The idea that conscription might be the best way to raise a new European army is probably a non-starter for the majority of people in Europe. After all, even unfounded talk about a European military force helped lose the lrish referendum on the Lisbon treaty. But there are at least two good reasons for exploring the conscription issue. First, after eight frustrating years trying to flesh out the European Security and Defence Policy (ESPD), it’s clear we need some “big ideas” to turn plans for an EU military dimension into reality. Second, serious analysis of the conscription option throws the plight of the ESDP into sharp relief. The debate is urgent: Europe’s military reserve tank is already running on dry at a time when pressure for extra EU effort is bound to increase – not least from the new U.S. administration. Talk about conscription in Europe could help focus minds in a continent that so far has stubbornly refused to reconcile its widely different views on the proper role of modern armed forces.
The “headline goal” of the ESDP was the capacity to deploy 60,000 troops rapidly. Yet only a small part of the 70,000-odd European forces serving abroad right now are under EU command. On average, less than 4% of Europe’s 2m troops can be maintained abroad at any one time, and those nations like the UK with a higher ratio are badly overstretched. Where will the extra troops come from when the next overseas crisis explodes? EU commitments in the western Balkans will not ease any time soon, and U.S. demands for greater European input in Afghanistan – both in terms of numbers and risk-taking – seem certain to increase. Arguably, some existing trouble spots – Sudan and Somalia – would have been in less dire straits had Europe felt able to face the idea of direct military intervention. Yet the Georgian crisis has re-awakened Europe’s own sense of vulnerability, which makes it harder still to talk about stripping our continent of the few combat-ready troops that remain at home.
Today’s inexorable demands for more mobile troops has in the majority of the EU’s 27 member states run into the immovable logic of military planning. Planning is still based primarily on national territorial defence, and many countries design their forces to help with internal duties, and even to meet political and economic goals such as national unity and regional development. Many EU countries still hesitate to stretch the concept of national security to cover the use of force in unrelated territories. So foreign deployments are mostly an exception, a luxury or a constitutional headache. Such institutional barriers to sending troops overseas are compounded by public attitudes to foreign operations, with or without the use of armed force. Opinions on the subject vary from nation to nation in Europe perhaps more widely than in any other region on earth.
But if the main impediments to foreign deployments are national, why not simply take the nation state out of the equation? European security and defence policy is anyway not (to date) about traditional national defence. De-nationalising major public functions has been a winning trick in European construction ever since the Coal and Steel Community. It worked for the single market, for direct elections to the European Parliament and for the single currency. Each of these unique experiments had the power to change the life of every citizen of Europe. A system of universal, direct military service is simply the defence sector equivalent of these earlier economic and political successes, one that could sustain a common EU policy on global crisis management.
For military planners, universal conscription could at one stroke cut through the problems of the ESDP. European commanders would gain access to a huge force employed on the same conditions, all trained to the same pitch and ready to serve abroad. Equipment could be standardised and specialised units developed with a precision and on a scale undreamt of so far. The political and social impact of soldiers of all nations serving Europe as their primary task would give a massive boost to popular awareness of Europe at home and gain respect for the Union abroad.
Common sense, however, provides plenty of obvious reasons why such a conscript army could never happen and how this planners’ dream could in practice become a nightmare. In what language would orders be issued? How many decades and billions of euros would it take to standardise the equipment pool? What would be the standard length of service? Some European conscripts currently serve four months, others four times as long. However, it is the less obvious – and larger scale – questions about conscription that tell us more about the causes of the ESDP’s present plight.
According to mainstream analysis, one of the central problems for the ESDP is member states’ reluctance to move decisively towards smaller, specialised volunteer armies. This effectively pins down the bulk of Europe’s manpower within the continent. It is a hangover from the late 18th to 20th centuries when universal conscription was the default form of military service in most European nation states. Conscription fitted with the practice of ‘total’ existential war in which ownership of territory was the ultimate stake; the conscripted solider was fighting for his homeland. The principle of homeland defence was sustained in countries that owned non-European empires by treating faraway lands as “overseas provinces”. France still uses this definition today. (Still, it’s worth noting that Europe’s more successful imperialists raised native armies to avoid basing large numbers of their own troops abroad.)
Now, of course, the requirements for modern forces have changed, for both political and technical reasons. Countries that want to maintain an ability to send troops abroad on any significant scale have steadily switched from conscription towards professional, volunteer services. Even those that retain a basic system of conscription often recruit their naval and air forces in a different style, and need longer voluntary contracts for non-commissioned officers and higher ranks. One simple reason is cost. Training conscripts each year to reach a limited level of competence eats up money which is badly needed for specialised expeditionary hardware. (Nations like Finland that do well in deployments despite sticking to conscription tend to be somewhat under-mechanised.) Conscripts’ limited tours of duty also complicate operations which require units to stay abroad for any length of time. And it's hard to train conscripts to necessary levels of specialisation and professionalism, and make sure they have sufficient foreign language skills for multinational missions. Such factors make it harder to send conscripts on really rapid deployments and several national constitutions forbid sending them abroad unless they volunteer.
Many people across Europe also feel that home is exactly where their soldiers should stay. Defending the homeland is the most obviously legitimate and widely accepted context for military force. It is all very well for the EU Security Strategy to say in 2003 that “…with the new threats, the first line of defence will often be abroad.” Not all Europeans accept these “new” threats or experience them in the same way. Even those who agree with official definitions of current security threats may doubt whether fighting abroad is the answer.
There is one theatre where perhaps everyone can see how military action to stabilise and contain a volatile foreign area directly protects EU territory. Conflicts in the western Balkans have repeatedly involved the rest of Europe since the 19th century. The ultimate aim of all EU operations in the region is a noble one: to prepare local people to play their full part in the integration of Europe, thereby defusing the Balkan bomb once and for all. But where is the equivalent European defence interest in Congo or Aceh? Just how is Europe protected by fighting the faceless, non-state enemies of proliferation and terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Part of the population in countries like France, the UK, Belgium or Portugal may see the point of foreign interventions because of their imperial past. They perhaps appreciate more readily than others that the “chain of vulnerability” linking home to the far side of the planet can be quite short. Irish and Nordic people might say that Europe has a moral duty to help with problems plaguing weaker and poorer parts of the world. Some leaders of newer member states may be willing to take risks abroad to be seen as good EU citizens (and/or earn favours from more interventionist powers) even if they cannot see any genuine security threat to their country.
Other Europeans, however, will have their own reasons for looking inwards. For those most concerned about Russia or disorder in the Mediterranean, faraway actions are a strategic distraction. Military spending is a wasteful diversion of resources for people who put social and economic concerns at the top of their risk assessment. And those who have learnt to mistrust militarism – along with people who have adopted the EU’s law-based civilian culture as a personal creed – will be highly suspect of any armed deployment that claims to be in Europe’s defence.
The level of suspicion about fighting battles with far-off enemies was highlighted by the 2007 “Transatlantic Trends” opinion survey. It found that 79% of respondents across the EU were willing to send forces for humanitarian work in Darfur, 66% for reconstruction in Afghanistan and 59% for a ceasefire in Lebanon. But only 31% wanted European troops to fight the Taliban. Clearly then, if Europe formed a conscript army mainly for missions abroad, it would quickly run into divided and often hostile public opinion, as well as a host of technical obstacles. A more integrated approach to the traditional, territorial dimension of self-defence would therefore seem a better option.
But surely, 21 of the EU’s 27 members have already agreed on one in the shape of NATO? This is probably the killer argument against the idea of a conscripted EU force. It may also be one of the greatest weaknesses of the ESDP. NATO still offers the only framework for Europe’s defence that combines crystal-clear mutual defence commitments with concrete military preparations and structures to execute them. By contrast, the Lisbon treaty’s formula on mutual defence is self-negating: its wording protects both NATO’s primacy and non-Allies’ national roles. Nothing in the structures or doctrines of the ESDP is geared to managing member states’ whole armed forces or their use for self-defence. NATO’s planners, meanwhile, are trying hard to wean Alliance members off conscription and encourage them to develop better-skilled forces fit for operations at home and abroad.
It’s a no-brainer, then. You cannot expect Europe’s citizens to accept universal conscription for military tasks they do not consider vital, especially when this would hurt the one institution that does claim to protect their homelands. It would probably be easier to get people to accept a kind of Europe-wide Foreign Legion of private military forces and other volunteers who are willing to serve on a non-national basis, with Europeans at large paying the bill but still free to organise their ‘real defence’ as they choose.
We could leave this mind game about EU conscription right there. However, it does give us grounds to ponder seriously how well Europe’s basic defence needs are currently being served. Europe’s citizens are today caught between a NATO that has recently been distracted from its members’ territorial interests – and grown heedless and clumsy in its Ostpolitik – and an EU that demands superhuman efforts for distant and divisive missions of limited concern to the public. Europe lacks any call to arms that makes both strategic and moral sense to all. Perhaps the only way out of the confusion ultimately will be for the ESDP to inherit the direct defence of Europe. But maybe the next steps should be in a different direction altogether – tough common EU responses to tasks like tackling internal emergencies, containing pirates and boatpeople or defending vital lines of supply.