The State of Defence in Europe: State of Emergency?
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THE STATE OF DEFENCE IN EUROPE: STATE OF EMERGENCY? EGMONT PAPER 62 THE STATE OF DEFENCE IN EUROPE: STATE OF EMERGENCY? SVEN BISCOP & DANIEL FIOTT (eds.) November 2013 The Egmont Papers are published by Academia Press for Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations. Founded in 1947 by eminent Belgian political leaders, Egmont is an independent think-tank based in Brussels. Its interdisciplinary research is conducted in a spirit of total academic freedom. A platform of quality information, a forum for debate and analysis, a melting pot of ideas in the field of international politics, Egmont’s ambition – through its publications, seminars and recommendations – is to make a useful contribution to the decision- making process. *** President: Viscount Etienne DAVIGNON Director-General: Marc OTTE Series Editor: Prof. Dr. Sven BISCOP *** Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations Address Naamsestraat / Rue de Namur 69, 1000 Brussels, Belgium Phone 00-32-(0)2.223.41.14 Fax 00-32-(0)2.223.41.16 E-mail [email protected] Website: www.egmontinstitute.be © Academia Press Eekhout 2 9000 Gent Tel. 09/233 80 88 Fax 09/233 14 09 [email protected] www.academiapress.be All authors write in a personal capacity. Lay-out: proxessmaes.be ISBN 978 90 382 2266 0 D/2013/4804/274 U 2124 NUR1 754 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publishers. Table of Contents Abbreviations . 3 Introduction: One EU, One NATO – One Europe?. 5 SVEN BISCOP Context The Dependent State(s) of Europe: European Defence in Year Five of Austerity . 13 CLAUDIA MAJOR & CHRISTIAN MÖLLING America’s Asian “Rebalancing” and the Future of Europe. 19 LUIS SIMÓN NATO post-2014: Preserving the Essentials . 27 JAMIE SHEA Modern European Operations: From Phoney Wars to Sickle Cuts. 33 ALEXANDER MATTELAER AND JO COELMONT Priorities, Ambitions and Challenges CSDP in the Eastern Neighbourhood: From Neighbours to Partners . 41 MARGARITA ŠEŠELGYTƠ Mare Nostrum? The Search for Euro-Mediterranean Security . 47 SVEN BISCOP Europe’s Asian Frontier . 53 JONATHAN HOLSLAG Europeans and the “Wider North” . 59 JAMES ROGERS Objectives and Implications Capability Development: The Times They Are a-Changin’ . 67 JO COELMONT AND ALEXANDER MATTELAER 1 THE STATE OF DEFENCE IN EUROPE: STATE OF EMERGENCY? The European Defence Technological and Industrial Base: Five Suggestions . 73 DANIEL FIOTT If Security Matters, Institutions Matter . 79 MARGRIET DRENT Contributors . 83 2 ABBREVIATIONS A2/AD Anti-Access Area-Denial ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations AU African Union BMD Ballistic Missile Defence C4ISTAR Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Information/ Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting Acquisition and Reconnaissance CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy CMPD Crisis Management and Planning Department CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy DCFTA Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement DOD Department of Defense DTIB Defence Technological and Industrial Base EaP Eastern Partnership EDA European Defence Agency EDEM European Defence Equipment Market EDTIB European Defence Technological and Industrial Base EEAS European External Action Service EIB European Investment Bank ENP European Neighbourhood Policy ENPI European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument ESO European Standards Organisation EU European Union EUCOM United States European Command EUMC European Union Military Committee EUMS European Union Military Staff FDI Foreign Direct Investment FPAs Framework Partnership Agreements GBAORD Government Budget Appropriations or Outlays on R&D GDP Gross Domestic Product HR High Representative ISAF International Security Assistance Force ISR Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation OHQ Operational Headquarters OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe PESCO Permanent Structured Cooperation PSC Political and Security Committee QDR Quadrennial Defense Review R&D Research and Development 3 THE STATE OF DEFENCE IN EUROPE: STATE OF EMERGENCY? RPAS Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems SMEs Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the EU TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership UK United Kingdom UN United Nations UNCLOS United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea US United States 4 INTRODUCTION: ONE EU, ONE NATO – ONE EUROPE? SVEN BISCOP 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 1. In his speech at the annual conference of the European Defence Agency on 22 March 2013; see http:// www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/136394.pdf. 2. For many Member States it is, apparently, such a small part of their forces that they seem to equate the CSDP with the Battlegroups and have all but forgotten the Headline Goal. They also tend to forget that a Battlegroup is pretty much the numbers that the Brussels police will deploy during the actual European Council – hardly a level of ambition worthy of a continent. 5 THE STATE OF DEFENCE IN EUROPE: STATE OF EMERGENCY? 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.