“We,
as an Alliance, are facing distinct threats and challenges emanating from all
strategic directions…We are adapting our military capabilities, strategy, and
plans across the Alliance in line with our 360 degree approach to security”.
London
Declaration, December 4, 2019
Arsenal of democracy?
Funny old week, as NATO
Heads of State and Government were meeting in Watford at the high-end of the Alliance,
I was briefing NATO (and other) senior commanders on power, strategy and future
war at the sharp-end.
With commendable brevity
NATO’s London Declaration (perhaps the Watford Declaration?) is a masterpiece
of British diplomatic drafting. Seventy years of Alliance, European defence
expenditure, Russia, China, terrorism, Open Door policy, future war technology,
cyber et al were all dispatched in succinct brevity. Still, the question I am left pondering is
thus: given the task-list implicit in the Declaration how does the Alliance get
from here to ‘there’, and is Watford a good place to start.
Much has been written
about NATO adaptation, and much of it by me. However, the tour d’horizon des menaces implicit in the Declaration suggests
that for NATO defence and deterrence to be credible the Alliance needs to be
less adapted more transformed if it is to balance the goals established at
Wales in 2014, Warsaw in 2016 and Brussels in 2018 with the hard strategic
realities of profound and rapid dangerous change faced by the Alliance. Much of
that effort must necessarily fall to the European allies. In other words, what the
London Declaration is missing is a London Charter.
The 2019 NATO London Charter
Seventy years on from the
founding of the Alliance, and in recognition of the service to Europe provided
by both Canada and the United States, the European allies propose the 2019 NATO
London Charter. The European allies
agree that NATO is first and foremost an institution for the defence of Europe.
They also agree that, given the scale of scope of dangerous change, and for the
US to maintain its security guarantee to Europe, Europeans will need to do far
more to assure and ensure their own defence.
Therefore, Europeans will establish a new defence-strategic level of
ambition that re-energises the NATO Washington Treaty with particular emphasis
placed on the modernisation of Article 5 collective defence and Article 3
self-defence.
Therefore, the Charter agrees
the following actions:
The
future defence of the Alliance: The European allies
will systematically and collectively engage in the revolution in military
affairs underway and properly consider the defence applications of artificial
intelligence (AI), machine-learning, big data, et al.
Assessing
China: Proper consideration will be given by the European
allies to the security implications of the military-strategic rise of China for
European defence, with a specific focus on the ability of the Americans to
maintain its security guarantee to Europe, as well as the further implications
for the Alliance of China’s use of debt to influence NATO members.
Countering
Russian coercion: European allies will collectively seek to
better understand Russia’s use of complex strategic coercion together with the
application by Moscow of 5D warfare against Europeans through disinformation,
deception, destabilisation, disruption and destruction.
Reinstating
worst-case analysis: European allies will again consider the
possibility that the worst-case could one day happen and judge Russia, China, Iran
(and others) by the military and other coercive capability capabilities they could
use against the Alliance if they so choose.
Building an
ACO European Heavy Mobile Force: European allies will
actively construct a high-end, fast, first-responder heavy mobile force able to
engage across multi-domain warfare by air, sea, land, cyber, space, information
and knowledge. The Allied Command Operations Heavy Mobile Force will be ready
by 2024. It will support front-line Alliance nations in Strategic Direction
East and Strategic Direction South, under both Article 3 and Article 5 of the Washington
Treaty, thus making the 360 degree Alliance a credible reality.
Restoring high-end
development exercises: European allies will design a series
of high-end ‘development exercises’ to properly test multi-scenario emergencies
that could possibly take place simultaneously in several theatres ranging from
the Arctic to the Mediterranean and beyond. Such exercises would be designed to
test NATO to the point of failure and also involve senior politicians,
including heads of state and government.
Further strengthening the EU-NATO Strategic Partnership: European allies
and partners will strengthen the EU-NATO Strategic Partnership recognising the
importance of the EU to credible European societal and critical infrastructure
resiliency, effective consequence management, and the enhanced mobility of
Allied and EU forces in and around Europe.
Greece
and Turkey: Turkey is an honoured and important
member of the Alliance, as is Greece. However, the European allies cannot
accept either Turkish absolutism or Greek exclusionism. The allies will thus
make it clear to all concerned that if the essential modernisation of NATO is
blocked by regional strategic disputes over oil drilling rights etc, the Allies
will seek alternative solutions.
Deconflicting Brexit
and NATO: It is vital the UK remains engaged in the future
defence of Europe beyond the maritime piece. However, the European allies also recognise
that NATO cannot be isolated from a bad Brexit. Britain is a nuclear power with
Europe’s most advanced intelligence services, as well as an effective advanced
expeditionary military capability. A close post-Brexit strategic defence and
intelligence partnership with the UK will be in jeopardy is the EU and its
member-states sought to punish the UK over trade policy for departing the EU.
Promoting harmonised
threat assessments: The European allies will seek to
harmonise their respective threat assessments and set defence budgets at a
level commensurate with the nature and scale of actual threat. To that end, and
given the deteriorating strategic environment, European allies will consider
the impact of both austerity policies and Eurozone monetary convergence
criteria on defence investment and the ability of nations that are both EU and
NATO members to meet their obligations under the Defence Investment Pledge.
Creating NDARPA: European
allies will create a NATO Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (NDARPA) to
inform their collective research and development and inform their future war
defence procurement choices.
Making better
use and place of Alliance forces and resources: European allies agree
that NATO headquarters should be placed where they are needed, not where they
are desired, or where it is cheapest. Such headquarters will be re-married with
the forces they are designed to command and exercised as such. Command
structure and defence planning reform will continue. European allies recognise
that the NATO Defence Planning Process needs to be far more rigorous, with
possible sanctions for those allies who repeatedly fail their annual reviews. European
allies also agree NATO Centres of Excellence must be excellent, not simply
consolation prizes for those who did not get headquarters. Such centres must
form a NATO Network of Excellence that informs NATO HQ, SHAPE and deployed
forces.
Modernising NATO education and training: European allies will seek to
modernise NATO’s professional military education with the NATO Defence College
in the lead. Particular emphasis will be placed on the development of best practice
education and training ‘products’ that can be offered to nations. There will be
a focus on the use of new technology in education and training.
Rationalising EDTIB: European
allies will seek to create an effective and efficient European defence
technological industrial base to meet the requirement of the European Future
Force. Particular attention will be paid
to ensuring fielding times for new European defence equipment is vastly
improve.
In conclusion, the
European allies fully recognise the debt of gratitude owed to the United States
and Canada for their respective contributions to over seventy years of relative
European peace. They also recognise that
the sharing of burdens, risks and costs is central to the very ethos of
Alliance. Therefore, the European allies formally agree to build European
forces of sufficient strength and quality that US forces are never again
enfeebled by trying to offset European military weakness.
The strategic rise of
China, the continued aggression of Russia, and the threat posed by terrorism
demand of all the allies a fundamental re-commitment to the principles of unity of effort and
purpose without which there can be no sound defence of Europe. They also
recognise that if they fail NATO to could fail and be replaced by coalitions. Such
an outcome would critically undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of the
Transatlantic Relationship upon which the peace of the world relies. For Europeans NATO is the arsenal of democracy
and is recognised as such.
(It
was a nice dream).
Julian
Lindley-French
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