LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Autumn 2007

by Ingemar Dörfer

RELATED ARTICLES:

---

Sir,

François Godement says that Europe’s military power is best used to improve the world order through crisis management, peace-keeping and nation-building. He also observes that Europe’s peaceful intentions should not be equated with weakness. Unfortunately, he is projecting the viewpoint of a European living in a land that is essentially united and free, onto another continent that is neither whole nor free. Asians will interpret peacefulness as weakness, whatever Europeans may think.

It seems to me that Europe is in great danger of underestimating Asian military might. The Japanese navy until recently played a relatively low-level role in protecting its maritime lines of communication. Now is has 53 destroyers and frigates, compared with 26 in the British navy and 33 in Taiwan’s fleet. Asia has eight of the world’s ten largest armies and it will soon be home to at least five nuclear powers – China, India, Israel, Pakistan and Iran. The continent has a martial history and no one has yet been able to unite it.

All this suggests that Europe’s defence capabilities should be harnessed against future Asian missiles with payloads of mass destruction, rather than designed to support marginal UN operations. However, European debate about missile defence is still at kindergarten level, especially among German politicians who fear it might annoy the Russians.

So can European policy towards Asia be based on an extended European Security and Defence Policy? Not really. ESDP is essentially designed for nearby operations where Europe has military superiority. Only two of the five security threats highlighted in the European Defence Strategy – proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and regional conflict – are matters for the “high politics” of international military engagements. The other three issues – terrorism, state failure and organized crime – are all within the realm of “low politics” and can be dealt with accordingly.

Godement says that European soft power can achieve certain foreign policy objectives in Asia when it is supplemented by America’s hard power. He lists five topics suitable for such intervention: maritime security, countering nuclear and missile proliferation, security in the Taiwan Straits, energy cooperation and helping Asia’s transition to democracy.

But there are difficulties for European action in all five fields. Maritime security can be handled by the emerging Asian navies. Containment of weapons proliferation needs cooperation from America, Russia and China as well as Europe. The Taiwan Straits’ security is, in Europe’s view, best secured by appeasement. In the energy sector, Europe is competing with India and China, so regulated competition is welcome but hard to achieve. It is also nonsense for Europeans to tell Asia that “energy supply should not be used as a political weapon” as this directly contradicts our own experience of recent Russian policy. European proposals and initiatives must not be completely divorced from reality.

The transition towards Asian democracy, which was started by the US in Japan 60 years ago, is, of course, an admirable goal. But the botched international efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan show just how hard it is to accomplish. It should be remembered that there was no major European military intervention in Asia between the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the multilateral operation in Afghanistan 50 years later. If European troops are defeated again, this will obviously have an impact on our willingness to intervene in Asia in the future.

Perhaps Europe can make a difference on the margins of Asia. Certainly, an independent European view about Asian crises and the possible options for their resolution would be welcome. But solutions put forward by Europeans who have no stake in their outcome will excite little interest in either Asia or the US.