My European defence speech at the European Parliament

European defence: on the Tusks of a dilemma

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 February. As European Council President Donald Tusk was reserving a special place in hell for those who backed Brexit with no plan I was a few metres away in the European Parliament giving a speech on the military aspects of Europe’s future defence at a conference organised by the European Conservatives and Reformist Group, with a specific focus on EU defence ambitions. During the speech I addressed the defence implications of Brexit and suggested that whatever ‘agreement’ is finally fashioned it will please no-one and will likely serve as a source of intense friction between Britain and the EU for many years to come. Mr Tusk merely confirmed that. 

The important question is whether it also serves as a source of friction between Britain and the remaining EU member-states. If it does it will undermine the support of the British population for the defence of continental Europe and Britain could well retreat into a form of nuclear-armed defence isolationism. Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs, but to do just that leaders on both sides of the Channel, even in Brussels, need to be precisely that - leaders. 

The text of my speech is below:

A European army or a better army of Europeans?

Good afternoon,

The essential question all Europeans face, but many refuse to admit, is essentially simple: a European army or a better army of Europeans? That is the only realistic question all Europeans should be asking themselves. The key phrase I want you to bear in mind as you consider the future of European defence is not defence integration, but rather sovereign cohesion.

The crux of the debate is the need for Europeans to take greater strategic responsibility and the cost of the force that would make such ambition credible.  There has also been much talk of late, European defence always involves a lot of talk, about strategic autonomy, but what does it mean? Strategic autonomy cannot be simply declared for it will only emerge as a function of real European military power.

The question about what kind of army Europeans need was implicit in the 2019 Franco-German Aachen ‘Treaty’ and the implicit tensions it revealed between Berlin and Paris. Should the European future force be a joint force or aspire to become a common force? The ‘answer’ in Aachen was all too typically ‘European’, an eloquent, hidden contradiction.

The treaty called for a Franco-German Defence and Security Council that will provide “…aid and assistance by all means at their [my italic] disposal, including armed forces, in cases of aggression against their territory”. In other words, for France the focus is joint forces and the ambition collective defence. However, the Council would, at the behest of Berlin, also help foster a “common military culture” that “…contributes to the creation of a European army”.

It is certainly time we Europeans took more responsibility for our own continent’s defence. The Americans are over-stretched and could well be mired in dangers elsewhere, Europeans face a range of emerging threats from peer state competitors to the ongoing menace of violent fundamentalism in and around Europe.  The transatlantic relationship, which remains the essential pillar of any meaningful defence of Europe needs Europeans able and willing, at the very least, to act as an effective first responder in an emergency. NATO, which must remain Europe’s main defence, will be unable to function as either collective deterrent or collective defence unless Europeans generate more military capability and capacity. The British, post-Brexit, may be in no mood to seriously defend other Europeans (more of that later) whilst the abrogation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by both the US and Russia may well mark the beginning of the end of the rules-based system that is rightly so important to Europeans.

In a sense, INF encapsulates all one needs to understand about what is wrong with how too many Europeans see ‘defence’. Those who believe in rules have no power (Europeans), whilst those that increasingly have the power do not believe in rules. As seventeenth century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes once said, “Covenants without the sword of but words, and of no use to any man”.  

A European Army? 

A European Army?  There can be no European army without a European Government. The failed European Defence Community between 1952 and 1954 is a lesson from history. It failed because the major powers – most notably France, Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany were simply not prepared to abandon defence sovereignty. Has that changed?  Poland? Sweden? Spain? Putting young citizens in uniform in harm’s way is rightly the most preciously guarded responsibility of sovereign democracy and in Europe the centre of gravity of such democracy remains the nation-state.  

Given enduring political divisions a European Army might have some limited utility for full-on collective defence, but precious little else. Recent operations, such as Libya, SAHEL, and Syria etc. have highlighted many political divisions between member-states about how and when to use force. In the absence of any automaticity of political action no true European Army can exist.  In such circumstances the more defence efforts are integrated the less chance an integrated force would likely be used for anything but the most extreme of emergencies.

So, what do Europeans really need?

So, what do Europeans really need? First, Europeans need to develop more capable, interoperable and standardised forces to build the reach, redundancy and resiliency that will make NATO work better and ensure the EU-NATO strategic partnership is credible in the face of the actual threats Europeans face. Second, Europeans must grasp that their forces will often be organised into coalitions operating under NATO, EU or national flags. Third, the scope and capability of any European Future Force (EFF) must be actively considered in relation to the threats and pressures it must ease. Fourth, the EFF must be a decidedly joint force not a common force and focussed squarely on the nation-state. A common force would kill flexibility and from experience generate more EU lawyers than warriors. Fifth, the EFF must be protectable and projectable and designed specifically to strengthen the European pillar of NATO and give credence to EU-flagged operations and thus ease burdens on the Americans.

Does current talk about EU defence match up to the scale of the challenges Europeans face?

Does current talk about EU defence match up to the scale of the challenges Europeans face? No. Indeed, it is all a bit Groundhog Day. There has always been tension between harmonisation, i.e. the creation of deep joint forces, and integration, the move towards a common force.  That tension has repeatedly stymied progress because those member-states who have tended to champion integration have tended to have few armed forces whilst those who fear such integration are the ones who have such forces. Germany? The state of the Bundeswehr puts Germany squarely in the integration camp. 

Once again the future defence of Europe seems to be mired in the swamp that stretches between EU defence and European defence with Germany still too fearful of its own power to lift Europeans onto the dry land of strategic stability. Even harmonisation efforts since the Franco-British St Malo Declaration back in 1998 have been fraught with difficulty. Past such efforts have realised results that have been, at best, patchy. The European Rapid Reaction Force, EU Battlegroups and pooling and sharing all met with limited success. This is because they were all essentially cost, rather than effects-driven, lacked any inherent strategic ambition and without US enablers formations, such as EU battlegroups, had at best limited utility and pooling and sharing could only go so far. They all suffered from, and revealed the extent of the essential dilemma of European defence; what aspects of defence should be ‘European’. i.e. national, where could the EU add real value, such as the development of ‘autonomous’ strategic enablers, such as SIGINT and strategic lift, and who would decide and how to use the forces and resources so generated?

PESCO, CARD and the European Defence Fund?

PESCO, CARD and the European Defence Fund (EDF)?  They are good as far as they go but…PESCO’s 17 joint projects are useful, but will do little to ease reliance on over-pressed US forces for anything but the most permissive of European operations or lay the ground for a defence-relevant European future force.  EDF has a budget of €5.5bn per year that will help promote some synergies and efficiencies. However, and to put EDF in context, the UK defence equipment budget per annum is some €20bn per year. Moreover, the introduction of the fund could also corrupt the European defence industrial market and slow, rather than accelerate, consolidation of the European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) and innovation within it. Other people’s money does that if it is not accompanied by clear goals and mechanisms for compliance.

Even further European defence harmonisation will have consequences for smaller European powers that must be understood. Take the Netherlands for example. Its small but good army is close to the Germans, its small but good navy is close to the British and its small but good air force is close to the Americans. In other words, the Netherlands needs all three to agree to act in strategic alignment if its force is to be anything other than a small gendarmerie force.

Yes, I am suggesting PESCO, CARD, EDF et al go further but…

What choice do we Europeans really have?

What choice do we Europeans really have? We can either continue with an analogue EU-led army of Europeans that just bolts together a lot of European legacy stuff… or, we can collectively build an information-led digital 5D future defence that counters disinformation, destabilisation, disruption, deception and destruction. The military core of that defence will demand a twenty-first century European future force at its deterrence and defence core that masters the cross-domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge. Such a force would only be realised if it is also built on a European defence and technological industrial base that embraces the revolution in military technology and the application to the battlespace of Artificial Intelligence, big data, machine-learning, quantum-computing et al.

THAT is the only real European Future Force ‘choice’ we have as Europeans and such a choice can only be realised with the European nation-state and the EU in harness, not in implicit competition. The new/old problem with the current new/old European defence debate is that still too many in Brussels and elsewhere see defence as THE Trojan horse to progressively undermine the sovereign European nation-state in favour of some vacuous and at best partial EU super-state. Europe will NEVER defend itself if the implicit ‘war’ being fought is between the EU and its member-states.

Brexit, NATO and European defence

Last night I attended a reception at which many of the great and good from this House (European Parliament) were also present. At one point a speaker referred to Britain as ‘…a small island off the north-west coast of Europe’. Everyone laughed, except me. One could feel the condescension. Oh, those poor little British lost in their post-imperial fantasy. Get over it! The speaker was clearly a geographer not a strategist! Now, I do not for a moment under-estimate the lose-lose strategic implications of Brexit for all of us, which is why I campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum. But, like many decent but pragmatic Remainers I am getting tired of such ignorance and the arrogance.

First, there are very few in Britain who harbour post-imperial, post-Brexit fantasies. Second, Britain remains a major economic and military actor. Third, Britain has Europe’s most advanced military and intelligence nexus. Fourth, given the growing importance of coalitions to defence in Europe the importance of Britain as a command force to the defence of Europe will increase not decrease. Those of you with such views need to get over your anti-British prejudice and quickly as you cannot expect to insult the British people and, at the same time, expect them to help defend you. Your choice.

Irrespective of Brexit the defence-strategic choices of the British hardly suggest the British Army of the Rhine reborn. Britain is building new fleet aircraft carriers, nuclear ballistic missile submarines, new nuclear attack submarines, new frigates and a host of F-35 strike aircraft do not a Continental Strategy make. The British Army is the smallest it has been since Napoleonic times and could fit inside Wembley Stadium.

The implications for an ever-more important NATO? We may be witnessing the beginning of a re-pillaring of NATO as it divides into a Yankosphere & a Eurosphere. Brexit will certainly push in that direction if the current tensions endure. I would counsel against such divisions because all it would likely realise is a small cluster of Europeans just about hanging onto America’s strategic coat-tails, and a Eurosphere comprised of the strategically left-behind.  Such a divide would over time kill NATO and replace it with what?

Europeans must think about future war if we are to deter it!

The motto of the Royal Navy is ‘Si vis pacem para bellum’ - if you want peace prepare for war. I am not suggesting we prepare overtly for war but we Europeans must at least begin to seriously think as Europeans about war. Europe is at a strategic tipping point and must return to defence fundamentals, credible deterrence and dialogue and do so from a position of legitimate and genuine strength, including a credible military component.

All of the above implies the move towards some form of modular army of Europeans built around the further harmonisation of national forces. Far from denying that I would welcome it. BUT, it needs a proper plan. The first step would be for Europeans to conduct a strategic audit so we know who has what and why with the aim of seeing how existing resources might be applied more efficiently and effectively.  Then we need to consider properly the sustained and systematic application of resource where it can make the most difference. In 2017, Admiral Giampaolo di Paola and I published a paper entitled Equipping & Affording European Defence. Using European Defence Agency figures the message was clear where a fundamental problem with the future defence of Europe can be found.  European Defence R&T is only 2% of total defence spending. And, whilst European collaborative defence R&T might equal some 20% of total defence R&T spending in Europe, it is still only 0.4% of total defence spending. China? Russia? India? US?

Sovereign cohesion? Spending better what we Europeans spend now on defence, spending coherently and in line with what the future defence of Europe needs not what we would like. Then, spend together on what is missing and vital with a clear vision of Europe's objective - to deter war, not to have to fight it.

Let me finish with a warning from Robert Schuman. “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers with threaten it”. 

Thank you.

Julian Lindley-French,

European Parliament,

6 February 2019