In today’s Daily Telegraph, former party leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown writes on the challenges facing Nato and the future of European cooperation on matters of defence.
Here’s a sample from Paddy’s piece:
These are confusing times for supporters of Nato. On the one hand, the alliance has completed its mission in Libya without a single casualty. On the other, its future looks less certain than ever in the face of fiscal austerity, increasingly uneven burden-sharing between members, and America’s dwindling faith in its utility.
The fact that the US feels this way is understandable. In 2000, America’s share of Nato defence spending was around 50 per cent. Today, it has risen to 75 per cent. With peace at home, many European nations have redirected spending towards other priorities, free-riding off the US when it comes to threats overseas. And this problem is set to get worse, since every European Nato member is set for severe defence cuts – including France, whose own equivalent of Britain’s defence review begins next year.
This decline in capability has come about not just because we are spending less, but because we continue to spend badly. Military funding is channelled through dozens of separate national programmes and structures, creating enormous duplication and failing to achieve economies of scale. While Europe has half a million more military personnel than America, it can deploy just a fraction of them overseas.
Nato is also being weakened by changes in US foreign policy: as the then defence secretary, Robert Gates, said earlier this year, his country is starting to look west as much as east. What America sees in Nato is yesterday’s vision of the future: allies with declining capabilities, reluctant to put troops in harm’s way, and an institution ill-suited to addressing US interests – especially with defence cuts looming in Washington as well.
To see where this is leading, consider what happened in Libya. After the initial air strikes, the US played a substantial but supporting role, encouraging Britain and France to lead the operation. As a result, the mission suffered from significantly reduced firepower, with less than a quarter of the planes used in Kosovo, flying less than a fifth of the sorties, and ammunition running dangerously low. As in Bosnia in the 1990s, it exposed how poorly equipped, organised and prepared Europe is for serious and sustained missions, even in its own backyard.
You can read the whole piece over on the Telegraph website here.
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11 Comments
Good article from paddy.
“The French vision is to create a wider process of co-operation between like-minded countries, based on practical steps and national interests. This is the right vision – but it is anathema to some in London.”
That is fine, so long as it remains a collaborative intergovernmental framework for nations with a disposition for an active Foreign Policy, for as you say a Euro-Army is a pipedream.
You say a Euro-Army would require a common budget, common equipment and integrated command, under clear political direction, but it the one you leave to last that is most important; you need a common vision of the world you desire to live within, and a common commitment to the methods you will use to create it. Without this a Euro-Army is a paper tiger that will never be employed, and it does not exist.
What does new entente agreement tell us about how those ambitions have evolved since the Cold War?
The first question to ask is whether one party or the other has moved significantly in the direction of the other, the second is whether the detail provides any clues to the future trend of movement along the Gaulist/Atlanticist axis.
The logical focus for the first is the agreed position on NATO and the EU, for Britain has always worked to retain the engagement of the US, through NATO, in its european interests, and the latter has instead worked build a europe that is independent of American hegemony. Both have been edging closer together since the late nineties but significant differences persist.
For its part Britain has worked to fashion a europe that is capable of collective military action at the softer end of the conflict scale, such as peacekeeping, by working with France to create the St Malo accords on defence integration at the inter-governmental level.
France under Sarkozy has welcomed this defence integration, albeit wishing to have this occur at a supra-national EU level, but has demonstrated a commitment to the NATO collective defence organisation by rejoining it after decades of observer status.
The result is unambiguous, european security has a core extra-european component via the capability and will of Canada and the US. In addition the two countries seek a new strategic concept that works to resolve threats to north american security as well as european, including threats to their ‘interests’.
The December 2008 European Council decision includes agreement that the Treaty of Lisbon will not prejudice the security and defence policy of Member States. Further, that the EDSP will continue to develop in full complementarity with NATO in the agreed framework of the strategic partnership between the EU & NATO, with the goals of strengthening and optimising ‘european’ capabilities in the years ahead, and
emphasising the ‘EU’s’ desire to work for peace and security. A clear demarcation between a europe of nations and the EU.
The result appears to be a bilateral affair characterised by inter-governmental cooperation and integration, so on balance the British government appears to have ‘won’ its preferences………
However, as with all matters european there is the potential for further integration, potentially to the point where force employable is no longer sovereign, which in this instance depends on two factors.
1. that strategic capability is so enmeshed with France that sovereign action is not possible without access to those joint assets.
2. that command and control of various joint assets gradually becomes subsumed into a supr-national EU defence entity.
This is termed a ‘downstream effect’ in Defence circles, but can any evidence of intent for such an effect be determined from the new Defence agreements?
The matter of the nuclear deterrent is the most controversial area of cooperation if only because of our technology relationship with the US through shared facilities such as Aldermaston, but rumours in the news suggest this collaboration was agreed with the US beforehand therefore we must assume that sensitive areas will be thoroughly fire-walled on both sides. The lack of protest and outrage from the other side of the Atlantic indicates that the US is satisfied with the security arrangements surrounding sensitive technologies. It has been suggested that ‘downstream’ effects will result in a joint deterrent but given that the French deterrent costs nearly double our own, which is itself heavily subsided by sharing with the US, it is difficult to imagine that any putative French/UK deterrent would prove as effective or as cheap as that which is possessed now. It would in any case only swap one technology dependence for another and thus fail to answer the biggest objection which lies around its independence.
Significantly, one area that does not feature at all is intelligence gathering. There is specific mention of cooperation in the areas of satellite communications, cyber-security and counter-terrorism, but nothing on broader intelligence gathering apparatus. Agreement in this area would have signalled a disengagement of Britain from the US for the intelligence sharing agreements go beyond that shared by any other nations today in the depth and breadth of their integration, thus requiring a level of trust that utterly precludes the involvement of third parties.
To conclude, the agreement reiterates the primacy of intergovernmental treaties as the bedrock of european security, rather than supra-national bodies, and does so whilst preserving the US/UK intelligence relationship, and sovereign military capabilities in all areas with the possible exception of carriers, so with that proviso in mind this author is happy to endorse what is a very sensible and beneficial agreement. The failure to bring the second carrier into service would give lie to the conclusion above, and herald exactly the kind of ‘downstream’ peril that so many suspect.
Finally, it is interesting to speculate that Britain’s supposed lack of grand strategy is nought but a sham. To quote Churchill; “For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent”. If we consider a future federal europe as the dominant power on the continent, whilst agreeing that we are too polite to call it such and thus articulate the ambition, have we not worked to achieve exactly this by picking at the seams of the already frayed Franco-German axis? Why would France accept such a change? Perhaps it to is looking to bolster its leverage in europe, an end primarily achieved through Germany in times past, and now in need of a new fulcrum given Germany’s dalliance with Russia……
Britain’s Grand Strategy must be to retain the ability for sovereign and strategic power projection inside an ever more multi-lateral world. But that world will be one where our interests are best served by us delivering a NATO in twenty years time which is not fixed on Article V defence of European territorial integrity, but instead provides a genuine institutional bond linking the security and prosperity of North America and Europe.
This is why we need to focus our limited resources on a Maritime/Expeditionary future.
http://critical-reaction.co.uk/2783/17-10-2010-britain-and-the-world
@jedi
as you are in favour of a common foreign policy, or at least extending shared foreign policy aims, how do you propose making these more effective and accountable without formalising European diplomatic relationships?
Is that question with respect to a healthy and effective NATO, as per the article theme, or about creating in europe a useful vehicle for foreign policy?
I’m going to presume the latter for now:
I am not in favour of a common foreign policy, because i do not believe it possible for any common ‘european’ position to be effective or decisive, as it must always adopt the lowest-common-denominator of conflicting priorities, and were an effective and decisive policy pushed through from whatever angle it would have no mandate, as it is impossible to formulate such policy in a manner that is representative of, and accountable to, the will of the different polities of europe.
When it comes to foreign policy, as opposed to trade policy, I advocate Intergovernmentalism generally and coalitions-of-the-willing specifically. I would like to see NATO reformed likewise, at least for non-article 5 interventions.
Yet the problem is that by intervening in Libya Cameron rejected the argument in favour of national sovereignty, and the success of the mission promotes the requirement for greater coordination.
Don’t intra-governmental treaties naturally lead to the assumption of competences by supra-national bodies when they are made on an equitable basis? Because if they are not equitable then they are not sustainable over any extended period, since unaccountable relationships eventually lose relevance and become untenable – this is the situation regarding funding for Nato currently and which is driving the debate. In other words the current ad hoc status quo must change.
Given that you argue a common policy cannot be accountable within current structures, are you therefore saying that it is desirable for Nato to be made accountable within EU structures in order to provide the political and financial means to be more effective, or that Europe-wide spending on defence and security should be reduced and Nato’s success of Libya should be ignored because it had no mandate? Or that you are prepared to demand US commitment to Europe will be maintained and underwritten with their current levels of spending?
As for your quote of Churchill, it’s misplaced since this debate about Nato provides ample evidence that the EU does not function as a power and certainly doesn’t dominate. However I would say it is not irrelevant since the Eurozone discussions over Greece shows potential subordination of individual member states’ interests to those of France and Germany, which in turn indicates that the application of British strategy should be to deepen integration within the alliance as a whole in order to counteract the dominance of the power of their ‘axis’ whilst furthering the ability to implement effective policy.
You seem to wish to exchange legitimacy and effectiveness at will without acknowledging the direct links between the two. You just can’t have one without the other unless you’re prepared to pay for it in blood and taxes.
“Yet the problem is that by intervening in Libya Cameron rejected the argument in favour of national sovereignty, and the success of the mission promotes the requirement for greater coordination.”
What Cameron and Sarkozy achieved in Libya was a coalition of the willing, and what the entente 2.0 represents is a triumph of intergovernmentalism, which is precisely why the suprantionalist europhiles are so dismayed (http://europeangeostrategy.ideasoneurope.eu/).
“Don’t intra-governmental treaties naturally lead to the assumption of competences by supra-national bodies when they are made on an equitable basis?”
No, they do not, they are in fact totally separate approaches for all that in the case of the EU the former has been used as a stepping stone to the latter. The former being ‘an approach to integration that treats states, and national governments in particular, as the primary actors in the integration process.’
“Given that you argue a common policy cannot be accountable within current structures, are you therefore saying that it is desirable for Nato to be made accountable within EU structures in order to provide the political and financial means to be more effective, or that Europe-wide spending on defence and security should be reduced and Nato’s success of Libya should be ignored because it had no mandate?”
Dear me no, you are getting the wrong end of the stick! Understand this; I hold that europe is composed of many polities whose social and cultural histories have led them to many divergent aims and expectations, therefore it is impossible to achieve governance that is both representative of, and accountable to, the group as a whole, and thus it will struggle to be percieved as legitimate.
This comes back to my frequent complaint about lib-dem theory of governance, that it is a dry and technocratic affair combined with a general leftward faith that any societal problem can be overcome provided there is a sufficiently sophisticated legislative framework through which a solution can be expressed. This is false, politics is at heart a visceral and emotional struggle that hinges upon your perception of whether you can trust another to govern in your name, and be bound by the consequences. If that trust does exist the structure of governance lacks legitimacy and risks insurrection.
This is europes problem, particularly over emotive issues such as elective warfare, just as it is NATO’s problem in a post Article 5 world. NATO would like to move beyond pure Article5 mobilisations to get involved in operations such as Libya, and it knows that it needs to move beyond unanimity to do so. Britain and France as self-identifying Great Powers are happy to push this agenda, less warlike nations such as Germany are obviously bitterly opposed, quite bitterly.
This can readily be seen in the writings of highly respected and German mil-bloggers such as Sven Orttmann. He is a deeply knowledgeable and principled chap, who writing i admire greatly, but I totally disagree with his rejection of interventionist foreign policy. But……………………. that is okay because we are members to different nation-states whose group meme’s bear a much closer correlation to our own views, thus permitting the Libya intervention to be legitimate in the UK, but not in Germany.
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2011/07/about-crazily-warped-interpretations-of.html
Hence; coalitions of the willing on emotive and divisive issues. A supranantional foreign policy would be even more dysfunctional than the working mechanisms of the eurozone!
“As for your quote of Churchill, it’s misplaced since this debate about Nato provides ample evidence that the EU does not function as a power and certainly doesn’t dominate.”
It does when France and Germany act in unison, and there are many who would certainly like to see it act as a power, so the example is perfectly apt. What on earth do you think is going to be the effect of a euro17 on economic policy for the wider EU27?
“You seem to wish to exchange legitimacy and effectiveness at will without acknowledging the direct links between the two.”
No, you are confused, I recognise the inherent lack of legitimacy and thus reject political structures that will either:
1. fail to represent the whole, and thus be rejected as illegitimate
2. in being forced on dissenting partners will lack accountability, and thus be rejected as illegitimate
Paddy is right, a euro-army is a pipedream, and it is a pipedream because there will never be a foreign-policy to which it can be applied.
re: Libya
where was Libyan national sovereignty while violence was contained within Libyan borders and there was still a functioning government? If the trouncing of national sovereignty amounts to a triumph of intergovernmentalism, why are Cameron and Sarkozy reasserting the national sovereignty and supra-national arguments respectively with regard to Greece and the Euro?
re: intergovernmental treaties
aren’t these treaties implicitly designed to foster closer relations through confidence-building measures rather than establish a status quo? if intergovernmentalism does not lead to permanent coordination beyond the scope of initial agreements and take on some political infrastructure wouldn’t the process therefore constitute a failure? Bilateral treaties are good: a good starting point.
“I hold that europe is composed of many polities whose social and cultural histories have led them to many divergent aims and expectations, therefore it is impossible to achieve governance that is both representative of, and accountable to, the group as a whole, and thus it will struggle to be percieved as legitimate. ”
I completely agree with the first section of this, and would only disagree with the second (other than with your grammar usage) insofar as to replace ‘impossible’ with ‘imperative’ and the final ‘and thus’ with ‘or’.
Your next paragraph (your ‘frequent complaint’) is beyond my comprehension of reality – it is itself a dry and technocratic affair, ironically. Where you talk about ‘left’ or ‘right’ as a means for describing political positions, I’m sorry, I don’t see that they are relevant terms to any general talk of Libdemmery. I only partially accept your description of politics as ‘a visceral and emotional struggle’ – precisely because political terminology such as ‘trust’ is entirely capable of being interpreted in differing ways by different people.
re: Sven Orttmann
I don’t see it’s possible, likely or desirable that all constituents of a nation will ever speak in complete harmony even under the most extreme circumstances.
re: Churchill
Thank you, I agree that the overweening influence of the Franco-German interest is a danger to European stability but I disagree that it is desirable or possible to do anything to lessen or mitigate against it by resorting to negative policies. Maintaining a strong Franco-German alliance is in the British interest, as it was when we sought it as a war aim, but it can only be done through our own active involvement – which requires deeper integration and full participation in joint forums. You don’t trust them, so why turn your back on them to let them out of your sight?
re: legitimacy and effectiveness
this is where you get confused – you say you ‘recognise the inherent lack of legitimacy’ of the EU political structure which will be rejected as illegitimate whatever happens. This is a biased conclusion from a biased assumption which totally ignores my point that you appear happy to exchange legitimacy for effectiveness as it suits you without acknowledging their true relationship.
The legitimacy of nations is falling because economic power has been and is shifting to larger polities and this limits national effectiveness (particularly in defence and security), however the effectiveness of these larger polities is hindered by their lack of democratic legitimacy (either because material concerns limit the uptake of the franchise or because the practical structures don’t exist to develop and direct mandates into policy).
It is highly undesirable to reverse these economic shifts and it is highly unlikely that you could be successful anyway (demographics, diplomacy and primary resources are dangerous when they aren’t treated with care and attention), whereas the positive alternative is entirely within our grasp should we find the will.
re: a Euro-army
It’s actually quite amusing that you quote PA out of context (‘a Euro-army is a pipedream’) to insinuate formalised cooperation is undesirable, when he actually says an autocephalous alliance of European forces has been an effective reality for several hundred years already – working cooperation or integration, it’s the same thing really, when seen through human eyes.
Other than your blase attitude and blindness to certain facts I think you’re capable of arguing quite well, unfortunately your conclusions as a result aren’t reliable.
you need to read Rob Dover – Europeanization of British Defence Policy:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0754648990/?tag=libdemvoice-21://www.amazon.co.uk/Europeanization-British-Defence-Policy-Robert/dp/0754648990
i’m not arguing because i like a jolly good argument, i’m arguing because i am trying to sway lib-demmery away from supporting a position that is dangerous in its capacity to absorb attention and resources to no good effect.
That’s fine because I think it’s clearer to understand where the difference of opinion exists – you’re saying there is a strategic and practical advantage by loosening the framework of international ties, whereas I’m saying this would be to sacrifice the longer term advantage to loosen them too far or in the wrong way.
There’s some potential for reconciliation on the points, but it looks like the symbolic nature of the decisions is likely to have a stronger influence on opinion than the practical outcomes.
“you’re saying there is a strategic and practical advantage by loosening the framework of international ties, whereas I’m saying this would be to sacrifice the longer term advantage to loosen them too far or in the wrong way.”
I can accept the difference as you outline, but i do have doubts that your longer term advantage would materialise given that I believe it is a price that the electorate are unwilling to pay, but I am happy to agree to the principle that we should not go to far the other way (…….and be unable and unwilling to cooperate and collaborate).
just a final question – if you accept the potential for a longer-term advantage, how do you square it with your conclusion that ‘the electorate are unwilling to pay’ for it, when the implication is that we would be investing in the diplomatic asset of higher confidence which provides an economic reward to be reaped?
hmmmmm, 50 hours is enough to separate a reply by 13 months!
regardless:
nothing is set in stone, no identity is fixed, and I am unwilling to prejudge what will constitute british identity in 50 years time, and how that will jell/jar with what constitutes a ‘european’ idenity in the same time-frame.
this nebulous potential long-term advantage will – if a supranational foreign policy results from british federal involvement in europe – come at the cost of britain achieving its sovereign foreign-policy goals in those intervening decades.
if there does emerge a sufficiently converged identity, by the middle of the century, that a common EU foreign-policy would amplify british influence rather than diminishing it then by all means we should adopt this position. at that point.
at the end of the day i am interested that britain gets its way, not europe. because i am british.