European defence: Divide and fall

Date: 25/10/03

Recklessness on both sides of the Atlantic is threatening to undermine NATO

ARE Europe and America having doubts about their decades-long habits of common defence? America's ambassador to NATO darkly describes the current spat between NATO and the European Union (and for that matter within the EU itself), over what military things Europeans might plot to do together and where they might plot them, as “one of the greatest dangers to the transatlantic relationship”. France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, who started the quarrel by announcing that the EU should build its own operational-planning headquarters in Tervuren, a previously inoffensive suburb of Brussels, claim that causing a rift in the alliance could not be further from their minds. But more is at stake than bricks and mortar. How the row is settled will affect the way Europe and America can work together in the future.

They have supposedly already agreed on many of the basics: that Europe's armies should boost their limited firepower, for example; and that the EU should be able to act independently of NATO in cases where the alliance, with right of first refusal, chooses not to be involved itself. Indeed a painstakingly worked-out formula, finalised in March, enables the EU to use NATO equipment for these sorts of military operations, as is already happening in the Lilliputian mission the Europeans have taken over from NATO in Macedonia. There is even general agreement that the EU should be able to plan for its own military operations.

The real disagreement is about how the Tervuren four want the EU to do that - in its own headquarters, entirely separate from NATO. And the Americans have been alarmed as much by the way the proposal came about as by its content: the four, all sceptics of the Iraq war, cooked it up at their own mini-summit in April, when tempers were still running high. Disparaged at the time as a “chocolate soldier” summit, given the limited military capabilities of its Belgian host, among others, the meeting nevertheless made the Americans worry that Europe's defence effort might start to evolve into a competitor to NATO, rather than as a complement to it. All the more so, as it fits President Jacques Chirac's recently expressed neo-Gaullist vision of a “multipolar” world, one in which Europe could potentially be as much America's rival as its ally.

Still more worrying, Britain's Tony Blair may have made concessions to the neo-Gaullists at a get-together with Mr Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder last month. Perhaps to show goodwill in advance of the wrangling over the draft European Union constitution, perhaps to seem to distance himself a little from George Bush, Mr Blair was more hospitable than Britain had previously seemed to the notion of independent operational planning by the EU. He also appeared to agree that some EU members should be allowed to push ahead on defence without the rest, though he has been careful to insist that any advance party must be open to others to join. He is clear, too, that Europe's defence efforts must remain compatible with NATO's - and he has the support of a lot of other European governments in that. He has therefore ruled out setting up military shop in Tervuren. And he has so far shown no sign of giving way to those who want the new EU constitution to contain a mutual-defence clause, which could undermine NATO's status as the ultimate guarantor of Europe's security.

Friendly fire

Mr Blair is right. The EU can already plan its own military operations, whether using NATO kit (as in Macedonia), or that of France and Britain, its two most militarily capable nations. The EU's mission in Congo, for example, is being run from a French headquarters. Putting up a new building for such purposes, at Tervuren or anywhere else, makes no sense. If something more is needed, better - and safer - for the EU to do its operational planning at NATO's existing military headquarters at Mons, in Belgium. Both sets of planners will be calling on the same pool of soldiers, making co-ordination essential. And it is more soldiers, not more headquarters to order them about, that Europe needs. What is more, if an EU operation should ever go wrong, and NATO is called in to help, common procedures would put fewer soldiers' lives at risk.

The Americans, however, are also at fault. The Bush administration has itself recently seemed intent on dividing NATO into allies and irritants. This gives the impression that it prefers strong Europeans to a strong Europe. It wants well-armed countries with whom it can work bilaterally instead of turning first to NATO. What a pity if “friendly fire” were to fell what is still the most successful military alliance in history.

Editorial argues that recklessness on both sides of the Atlantic is threatening to undermine NATO.

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