CFSP Forum Is EU Security and Defence
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CCFFSSPP FFoorruumm Volume 3, Issue 1 January 2005 Note from the Editor The European Defence Karen E. Smith, London School of Economics, Editor Agency: serious opportunity, daunting Happy new year! challenge The focus of this issue of CFSP Forum is EU security and defence. One article analyses the Hugo Brady, Research Associate, Institute of European new European Defence Agency, another the Affairs, Dublin, Ireland recently-launched Operation Althea in Bosnia and and Herzegovina. Two articles examine in more depth the significance and implications of recent Ben Tonra, Jean Monnet Chair of European Foreign, developments in EU security policy. And the two Security and Defence Policy, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University College Dublin, Ireland final articles take a closer look at developments in two member states, Finland and Germany. The Union’s strategic awakening to crisis management has been signalled by a number of This year Commission funding for the FORNET recent developments and the arguable lynchpin of network will end. We would appreciate hearing that awakening is the European Defence Agency your views on FORNET in general, and on how (EDA). The Agency, however, faces a number of FORNET might continue into the future without challenges that must be surmounted before it can Commission funding. Are there other sources of contribute meaningfully to the Union’s broader funding for which we should apply? Which strategic goals. FORNET activities should we try to extend beyond the next year? Please contact us with The drafting of the first ever agreed EU threat your thoughts, at [email protected]. analysis and strategy document, the 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS),1 is widely acknowledged as being a significant signpost in Contents the development of EU crisis management. Despite shortcomings, it represents a qualitative The European Defence Agency 1 analytical leap in the Union’s understanding of its potential and its strategic mission. It also A Secure European Community 5 underscores – for both ambitious and reluctant member states – the scope of the task that we Is the EU a Strategic Actor? 8 face. In particular, the concept of preventive Operation Althea 11 engagement – which stands in contrast to the US doctrine of pre-emptive action – has the potential Finland’s Mission Statement 14 to underwrite a more holistic, long term and truly Germany’s New Deployment Law 16 ‘strategic’ approach to security. However, the ESS also acknowledges inter alia that the threats New Books and Articles 19 posed by regional conflicts and state failure, and CFSP Forum, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 1 the need to address these with the full spectrum the Union’s ‘Headline 2010’ programme while of instruments for crisis management and conflict avoiding the pattern of failure that the EDA prevention, requires the Union to address inherits from the past. definitively the capability/resource deficits identified by military planners and academic In 2004, the Union – with perhaps more analysts alike. confidence than its track record might have suggested – crossed the rubicon in taking on The draft constitutional treaty’s provisions to three peacekeeping missions with strong military establish the post of Union Foreign Minister, to dimensions. The third of these, in Bosnia and widen and better define the Petersberg Tasks, to Herzegovina (EUFOR-Althea; see Hanna Ojanen’s develop permanent structured cooperation, to article below), is by far and away its most introduce a solidarity clause, to establish an ambitious to date even though it relies heavily in External Action Service, and to establish the its execution upon NATO assets. That reliance European Defence Agency all promise to boost may be problematic if its puts any strain on the the Union’s security and defence capacity in the Berlin-plus arrangements allowing European short to medium term. Indeed, the EDA’s forces to have automatic access to NATO (read expansive mandate and ambitious development ‘US’) assets. Moreover, the Union’s requirements programme agreed at its first Steering Board in this area will grow further as the addition of the meetings in September-November 2004 highlight proposed Headline 2010 battle groups to its rapid the priority of making the EDA a critical enabling reaction capacity come on stream. In the tool of an effective ESDP.2 The Agency must now meantime, personnel costs and the expense of deliver on the reasoning of the ESS that ‘a more maintaining out-dated defence equipment capable Europe is within our grasp’. continues to chew up the largest proportion of defence budgets. Then, even within the limited Opportunity and challenge proportion of budgets spent on R&T, the opportunity costs of applying the juste retour The opportunity presented is much broader than principle undercut both efficiency and value for the four flagship projects rubber-stamped in money in defence procurement. The practical Brussels in November 2004,3 and is based upon result of this – and it has become something of a a convergence of three factors: cliché to restate it – is that while the US has over 200 long-range transport planes that can carry 1) recognition of the logical link between a the heaviest military payloads, EU member states credible ESDP and a more integrated have only four such planes (C17 Globemasters) – European armaments market; all of which the UK is currently leasing from the 2) the clash between low national military US. This has serious consequences as when, in budgets and the need for expensive Operation ARTEMIS in the Congo, a transport technologies. This has resulted in a new aircraft on short-term lease from the Ukraine interest in armaments cooperation, malfunctioned resulting in 120 deaths. The second industry consolidation and development all-too-obvious fact is that no European state can of common regulatory and research afford to buy or to develop all categories of frameworks; and materiel necessary to the kinds of missions 3) a widening transatlantic gap which has assumed in the ESS. endangered the European Technology and Industrial Base (ETIB). Governments have accepted the principle that they must combine their resources to acquire The latter has been a critical factor for those necessary capacity, but they balk at many of the member states that have traditionally relied upon political and strategic consequences. The existing market forces and preferential bilateral ties with record of multinational European defence research the United States. Such is the technological gap and development programmes is poor, frequently that in recent years they have found themselves dogged by well-publicised delays, budget over- – in some circumstances – unable to link runs and political gamesmanship. For example, operationally with US forces in the field. All of the first deliveries of the Eurofighter jet – a four- this underscores an urgent need for increased country venture – arrived in 2003, ten years after investment in research and technology (R&T) the original target date, and greatly over-budget. which is beyond the capacity of the market to The EDA Director General, Nick Witney, has provide and which demands some form of public- openly criticised the failings of both the private partnership. That investment, however, Eurofighter and the A400M aircraft – the proposed must also be directed politically so as to ensure solution to Europe’s shortfall in strategic lift that it delivers the capacity necessary to sustain capacity. He has argued forcefully that European CFSP Forum, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 2 states must do more to harmonise their military European Commission in its August 2004 Green requirements in developing new equipment ab Paper on Defence Procurement. initio rather than agreeing on a cut-down base model and then (expensively) modifying it to The Commission has long argued for a regulatory suit often outdated national strategic framework that would provide for a more efficient 4 requirements. In addition, it is predicted that allocation of resources in this sector. A significant critical EU shortfalls in the area of command, part of this might be achieved by a more strategic control and communications will be more keenly interpretation of EU treaty article 296, which felt in the deployment of the 33-nation EU-led allows member states to derogate from free force in Bosnia. The conclusion is clear: EU market commitments on the basis of their security governments know they need to improve interests. In addition, the Commission argues that greatly the way in which they co-operate on much can be achieved by ‘joined-up’ policy purchasing and developing weapons systems. making in the civilian sector, where much The EDA will need to negotiate carefully the research and development in technology gives traditional bureaucratic pitfalls of armaments rise to dual-use goods with direct military procurement to achieve its stated goal of applicability. It is clear that the Commission sees managing European armaments projects at the the EDA as a critical partner in drawing up request of member states. More importantly, it schemas for civilian R&D that have potential for must deliver value for each euro spent to prove RMA adaptation. This has obvious attractions too the Agency’s own added value. for the Agency since the Union’s substantial investment in many relevant civilian projects will Advances in information technology, precision give it an entrée to project design otherwise guided munitions and new operational concepts unavailable to it. form the central dynamic in military affairs today and are sometimes called the 'revolution However, in the area of markets and regulation, in military affairs' (RMA). Ultimately, another the role of the Commission as a partner of the principle ambition of the EDA will be to cajole EDA will have to be tempered by concerns that European defence ministries into transforming the Agency should not come to be seen as a their armed forces by endowing EU crisis creature of the central bureaucracy, an outcome management capacity with the RMA which would be potentially fatal to its success.