In Kabul in January of last year I asked Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai what the European Union should do to increase its visibility in his country. “Send more troops,” answered Karzai with his usual broad smile.
Well, as we know, the EU is not running a military operation in Afganistan and President Karzai knows it too. He may well have meant the military commitments by the Europeans to the NATO-led ISAF, but perhaps it would be a useful mental exercise to imagine the EU having a need for such a military mission. Could its member states agree to launch one? And if so, would they be capable of handling it?
The EU seems to have contradictory goals – on one side it wants to be a global player and believes it needs a strong security and defence policy to support this international role. On the other, its member states are reluctant to commit more resources to building up a modern, deployable military capability and to make full use of their existing forces. There is further contradiction between their goal of long distance projection force and the pride that many of them have in Europe’s “soft power” ability to influence world opinion through example.
The French presidency had championed a review of the European Security Strategy (ESS) that would take account both the international changing situation and also new developments in European security thinking. The updated version of the ESS may perhaps provide us with the answers to the contradictions. And although the outcome of the review process is still unclear, some of the problems it must address are plain enough.
ESS was in its old form still serviceable to some extent, even though some parts of it had clearly become obsolete. Take its opening sentences: “Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free. The violence of the first half of the 20th century has given way to a period of peace and stability unprecedented in European history.” Sounds nice, but if we look out of the window at present-day Europe we see that the financial crisis is assailing most of the European Union’s member states, we see Russia employing its own brand of power policy to solve problems, an increase in global threats and geo-political tensions, and international rules at risk of becoming invalid. We see a world that is being divided into roughly three sets of states – liberal democratic nations, authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states and those that have not joined either club yet.
We are in fact witnessing a new security paradigm which should be reflected in any document that bears the proud name of “security strategy”. Unfortunately, documents of this sort too often bear the stamp of the times when they were compiled, and thus reflect the different economic and political interests that politicians happened to have at that moment.
The ESS should define the foreseeable threats to Europe, and provide guidelines according to which future civil and military operations should be launched. But threat assessments are difficult to provide when some nations are even afraid of mentioning those other nations that are the potential source of these threats. It is always safer to land texts like the ESS with much “constructive ambiguity”. That leaves room for different interpretations and so not doing things that should be done.
In an ideal world there would be a clear division of labour between the different international organisations involved, as well as close cooperation between them. That means between NATO and the EU. NATO should take care of the military side of any operation or mission and the EU should concentrate on the civilian aspects, with both sides being planned simultaneously from Day One. If this had been done in the case of Afganistan, we would be in a much better situation now. But of course we are not living in an ideal world, and the EU has taken what seems to be an irreversible decision to become a military actor too.
In this situation we have to make the best of the capabilities and resources that we have. The first thing we need is the political will to act, and this is where it becomes clear that lots of politicians in Europe, but not too many statesmen. A politician follows public opinion whereas a statesman creates and leads it, by being unafraid of unpopular decisions. European Union countries (and others too) have a myriad different commitments – NATO’s operations and its NRF Response Force, EU-badged operations and the new Battlegroups, UN operations, ad hoc coalitions and then their own distinct national needs. In a situation like this it is quite clear that defence budgets should reflect those needs, with every euro in them used to the maximum effect.
Talking of increasing defence budgets at a time of financial crisis may sound like talking of rope in the house of someone who has been just hanged. But if the EU really intends to become a global security player, it is a problem that has to be dealt with. No security strategy can compensate for the lack of finance for improved capabilities, or for the unwise allocation of defence spending. Experts claim that about 70% of Europe’s armed forces are incapable of acting outside their national territories, so the resources spent on these troops are largely wasted.
This reluctance to commit the necessary resources to equipment has resulted in a situation where too often someone has to travel around with begging-bowl in hand to ask for a helicopter here and fixed-winged aircraft there. The EU´s Chad mission has been glorified as an example of cooperation between the EU and Russia, but perhaps it should more accurately be used as an example of the EU nations’ inability to assemble on their own the helicopters they needed? A greater pooling of resources and the centralised funding of operations would be one of the solutions, and some initial steps in that direction are now being taken in both the EU and NATO.
Crisis-management operations cannot be run on the principle of doing as little as possible and launching a mission only when it seems to be in a safe environment. Safe environments do not usually need crisis management, even though they may offer a climate conducive to upbeat press releases.
Another important aspect is the duration of a mission and its exit strategy. The EU has had a number of operations in Congo, both civilian and military, but the violence there continues to make headlines. What lessons have been learned from these missions? All of them have been dubbed a success because declaring an operation unsuccessful would be politically damaging. Should there have been a civilian follow-up, or should the troops have stayed in longer? Honest evaluation of every mission or operation means better planning for the next one.
And talking of operations, we should not forget crisis prevention. Development aid should be considered part of European security strategy, because it is often cheaper and easier to step in at an early stage with economic measures than it is to deal with an acute crisis later.
EU operations are often hampered by inertia in the decision-making and launch phases. The EUPOL mission in Afganistan is a good example of that – it took a great deal of time to come to a common decision and then to launch the operation on the ground, with months then spent by the mission on dealing with their own problems instead of the duties they were sent out to perform. Having said that, the EU’s monitoring mission in Georgia was launched last autumn much faster than usual and should serve as an example of how quickly Europe can get its act together if the political will is there.
There is also a psychological issue that has to be dealt with – the jealousies that exist in some capitals when it comes to cooperation between NATO and the EU, and regarding the role of U.S. In security terms, close cooperation between NATO and the EU, as well as between Europe and U.S., is unavoidable. And when it comes to Europe’s own security, the U.S. is far more important to Europe than is Russia. It is to be hoped that Barack Obama´s presidency will see the revival of Europeans’ belief in the transatlantic relationship.
History has shown that the world is still a pretty unpredictable place, so the EU has to be ready to confront a daunting array of new and old challenges if it wants to be a global security player. Producing a shiny new security strategy paper will be of no help if there is not enough political will to do what has to be done. Preserving the status quo or closing one´s eyes in the hope that problems can be wished away is also of no help. The problem lies not in the EU, but in its member states. It also lies in the conflict between the EU´s collective interest and narrow national interests. Meanwhile the next call for a new EU mission may be closer than we think…