The Origins and the First Years of the European Union Battlegroups by Tommi Koivula

NR 1 JANUARY/MARS 2010 The Origins and the First Years of the European Union Battlegroups by Tommi Koivula it has become nearly commonplace to The inquiry is both European and political claim that the European Security and De- in nature: it focuses on the general European fence Policy (ESDP) has made substantial and global political currents influencing the pro gress in recent years. A somewhat less emergence of the Battlegroup concept and obvious statement is that we have within the early decisions on their utilization. the last few years witnessed a qualitative The structure of the article is as fol- step in which the EDSP has entered into a lows. The second section focuses on the new operational phase in which its focus background of the European Security and has moved from treaties establishing vari- Defence Policy, starting with the post-Cold ous institutional arrangements to ways of War international environment and the im- implementing them. plications made of it in Europe. This will be The emergence of the European Union followed by a discussion on the stages of the Battlegroups (EUBGs), which reached their institutional birth of the Battlegroup con- Full Operational Capability (FOC) in Janu- cept, discussing the Helsinki Headline Goal ary 2007, was an important milestone in process, the European Security Strategy and this development. From that point onwards, Operation Artemis as the three decisive fac- the EU has had a capacity to undertake two tors behind its creation. Subsequently, the concurrent single Battlegroup-sized response attention turns to the more recent experi- operations, including the ability to launch ences, with special emphasis on the issue both operations almost simultaneously. of the use of the Battlegroup as a part of However, while a number of both civil- the EU response to the Israeli incursion into ian and military crisis management opera- Lebanon in 2006 and to the ongoing situa- tions have been conducted under the EU flag tions in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2003,1 thus far the Battlegroups have and Darfur. Finally, consideration will be not been utilized in any one of them. As a given to the explaining factors behind their consequence, there have been occasional non-utilization and their future prospects. signs of frustration because of the inactivity of this standby instrument. Why EUBGs? The pages of this article are devoted to the questions of why and how the European The harsh realities of the post- Union Battlegroup concept came into exist- ence and where we now stand after a few Cold World War years of their full operational capability. The story of coordinated European defence 110 DISKUSSION & DEBATT was in practice a taboo during the Cold War. during several years of brutal war, politi- There was an effort to initiate an arrange- cal instability and continuous violations of ment called the European Defence Com- international justice by all warring parties. munity, which would have included the po- A further embarrassment for the Europeans tentiality of a European Army, but it failed was that a political solution to the Balkans to be ratified in August 1954. Although the crisis was only reached after Nato, in other Western European Union (WEU) was oc- words the United States, a non-European casionally referred to as a European forum power, became resolute enough to use its for discussing security questions, its military political and military might to enforce peace significance and political role was marginal. in the area – after the various and often con- Thus, Western European security remained tradictory European voices had fallen on a Nato monopoly until the fall of the Berlin deaf ears. Wall.2 Another painful reminder of Europe’s in- After the end of the Cold War, a latent ability to act took place in Rwanda during division of labour emerged between the Eu- the spring of 1994, when full-scale genocide ropean Community, which was focused on was perpetrated by the extreme Hutus close economic integration, and the Atlantic Al- to the Rwandan government within a mat- liance, which found fresh impetus in laying ter of only a few weeks, causing the death of the foundations for new political relations at least 800 000 people. All this time the in- with liberated Central and Eastern Euro- ternational community looked on and won- pean countries.3 dered whether something ought to be done. Some efforts were made towards stronger However, these tragedies were not just coordination of the defence policies of Euro- examples of European powerlessness. An- pean countries, but they met with no success. other failed organisation in this respect was However, progress was more significant in the United Nations, since these cases illus- the field of foreign policy. As a concrete result trated the severe shortcomings of the mul- of these efforts, the leaders of the European tilateral approach to international security Community agreed on the development and crisis management. of a Common Foreign and Security Policy This was particularly distressing from (CFSP), including the eventual framing of the European perspective, since the Euro- a common defence policy, “which might in pean Union was composed of a number of time lead to a common defence” in a treaty small and medium-sized states very closely signed in Maastricht in 1992.4 connected to the world economy and with It was soon realised, however, that the strong interests in maintaining peace and post-Cold War world, or post-Cold War Eu- stability all over the world. Europe was al- rope for that matter, did not prove to be the ready a prominent player in world politics, peaceful and ever more prosperous place being a major donor of international aid that had been anticipated in the most opti- and assistance and producing a large share mistic accounts. A striking and tragic lesson of the world’s GDP. Still, regarding the ca- in this was provided in Yugoslavia, where pacity to affect military crises elsewhere, the a series of bloody wars erupted after 1991. EU and its individual member states lacked Europeans in general and the EU in particu- the necessary resources. The Europeans were lar were both anxious and frustrated to see natural proponents of multilateral coopera- that they were almost completely helpless tion, which, however, did not seem to work. 111 NR 1 JANUARY/MARS 2010 Militarily, the Europeans were almost civilian crisis management, and that actual totally dependent on the resources of their combat was just one element among others. powerful ally, the United States. Basically, All the same, from now the reorganisation the United States was willing to encourage of defence emerged on the European agen- the development of better European crisis da, with an added emphasis on force projec- management capabilities, at least to the ex- tion and the management of far-off crises.7 tent that these capabilities would not chal- This reorganisation, However, turned out to lenge U.S. military might. The Americans be a slow business. wanted its allies to do more, either on a bi- The Amsterdam Treaty of 1996 marked lateral basis with the American military, or the beginning of a conscious development within a UN or Nato framework, or even of the European Union’s crisis manage- within a purely European framework on ment capabilities. Among the most signifi- occasions when the U.S. decided not to be cant achievements of the Treaty was that, involved. thanks to an initiative by two new member Thus, step by step, a new kind of under- states with a background of neutrality, Swe- standing of the very basic European secu- den and Finland, the Petersberg Tasks were rity deficit became widespread: even though incorporated into it and thus into the EU Europe’s political and economic capabilities agenda.8 were considerable, and even though the use of force was neither regarded as the first nor The Emergence of the the only way to deal with regional or inter- European Security and national crises, such as those in Yugoslavia or Rwanda, it became increasingly common Defence Policy to assess that the EU must have at its dis- During this process of building a Common posal a certain level of forces at a certain Foreign and Security Policy a spectrum of state of readiness and operational efficiency, opinions on European defence had emerged if only to widen its range of options when within the EU. It ran from countries such faced with a crisis and to facilitate decision- as the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands, making at the highest political level.5 which had been consistently keen on main- As a consequence, a reorganisation of taining Nato, and thus U.S., involvement Europe’s military forces began in June 1992, in Europe, to France and Belgium, which brought about first and foremost by the had been most interested in building an Western European Union, (WEU), which autonomous EU capacity. Those members defined its operational roles in the Peters- which had been traditionally neutral (Aus- berg Declaration. These, later referred to as tria, Finland, Sweden and Ireland) had in the “Petersberg Tasks”, included ‘humani- turn been less ambitious about building tarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks anything resembling a European Army.9 and also tasks of combat forces in crisis Leaving this spectrum of opinions aside, management including peacemaking’.6 European defence issues had traditionally The Petersberg Tasks, although not yet been dominated by two member countries, adopted by the European Union at that France and Great Britain. Thus it was no time, were the first expression of Europe’s surprise that the launching of an indepen- new strategic environment. It is noteworthy dent European security and defence policy that these tasks included a strong element of was based on a declaration made by these 112 DISKUSSION & DEBATT two nations at St.

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