“What
we are currently experiencing is the brain-death of NATO. You have no
co-ordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States
and its NATO allies. None.”
President
Emmanuel Macron
Macro-Gaullisme
Alphen, Netherlands.
November 15. Is NATO suffering “brain death”? President Macron of France certainly
thinks so. In an interview for The
Economist last week, the transcript of which I read carefully on two planes
to and from Rome, Macron suggested the US can no longer be trusted to defend
Europe, and effectively called on Europeans to defend themselves. Clearly,
Macron’s one-time ‘bromance’ with President Trump is now mired firmly in ‘la merde’.
So, what is motivating Macron? Is it another French attempt to generate Europe puissance, or just more Macro-Gaullisme,
the applied and sustained hubristic application of a weak French hand in
pursuit of French interests through more ‘Europe’ and less America?
The
Economist interview reveals three strands of Jupiter-sized frustration.
He is clearly frustrated that President Trump signalled his intention to
withdraw US forces from Northeast Syria without informing his close allies. This is understandable angst given the
exposure of both British and French Special Forces to the White House
decision. His second frustration is that
Europeans (for that read Germans) remain lukewarm to his idea of a high-end,
projectable, robust European military capability – the European Intervention
Force. This is even though nine European states have signed up, including the
still-vital British, there is profound disagreement about the level of
strategic autonomy from the Americans implicit in French ambitions. St Malo
redux? However, it is the third strand of Macronian frustration that is at the
heart of his concerns and pose the most fundamental of questions. Are the
tensions in the transatlantic relationship simply due to one US president, or
is there a deeper structural change taking place that will inevitably lead to
the allies drifting apart? More of that later, but what of Macron’s
prescriptions?
The six paradoxes of Macro-Gaullisme
The Macronian solution is
for ‘Europe’, however Paris defines it, to generate far greater “strategic
military sovereignty”. There are six
paradoxes the European defence of Europe would need to overcome:
1. The Franco-British strategic defence partnership: Any such sovereignty could only be
generated, to the extent it could, by Paris re-committing to a close military-strategic
partnership with nuclear-armed London.
That would mean building on the 2010 Franco-British Security and Defence
Treaty. And yet, President Macron also wants to make Britain pay for Brexit by
insisting on the hardest of trade ‘deals’ in any future ‘strategic partnership’
between Britain and the EU. For Macron to think he can attack Britain at one
level and forge a close strategic partnership at another is less Macro-Gaullisme,
more Macro-fantasie.
2. Less America, more Russia: As
Macron wants to distance himself from the US, he also wants to move closer to
Russia. There is a strangely ‘zero sum’
quality to strategic Macronianism. The paradox here is that only though the
strong presence of the US in Europe would any rapprochement with an inherently unstable
and aggressive Russia be at all safe. Moreover, if less America, more Russia is
really the basis for Macon’s future ‘strategic sovereignty’ very few other Europeans
would ‘buy’ into it, and absolutely no-one east of the Oder-Neisse line.
3. The sheer cost of European military sovereignty:
To replace the US-funded military-strategic architecture under which Europe’s deterrence
and defence shelters would be immense.
It would also likely require the complete restructuring of the European
defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB). The recent experience of Galileo, Europe’s hugely expensive and alternative ‘GPS’ system, is
a chilling example of the likely outcome of strategic Macronianism. Any such ambition
would, and necessarily so according to Macron’s own time imperative, demand a
rapid and massive taxpayer-funded investment in a raft of high-end European strategic
defence enablers from satellites to air and fast sea lift. During a disastrous July
software upgrade Galileo crashed. It is
still not working properly. If one listens hard enough one can hear the European
establishment trying to keep this quiet. Galileo,
like the absurdly high-maintenance A400M
military transport aircraft, is but another example of high-cost, low return European
defence-industrial projects that have more political benefit than military.
Plus ça change?
4. Common or collective? The
only way for the architecture implicit in Macron’s vision to be afforded would
be a much more integrated European defence effort, along the lines of the
European Defence Union that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen favours.
In fact, neither Paris nor, more importantly, Berlin are willing to countenance
the loss of the national defence sovereignty Macron’s European military sovereignty
would demand. And yet, deep military sovereignty is the essence of Macron’s
vision, and the only way to balance the strategy, capability, technology and
cost required.
5. Public or private?
Given the pace that new civilian technologies, such as artificial intelligence,
are entering the battlespace, much of it American, transatlantic defence-strategic
public private partnerships will become more not less vital to European
defence. And yet, what Macron is proposing reeks of yet another of those French
statist, protectionist European ‘solutions’. Given the sorry state of Europe’s collaborative
defence research and development and the uncomfortable relationship between
defence policy and industrial policy in Europe, the likely result will be a
Europe more not less vulnerable to twenty-first century warfare. The European Defence Agency and the European
Defence Fund? Amateur hour.
6. Anglosphere versus Eurosphere:
Perhaps the most hubristic of Macron’s ideas, and the greatest paradox therein,
is Macron’s implicit suggestion that Europe could defend itself in the complete
absence of ‘les anglosaxons’. Such an idea is utter and complete nonsense, and the
reason why Berlin immediately dismissed Macron’s demarche.
Right analysis, wrong
solutions
For all of these paradoxes
President Macron is essentially correct to demand Europeans do more for their
own defence. It is time. However, he is dangerously wrong to believe that by doing
more for their own defence Europeans should, or could, distance themselves from
the Americans. No, the reason Europeans should do more for their own defence is
because that is the only way NATO can and will survive as a meaningful
deterrent and defender. It is also the
only way the Americans will, over time, be able to maintain their security and
defence guarantee to Europeans. The US
is facing a growing challenge to its military power across the globe, most
notably from an emergent, autocratic China. Like all the democracies it is also
facing a growing threat across the 5Ds of twenty-first century warfare –
disinformation, deception, destabilisation, disruption and implied or actual
destruction.
Macron’s problem is that
he confuses his strategic mission with his political mission. Gaullism sought
to forge French political unity at home by talking France up abroad. Macron is doing exactly the same by demanding
other Europeans commit to an overtly French need for the Elysée to be seen to
standing up to America in the name of Europe
puissance. This, whilst privately French diplomats reassure the Americans
about the vital importance of the Franco-American strategic partnership. What is the French word for ‘hubris’ again?
The real strategic paradox
is that the Americans will need capable European allies almost as much as
Europeans needs Americans. The ‘West’ is now a global idea, not just a Euro-Atlantic
place which Europeans need to help secure and defend. A truly capable high-end, fast, first
responder European Intervention Force that could operate to effect across
twenty-first century multi-domain warfare would represent a real sharing of
transatlantic strategic burdens. It is how best to realise more equitable burden-sharing
between Americans and Europeans which Macron should address, rather than offering
Macro-Gaullist European defence fantasies. Indeed, more equitable burden-sharing is the
surest route to strategic autonomy.
Here’s the cruncher, the real
reason for greater European military ‘sovereignty’ is the precise opposite to
the prescriptions of Macro-Gaullisme. Europeans need to become militarily
stronger to the US to remain close to the Americans, increase their importance to
DC, and thus exert the very influence over Washington’s strategic choices, the
lack of which clearly frustrates President Macron.
Europe puissance or
Macro-Gaullisme?
President Macron is right
to try and shift Europe out of the defence no-man’s-land in which it has been
mired for too long. However, whilst his analysis is essentially correct, the solutions
he offers are doomed to fail. If France really wants to lead the way towards a
more strategically autonomous Europe France must, at the very least, put its
‘argent’ where its ‘bouche’ is, and increase French defence expenditure to,
say, 3% GDP. Don’t hold your breath! Perhaps the ultimate Macronian paradox is
that the only way to begin realise his vision will be to make the 2019 NATO Military
Strategy work. That means Europeans fulfilling the defence planning Christmas wish-list
the Pentagon has suggested. Do that and the NATO Defence Planning Process might
finally cease to be the greatest work of European fiction since Dickens, or do
I mean Flaubert and his masterpiece about unfulfilled bourgeois aspiration, Madame Bovary.
Is NATO suffering “brain
death”? No, but it does (again) have a French headache. Does Macron’s vision
promise Europe puissance? Non! It is Macro-Gaullisme on the road to Europe faiblesse! Is Macron right to push Europeans to become
strategically serious, militarily-capable and to better understand their place and
role in a dangerous world? As the Americans would say, ‘hell yes’!
Julian Lindley-French
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.