To make any progress on the burdensharing debate, there must be a common agreement on what constitutes the global security burden today. Only then can an assessment of division of labour be sensibly made.
The global security continues to deteriorate. The rushed intervention in Iraq of March 2003 resulted in new regional security problems, and an extended commitment for both militay and overseas aid. The 2002 US intervention in Afghanistan has also generated an increasing demand for security assistance, and this is set to grow in 2006. The Balkans are not yet finished, and Kosovo remains a concern. The al-Qaeda threat from suicidal terrorism has not diminished, and random acts of mass killing have occurred, including in London, from this source. Conflict in sub-Saharan Africa has also continued, and at times has required forces to be deployed under UN, EU, NATO or national auspices. Control of nuclear weapon proliferation has made little progress. The review conference of the NPT in May 2005 was a failure. North Korea has probably developed a crude nuclear capability. Iran continues to take actions of concern to the international community. The revelations of the illegal nuclear activities of A Q Khan have also illustrated the limitations of international controls. Only in Libya, has there been some helpful progress in the WMD area. The Israel-Palestine peace process has been both slower and less certain than had been hoped, and may yet call further on international resources.
The traditional international structures to promote peace and security have also suffered setbacks. Reform of the UN makes slow progress. NATO has been damaged, perhaps fatally, by the tensions between members over the Iraq intervention. The US has only recently realised, perhaps too late, the costs of failure to consult with allies. European defence co-operation has also been hampered by Iraq, but also by the failure to agree a new EU constitution. The divide between the rich and poor peoples of the world widens both through increasing protectionism by the rich and inadequate governance in the poor. Poverty, repression, disease and ethnic disputes increase the sense of despair amongst the developing world, and will lead to more security challenges.
Natural catastrophes are also presenting challenges to governments. They have much in common with the manmade problems which stem from conflict. As climate change increases the intensity and frequency of some environmental disasters, governments will be under pressure to provide more reliable responses than the current ad hoc arrangements. We prepare for a pandemic of Avian flu' which may cause more deaths than any of the heard secuirty threats. International crime and corruption flourish and undermine democracy and governance.
The deduction from this brief analysis is that there is no shortage of tasks to improve security and stability around the world and that they will require a mix of civil and military tools. Many will require coherent parallel application of diplomatic, economic, legal and military resources. Yet we have both conceptual and structural problems. The conceptual is a debate that we have had on many occasions about hard and soft security. The worries that have been expressed about the US taking the burden of hard security and the Europeans doing the dishes of post conflict reconstruction. Seriousness in security is still measured by the yardstick of expenditure of GDP on military power. Yet the evidence is that military power is a declining part of the tools needed. Even when we look at the use of military power, the important aspect is no longer at the high end of the technology and hardware, but at the low end of troop numbers, training. deployability and sustainability. General Sir Rupert Smith in his new book, The Utility of Force, makes a persuasive case that the UK government departments are still locked into preparations for traditional industrial wars, which now have little relevance. Major change in an approach to future security will be difficult. There are many political, industrial and cultural vested interests in continuing the current system. One could argue that EU thinking is further advanced in accepting this change in priorities – although for a number of players it may be more an excuse to do less.
There is no great division of views across the Atlantic on the nature of the future security problems – although there are some differences of view about the relative risks. There are however significant differences about the optimum strategies to tackle problems. The run up to the intervention in Iraq in 2003 highlighted these differences. The current problems over force arrangements in Afghanistan show that the differences continue. This gives us a problem of the meaning of burdensharing in a transatlantic context. If the US measures contributions only with respect to hard military power, while the EU looks to civil society agencies then the debate is likely to be fruitless.
There is however a second problem beyond the conceptual and that is structural. Nations are still deploying resources in a similar way to Cold War days. In the UK, MOD:DfID:FCO budgets are in the ratios 32:5:2. It is also far easier to generate extra funds to meet emergency military needs than it is for the equally essential civil conflict prevention or post conflict reconstruction requirements. We have seen a parallel in the US with the decision to withdraw reconstruction funding from the budget for next year.
The transatlantic debate has been conducted in recent years, even before 9/11, in terms of one side (mainly but not exclusively the US) focusing on encouraging high technology high intensity warfighting capability, and the other in Europe seeking recognition for the soft security civil input. That debate has not finished, but there is a growing recognition of the contribution that each can make. In a rational world, we would divide up the tasks on an equitable basis –a form of role sharing but across capabilities as different as armed predator drones to training for the judiciary in an emerging democracy. We know how difficult such rational allocation of tasks has been in the much more narrow field of NATO military tasks. In some ways after the train wreck of the EU constitution, sovereignty issues are now more difficult even within Europe. Yet attempts for every nation to be able to undertake every security task are bound to duplicate effort and be inefficient.
Burdensharing at its cheapest and easiest is political support and endorsement of the actions of an ally. Spain and Italy provide such low financial cost support for the US over the Iraq intervention. There was certainly a political price to pay, but no military contribution to the intervention. Poland, Australia and the UK provided increasingly expensive hard support. Did that sharing of the burden, at both financial and political cost, buy them more influence in the development of the strategy? Which brings me to another aspect of burdensharing – the sharing of the decision making process. The differences between national approaches make this even more important. In the Cold War, when there was agreement on the threat and the strategy, burdensharing through an Alliance such as NATO was simpler. Now when the levers of change are much more complex, agreement on strategy between contributors is vital. I think we are a long way from achieving genuine consensus approach to security operations. The coalitions of the willing approach has become the norm – the mission defines the coalition. But the approach leads to the lead nation, usually the US, determining the strategy. These makes other contributors reluctant to become emeshed in a conflict over which they have no control. So I would argue that improvements in burdensharing will require a much more consensus approach to strategic planning.
We shall doubtless focus on shortcomings in levers of power, both civil and military. How can burdens be shared if allies are lacking the necessary interoperable capabilities? Yet if we define burdensharing more broadly than just military aspects, there are many opportunities for significant sharing between allies. A deployable body of international police may be more important than an aircraft carrier. When it comes to the question of military capabilities, it might be more sensible to encourage nations to give priority to investing in those capabilities which multiply the effectiveness of their civil contributions. Air transport both strategic and tactical, heavy lift helicopters, and reconnaissance assets are important in all warfighting operations, in post conflict reconstruction, and in disaster relief. They give a bigger payoff in terms of burdensharing across the spectrum. Similarly when looking at army structures, technical specialists such as engineers, medical, signals, and police are all required in greater numbers than the main combat arms for sustained operations other than high intensity warfare. My deduction from this is that even when we focus on defence budgets, there are opportunities to look across the civil and military burdensharing to provide a different balance of investment, which will improve the transatlantic relationship.
Finally, a word about where I think Europe should be going. The EU has a theoretical comparative advantage in deploying the civil levers of power. Yet it remains a piecemeal and inconsistent approach. Just as is the past, I have argued for the need on the military side to be prepared to pool capabilities to achieve greater effectiveness, there needs to be the development of a greater capability in the civil side. Some good things are already done. However an EU air transport capability needs to be complimented by an EU standing disaster relief force. We could get public backing for such a mission, and it would allow us to build up over time a range of capabilities, which in turn would prove that we were serious about burdensharing.