Inteligencia y Seguridad Frente Externo En Profundidad Economia y Finanzas Transparencia
  En Parrilla Medio Ambiente Sociedad High Tech Contacto
Inteligencia y Seguridad  
 
29/09/2010 | EU Ponders Defense Irrelevance

Richard Weitz

Last week, French Defense Minister Hervé Morin told an informal meeting of European Union defense ministers in Ghent that if they did not pool their defense capabilities more effectively, Europe risked becoming a protectorate. "Fifty years from now we'll become a pawn in the balance between the new powers," Morin said, "and we'll be under a Sino-America condominium."

 

Morin's provocative remarks were triggered by recent cuts in European defense budgets, which reinforce longstanding downward trends in military spending on the continent. The question facing the EU is whether the cuts will finally impel European governments to cooperate more closely in the sensitive defense sector. 

Morin has long been pressing EU governments to make collective defense a more important priority, telling one interviewer in 2007 that having a common defense policy was at least as important to the EU as having a common currency. At the Ghent meeting,he insisted that European governments simply had to spend more to exert global influence commensurate with the EU's standing. He also argued that the best way to enhance their overall military capabilities was by deepening their defense cooperation.

To this end, Morin proposed that all 27 EU states compile a list of their military capabilities and indicate which of them should be shared and which should remain under the control of the individual nation states. 

Morin's German counterpart, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, likewise argued that the EU could mitigate the adverse effects of its member states' declining military budgets by agreeing to specialize in different defense areas and by combining their defense procurement orders "to secure better deals." He proposed a three-step program to promote such defense specialization and collaboration. First, EU members would determine which defense capabilities they had to retain individually as national assets. Then they would assess which areas would produce savings if procured collectively. Finally, members would make defense assets and capabilities available to other members if necessary.

Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich told reporters at the meeting that member states are not moving fast enough to apply the Lisbon Treaty in the area of defense, particularly with regard to the treaty's provision allowing limited groups of member states to collaborate more closely in the military field in the absence of union-wide initiatives. 

The Lisbon Treaty also created the new position of EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, held by Catherine Ashton. Though often informally referred to as EU foreign policy chief, the position also makes Ashton responsible for guiding the EU's Common Security and Defense Policy. Nevertheless, Ashton chose to skip the Ghent meeting, despite having been widely criticized for missing another informal EU defense ministers' gathering held earlier this year. 

Ashton instead attended last week's U.N. General Assembly session in New York, though she did make some introductory remarks (.pdf) to the Ghent meeting by videoconference. She stressed two key points: that the EU needed to cooperate more in the face of a "very difficult budgetary situation," and that the EU needed to develop "better and more comprehensive strategies" for its CSDP missions.

Citing the "clear sense" she perceived in New York that the world wanted the EU to be more active and present in global affairs, Ashton argued that the EU needed to turn the crisis into an opportunity by pooling and sharing its increasingly limited defense resources. She proposed that the EU exploit joint research programs for dual-use items, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. She also called for making better use of the European Defense Agency to develop new common projects, as well as for pursuing greater complementarity with NATO in developing joint defense capabilities, noting that the European Council had given her a clear mandate "to move forward on EU-NATO cooperation in crisis management." 

Although Ashton's decision to join the world leaders in New York was probably justified, Morin still seemed dissatisfied, observing that, "We need the [EU] institutions . . . Mrs. Ashton should carry forward the European ambition -- the states can't do it on their own." 

Despite Ashton's absence, Belgian Defense Minister Pieter De Crem optimistically noted that the EU was making progress in pursuing collective defense efforts. He specifically cited an agreement signed earlier this month in which Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands agreed to place 200 transport aircraft under a single command. The governments of Spain and Luxembourg are considering joining the project. Crem told reporters that the economic crisis could actually prove to be beneficial for further EU defense cooperation by strengthening the imperative of joint efforts to save money.

But whether the union can actually pool defense assets and significantly expand collective defense procurement efforts is questionable. The 1998 St. Malo Declaration between Britain and France, which inaugurated the European Security and Defense Policy, affirmed that, "The Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises." The declaration further called for "strengthened armed forces that can react rapidly to the new risks, and which are supported by a strong and competitive European defense industry and technology."

Despite the passage of more than a decade since the declaration, however, the EU has made little progress in developing a collective military capacity, let alone a European army, as some have proposed. At Ghent, the ministers asked the European Defense Agency to evaluate how the EU states could enhance their military cooperation and report back at a formal meeting of defense ministers in December. The agency, created in 2004, has thus far proved unable to promote the bloc's collective defense capabilities, largely due to its miniscule budget, which is dwarfed by the national defense budgets of the EU's leading military powers.

The EU defense ministers also agreed to follow Morin's suggestion to compile lists of national capabilities, but even here, optimism is perhaps premature. The EU governments have yet to implement earlier agreements to deepen joint military training and education, logistics, and surveillance. They are even less likely to share their more-sensitive combat capabilities. At best, the EU members seem prepared to establish a multinational helicopter wing that could be used for disaster response and other emergencies as well as to support combat operations.

Guttenberg noted that the democratic nature of the EU constrained a more ambitious defense posture in two ways. First, all 27 member governments need to support any collective defense mission. Second, some members' national legislatures, which enjoy considerable influence in many European countries and whose members are highly responsive to their constituents' opposition to foreign military adventures, have to approve their countries' participation in every international mission as well.

Proposals to expand EU-wide defense procurement also run into the problem that industrial policy considerations often have a greater influence on members' military spending decisions than do national security considerations. As a result, the already low levels of defense investment are spread over too many projects. Add to that the fact that each major EU member state wants to preserve its own shipbuilding and aviation industries, and the result is inefficient and duplicative EU defense industries.

The idea of pooling resources within a transatlantic framework encounters the same problems, and comes with additional difficulties. The EU and NATO have yet to overcome the mutual vetoes of Cyprus and Turkey on broader EU-NATO cooperation. In addition, the Americans are pressing the Europeans to allocate whatever defense spending they can muster toward sustaining their military commitments in Afghanistan, the clear priority of the Obama administration.

Given these obstacles, it could be a mistake to expect EU institutions to take the lead in this difficult area. Instead, sustained intervention by the EU member states' political leaders -- and most likely their prime ministers rather than their less-powerful defense ministers -- will probably be needed to prevent further erosion in European military spending and capabilities. 

**Richard Weitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a World Politics Review senior editor. His weekly WPR column, Global Insights, appears every Tuesday.

World Politics Review (Estados Unidos)

 


Otras Notas Relacionadas... ( Records 1 to 10 of 841 )
fecha titulo
01/07/2013 El socio 28
16/05/2013 La crisis europea
16/03/2013 Europa, el paquidermo
13/03/2013 Europe, Unemployment and Instability
10/03/2013 Mejor con Europa
30/01/2013 UE - Mucho más que un mercado interior
24/01/2013 La gran ventolera
24/01/2013 Las cenizas del esplendor
23/01/2013 Cameron pide una reforma de la Unión Europea para que Reino Unido no salga de ella
23/01/2013 Ser o no ser de Europa


Otras Notas del Autor
fecha
Título
17/02/2017|
26/07/2013|
25/10/2011|
03/08/2011|
26/06/2011|
26/06/2011|
13/04/2011|
11/01/2011|
21/11/2010|
17/11/2010|
03/11/2010|
20/10/2010|
16/06/2010|
29/04/2010|
09/04/2010|
25/02/2010|
11/11/2009|
11/11/2009|

ver + notas
 
Center for the Study of the Presidency
Freedom House