What a great year and a bit it has been for the European Foreign & Security Policy wonks. Much of the exciting flurry of activity has only been possible because of a significant change in the position and enthusiasm of the United Kingdom Government towards greater defence cooperation in Europe. From the St Malo meeting in December 1998, through an important Anglo-Italian summit in July 1999, to the second Anglo-French meeting of November 1999, we have seen a strengthening of British resolve to make Europe more effective in its defence capabilities. The Kosovo operation proved, if there was ever any doubt, that European nations lack the offensive airpower capability for NATO's new role, and that they were no better prepared to mount a potentially hostile ground campaign. In December, the European Council at Helsinki agreed to establish defence capabilities to enable them to conduct EU-led operations .The Joint Declaration looks to EU members cooperating to provide a rapidly deployable and sustainable force up to Corps level with all the necessary command,control and intelligence capabilities, logistics, combat support, service support and appropriate naval and air combat forces.
At one level, this is a sensible attempt to make some progress in harmonising defence effort across the EU so that it can at least generate a useful force of 60,000 men out of its 2 million troops. It also gives a welcome impetus for the development of some key capabilities such as intelligence and strategic airlift. What it does not do is generate a single extra soldier, tank, aircraft or ship. It gives the free-rider nations in Europe an opportunity to run their defence forces down further by concentrating only on their contribution to this new force. Years of experience at fudging goals in the NATO force planning process give little hope of achieving the Corps capability easily or in full. However, it does at least start putting in place some structures to look at developing real new capabilities.
What is needed urgently are some practical moves to get better value from the 170 Bn Euros that EU nations waste on defence every year. In a Europe where sovreignty wasn't such a hang-up, I could imagine Javier Solana, with wise advice from George Robertson, doing a full Strategic Defence Review which ensured that European forces were structured sensibly to support European and NATO needs. As one business man said to me last month, if we ran our operation the way Europe does defence, we would be bankrupt. It is ripe for rationalisation and flattening of management layers. However in the real world, this is some decades away. This is not as reason to do nothing. In NATO AWACs we have a good example of how an expensive, but important, capability can be afforded if it is operated at the supranational level. Nobody gets excited about sovereignty, and all NATO members both contribute to and benefit from this shared capability. There are many possible areas where such an approach could be used. Time will only let me give you a quick taste of some examples.
Europe needs an air transport capability. Some ten EU nations operate C130 Hercules military transport aircraft . It would be possible to imagine a pooled fleet of 70 aircraft, which would look after all the national C130 needs of Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Spain , Sweden and Portugal, and to which France, the UK and Greece might provide a partial contribution from their larger fleets. For those nations that were prepared to put all of their C130 fleets into a common pool, there would be significant savings in operating costs. They would also have a much better assurance of availability on a day to day basis, given the ability to plan routine servicing across a larger fleet. For Europe there would be a usable airlift capability for humanitarian operations as well as for use within NATO. This is quite different from multinational forces as it requires a single headquarters and a single support and maintenance structure. Nations would be able to close down their expensive national establishments and use the money saved to buy new capabilities.
A similar approach would work well for an EU air-to-air refuelling force - particularly if it were operated by a commercial company, as is currently under consideration for the UK.
Five EU nations are ordering the Eurofighter for delivery from 2002 onwards. Each nation will set up its headquarters for planning and support, a training base, and a myriad of support organisations. Over a period of years, each nation will change its version of Eurofighter in different ways (just as we have seen with the Tornado). Interoperability will get worse as time goes on, unless there is common management and doctrine. This is a role for a single EU military headquarters, which would operate an EU mixed nationality Eurofighter force of perhaps 400 aircraft. If any nation still felt the need to retain some independent national capability, it could rotate crews and aircraft through the EU force on a regular basis. Beyond Eurofighter, France, Italy, Spain and the UK want to keep in the aircraft carrier game. The UK can only afford an inadequate force of two carriers. Between them, the maritime minded nations of the EU could field a serious capability of 4 or 5 carriers supported by the frigates, submarines, helicopters and mine counter-measure vessels provided by other EU nations. For the armies of Europe, the need is for rapidly deployable forces with a range of capabilities. The EU could set the guidelines to produce a well balanced force structure.
As the EU moved along these paths, it would be important to ensure that there was no free ride for less enthusiastic members. The establishment of a European Defence Budget would be an early priority and would force member nations to take a serious interest in agreeing what capability Europe needs. Nations could then either contribute capability or funds. This would undoubtedly lead to a virtuous circle of each nation volunteering force capability, and a realisation that they get more capability when their defence budget supports European rather than national forces.
Finally, as forces were increasingly operated at the European level, the common doctrine and operational planning would lead to common equipment requirements. Role specialisation might happen, but it would be in a planned manner rather than the random system of today. The inefficiencies of duplicated support that we see in today's multinational forces would be eliminated. Europe would be a more equal partner with the United States within NATO, and would be able to field its own diplomatic and military capability if necessary. Nor, after restructuring costs, would it need to spend any more than it does in total now on defence.
In summary, I welcome greatly the vigour with which my country is approaching the development of European defence capabilities. However, we need to apply the logic of our own SDR to Europe as a whole, and free up the vast wasted resources by sensible rationalisation of duplicated defence overheads. We should look for early opportunities to pool common capabiIties, take the savings in overheads and spend them on such much needed things as a European intelligence element. It is unlikely that Defence Ministries across the EU will be enthusiastic (turkeys don't vote for Christmas) - but Finance Ministries should be.