would be drawn would be predominantly the same.
If that were the case, then all sorts of problems immediately arise: command
and control; right of first refusal; planning. If the pool is largely separate,
many of those problems go away. Yet separateness poses its own problems.
It would create what some have called a ‘cream-skimming’ situation where
the NRF would hive off the very best units in the EU and deploy them in
the service of US grand strategy. That would have a highly negative effect
on the ERRF, already struggling to become operational. Separateness also
runs counter to one main purpose of the NRF, which is to guarantee interoperability with US forces, as well as counter to NATO which has always
been based on shared risks and shared responsibilities. If some national
forces from different EU member states are trained and equipped to be
interoperable, and others are not, what does that say about the remaining
force? It would tend to confirm the wishful thinking of anti-EU conservative elements in the UK which have predicted that the British alone will
participate in the NRF and the rest of the EU member states will join a ‘second division’ ERRF force — led by France and Germany.
Another military problem is the planned size of the NRF. Many analysts
dismiss the 20,000-man force as too small to be significant (Clarke and
Cornish, 2002). But it is geared to very specific and relatively limited missions. To the extent to which it could prove invaluable to an overstretched
US, there is some potential mileage in the arrangement. The trickier problems have to do with command, strategic purpose and ‘fit’ with more global
US plans. It is very difficult to see how this particular force configuration
could be anything other than a token use of Europe’s best military resources
in the service of the US. In the long term that is a certain recipe for tension.
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There remains, therefore, considerable doubt about the political and
military viability of the NRF, particularly given the experience of the Iraq
war in March-April 2003. US strategic interests are moving very fast, both
in terms of capabilities and in terms of geography. The proposed long-term
basing facilities which the US is reported to be seeking from a future
government of Iraq will have many consequences for NATO. One of them
could be a less significant role for Turkey. The other will be the future role
of NATO ‘out of area’.
The ‘Out-Of-Area’ Debate Intensifies in the Wake of the
Iraq War
Whether or not the NRF emerges as the miracle solution to re-cement US
and EU strategic interests, new demands on NATO as a military instrument
to be used ‘out of area’ have multiplied in 2003. Several proposals appeared
on the agenda. First, that NATO should take over the command of ISAF
(International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan. This was requested
by the countries leading ISAF in the first half of 2003, Germany and the
Netherlands, and also by Canada, which will take over the command of
ISAF in August 2003. In April 2003, the NAC agreed to take on the command, coordination and planning of the ISAF operation. NATO is supplying an in-theatre HQ to command and coordinate the operation, a force
commander (selected by SACEUR), strategic C3 (via Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), an ISAF coordination cell
and political direction through the NAC. This is the largest mission NATO
has ever launched (almost 5000 troops) outside its traditional European
theatre. However, the operation will continue to function under a UN mandate (UNSC resolution 1386). No NATO flag will fly in Kabul and the
NATO forces will be restricted to stabilization missions around Kabul
(whereas US troops in operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ perform combat missions across Afghanistan). The fact that France, Belgium and one or two
other countries did not object when the proposal was debated in the NAC
can in part be attributed to the French desire, at that specific moment in
time, not to exacerbate further an already poisonous relationship with
Washington. It does not mean that France has now accepted the principle
of NATO ‘out-of-area’ missions. Prior to the 16 April debate in the NAC,
France had strongly resisted a role for NATO in Afghanistan, but German
pressures may also have been brought to bear in Paris. The decision to give
NATO a semi-official role in Afghanistan, while symbolically significant,
cannot yet be read as a new policy direction.
This is all the more true in that the parallel proposals to use NATO as a
substantial peace-keeping force in Iraq proved much more controversial.
When the idea was originally floated by Paul Wolfowitz in December 2002,
it was immediately seized upon by sceptical countries as evidence of a US
plan to enlist NATO in its war plans for Iraq. The idea then got caught in
the crossfire of the ‘guarantees to Turkey’ fiasco in February 2003. The
spring 2003 proposals came from Atlanticist sources in the US and the
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EU, eager both to avoid a US military monopoly in Iraq and to find a
‘cementing’ role for EU and US forces. But the use of NATO as the
principal peace-keeping force in Iraq found favour neither with the Bush
administration, nor with those countries such as France, Germany and
Russia which opposed the war from the outset, nor indeed with Canada,
which objected on the grounds that a major NATO role in Iraq would rule
out the planned mission in Afghanistan. In April 2003, Bush administration
spokespersons floated the idea of NATO taking over the limited function
of weapons inspectors to destroy any residual stocks of WMD which might
turn up. This was too obviously an effort to circumvent the UN role in Iraq,
while avoiding giving NATO a major role in peacekeeping. Eventually,
agreement was reached on NATO offering logistics and communications
assistance to the (politically symbolic) Polish-led force of 8000 troops being
positioned between the US-run northern occupation zone in Iraq and the
UK-run southern zone (Dempsey, 2003). The politics of finding new functions for the Alliance continues to pose a major headache for the transatlantic community.
A third ‘out of area’ proposal, put forward in February 2003 by Norway
was to use NATO as an inter-positioning force between the Israeli army
and the Palestinians in the West Bank. The proposal was formulated by
Thorbjoern Jagland, a former member of the Mitchell Committee who, at
the time, was Chair of Norway’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
Washington studiously ignored it. Another idea floated in April 2003 was to
use NATO to interpose between Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir.
These various proposals demonstrate how difficult it is likely to be — politically — for the Alliance to reach agreement on the use of its forces in a
global context. NATO’s official line is that the Alliance has played an
important role in the war on terrorism — in Afghanistan, in the Balkans,
through naval patrols in the Mediterranean (‘Active Endeavour’), through
its Partnership Action Plan on Terrorism, through projects on WMD and
Civil Protection, missile defence and protection against cyber terrorism.
The reality, however, is that the war on terrorism is best conducted not by
an essentially military organization, but via police, intelligence and a range
of soft instruments which are far more appropriately coordinated through
other international organizations, including the UN, the EU and the OSCE.
The ‘out-of-area debate’, somewhat hastily declared at Prague to have been
resolved, is still very much a live issue and will continue to complicate
NATO’s attempts to find a new role in the 21st century.
The NATO ‘Transformation’ Project
A new, streamlined command structure was introduced in June 2003. This
aims to make NATO leaner, more flexible, more efficient, and better able to
conduct the full range of Alliance missions around the globe. At the strategic level, there will be only one operational command — Allied Command
Operations (ACO) — under the SACEUR. ACO will combine the operational duties previously undertaken both by Allied Command Europe and
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by Allied Command Atlantic (SACLANT, which will cease to exist).
Beneath this level, there will be just two standing Joint Force Commands
(JFCs) — at Brunssum, (Netherlands), and Naples — able to conduct operations from their static HQ or to provide a land-based Combined Joint Task
Force (CJTF) headquarters. There will also be a more limited standing Joint
Headquarters (JHQ), in Lisbon from which a deployable sea-based CJTF
HQ can be drawn. Previously, NATO fielded five regional commands.
A new functional command, Allied Command Transformation (ACT),
will be established to promote and oversee the continuing transformation
of Alliance forces and capabilities. ACT will be commanded by a new position, the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) whose first
incumbent will be US Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, based in Norfolk,
Virginia. The main purpose of this transformation is to end NATO’s role as
a static defensive system against the Red Army and to configure it for rapid
force projection using the high-technology weaponry of the 21st century.
Smart weapons, GPS-guidance, network-centric warfare and other developments have allowed considerable reductions in the size of field headquarters. Today, infantry companies can do the work that required entire
battalions 20 years ago. However, this considerable effort of transformation
depends, for its effectiveness, on the continuation of tight Euro-American
cooperation within the Alliance. It is this key element which many analysts
are currently questioning.
Two sets of arguments underlie the concerns of the NATO-sceptics. The
first is that the four major military campaigns which have been waged since
the end of the Cold War (the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) have
borne little resemblance to each other. Each has involved a different type
of enemy and a different style of warfare. This is also true of missions such
as those the British have undertaken in Sierra Leone or the French in Ivory
Coast. An imaginary mission to ‘rescue’ European residents from Abidjan
or Algiers would be very different again. Such missions would not necessarily be best undertaken either by the NRF or by the ERRF. This feeds
directly into deputy secretary Wolfowitz’s observation that ‘the mission
defines the coalition’ (and indeed appears to contradict some of the logic
behind the NRF, which is at least in part predicated on the notion that ‘the
coalition defines the mission’). In this context, NATO appears, at most, to
have an appropriate function as a facilitator of coalitions rather than as the
provider of the main military response. If this were to be the case, its function as a military organization would indeed be even further eroded.
The likelihood of NATO shifting to such an organizational role is
enhanced by the second set of arguments deployed by the sceptics, which
has to do with a perceived waning of interest in NATO on the part of the
US. While this has been particularly evident under the Bush administration,
signs of it were already appearing under the Clinton administration. The
end of the Cold War clearly reduced the centrality of Europe to US global
strategy. At the same time, the main US theatre commands became increasingly unrelated to NATO, and particularly to its training standards and
operational procedures and norms. Most of the combat missions in Kosovo
came not under NATO command but under direct US command. When
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92% of US forces are unconnected to NATO, the role of the Alliance in US
strategic planning becomes difficult to discern with any clarity. This highlights once again the problem of the growing capabilities gap between the
US and the EU. Unless the Europeans make themselves capable of fighting
alongside US forces, the latter will have no alternative but to operate on
their own. There is therefore a real danger, in this view, that a three-tier
‘alliance’ could emerge. In the first tier there would be one or two countries
(the UK, France) which could operate with US troops, almost certainly outside NATO control. In the second tier there would be the majority of the
European alliance members, still configured for Cold War postures, thus
making recent Alliance restructuring irrelevant. Finally, the new accession
countries whose real capabilities — other than in niche specialisms —
would be extremely limited.
Although the Bush administration appeared, at Prague, genuinely to wish
to revitalize the Alliance, and although this effort is (sporadically) ongoing,
it is undermined by high-profile statements which are profoundly divisive
of Alliance solidarity: comments to the effect that Germany can be compared to Libya and Cuba; protracted attempts to make distinctions between
‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe; assertions that France must be ‘punished’ for questioning aspects of US policy; suggestions that US bases in Germany might
be shifted to Poland; or that Belgium might cease to be the host nation for
NATO headquarters. Such incidents, cumulatively, appear to many (not
only in Europe) as something more than mere lapses on the part of exasperated US officials. They could reasonably be mistaken for US policy.
Whither ESDP in the Wake of the Iraq War?
On the surface, ESDP as a unified policy stance looked, in the early summer of 2003, to be on the sick list, particularly since the megaphone
polemics over Iraq. Most of the anti-terrorism policy coordination post-9/11
had been in the field of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) rather than in that
of security and defence. There remained significant differences among the
member states as to how far and in what way they wished to associate themselves with and/or support US policy on major strategic issues. There was an
ongoing and increasingly confused debate about military capacity which
resurfaced on the occasion of the third ‘Capabilities Conference’ in
Brussels in May 2003. The Franco-British motor seemed to have seized up
and been (temporarily?) replaced by a Franco-German bicycle with little
real dynamism behind it. NATO, post-Prague, seemed to be in the ascendant while ESDP was casting around for a role.
In the long term, all of the deeply rooted historical and political reasons
why ESDP emerged in the first place still hold and indeed have been reinforced by the crisis (Howorth, 2003). They have been reinforced at two
levels: politically by the urgency of coordinating policy against existing and
emerging threats and of addressing the deeper roots of the current crisis
(especially in the context of enlargement which brings any potential
crisis zone closer); but also militarily since the EU is now more dependent
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than ever on its own resources.4 Moreover, the institutions of ESDP have
functioned well, despite the complexity and the urgency of the problems on
the table. Analysts remained practically unanimous in concluding that new
challenges strengthen rather than weaken the EU’s institutions (Ginsberg,
2002; Deighton, 2002). What, then, are, at the time of writing (May 2003) the
major current and future problems facing ESDP as a project?
First, the most far-reaching and significant question has to do with finalité
— a buzzword for what it is the EU wishes to become: a glorified market or
a world actor? Clearly, around the table at 15 and even more so at 25, there
is not (and will not be for some time) any absolute agreement on this issue.
But there is much more agreement than one might suspect. No member
state argues in favour of the EU remaining simply a marketplace. Even the
UK accepts the need for a tightening and strengthening of the EU’s institutions, and the cold reality of trade flows, investments, complex interdependence and the ratchet effect of integration have pretty much delivered
the broad verdict. The EU does intend to become some form of serious
international actor. Two questions therefore remain: Precisely what form
will this take? Can the US learn to live with it? The Convention and the
2004 IGC are dealing with the first question and we shall have to await
the details. As to the response to the second question, the answer is beyond
doubt. At the level of everyday interactions, EU–US relations are deeply
embedded in a ‘dense network of multilateral links’ (Wallace, 2001: 17). As
Javier Solana points out,
for all the talk about NAFTA or the ‘Asian century’, over the past eight years
American investment in the Netherlands alone was twice what it was in
Mexico and ten times what it was in China. There is more European investment in Texas than all the American investment in Japan. More than twelve
and a half million Americans and Europeans owe their livelihoods directly to
the $2.5 trillion transatlantic commercial relationship (Solana, 2003).
Divorce is simply not an option. The major remaining question is therefore:
what will be the effect of all this at the other level — strategy, security,
defence?
An initial part of the answer relates to the second major problem facing
ESDP and that is the motor behind it. That motor (Franco-British) was
always based on constructive ambiguity. For the UK, ESDP was essentially
a NATO project with an EU instrument; for France, it was an EU project
with an Atlanticist instrument. As long as the emphasis was on forging the
European dimension of the new transatlantic order (from Saint-Malo to
9/11), this ambiguity might have delayed progress, but it did not pose insuperable problems. After 9/11 and particularly as the Iraq crisis mounted,
that ceased to be the case. The intra-EU divisions over policy towards the
Iraq crisis stemmed from differing responses to new implications in the field
of international law and specifically in the use of pre-emptive warfare as an
instrument of policy. Three players all had a major role in this unfolding
drama. Tony Blair had been the driving force behind ESDP in its early
years (1998–2001). However, after 9/11, Blair became convinced that, while
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still important, European security autonomy was a second-order priority
behind the global war on terror. Blair believes that the UK can act as a
pivotal force between the EU and the US in this new global campaign. He
is a courageous leader, prepared both to take risks and to stick to his principles. Convinced, like his US counterpart, that the most dangerous threat
in the post-9/11 world was a combination of fanaticism and weapons of
mass destruction, he appears to have decided as early as summer 2002 that
war with Iraq was probably inescapable and therefore could be legitimated.
Jacques Chirac, Blair’s co-sponsor of the ESDP project, was also concerned
about weapons of mass destruction and, in the mid-1990s, had had to deal
directly with Islamic terrorism. But Chirac, over the summer of 2002,
became increasingly concerned about the broader implications of the new
US doctrine of pre-emption. In a major interview with the New York Times
on 8 September, he made a number of key points. First, that Iraq must be
made to disarm. Second, that this should be overseen by the United Nations
via a new inspections regime. Third, that if inspections failed, the authorization of the use of force must also be mandated by the United Nations.
Fourth, that everything must be done to avoid destabilizing the Middle
East. And fifth, that he could not endorse ‘regime change’ as a political
objective. Like Blair, Chirac stuck to his stated principles throughout the
current crisis. The third key player was German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder. Schroeder took a major political risk in October 2001, when he
strong-armed a motion authorizing the deployment of German combat
troops to Afghanistan through a sceptical Bundestag. However, during the
German elections of September 2002, candidate Schroeder, fighting for his
political survival, capitalized on a deep-rooted post-1945 German aversion
to war by professing his absolute opposition to war in Iraq.
Thus, on 1 January 2003, the three main European nations embarked on
three distinct policy paths with respect to Iraq. Britain was prepared to go
to war. Germany had ruled out going to war. France was keeping open all
options. UNSC Resolution 1441 suited everybody. The problem with 1441
was that it contained two contradictory logics: it was both a legitimation of
military action should inspections prove to be a dead-end; and an alternative to military action. Thereafter, under the pressure of a rapidly escalating
crisis, the Europeans allowed themselves to be corralled into two seemingly
irreconcilable camps. Prior to January 2003, only Germany had stated
openly its opposition to the use of military force to remove Saddam
Hussein. That position was based on a peculiarly German reading of international law and of the specifics of the Iraq crisis.5 Amid the emotion of the
40th anniversary celebrations of the Franco-German Elysée Treaty of 1963,
by which the two countries put an end to a century of war, Chirac made the
first of several strategic errors. He appeared to narrow the gap between
himself and Chancellor Schroeder by declaring that the two countries had
‘a common position’ on the Iraq crisis. One week later, as if in reaction to
the Franco-German statements, Prime Minister Blair, together with seven
other European leaders (henceforth known as the ‘Gang of Eight’),6 published an open letter stating their attachment to the ‘transatlantic bond’. Yet
the differences between and among the EU member states should not be
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overblown. The Franco-German ‘agreement’ of 22 January posited two
simple principles: that any decision on how to disarm Iraq should remain
that of the UNSC; and that war should be considered the worst of all solutions. The ‘Gang of Eight’ statement of 30 January also gave centre stage to
the UNSC, but stressed the community of values between Europe and the
United States and the need to ensure respect for UN Resolutions. It was
not a call for war, but specifically stated that ‘the solidarity, cohesion and
determination of the international community are our best hope of achieving [disarmament] peacefully’. Chirac himself (had he been invited) could
almost certainly have signed. Neither of these positions was incompatible
with the conclusions of the Extraordinary European Council meeting in
Brussels on 17 February 2003, which insisted on five main points:
•
•
•
•
•
EU determination to deal effectively with the threat of WMD proliferation.
Commitment to the UN remaining at the centre of the international
order.
Commitment to full and effective disarmament of Iraq in accordance
with Resolution 1441.
Full support for the UN inspectors who should be given the time and
resources they need, without continuing indefinitely in the absence of
Iraqi cooperation.
Force should only be used as a last resort.
Beyond the continuing differences among EU member states as to the precise nature of their relationship with the US, the major basis of disagreement among the EU member states and accession candidates hinged largely
around the timing of that last point. On that crucial issue, their margin of
negotiation was abruptly removed when war broke out on 19 March. It is,
therefore, something of a miracle that the venom with which the Iraq crisis
was treated by the world’s media appears not to have produced spill-over
into other aspects of bilateral or multilateral European affairs.
Recent ESDP Developments
The blockage, first by Turkey, then by Greece, of the ‘Berlin Plus’ arrangements had been a major problem for the operationalization of ESDP
(Webber et al., 2002). Considerable pressure was applied throughout 2002 on
both Athens and Ankara, both by the EU and by the US. Eventually,Turkey,
keen to make progress on a range of interconnected issues (including the
Aegean, and Turkish membership of the EU) agreed to a formula whereby
Cyprus, on the somewhat technical grounds that it belonged neither to
NATO nor to Partnership For Peace (PFP), could not be covered by ‘Berlin
Plus’ arrangements, thereby ruling out any prospect of the EU threatening
Turkish interests in the Aegean. The resolution of the ‘Berlin Plus’ dispute
then allowed the EU and NATO to make a landmark Declaration on ESDP
(16 December 2002) providing a formal basis for cooperation between the
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two organizations in the areas of crisis management and conflict prevention.
The EU and NATO were then theoretically in a position to progress their
relationship in mutually reinforcing ways, while nevertheless recognizing
that they are organizations of a different nature. In particular, the EU can
now rely on access to NATO’s formidable planning capabilities, which has
always been the essential prerequisite to any credible EU military operation.
In principle, the Europeans can also look forward to more extensive access
to other (essentially US) assets, although, in the context of America’s current
involvement with Al-Qaeda, Iraq and North Korea, the availability of such
assets cannot be taken for granted.
The Franco-German defence proposals of December 2002 and January
2003 were aimed at presenting a common front on certain institutional and
procurement issues geared essentially towards enhancing European integration. They include:
•
•
•
•
•
The proposal to transform ESDP into a European Union of Security
and Defence (EUSD), a notion which remains unexplained, but which
implies tighter institutional coordination. This will be informed by a
common ‘global vision of security’ and a joint threat assessment.
The inclusion in the Treaty of an article on ‘common solidarity and
security’, which most commentators interpret as a call for an EU
‘article 5’ commitment to collective defence.
The adoption of EU procedures on ‘enhanced cooperation’ and
increasing use of qualified majority voting across the range of ESDP
activities with the explicit exclusion of military operations.
A commitment to increases in military capacity, joint procurement
projects, joint air and sea commands and joint training — all of which
have been mooted for months if not years.
A joint approach to the fight against terrorism.
This rather bland declaration conceals the reality of an ongoing divergence
in security culture which, despite the closeness of the French and German
positions on Iraq, actually prevents the two countries from becoming the
power-house of European security and defence policy — other than as the
promoters of an ‘autonomy’ whose achievement, paradoxically, will depend
heavily on the UK as the EU’s biggest military power.
Franco-British cooperation, despite everything, remains alive. The
Communiqué issued after the 5 February 2003, Le Touquet summit contained several concrete proposals for a muscular EU military capacity
designed to allow the EU to achieve autonomy in peace-keeping and even
peace-enforcing missions:
•
A commitment to expand the scope of EU peace-keeping missions in
the Balkans concretized by a late February 2003 Franco-British proposal
on taking over NATO’s mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This commitment to peace-keeping, however, is also explicitly set in a global context
as the muscular arm of the overall objectives of the EU’s CFSP. A special agreement on cooperation in Africa complements this initiative.
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•
•
•
•
COOPERATION AND CONFLICT 38(3)
A statement of solidarity and mutual assistance based on the notion of
the identity of strategic interests between the two countries. The
novelty in this approach is that it explicitly links a hypothetical ‘solidarity clause’ in the new Treaty to the necessary measures to be taken
against terrorism and commits both countries to share all available
instruments, civil and military.
The development of military capacity. Several specific proposals are formulated, including new quantitative and qualitative indicators to ensure
the achievement of the Helsinki Headline Goal by its due date in
December 2003 and the establishment of a new intergovernmental procurement agency with a solid list of functions and objectives, including
enhanced cooperation on research and development and the acceleration of ongoing work under both OCCAR and the Letter of Intent.
Prioritization of Rapid Reaction capabilities, including initial deployment of air and sea forces within 5 to 10 days. This will require considerably enhanced joint planning mechanisms.
The recent award to a Franco-British consortium of BAES and Thales
of the contract for the development of the UK’s two aircraft carriers is
seen as the first step towards the joint procurement of air-naval groups.
President Chirac implied that France’s second aircraft carrier may well
be developed as a third unit by the same consortium. Joint training for
the two naval forces is also envisaged.
Finally, on 29 April 2003, a controversial ‘defence summit’ took place in
Brussels between France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Aside from
the somewhat provocative nature of this exercise, which brought together
four ‘anti-war’ states, nothing of substance emerged. The one innovation
seized upon by the press (the organization of an EU-only planning facility)
was seen as further evidence of the ‘anti-NATO’ bias of these four states. In
reality, such a planning facility had already been called for by all 15 member states at the Nice European Council in December 2000, but had, like
much else, fallen into abeyance given the dramatic turn of events ever since.
In the event that the EU were ever to mount an operation without any
reliance on NATO, such a planning facility would be indispensable. It would
be over-hasty to conclude that these recent developments represent a fresh
start for ESDP. The post-Iraq hangover will require much nursing through
2003. But they demonstrate a renewed commitment to driving forward the
practical aspects of EU military intervention. Everything ultimately hinges
on the question of European military capacity.
European Military Capacity
EU military capacity will develop. But it will require significant progress in
a variety of areas. The EU Defence Ministers met for the third ‘capabilities
conference’ on 19–20 May 2003 and attempted to plug the gaps in the
ERRF which had been identified by the European Capabilities Action Plan
(ECAP) panels focusing on the 20 top priority procurement areas.7 In par-
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allel, the NATO ministerial meeting on 31 October 2002 — in the context
of the planned NRF — had identified eight areas for the Europeans to concentrate on: ground surveillance; strategic air transport; Precision Guided
Munitions (PGMs); protection against Atomic, Biological and Chemical
(ABC) weapons; Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4);
battlefield support to combat troops; jamming enemy radar/communications; air-to-air refuelling. Over 70% of the areas covered by these two processes overlap. It is clear that the credibility of the ERRF remains seriously
lacking in virtually all of them. For the deficiencies to be made good, several things will have to happen.
First, the EU must concentrate on the development of a comprehensive
strategic concept, which will emerge (slowly but surely) from a top down
process involving the embryonic Council of Defence Ministers and highlevel working groups. This might eventually involve some sort of article 5
declaration and greater emphasis on civilian protection. Such a strategic
concept (akin to the US National Security Strategy document) is necessary
in order to be able to employ forces in the service of a political objective. It
will also involve the emergence of a unified command system. Second, there
will have to be some measure of convergence criteria for defence budgets
and a much more rigorous form of rationalization and specialization of
defence spending, especially in the field of R&D, conducted hand in hand
with industry via the emerging European Armaments Agency.
Specialization is virtually unavoidable. Third, emphasis should be placed on
a small number of concrete projects as models of collective procurement,
probably in areas which will enhance EU strategic autonomy. Various specialization leaders have already been identified: Germany: strategic air lift;
Spain: air-to-air refuelling; Netherlands: PGMs for delivery by EU F-16s.
Finally, there will have to be developments in enhanced cooperation and
constructive abstention. Such an approach to flexibility will be a way of
committing the entire Union without involving everybody. This will also be
necessary at the level of procurement.
The EU has only existed as a (potential) military actor since the Helsinki
European Council in December 1999 — less than four years. Given the
challenges involved, the fact that the Union actually deployed its own
forces to Macedonia in early 2003 is encouraging. The development of
a significant military force will take time and great patience. There will be a
furious debate about the eventual size and functions of the EU force which
will almost certainly take on a life of its own. But that force is now inextricably entangled in the slow emergence of the EU as a global actor. The
nature of its interaction with the US and with NATO will evolve constantly.
Much will depend on wise political leadership on both sides of the Atlantic,
as well as on Harold Macmillan’s famous bugbear: ‘events’.
Conclusions
The future of NATO remains a subject of intense speculation. The problems
of reaching consensual agreement, among no fewer than 26 allies, on issues
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connected with war and peace in areas both close to and remote from the
European theatre, are considerable. Increasingly, the US has little need for
the military contribution of the NATO allies, but is grateful for any political solidarity that is forthcoming. The European allies, on the other hand,
are still heavily dependent on US military assets in order to be able to
transform European military potential into operational capacity. The big
question is whether they will elect to remain in a state of dependency, or
whether the eventual logic of autonomy which gave rise to the ESDP project in the first place will result in the ESDP project generating ‘indigenous’
military capacity of a serious order. That will be the focus of a political
debate among the European allies over the next decade. Duplication,
decoupling and autonomy are not simply slogans. They are also very real
potential outcomes.
The device launched in November 2002 to try to bridge the growing
transatlantic military divide within NATO — the Nato Response Force — is
unlikely to prove to be the miracle solution which can hold the alliance
together. There are simply too many problems — both political and military
(on both sides of the Atlantic) — for this to happen smoothly. It is not impossible. Some EU member states would be quite content to quietly discard
ESDP and recreate a new, viable, ‘transformed’ NATO. But that project will
not be easy because there are too many influential voices in Washington DC
which see no reason to follow such a route. Whether NATO survives as a military instrument will depend crucially on whether the two sides of the
Atlantic decide, collectively, that there is more to be gained than to be lost
from sticking together. At present, there are simply too many different and
conflicting variables involved in that equation for it to be possible to give a
clear response. I believe that the jury is still out on this, but, on balance, it is
more likely that the US will continue over the coming decades to develop
leap-ahead military technologies which will leave all Europeans with the
exception of the British and the French unable to interoperate. These (and
any other countries prepared to make the necessary investment) may be in a
position to fight alongside US forces. The others will form the nucleus
of a European army with limited but nevertheless growing capacity to engage
in peace-keeping operations. Under these circumstances, it is not clear what
NATO — at least as it has been understood in the past — could become.
Notes
1. The European Security and Defence Identity, a mechanism for identifying a
Europe-only force from within NATO, dominated the debate in the mid-1990s, but
was subsequently displaced by the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP)
— the EU’s own project — after 1999. Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) were
identified as the means whereby a Europe-only mission could be optimally manned,
but they have remained more theoretical than practical (Terriff, 2003). Finally, the
‘Berlin plus’ mechanisms, intended to allow the EU access to US assets via NATO,
ran into all sorts of problems between 2000 and 2002.
2. These critics stress that Tony Blair had no significant influence over the Bush
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administration, despite the solidity of the UK’s military support during the 2003
Iraq war. See, in particular, Braithwaite (2003).
3. This ‘school’ features politicians such as George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Lord
Robertson, Joseph Biden, Richard Lugar, Madeleine Albright and analysts such as
David Gompert, Stephen Larrabee, Philip Gordon, Ronald Asmus and many others.
On this, see the extensive Bibliography and excellent analyses in Medcalf, 2002.
4. One of the most significant arguments deployed by those who refused to be
subservient to US/UK strictures on duplication of military equipment was that, in
the event of an international crisis demanding scarce US resources, those resources
simply would not be available to the EU on a ‘loan and return’ basis (Schake, 2003).
5. It should be recalled that, after 9/11, Germany pledged ‘unlimited’ support to
the USA. In February 2003, at the height of the controversy over Iraq, Germany
took over joint command (with the Netherlands) of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.
6. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Demark, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.
7. Attack Helicopters/Support Helicopters; NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical);
UAV/STA (unmanned aerial vehicle/surveillance & target acquisition) units; UAV
(HALE/MALE [high/medium altitude long endurance] and tactical UAVs);
Medical Role 3/Medical Collective Protection Role 3; Special Operations Forces;
Carrier-based air power; Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD); Air-to-Air
Refuelling; Combat Search & Rescue (CSR); Cruise missile and precision guided
munitions; Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence; Deployable Communication Modules;
Headquarters (OHQ, FHQ, CCHQs); Theatre Surveillance and Reconnaissance Air
Picture; Strategic ISR IMINT (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
imagery intelligence) Collection; Early Warning and Distance Detection Strategic
level; Strategic Air Mobility/Outsize Transport A/C, General Cargo A/C; RO-RO
[roll-on roll-off]/General Cargo Shipping.
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JOLYON HOWORTH is Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics
and Professor of French Civilisation at the University of Bath (UK). In
2002–2004, he is Visiting Professor of Political Science at Yale
University. Recent books include Defending Europe: The EU, NATO
and the Quest for European Autonomy (co-edited with John Keeler;
Palgrave, 2003) and European Integration and Defence: the Ultimate
Challenge? (WEU, Institute for Security Studies, 2000; also published in
French as, L’Intégration Européenne et la Défense: l’Ultime Défi).
Address: University of Bath, Department of European Studies and
Modern Languages, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, England.
[e-mail: [email protected]]
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