European defence: another set of questions

[Alyson Bailes is Political Director of the Western European Union. The views expressed here are her own and should not be construed as representing either the WEU or UK Government's policy. The article appears in the February edition of the RUSI Journal]

As with the Köln European Council before it, the progress made by the Helsinki European Council (10-11 December 1999) towards a Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP) defied rather than disappointed expectations. It adopted a 'Headline Goal' defining the repertory of force capabilities needed for EU-led operations, and launched the process of getting European states to pledge national contributions to it.

It sketched out all but the fine print of the new institutional structures needed to let the EU take over full responsibility for running such operations by end-2000 (subject to a lingering question-mark about Treaty amendment), and brought some of them into being on an interim basis. It set out very full, if necessarily non-legislative, guidelines for the role to be played by non-EU nations: an important requisite, in political terms, for starting on the slower and still delicate business of codifying the future EU/NATO relationship.

Progress in all these fields will bring its own challenges in terms of detailed follow-up, with a stronger sense than ever being 'condemned to succeed' both for the new Portuguese EU Presidency (January - June 2000) and its French successor (July-December). There are also some well-identified issues left open or vague at Helsinki which will stay near the centre of debate, whether or not the EU is the eventual broker of solutions: the way forward on European command structures, for example, or intelligence acquisition and sharing, or the value of new collaborations in air-lift and sea-lift, as well as the broad question of what to do on armaments.

Important though these are, the present article tries to look beyond all of them to a further set of questions the EU will need to answer before it actually launches its first new operation and which would merit some advance attention, given the possible diversity of members: starting-points. Where in the world should the EU be prepared to act and when will the EU flag be the right one to fly? What values and norms should an EU-led operation conform to, in the 'how' as well as the 'what' and 'why' of its mission? Do the new goals and mechanisms of CESDP imply – and should they imply? – broader changes in the way the EU deploys its instruments of power or in the style and balance of its internal governance?

When to fly the EU flag

The range of missions for which the EU now claims competence runs from evacuation, through other humanitarian tasks, to traditional peacekeeping and other crisis-related uses of military force going in principle as far as peace-making. There is no EU country which has not lent its forces in the past for one or all of these tasks in the international interest.

When the EU comes to do them under its own flag, its members are going to have to decide where the specific cause of Europe is sufficiently engaged to justify the risk and cost-sharing of a common action. Starting positions are likely to differ on this because some members have a narrower mental picture than others of where Europe's interests and responsibilities stretch. But in principle and especially from a British viewpoint it is hard to see any reason to set any prima facie geographical limits.

The EU is locked into the world economy with a total of $825bn exports and $790bn imports (many of crucial raw materials): 10 per cent of all its jobs are said to depend directly on the export market [1]. There is hardly a part of the world with which it is not connected by defence relationships from history and present-day migrant communities.

Even without such tangible links its security could be shaken by conflicts which, for example, led to nuclear proliferation or the breaking of taboos on chemical and biological weapons use; or which had side-effects damaging world ecological systems. All these dangers could arise just as much from civil wars or other internal disorders (including violent repression) as from 'normal' inter-state crises: indeed, violence linked with the collapse of states is more likely to cause over-spill in the areas of population movement, terrorism, crime and disease.

There is a further argument at the level of values. The EU is a community based on respect for universal human rights and which claims to make those rights a touchstone of its policy abroad. Its own model of voluntary integration is seen in many regions as one to which not only Europeans can aspire, as reflected in the proliferation of Pacific, South-East Asian, Latin American cooperation networks: not least because of the solutions it offers for managing local interests in a globalised environment.

For the EU even to formulate a theoretical limit to its military engagement could do damage to its credibility in these contexts and would smack of a reversion to discredited 'sphere of influence' politics. On all counts it would seem better for the EU to follow WEU's example in avoiding such demarcation and to face up to the consequences of this open approach when it comes to planning its capacities. The Helsinki language paves the way for such an approach by speaking (without further qualification) of the EU acting 'in response to international crises'.

Before Helsinki there was much anguished discussion of whether the EU or NATO should have 'first refusal' of any potential operation. That point was covered at Helsinki by saying the EU would act 'where NATO as a whole is not engaged' and in day-to-day reality it can be de-dramatised both by a sensible EU/NATO consultation code and by political contacts among the key capitals involved. Overall, the most valid general guideline is surely that of comparative advantage.

There are several legitimate frameworks where Europeans can use their forces to good effect: apart from NATO, UN-led deployments should remain an alternative and in some cases, support for a local peacekeeping network might make more sense than intervening directly. The reasons for deciding each time should not be a matter of institutional prestige but of concrete, political as well as military-technical considerations.

The EU would do well to give NATO the preference for an action that demands very elaborate command structures and/or strong military back-up, to deter and control possible escalation. If there is any risk at all of retaliation against peace-keepers: home territory it makes sense to use a framework based on all-weather guarantees. But there are also political reasons to use NATO when trans-Atlantic solidarity is paramount: where US and European aims might diverge without shared experience of risk on the ground, or a clever opponent might find space to divide and rule. When the US is strongly motivated by its own interests to intervene, all experience suggests that Europe's influence will be stronger as an active partner in the cause.

This still leaves plenty of scenarios where the EU flag might be the right one, and could even be advocated by the US: for instance where local political factors make a European lead more acceptable or the particular human skills required can more easily be furnished from European experience.

This may particularly apply for operations requiring the troops to mingle with local society or work closely with humanitarian authorities or carry out 'cross-functional' tasks e.g. with elements of border control and policing. If re-structuring and training of local forces is required and the model in view is a European one, the logic is obvious. Above all, the European method will work better when synergy with non-military inputs is at a premium or when military and non-military phases of action need to be interwoven over time: because only the EU has the single tool-box needed to control all such efforts from the same decision-making centre [2].

Doing it the European way

What is the 'European way of defence,' or at least, of military crisis management? On the face of it the Europe of defence is a hotbed of diversity, and not just as regards the quantity and quality of national efforts, or army/police/society relations, or mental images of the permitted area for action. Attitudes differ as well to risk-taking, to casualties, to legitimacy of force, to taking orders from another nation in the field [3]. And all this without mentioning the differences in European side-taking on specific 'out-of-area' challenges, e.g. bombing Iraq.

On the other hand, if there was not some common yearning after a more European, self-chosen way of doing things in defence, the experience of Kosovo could not have propelled European leaders down a converging track. Many people feel uneasy about acknowledging that such European instincts could be different from those of the US (or the trans-Atlantic mean), but there are objective reasons why this should be the case. The Europeans have had many centuries to commit their own sins and errors in the use of force and to start (at least) learning the lessons.

They have been in intimate contact for nearly as long with many of the neighbouring zones and more distant regions of insecurity and so should (at least) be less prone to misunderstanding or demonising them. Living in an integrated community bound by webs of interdependence that vibrate if punctured anywhere, they understand 'with their skins' the potential recoil of violence and they know they will have to live indefinitely with any problems of the neighbourhood that they fail to get right.

Conversely, they do have a wide range of non-violent levers and inducements including the unique lure of admission to their own club. For all these reasons, it is an oversimplification to think (as some Americans do) that the Europeans don't act as forcefully as the US because they can't get their act together. The better they get their act together, the firmer their views may and should become on when to eschew force as well as on when to embrace it.

Delicate though these issues are, the EU will need to ask itself before too long what style of defence it should be aiming at and why. The challenge here goes further than just ironing out beforehand the possible diverging assumptions that might hold up decisions. Precisely because the new defence tool is meant to serve larger EU external goals, impressing upon the world that the EU means business needs to go hand in hand with conveying that the business in question is clean and altruistic.

Not only it is important for the EU's own image to convey for instance, to Russia or to our North African neighbours that Europe's strength is at the service of wider international interests. It is also a question of the signal and the model that will be offered to those with ambitions for leadership in other regions, including the local peace-keeping groups that are already trying to learn (inter alia) from Europe. The best solution on all these counts will be for the EU to adopt high and transparent standards in matters such as the threshold for use of force, legal basis, moral authority, laws of war, arms control, democratic accountability and openness.

The use of force

All the Fifteen recognise that as a matter of principle, the use of armed force should be a last resort, should be minimised, and should be proportionate. The difference of instincts in specific cases is what needs to be overcome. Some might be tempted to try out the new defence toy at any cost, or even worse, as an escape from the complexity and lasting burden of non-violent solutions. But the opposite instinct, to delay force until all else has failed and then to scrimp on resources and risks, would be equally reprehensible.

Quick and decisive action, including for prevention or deterrence, may be more humane and make it possible to hand over sooner to the non-military players than half-hearted and hesitant experiments. No general solution can be legislated for in advance, but what should help is:

• Good early warning
• Professional situation analysis and cool evaluation of the merits/costs of military and non-military action
• Good military advice and a decision-making forum willing to listen to it

The earliest possible inter-institutional discussion with NATO, UN, OSCE or regional organisations as appropriate should also help clarify the demand for EU action, its comparative advantages and the most telling and acceptable ways to present its rationale.

An adequate legal base

The Köln Declaration says that the European defence initiative will be pursued Rin accord with the principles of the UN Charter and the Helsinki text adds a reference to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). However, it would be a distinct step from this to stating that a specific UN mandate will always be necessary and the Fifteen ought to think twice before making such a blanket commitment.

Evacuation operations, linked with the defence of one's own citizens, do not normally pause for a mandate at all and for certain other missions a request for help from the legitimate national authority would suffice. Even for other operations involving greater use of force on foreign territory, there may be a case to be made in terms of overwhelming human need: an idea that after all was first debated by Europeans, notably in France, after the end of the Cold War.

Finally, everyone is well aware since the Kosovo episode of the potential trap involved in making every Western action subject to an express UN Security Council authorisation and thus to a Russian or Chinese veto. Overall, it may turn out best to stress the EU's support for the UN and its commitment to legality without specifying a direct UN mandate as a requisite in all cases, unless perhaps for the case of 'peace enforcement' (which the EU will have to approach very prudently for other reasons anyway).

Moral authority

Up to now, the EU has generally had a 'clean' and peaceful image in the world. It has espoused impeccable international principles and the most that can be said is that it has not gone far enough in fighting for them. For certain EU countries, operating under an EU flag could be a way to purge feelings of guilt or self-mistrust arising from national history. This ought to add up to an important aspect of the EU's comparative advantage, so long as certain pitfalls are avoided.

The EU should try not to get in a position where it can be accused of interfering in others: affairs from selfish material interest (e.g. as 'oil mercenaries') or just for the sake of throwing its weight around ('world policemen'). If it is led to intervene on ex-colonial territory, for instance in Africa, it would be wise to give a prominent role in the operation to its non-colonial members and partners and possibly also to work in conjunction with local peace-keeping groups.

Exemplary behaviour by the European troops on the ground, which includes not being fixated with self-preservation at others: expense, is also a component of moral authority and may be crucial for maintaining popular support at home as well: atrocity stories can be just as corrosive as body-bags.

The laws of armed conflict

All EU members are party to the Geneva Convention and most of them are also party to its two Additional Protocols. These regulate the means and methods of warfare and protect those who are not taking part in hostilities. All members contributing to any EU-led mission would be committed to act in accord with their obligations and the EU should specify that any of its regular partners, or other countries, joining in must promise to respect the same standards.

Arms control

Similarly, EU Member States and any partners joining them on each occasion must ensure that their troops obey any additional commitments they have entered into regarding specific weapons and techniques such as chemical or bacteriological weapons, and the use of anti-personnel landmines; and that they obey a host of restrictions on transferring particular weapons and materials to other countries involved (apart from their permanent Allies). Even if some individual countries have not actually ratified the relevant conventions because of national security factors, they should be able to promise not to use the technologies in question for the purpose of a specific and time-limited deployment.

Moreover, since the EU is strongly committed to arms control as a general aspect of its security policy, it needs to give thought to this angle at two other levels as well. First, it needs to make arms control and export controls an integral part of its prevention, stabilisation and normalisation strategy for individual crises and not just in the form of punitive restrictions on the 'losers'. Secondly, it must think hard about how to ensure that its own plans to re-build force capacities for legitimate intervention are not mis-read by would-be regional leaders elsewhere as an excuse for unbridled arms races. Pointing out that Europe collectively, and alone in the world, has already cut its forces by 40 per cent since the Cold War should help.

Democratic accountability

At one level this issue is simple because decisions to start and end EU operations will be assented to by nations individually. EU leaders will remain just as answerable as they are now to their relevant parliamentary bodies and just as constrained by their national constitutions. In Brussels, correspondingly, political control will be guaranteed by leaving the last word with the (inter-governmental) Council of Ministers.

There is an issue of answerability within the EU system to the extent that these actions will have repercussions for the Union as an entity and could often be interlinked with the use of other Community resources. But this can be covered if, as a minimum, the European Parliament (EP) is informed and involved to the same extent that it is inother elements of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The remaining aspect that needs thought is the wider democratic community comprised by the NATO members and Central Europeans who should have regular association with the EU's defence work. Up to now the WEU's Treaty-based Parliamentary Assembly has brought in these nations: parliamentarians to take an active role in its enquiries, recommendations and debates. Could some such wider consultative forum continue to coexist with the EP and provide added feedback, advice and legitimacy for European decision-makers, without upsetting too many institutional apple-carts?

Openness

The most obvious principle for the new EU machinery to follow is maximum transparency short of compromising its forces: safety. Explaining and presenting the EU's new powers properly is important as noted above, for Europe's image and credibility with outsiders as well as for its own peoples' support. A large part of what the EU is doing should have a demonstration (and at the limit, perhaps even a deterrent) effect which depends on a reasonably high profile.

Recent conflicts have reminded us, however, that once an institution gets into a conflict its spokesmen and answerable leaders will face information policy challenges of a peculiarly difficult kind. The EU would profit from considering and cultivating the relevant skills, in Brussels as well as at command and field level; and in particular, should reflect on how to keep a consistent standard of professionalism in this field while its Presidencies continue their six-month rotation.

The EU as a security actor

Like Molière's character who was speaking prose without knowing it, the EU has done a lot for crisis management in Europe even from the time before CFSP was thought of. It is a no-war zone in itself and, with NATO, has had the effect of damping down or at least compartmentalising old disputes among its members. Its single market fosters interdependence; its free movement policies promote familiarity and de-dramatise the physical location of minorities. More recently and consciously, the EU has developed policies to protect all its members' interests in fields like anti-proliferation and weapons control, long and short term environmental threats, defence against terrorism, international crime and illegal immigration.

It has worked for peace and stability through its free-market trade relationships: its aid (with elements of conditionality); its humanitarian help, and its promotion of human rights as well as more traditional diplomatic inputs like fact-finding, mediation, and sponsoring peace conferences. In Europe specifically, it has been growing into two further roles which draw their logic from the very strength of the integration process: the normative moulding of the new democracies: behaviour through setting them clear standards to meet for accession, and the assumption of major responsibilities for post-crisis rehabilitation in former Yugoslavia.

Adding a direct military capacity to this security tool-box is supposed to round it out, not overset its balance. The EU needs to view the military option as part of the same continuum with non-military crisis control, crisis pre-emption and positive security-building. The better machinery now being designed to run CFSP must be capable of building up all parts of the spectrum, including such intermediate niches as police and customs operations, civilian crisis control, or 'peaceful' uses of military forces (disaster relief, de-mining, advice and training . . .).

The EU of all institutions must not fall into compartmentalised thinking here and regard such inputs as alternatives: as explained above, one of its comparative advantages should be precisely its ability to mix them concurrently or sequentially in a single strategy for normalisation. This is not to say that careful thought is not needed on what instruments to use and when.

Very rarely will the EU be the right provider for an isolated, in-and-out military task; it should normally (evacuations aside) be using force as a step to create conditions where its long-term strengths as an economic and political guide can take over. This also has implications in the resource field, because military actions eat up money very fast and it would be paradoxical to let them empty EU coffers, leaving nothing behind, say, for post-crisis reconstruction.

Decisions on how to budget for future EU operations are therefore more important than they might seem and there would be a lot to be said for adopting the NATO/WEU principle that the direct costs of national contributions should remain with nations themselves (ie where they fall) [4].

The impact on EU governance

The defence experiment comes at a time when many other aspects of EU life are under scrutiny. The new Commission is supposed to cut red tape while increasing accountability. The new IGC is supposed to focus on the procedural/institutional cruces of making a bigger Union work. There is pressure both from ground-level (citizens, regions) and from above (pressures of globalisation) to reconsider the vertical share-out of power and responsibility.

Making a success of defence is an important test-case here because it shows in the sharpest form the tension between the EU's past orthodoxy and its future strength. Mastering crises comes out high in the surveys that enquire into EU citizens' true concerns; they also show little shrinking from the disciplines of joint action. Yet no government can expect to sell to its citizens a system for managing defence like the Common Agricultural Policy.

The new machinery the Fifteen have agreed to set up for defence, and for CFSP in general, therefore aims to increase the EU's collective strength in a non-collectivist way. It gives governments the chance to create a sum more than the total of national parts by political methods and on political inspiration, without need for mechanical constraint. If this works and if the European Council can make it work smoothly with the rest of the EU machine, an important trick will have been turned by those who believe Europe can remain 'of the nations' and still be at one.

Allowing such diversity of methods does not and should not mean deconstructing the central supranational powers of the Union. It can still involve managing new areas of business in a centralised way, but by techniques undreamed-of in the Treaty of Rome – as happened with the Euro. What it does demand is a readiness to escape from the old dialectic of 'widening' versus 'deepening' and to find a way for the Union to grow, both geographically and functionally, without clipping its every branch into the now distinctly Bonsai format of the original treaties.

A Europe which can make the shift from orthodoxy to unity and from theory to substance in this field should also make more sense to outsiders. Like it or not, military power impresses. Institutions who can wield it are seen to have more gravitas, more authority and (by inference) more street-wisdom than those who don't. In this context of image, therefore as well as through multi-functional synergy the addition of the military element should bring disproportionate benefit to the whole enterprise of CFSP.

And those observers who know Europe best may read the deeper significance of what is happening as lying in the field of intra-European, just as much as of trans-Atlantic, relations. The Köln/Helsinki formula both reflects and has the power to 'capture' a historic congruence of British, French and German national interests. It could slam the door for good on any risk of 're-nationalisation' among Europe's defence leaders, of (the modern equivalent of) 'separate peaces' with Russia, of Europe¹s extension to the East being conducted in a spirit of competitive empire-building.

If so it should also presage these large countries pulling together better in other contexts where they are active and relevant for the wider interests of the democratic world. And although it is crystal-clear that this step does not involve a 'real' European defence, should the day ever come when NATO cannot perform its present function, it would be much better for everyone including the US for the Europeans to be able to address the situation with such a strengthened core.

1. Statistics from the World Trade Organisation and the European Commission respectively.

2. It may seem strange that stronger European interests are not adduced as a reason for using the EU option, but collective interests – particularly of the indirect kind involved in non-Article V operations – are notoriously difficult to quantify or to weigh against those of another set of states. Paradoxically, crises where the national interests of one or more of EU members are strongly implicated may be among the most delicate to tackle by collective military action (think of Algeria or other 'post-colonial' situations). Crises in the NIS or on Russian territory, though plainly affecting European neighbours' interests, are also likely to be a problematic category for the EU (dangers in tackling them 'against' Russia but also in acting alongside Russia).

3. See also "European Defence: What Are the Convergence Criteria?", written by Alyson J K Bailes for the RUSI Journal, June '99.

4. The WEU has neither its own forces nor its own permanent command structures. The military units and headquarters that could be made available to WEU on a case-by-case basis for specific operations have been designated by the WEU nations. These "Forces answerable to WEU" (FAWEU) are held on a database by the WEU Planning Cell and updated annually. In addition to national units, a number of multinational formations have been designated as Forces answerable to WEU:

• EUROCORPS (European Corps) - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain
• Multinational Division (Central) - Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and the UK
• UK/Netherlands Amphibious Force
• EUROFOR (Rapid Deployment Force) - France, Italy, Portugal and Spain
• EUROMARFOR (European Maritime Force) - France, Italy, Portugal and Spain
• Headquarters of the First German-Netherlands Corps
• Spanish-Italian Amphibious Force

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