European
Security
Sir Timothy Garden
When
I accepted the invitation to return for a second lecture tour of Germany, I
imagined that I would be able to dust off the notes that I made for my last
appearance in 1999. At that time, Kosovo was uppermost in our minds; we had
seen NATO celebrate its 50th birthday with 3 new members, and we had
started on a road to closer defence co-operation in the EU. Lots of excitement,
but very much a natural progression as we gained experience in handling the
post Cold War world.
The
shock of a new kind of threat emerging, seemingly from nowhere on the 11
September, has put many of the certainties about future European security in
doubt. It is too soon to say whether, the mass murder at the World Trade Centre
attack is an aberration, or is the opening round of a new form of war and
insecurity. But let me tonight try to set the scene in terms of where we
thought we were going before 11 September on European security, and how we may
now have to change as a result of the terror attacks.
From
the end of the Cold War, we could look back, with a degree perhaps of
complacency, on a decade of military force being used by the Western powers to
promote peace and stability rather than to acquire empire. The Gulf War of
1991, coming so soon after the end of the Cold War was a salutary reminder that
the international system continued to need our close attention. The need for
military force to right such a clear violation of international law by Iraq, as
it invaded Kuwait, was obvious to all. The United Nations authorised the
action, and the United States built and led a coalition to expel the invaders.
That a major military campaign could be successful with so few casualties set
the tone for western military operations for the rest of the decade.
Military
staff colleges studied the rules of international law, drew up doctrine for
peace keeping, played humanitarian relief instead of war games. Without a
perception of direct threat to their territories, governments reduced their
expenditure on military activities. The "peace dividend" meant that
most European countries cut their combat forces by around 40%. Yet the list of
problems that the military were expected to sort out grew longer and longer.
There were looming humanitarian crises in the Balkans, in Africa and in
Indonesia. The aversion to casualties, particularly in the United States, meant
that some problems could not be solved. Somalia was abandoned when 17 American
soldiers died. The massacres in Central Africa were not stopped, as the
prospect of involving western ground forces was too distasteful. Where
sanitised warfare was possible, action was taken. The doctrine of overwhelming
force, attributed to Colin Powell when he was the senior US general, developed
into the practice of using the air force to win wars and ground troops to go in
later and administer the post conflict rebuilding of damaged states. We
Europeans tried other means in the early stages of the break up of Yugoslavia,
when we put in troops on the ground to provide humanitarian aid. But US
military power and political sensitivity led them to the use of air power to
bring an uneasy peace to Bosnia, and also to solve the situation in Kosovo.
This
high technology American approach to warfare has caused difficulties in
Europe. The USA is the only nation with such capabilities, and Europe remains
fragmented in its approach to defence. The wars, before September 11, that we
have been engaged upon are often called "wars of choice". As
the gap between European and American military capability widens, the choice
for European nations may more often be one of non-involvement. This in turn has
led to a frustration in America. Already there was little US enthusiasm for the
United Nations, and the Kosovo conflict will have shown some that war can be
conducted without the explicit approval of the UN. The election of the second
President Bush was seen by many as presaging a new more self-interested
America. But the signs were already there in the Clinton years. The world was
already frustrated by US antipathy to arms control, to international
agreements, and to its belief in extra-territorial powers. President Bush
reinforced this perception with his rejection of the Kyoto agreement on
greenhouse gas emissions, his desire for Ballistic missile defences come what
may, his rejection of an International Criminal Court and so on.
Some
believe that this would be the end of big wars that characterised the 20th
Century. Yet, the Korean peninsular is frozen in time with forces at very
high states of readiness. The United States has large forces in place in South
Korea. China is even more focused on reclaiming Taiwan, now that its other
territories have returned. Would the US allow Taiwan to be swallowed up by
military means? The security situation is Israel is very bad now, but has been
a concern for years. It is not 11 September which has brought nuclear weapons
to Israel, India and Pakistan, and has pushed Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and North
Korea into developing their own weapons of mass destruction. All these things
were happening before, and the United States has, up until now, been unwilling
to see how the international system could be used to best effect to reduce
these real risks of major conflict.
In
Europe, we seem to be heading (whether by design or accident is not clear) to a
state where we let the United States take the lead in military power
projection, while Europe looks after the "soft security" issues of development
aid, good government, environmental issues and support for UN activities.
Unfortunately such a division of tasks is neither practical nor I would argue
desirable. US foreign policy is clear in its aim, which is to support the
US national interest. Many would say, is that not the way every country shapes
its foreign policy? Perhaps the question is whether the national interest is
seen with a short or long time horizon. Thus it may be in the US short term
economic interest to fight Kyoto, but it will not be in the world's (and hence
the US's ) long term interest to ignore the environment. Support of the
International Criminal Court requires some giving up of national sovereignty in
the short term, in order to benefit from fewer genocidal despots in the long
term. The abrogation of the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, the failure to
ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the ignoring of the landmine
convention or the discarding of the Biological Weapons Protocol may all have
good national interest justifications in the United States, but the national
approach does not contribute to greater global security.
Europe
can try to follow a path towards greater international co-operation and
investment in the developing world to raise standards of education, living and
democracy. When the United States decides to isolate North Korea or Iran
as pariah states, Europe can keep the channels open for when they are needed
(as they have been just recently with Iran). However this divisive
transatlantic approach cannot work. The EU of 15 countries has a GDP as large
as the US. It is more populous. It is going to grow to perhaps twice the size
over the next two decades. Europe has global interests, and needs all the
levers, political diplomatic, economic and military to underpin those
interests. The EU has done remarkably well in developing all the structures for
being a major world player except in the field of foreign and security policy.
The imbalance between US and European military capabilities are seen every day
within NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation may appear to some to be a
strange hang over from
the Cold War. Yet it is the only working military alliance in the world. If the
UN wants to conduct a difficult and demanding operation, as it did in the Gulf,
and it may need to do so next in Afghanistan, it will need to centre the force
on NATO.
If
NATO is to thrive, and I would argue we need it more than ever for the global
security tasks that are emerging, it cannot be an unequal organisation made up
of the US and the also-rans. Europe has a role to play as an equal partner with
the United States. By developing its military capability, Europe can make NATO
more effective, can promote the wider global agenda in discussions with the US,
and can feel that its voice is heard in the decision making process.
None
of this is impossible. The amount that the EU nations spend so inefficiently on
their defence totals some Euro 170 billion per year. They duplicate everything
between them with tiny research establishments, multiple headquarters,
under-utilised infrastructure and protected national defence industries. If
monetary union was the vision for Europe over the past twenty years, the new
vision needs to be a common foreign policy supported by efficient military and
diplomatic structures.
The
question must now be how will the
events since 11 September affect Europe's role? Will the advantages of a global
approach to terrorism, make the US more internationalist? Will the perception
of new threats, make the Europeans more willing to give up sovereignty in order
to play a stronger role in security matters? Have we a real opportunity to
change the international structure to provide a better and safer world for not
just the rich countries?
The
military planners in London and in Bonn and now Berlin have not been good at
predicting the future, We failed to predict the Falklands, the Gulf War, the
fallout from the breakñup of Yugoslavia, and now the terror attacks on America.
I would add to that list of failures, our surprise at the speed and way in
which the Cold War ended. In the dark days of the Cold War, the prospect of a
war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was so awful that we (the nations of the
West) were prepared to field quite significant military forces at considerable
cost. In the UK we thought nothing of spending 5% of our gross national product
every year on defence. On that scale, we could cope with lesser challenges when
they popped up. Now, the situation is very different. We grudge spending even
half that proportion of our national budget on armed forces.
A
public document - called the Future Strategic Context for Defence ñ was
published by the UK MOD in February this year. This document concluded that the
worst case contingency for the planners is a British contribution to a war on
the scale of the Gulf War. It discounts a direct military threat to the
UK. Yet the author cautions that the analysis cannot predict shocks ñ "low
probability events with a dramatic impact". The co-ordinated attacks on
Washington and New York with mass casualties and an unseen enemy are presumably
just such a shock. We cannot know how events will play out on the international
scene as a result of this attack on America. It may be that we have moved back
into an era of risk and vulnerability like the one that we lived through in the
Cold War. What is clear to me is that the risks of security failure increase as
we in Europe allow our military capabilities to atrophy. We are demanding much
from our troops today: in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, over Iraq, in East Timor,
Sierra Leone, and now over Afghanistan. At home, we turn to them for help in
flooding or in foot and mouth. Our own terrorist threat in Ireland still
absorbs them (although that now looks more hopeful), and to all of that is
added the new international terror threat. In Germany you are now offering
nearly 4000 troops as a contribution to the alliance effort in Afghanistan.
These are dramatic times.
Our
armed forces remain essential for the security of the nation. The growing
number of tasks and the reducing resources will make them unable to deliver
what is needed in some future crisis or shock. This phenomenon is repeated to a
greater or lesser (but mainly greater) extent throughout the rest of Europe. I
see the possibility of some relief if Europe can work together in a serious way
to produce real usable military capability, but I fear that it won't. I worry
for all the reasons that we have discussed this evening about the changing
nature of our relationship with the United States. They will rightly expect us
to do more as they take on additional burdens. The instabilities which might
lead to big wars will need to be addressed.
The
Counter-Terrorist Campaign
I shall just focus for a moment on the current counter-terrorist campaign, and some of its implications.Terrorism was there before, some of it motivated by local political aims, some by single issue fanaticism, and some by unfathomable beliefs. Suicide bombers were not new. What is different is the targeting on a global scale of targets designed to cause casualties without limit and to undermine the global economy. They might be called strategic acts of destruction, rather than the tactical terrorist acts of the past. While it may have been possible for the international community to live with occasional acts of local terrorism around the world, it is not possible to live with non-state actors who have a mission to destroy the global system.
The
most effective approach remains very much the same as in more traditional
counter-terrorist campaigns, and these are unfortunately well known over the
past century to UK and German security forces. The priority must be to defend
the most vulnerable targets and to arrest the in-place operatives before they can
carry out new atrocities. These are jobs which belong primarily to the
intelligence and police agencies around the world. Sharing information on a
global basis is the only way to respond to a global threat. The lead taken by
the European leaders in shuttle diplomacy will have contributed to setting up
these linkages.
The second priority in defence terms
(but it is rapidly becoming the first priority in political terms) is finding
and eliminating the direct supporting infrastructure of the sponsor of terrorism.
This is always difficult, but is especially so when head office is located in
the wild country of Afghanistan. The use of $2 million cruise missiles to take out a camel and a tent is a
real problem. Nevertheless given good intelligence, carefully targeted air
attacks and small but capable ground forces we should be able to dismantle the
bin Laden infrastructure. European
states have useful niche capabilities in intelligence gathering, and in
specialist operations which can be helpful to what is inevitably primarily a US
effort. Capturing the man will depend on good luck as much as anything.
Remember that this does not remove the threat from the already trained and
deployed terrorists. I worry that some of the political rhetoric in defence of
the air campaign is beginning to attach too much significance to the effect of
eliminating bin Laden. We need to bring him to justice or remove him as a
factor for obvious reasons, but we should not delude ourselves that the world
will return to normal just because we have done that.
The indirect support by States of
terrorist organisations requires many different approaches. The Taliban have
few supporters among the governments of the world; but some of those
governments are aware that sections of their population are pro-Taliban.
Overthrowing the Taliban is not a simple military objective, particularly given
the constraints on collateral damage. However, it is likely to provide the most
visible part of the military campaign which is currently underway. As we have
seen in the Balkans, planning what happens after the military action is perhaps
the most important element. It is not yet clear how the power vacuum can be
filled in a way which makes life better for the people and thus stops the
growth of yet more recruits for international terrorism. Certainly providing a
government that can bring the rule of law and dispense humanitarian aid must be
a priority, and it will be a role in which a significant international military
presence is likely to be needed for some time.. The UN will have to take the
lead, but the EU will have an important contribution to make.
One other aspect to consider when
planning for action in Afghanistan is what may happen in other areas of
concern. The massing of military power in the region is not just useful for any
strikes on Afghanistan. It ensures that an opportunist action by Iraq can be
deterred or countered quickly. Nor should we forget the Balkans. After a decade
of work to stabilise that region, we need to make sure that we are not so
distracted as to allow them to regress. We must also address urgently the
Israeli/Palestinian crisis, and that may require a military contribution in the
form of an international peacekeeping force.
There
will be effects on the plans for further NATO enlargement, on arms control, on
relations with Russia and China. It is a time of great uncertainty, but not
necessarily all bad news. The events of 11 September have had a beneficial
effect on our troubles in Northern Ireland, as the US withdraws support for
terrorists. We may see the US
exert sufficient pressure on Israel, and the EU do the same to the Palestinians
to force through a just and lasting peace.
We
share the world with each other as never before. We live in a common
environment, where the actions of one state can effect the world. Information
is universal and instantaneous. Economies are no longer controlled nationally.
We need to develop, reform and use the international institutions of the world
for if we fail to do so we had better batten down the hatches and be prepared
for much more spending on security. We can use the current opportunity to build
a consensus for a Marshall Plan for the Globe; but that means that Europe must
act together. We have the resources to provide the aid, the diplomatic effort
and the security forces that will be necessary. This is a great challenge for
the EU, and Germany and the UK must be among the leading players.