Abstract
The 15 member countries of the european union (eu) are preparing to fulfill a long-held goal: creating a European army.
Last November, the eu voted to create a 60,000-soldier-strong rapid reaction corps to deal with regional conflicts and humanitarian crises. Eu members and other European nations have offered to contribute more than 100,000 troops, 400 aircraft, and 100 ships for the military force which, beginning in 2003, could be deployed on 60 days' notice and kept in the field for as long as a year. The corps, formally called the European Security and Defense Identity, would not be a part of nato, which depends heavily on U.S. leadership and military power.
The decision to create the force got a lukewarm reception in the United States. Although U.S. officials say they will support a European defense force if it is—in Secretary of State Colin Powell's words—”done right,” they are concerned it may duplicate nato activities, eventually making the Atlantic alliance redundant.
The United States also views the decision to create the force as a sign of Europe's increasingly independent attitude in security matters, particularly with regard to Russia, which has enthusiastically welcomed the corps' creation. “The danger,” one U.S. military expert told the New York Times in February, “is that the Europeans will set up the European Union as a competitor and alternative to nato. Then they say to the Russians, ‘Don't worry, work with us, we know the United States is too forceful.’ At that point, different geography and different interests become impossible to contain within nato.”
At least for the moment, these fears seem misplaced. Although the force will be distinct from nato, it will be a decidedly modest army incapable of engaging in major conflict and heavily dependent on nato for everything from command and planning facilities to military hardware.
The force is also a natural outgrowth of European unification, yet another step in the one-Europe project that began in 1957 with the establishment of the Common Market.
Europe's experience in the two Balkan conflicts of the last decade no doubt played a large role in the eu's decision to create the rapid reaction force. The Europeans were frustrated by their inability to settle the conflicts by themselves, relying heavily on U.S. diplomatic and military leadership. On the other hand, the United States was extremely reluctant to get involved, raising fears in Europe that NATO's strongest member was becoming less interested in European security.
Eu members were also embarrassed by the inferiority of their militaries. Although the eu's military establishments comprise some 2 million people—compared to nearly 1.5 million for the United States—the Europeans could raise only half the required number of soldiers to serve in Kosovo.
The air power gap was even more pronounced. Only a handful of European planes are equipped with laser-guided bombs and barely 10 percent are capable of precision bombing. Only Britain has cruise missiles. In addition, the European allies have no strategic bombers and stealth planes, lack reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft, and possess no aircraft capable of transporting heavy equipment. As a result, European forces played an almost insignificant role in the Kosovo air campaign.
The military gap continues to widen. U.S. advancements in communications, data processing, and precision-guided weapons are eclipsing the capabilities of its allies, creating the prospect that Europe will soon be unable to operate militarily alongside the United States.
The European Union has a larger total population than the United States—376 million compared to 275 million—and a slightly larger gross domestic product. But the eu's collective annual defense budget, $148 billion, is only half the size of the U.S. defense budget. Even so, the eu countries do not have 50 percent of the U.S. military capability.
The Europeans have also failed to adjust their military doctrine to the post-Cold War strategic environment. “Europeans have the ability to fight World War II, to stop the Russians, and to flatten cities with dumb bombs,” nato Secretary-General George Robertson complained last December.
In mid-1998, the British government decided that Europe, not nato, should provide the framework for building an updated European defense capability. This was a revolutionary change for the British, who in the 1950s blocked efforts to establish the European Defense Community—Europe's first attempt at a “continental army.” Prime Minister Tony Blair views the rapid reaction force as a way for Britain to become more involved in continental affairs without weakening its ties to the United States.
“Have a good day, honey. Don't push any buttons.”
France welcomed the change in Britain's attitude. In a milestone bilateral agreement completed at St. Malo in December 1998, both countries embraced the idea of improving the eu's military capabilities.
The St. Malo agreement set the stage for summits in Cologne and Helsinki during 1999. At these meetings, the 15 eu members approved the creation of the rapid reaction corps and agreed to absorb into it the 10-nation Western European Union (weu), a long-dormant European defense alliance founded in 1948, a year before nato. The weu's 60,000 troops, known as the Euro-corps, will become the nucleus of the new force.
Many observers suspected that France's decision to embrace the British plan was motivated by a desire to make Europe more strategically independent from the United States, a goal the French have pursued since President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO's command structure in 1966.
In September 1997 Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine told an assembly of French diplomats: “There is only one great power nowadays, the United States, but unless it is counterbalanced, that power brings with it the risks of monopoly domination.” The eu, he said, “must gradually affirm itself as a center of power.”
The British do not want to build up the European force at the expense of nato, nor do they want to jeopardize their “special relationship” with the United States. Last November the Blair government committed a quarter of the British army and air force, and half of the navy, to the eu—12,500 troops, 72 aircraft, and 18 warships—all to prevent French domination of the rapid reaction force and keep it from using the force as a wedge to push the United States out of Europe.
Although the Clenton administration evitially wel-comed the decision to create the corps, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen warned nato last December that a “cooperative, collaborative mechanism” must be established to prevent the force from becoming a competitor. Cohen's statement reflected a growing concern, shared by the new Bush administration as well as some Europeans, that an enhanced eu defense capacity will duplicate nato activities, or worse, deprive nato of the military forces it requires to maintain its credibility.
But even if all the eu nations increased their defense budgets—apparently only six have done so thus far—the eu's rapid reaction force would still depend on nato military and communication assets. Unless the eu adds to the pool of forces available for both nato and EU-led operations, some argue, the new defense force will be a burden, not a benefit.
To allay concerns that the eu force will “decouple” troops from national militaries, eu ministers have stressed that they do not intend to establish a full-fledged European army. “I want to spell it out so there can be no doubt,” said British Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon. “No European army, no European cap badges, no European flags; a British contribution to European cooperation firmly under British control and deployed at the behest of a British prime minister.”
Underlying all of these concerns is the deeper fear that an independent European defense establishment will make nato redundant and the U.S. commitment to Europe's defense unnecessary, thereby decoupling the United States from European security. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for instance, calls the European army project “a piece of monumental folly.”
One potential sticking point between the eu and the United States was whether the new force should have its own military planning staff, and the relationship that staff would have with NATO's commanding officer—who is always an American. In an interview last December, Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's commander during the Kosovo conflict, said: “With an American commander whose authority will always be subject to question [by an independent eu planning staff], will the United States continue to participate in nato?”
In January, however, Britain and other EU states quashed the idea of a separate planning staff—which had been strongly supported by France—and instead opted for outgoing Defense Secretary William Cohen's proposal for a common NATO-EU staff. As a result, the force will be dependent on nato for its command structure, assets, and intelligence capabilities, as well as it planning facilities. (However, in an attempt to secure greater autonomy for the corps, France recently called for it to have a separate intelligence operation.)
To guarantee Washington's continued involvement in European security, EU ministers agreed that nato will still have the primary responsibility for defending the continent against external threats.
Nato and eu representatives are also going to hold several high-level meetings every year to ensure that, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently put it, Europe's new defense will not “inject instability”—in other words, not undermine—U.S. preeminence in NATO.
The Bush administration was initially less supportive of the corps than the last administration. It was concerned that the force might be only the first step in the creation of a much larger European army, one that could make the eu a more equal partner to the United States in nato, and thus less amenable to American direction.
However, after British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to the United States in February, the administration declared its support for the force. Its new stance is prompted in part by the desire to remain on good terms with Blair—a strong supporter of trans-Atlantic ties— whose Labour Party is likely to win the next parliamentary election.
The administration is no doubt also concerned about the enthusiasm with which Russia welcomed the decision to create the force. “We consider it completely natural,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said last November, for the European states “to provide for their own security. And in a crisis situation, we are ready for constructive cooperation.”
In contrast to the Bush administration, which seems to view Russia as a potential threat, Europeans have begun to see Russia as a partner. This attitude was evident in a recent statement by German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping: “As the European Union develops its security and defense policy and becomes an independent actor, we must determine our security policy with Russia, our biggest neighbor.”
The specter of Europe—and particularly its most powerful member, Germany—adopting a more independent stance toward Russia is chilling to the U.S. administration.
At some point, perhaps fn the not-too-distant future, Europe will become an independent political and military power. It is already an economic giant. Building its own defense establishment would seem to be a natural complement to the continent's efforts to achieve economic and political unification.
Such a development would serve U.S. interests. The ability of Europe to patrol its own backyard would free U.S. military assets for deployment in more threatening regions of the world, like the Middle East. It would also save billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Some U.S. military presence on the continent will be necessary for the indefinite future, if only to allay European fears of revived Russian—or even German—militarism. And the eu will have to continue to be protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella to preclude any drive to expand the French and British arsenals. However, the eu, in partnership with Russia and the other nations of Eastern Europe, can and should assume more of the burden for maintaining peace on the continent.
But there is an even more important reason for supporting Europe's growing strength. European unification is a goal the United States has encouraged, haphazardly to be sure, for decades. Resisting the achievement of that goal now, for the ostensible purpose of preserving nato— which more than a few analysts believe has itself become a relic of the Cold War—would not only overturn a longstanding U.S. policy, it would also give credence to the charge, popularized by the Russians and the Chinese, as well as some Europeans, that the United States is more interested in perpetuating American hegemony in Europe than in seeing the Europeans stand on their own feet. Such a policy would not only be counterproductive to U.S. interests, it would be doomed to ultimate failure.