Last year was a great year for the European Foreign & Security Policy wonks. Much of the exciting flurry of activity was primarily 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.
The first six months of this year, during the Portuguese presidency have been a little quieter on the European defence issue. The question of how the US views the Helsinki outcome bubbles to the surface from time to time, but seems to swing between whether the Americans are annoyed about the Europeans developing their own military capability, or more annoyed about their likely failure to deliver a military capability. One important, and not much trumpeted, security development has happened in this first half of the year. The agreement to develop a 5000 strong EU international police force, with a raid deployment capability may in the end prove to be a more effective security contribution than whatever comes from Helsinki. There has of course been much work going on in capitals around taking forward the agreements on European deployable military capability. The French Presidency is seen as a critical period in this process, given that France has been central to the work so far.
The pledging conference in the Autumn is seen as the next big step towards achieving a real, if modest, European defence capability. I am afraid that I am pessimistic about the likely outcome. The European nations have decades of experience of fudging NATO force goals to meet their ever more limited defence resources. It is not clear why we should expect them to approach this exercise differently. There will be a number of different force goals to be fulfilled. The most publicised one, the ready manpower of 60,000, is relatively simple to identify. The difficulty comes in providing what have already been identified as capability gaps most recently in NATO's Defence Capabilities Initiative. To take a few concrete examples: Europe lacks capability in strategic intelligence systems, modern real-time tactical reconnaissance, integrated command and control systems, sea lift, air lift, useful aircraft carriers, air-to-air refuelling, all weather precision bombing, electronic warfare and suppression of enemy air defence. No amount of re-dividing and re-tasking the current forces will provide these expensive force enablers.
As some of you will know, I have been working for the past couple of years on how we might start filling these capability gaps. They can only be afforded as a shared resource operated at the EU level. Helsinki has started putting in place the institutional arrangements which could manage such activities - in the same way that NATO manages its supranational AWACs force. But where is the money to come from for such new capabilities? The answer always seems to be that nations must increase their defence budgets. You may judge how likely this is to happen. The answer is to find ways to free up defence money from the 170 billion Euros that the EU members already spend on defence. This can be done by pooling common activities and rationalising the infrastructure.
It is encouraging to see that some nations are beginning to see the sense in such an approach. The Bundeswehr Commission in its report had one recommendation:
10.The multinationalisation of the operational forces should be advanced by adopting solutions for integration modelled on the NATO Airborne Early Warning Forces (AWACS) and by pooling the European air and sealift, reconnaissance and air defence resources.
The Dutch and Belgians have also been setting an example for the rest of Europe with their pooling arrangements, particularly for naval forces.
There does not seem to be much being done to advance this in either of the two big players - France and the UK. They could take a lead by offering to take part in a pooling arrangement and putting the money saved into a European Defence budget which could procure some of these missing capabilities. An example for the UK might be the new air-to-air refuelling capability which is due to be procured, possibility under contractorised arrangements. If it were to cost £2 bn done nationally, why not offer £1Bn to Solana as the UK contribution towards an EU contract, with other nations paying their normal European budgetary pro rata share. The £1bn that was saved could be split between a contribution to a new capability, such as EU intelligence, and the other £500 million helping out a strapped UK defence budget. There are many possible examples - Eurofighter being the biggest and easiest saver.
If the French Presidency is to be remembered for more than moving the deck chairs on the Titanic of European defence, it will need to address these politically difficult issues - which are made yet more difficult by France's position in NATO.