Punchy speech won’t deliver global security

Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated his familiar ability to command headlines with a punchy speech to French ambassadors about foreign policy.

In a formidable tour d’horizon he listed the three major policy challenges of the 21st century as preventing a clash between the West and Islam, integrating new economic giants such as Brazil and China into the global order and dealing with global threats like climate change, pandemics and energy supply.

In a clear change of tone from his predecessor Jacques Chirac who once suggested that the world could live with Iran having a nuclear programme, Sarkozy said that the world was facing a "catastrophic alternative" of "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".

Sarkozy said that Europe should bear its responsibility for its security and that of the world and called for a "new impetus" for European defence. In particular, he said, a new European security strategy should be written, building on the one drawn up by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in 2003 so that Europe could have "common visions of the threats facing us and the means to respond".

The existing European security strategy (ESS) was drafted amid what one foreign policy expert calls "a very particular set of circumstances", namely the run-up and launch of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Despite the divisions caused by the war in Iraq, the strategy was agreed surprisingly easily even though it endorsed pre-emptive action, including "robust intervention", a controversial issue because of the decision to invade Iraq on the unfounded suspicion that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. Tomas Valasek, director of defence policy at the Centre for European Reform, says that at the time it was "hard to argue against the ESS when US defence policy seemed so unattractive".

Valasek believes it would be hard to improve the original strategy because it "identified the right threats" including terrorism, failed states and organised crime. It even highlights Europe’s dependence on energy imports.

There is some support for revising the EU’s security strategy. German centre-right MEP Karl von Wogau, chairman of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on security and defence, in a report approved in October last year, called for the strategy to be updated to include issues like climate change and energy and water security. He said that the strategy should be revised every five years.

Valasek says that if the strategy were to be overhauled it would need to address issues like nation-building in the light of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where the intended aims of the military interventions are far from having been achieved.

But it seems hard to see the benefits of revising the strategy, especially as the EU has made significant progress on defence and security since 2003. In addition to having launched nearly 20 military missions, the EU has set up the European Defence Agency (EDA) to work for better co-ordination of defence planning and procurement. It is also setting up 13 battlegroups of around 1,500 personnel which can be deployed rapidly to deal with crisis missions.

The EU has also developed a non-proliferation strategy.

The weaknesses in the EU’s military capacities are well known but they are being addressed. With governments unwilling to boost defence spending, the EDA is working to get more bang for defence spending bucks. The battlegroups are designed to address the fact that the EU’s initial goal of a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops was too ambitious. Instead, it will provide smaller forces which can deal with a scale of mission that is better suited to the EU’s capabilities while spreading the financial burden more equally among all member states. In terms of assessing new and increasingly acute security challenges, Javier Solana and the European Commission have been given a mandate to evaluate the impact of climate change on international security.

If Sarkozy wants to bring about real improvements in the Union’s security and defence capabilities, rather than launching a time-consuming reflection on a new strategy, he should deliver on his promise to mark the tenth anniversary of the St Malo declaration on Anglo-French defence co-operation which gave the EU’s defence policy new impetus. Tackling the dysfunctional relations between the EU and NATO would be one major contribution. The president and his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have made a number of important gestures on better international defence co-operation since taking office, including visiting Iraq and suggesting that French military could train Iraq security forces inside the country. Support for an international peacekeeping force to tackle the crisis in Darfur and the initiative to send troops to protect refugees in neighbouring Chad show that Sarkozy can deliver real actions. He should continue in that vein and overcome traditional French taboos, rather than launching policy rethinks which do little to make the EU the more effective foreign policy actor the president says he is seeking.

Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated his familiar ability to command headlines with a punchy speech to French ambassadors about foreign policy.