It hasn’t been easy, but EU member states have begun to overcome their divisions on security threats and responses. Jan Truszczynski, who was Poland’s political director when the ESDP was being shaped, explains the grounds for his optimism
It was in May 2003, just after Poland had obtained active observer status in the European institutions, that I first experienced EU policymaking from the inside at a meeting of political directors. Yet another human disaster in Africa was making headlines, and various colleagues had argued successfully for a peacekeeping operation in north-eastern Congo. But others from both older members and accession countries were doubtful, seeing no direct link to either EU or national security.
Three years later, despite the unquestionable success of what became known as Operation Artemis, history is repeating itself. It took the EU three months to agree to a request from the UN to send 1,500 troops to the Congo to provide protection during the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections. Once again, many EU countries did not perceive further involvement in Congo as having much to do with their own security.
Does navel-gazing of this sort mean that EU member states are unwilling to agree on the key components of European security, and on the instruments needed to create a safe international environment? After all, the Congo decision was finally taken, and several other missions and operations have been mounted since 2003, both close to home and far overseas. Most important of all, we have had a European Security Strategy (ESS) since December 2003, and it sprang from the EU’s own political will to find common ground after the Iraq debacle, as well as from a growing awareness that the EU needs a solid policy basis shared by all its members.
When we started discussion of the ESS there was no unity of view as to the threats faced by the EU. It was true, of course, that everyone could agree on the nature and origins of such new threats as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), terrorism, unresolved regional conflicts, state failures and organised crime. Nor did anyone question the view that large-scale armed aggression against any of the EU’s member states is now highly improbable. Indeed, these were all elements that could be found in any of the national security strategies that have been developed since the end of the cold war. But some EU countries – and not just France – feared that any renewed use of the big stick by the US, flanked by hand-picked allies that had been selected for the occasion, could pull the EU into a maelstrom of rapidly escalating and largely unforeseeable new risks. In their view, this required that the EU should establish a safer distance from the US by developing the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as a de facto alternative to NATO. Several EU partners, with the Soviet yoke still fresh in their memories, while not challenging its vision of Russia as a strategic partner for the EU rather than as a potential threat, remained uneasy over what they saw as the increasingly assertive posturings of Moscow.
Unavoidably, diverging positions also surfaced with regard to the EU’s policy response. Many of the EU’s would-be global players advocated ambitious outreach that would extend the line of our defences to other continents, while others – Poland included – strongly preferred to focus on the EU’s immediate neighbourhood. In cases of direct and present threat, would recourse to pre-emptive military action be allowed as an extreme option, or should the EU stay firmly within the limits imposed by the UN Charter? More broadly, how should the notion of effective multilateralism be translated into practice? Should a commitment to the transatlantic relationship as the main pillar of European security be unequivocally confirmed in the ESS?
Although all these differences have probably not vanished forever, developments within the Union since its adoption of the ESS have generally been positive, so a degree of optimism is not out of place. There is very broad agreement on the content of UN reform in the field of peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and that has been followed by an active and concerted effort on the UN forum by all EU member states. The emerging policy mix of actions for countering WMD proliferation is supported by all, and is being implemented according to each partner’s capacity. We also saw a smooth handover from NATO to EU forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Good progress is being made on the creation of the EU’s rapid military response effort, with even the most atlanticist members having quickly dropped their initial misgivings about the battlegroups concept so that they are now joining in the search for partners to make the battlegroups operational. Quite a lot of time and energy has been going into the development of the EU’s civilian response capability: a pool of rapidly deployable civilian experts is being created, member states are improving the recruitment of specialists and removing the existing national legal obstacles, and work on efficient mission support in terms of finance and logistics is making visible progress.
This is a quite an impressive list, and it does not even include such promising developments as the fight against terrorism, the European Defence Agency and improved co-operation with the EU’s strategic partners. There is hardly another field of EU action that in the past few years has achieved a comparable track record.
It’s the sort of lift-off that would not have been possible without strong motivation. During my time as Poland’s political director I witnessed an increasing convergence of views between the member states and a growing readiness to cooperate with one another. Of course there has also been a bandwagon effect; no one wants to be seen as a bad performer and suffer a relative loss of influence in shaping EU security. The focus of individual member governments’ interests and their perceptions of the ranking of threats to their own security can and must differ slightly. This is only natural given their different histories. Nevertheless, a shared security culture is undoubtedly emerging.
The EU’s growing potential in military and civilian crisis management has not yet been put to serious test. So much the better, because the rationale of our policy of preventive engagement is to minimise the likelihood of such tests. Now we can only hope that we have created a product that will prove resilient and effective in the face of a major crisis.