The new British interest in trying to make European defence arrangements more effective was underlined by the Anglo-Italian declaration of 20 July 1999, which announced the European Defence Capabilities Initiative. We can now track a steady progression of British measures to put some life into the moribund area of European defence capability and co-operation. The amazement within EU circles, when Tony Blair launched his new idea for European security at St Malo in December last year, has now given way to an interest in seeing some concrete proposals from Britain rather than just grand statements. Since St Malo, the NATO summit in Washington in April allowed some valuable ground work to be achieved despite the summit's focus on Kosovo. In particular the United States was just about convinced that the new British initiatives were not designed to undermine NATO or US influence within NATO, but might allow the Europeans to become more serious contributors of real capability to the Alliance. Among the raft of announcements from that NATO summit, the Defence Capabilities Initiative gave a number of openings for the European members to get their act together.
The experience of Kosovo was a salutary reminder to the Europeans of their military impotence. The EU states spend over half as much as the United States on defence, yet relied overwhelmingly on the Americans for the useful firepower to sort out a small scale problem in the former Yugoslavia. The UK was an important player politically but could provide only 4% of the sorties flown in the air campaign. Even its large contribution to the KFOR ground force has had to start scaling down before the force is fully manned by other nations. The EU summit in Cologne in June made all the right noises about developing the European defence dimension through better capability and more appropriate decision-making institutions. It looked at avoiding unnecessary duplication and strengthening the research and industrial base. The announcement of the appointment of Javier Solana, currently the NATO Secretary General, to the newly established EU post of High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy gives an opportunity for Europe to establish new mechanisms to improve its defence efforts. Solana will come to the EU with an unparalleled understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the European NATO members. He will be helped by George Robertson, his successor at NATO, who has been so personally involved in the reshaping of the UK forces over the past two years.
The time is therefore right for a significant move forward on European defence. The Anglo-Italian declaration of 20 July has produced some concrete proposals on what needs to be done. It has rightly widened the requirement from a need for an EU capacity for doing its own humanitarian, crisis management and peace support operations (the Petersberg tasks). The need for a more effective European role in NATO is promoted as a clear lesson from Kosovo. The declaration seeks to develop a timetable to achieve European-wide goals for enhanced military capabilities, and a set of national capability objectives to achieve this European requirement. The proposal is for a peer review process with meetings of EU Foreign and Defence Ministers twice a year to check progress towards the agreed goals. This will take place in parallel with NATO's Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI) work. The DCI made the point that NATO members would have to be able "to make a fair contribution to the full spectrum of Alliance missions regardless of differences in national structures." The DCI, like the Anglo-Italian declaration, highlights the need to develop a common assessment of future requirements. It recognises the importance of the resource dimension as well as the need for better co-ordination between defence planning disciplines.
We have now, in theory, an outline plan for progress in improving European defence capabilities in a way which works with the grain of NATO. That is a remarkable step forward given the reluctance of the US and the UK in past years to address these issues. But there are many difficulties ahead. NATO would claim to have a planning process, and to have expended much effort over the years on coercing nations into setting more challenging force goals for themselves. To this process, we shall now ask EU ministers to set themselves demanding and expensive targets, most of which will have little electoral appeal at home. The three major EU defence players will all have difficulty in making significant changes to their defence plans for the greater good of Europe. The UK has completed its Strategic Defence Review and is in the middle of implementing it. The foreign policy which drove that review took absolutely no account of these new European initiatives. The British forces are over-stretched and demoralised from too many post Cold War reviews. Short of a massive influx of new money, the MOD will fight to set NATO and EU goals for itself which match its current plans. The French are similarly placed and are following the UK route. In Germany, the great restructuring has still to come. Conscription is a highly political issue and its future will be determined on national politics rather than European defence needs. Germany has said that it will establish its own rapid deployment capability, but it is also expecting to reduce defence expenditure significantly.
If real progress in improving European defence capability is to happen, some adventurous thinking is required. The current initiatives are worthy but are more likely to disappear into the bureaucratic morass of the EU and NATO. There will be endless discussions about the timetable for the target setting, followed by watering down of the objectives to ensure they can be met. In any event there is no proposed mechanism for penalties for those members who fail to fulfil their defence commitments. What is needed, as well as all these worthy declarations, is some early signs that Defence is an EU activity, which is more effective and efficient when conducted at the regional level. If nations can live with the implications for their national sovereignty of NATO or EMU membership, they should be able to accept some minor moves towards an EU military capability. One current opportunity is in the field of airlift, which is an obvious and agreed EU defence requirement. The UK has allocated funds for four C17 equivalents, but terminated the procurement competition last month. That money could be put on the table to be matched by other EU members to establish very quickly a much needed force. It would also give Solana a budget to work with, a model to trial and an example of how European defence can be more than just a talking shop.