Macron, Power and Autonomy

 After Brexit, 80% of NATO’s defence expenditure will come from non-EU Allies”.

Secretary-General Stoltenberg, November 2019

Macron and autonomy

October 13^th, 2021. President Macron is right. ‘Europe’ needs to become a much more serious strategic power, but how Europe becomes more serious could well decide if Europe has any power.

In the past week three events have demonstrated the extent to which Europe is vulnerable to events elsewhere. First, President Putin has been fiddling with Europe’s gas supplies in an effort to coerce the European Commission and EU Member-States into sanctioning the German-Russian Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. If it goes active, as it will, Europe will become even more dependent on Russian energy, Moscow will have (further) extended its sphere of influence at the throwing of a switch, and much of Central and Eastern Europe will be forced into a choice between “war and warmth”, as one British minister put it.  German leadership or German selfishness? Second, President Xi Jingping has again been threatening to reunite Taiwan with the rest of China by force.  China is not ready quite yet to invade Taiwan, but Beijing’s growing military capability will not only render such a threat increasingly plausible, it will also focus much of America’s future strategic attention on the Indo-Pacific with profound implications for both Europe and NATO. Third, Nicholas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s chief software officer, resigned saying that the US had already lost the cyber-security war with China and will soon lose the race to develop military artificial intelligence, the very stuff of future war and my latest brilliant and very reasonably-priced Oxford book Future War and the Defence of Europe.

President Macron’s call for greater European strategic autonomy was both defence focussed and couched in the language of Macro-Gaullism. In a recent speech he claimed that, “This [European strategic autonomy] is not an alternative to the United States alliance. It is not a substitute, but it is to take responsibility for the European pillar within NATO and draw the conclusions that we are asked to take care of our protection”.  If that was the extent of Macron’s ambitions there would be no argument.  However, he then went on to say that, “…Europeans must stop being naïve. When we are under pressure from powers, which at times harden [their stance], we need to react and show that we have the power and capacity to defend ourselves”.  Naïve about whom?  With the AUKUS ruckus still in full flow Macron was in fact implying that the US is no longer a reliable ally and, that its perfidious ‘mini me’ Britain is little more than an American vassal state (his Europe Minister even said that).

(Small) Groundhog Day?

During France’s forthcoming presidency of the EU Paris will seek to define strategic autonomy specifically as European Union strategic autonomy with the EU the future European pillar of a transformed NATO.  France will champion the idea of a 5,000 strong European initial entry force, which for those of us who worked on the 60,000 strong European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) twenty years ago feels more like Groundhog Day than D-Day, albeit a small groundhog. The idea that in 2021 the ‘IEF’ is all the EU could muster for high-end crisis intervention highlights Europe’s essential weakness, the gap between ambition and practice. The retreat from strategic ambition evident over the past twenty years begs two fundamental questions; where exactly is the necessary fighting power and all of its enablers going to come from, and who is going to pay for it in the post-COVID European economy?  France? 

As French bank BNP has stated, “In the draft 2021 budget, the French government forecasts budget deficits of 10.2% of GDP in 2020 followed by 6.7% in 2021. The public debt ratio is expected to rise by 20 points, to 117.5%, in 2020, before declining slightly, to 116.2%, in 2021…the emergency measures…have effectively cushioned the economic shock caused by lockdown; the debate is about the extent and speed of the positive effects to be expected from the recovery plan”. Europe’s simple reality is NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s reality, 80% of NATO’s defence expenditure is now made by non-EU allies, with an equally indebted UK alone representing close to 25% of all European defence expenditure. 

Macron’s vision would make sense if there was agreement across the EU to move towards a European Defence Union with a common budget, but there is not. Countries that could make a very significant contribution to EU strategic autonomy, such as Poland, do not want it. Germany only talks European Defence Union to escape Berlin’s interminable defence dilemma over how much German military power is good European power. Even France, which constantly calls for more European defence integration, only wants it on French terms, and so long as France retains the capacity to be strategically autonomous from a future strategically autonomous EU. In other words, it is hard to see how European strategic autonomy that is ‘European’, ‘strategic’ and ‘autonomous’ could ever be realised without the active support of the US and the active participation of the British, the very ‘untrustworthy’ nations Macron implies are the reason why ‘Europe’ needs autonomy.

Power is as power does

The American economist J.K. Galbraith once famously said that, “power is as power does”.  Strategic autonomy from the US would by definition require Europeans to have sufficient military power to be autonomous from the US. In other words, the measure for such ‘strategic’ autonomy would be European military power in relation to US military power.  Therefore, if Europeans really want the EU to be strategically autonomous from the US and the future European pillar of a transformed NATO, then the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy would need to be imbued with far, far more strategic ambition than has ever been the case.  Indeed, CSDP only exists because of NATO.

To underline that point Ambassador (Ret.) Alexander Vershbow, the former Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, and Dr Hans Binnendijk, a hugely-respected Washington defence analyst, have just published an excellent article in Defense News which effectively sets the bar for such ambition. In, Needed: A transatlantic agreement on European strategic autonomy Vershbow and Binnendijk suggest that, “One way to establish a military standard for strategic autonomy is to agree that Europe will provide one-half of NATO’s current agreed ‘level of ambition.’ That would translate into Europe being able to conduct three nearly simultaneous small operations and one major operation on its own. Given Europe’s current lack of enablers, its relatively low readiness rates, and its fragmented military industrial complex, meeting this standard will take time. So strategic autonomy will be a process, not a diplomatic declaration. But the process should start now”.  You bet!

 Autonomy, force and technology

Vershbow and Binnendijk also believe that European strategic autonomy could only ever be realised within the framework of NATO, enabled by the Americans and including the British. What would such autonomy look like in practice?  At its core there would be sufficient and contemporary European military fighting power and enablers to create a real European rapid reaction future force that could both act as a high-end first responder to deter Russia in an emergency and project stability to Europe’s south.  Such a force will be vital if Europeans are to fulfil their obligations under what is a new transatlantic security contract in which Europeans help keep America strong where she needs to be strong, in return for a continuing American security guarantee to Europe.

To that end, Macron is certainly right to highlight the need to radically re-structure the European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) and Europeans must develop the technology of future war, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and hypersonic systems and drone swarms etc and et al.  Part of Macron’s narrative is clearly designed to protect the French defence industry, much like from London’s perspective AUKUS is designed to help shore up the British defence industry.  Macron also understands that such so-called emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT) will not only be vital for Europe’s future defence, but that such ‘EDTs’ could also offset much of Europe’s military weakness by easing Europe’s chronic lack of military expeditionary capability through technology-driven enablers. 

The paradox is that no amount of reform of the EDTIB is likely to realise Macron’s vision without significant buy-in from the US and its defence technological industrial base and any such future force would need to be part of NATO rather than the EU.  Any attempts by the EU to bypass the US by looking to China and Russia to give Europeans such a technological step up, as Macron seems at times to imply, would simply be self-defeating. That said, it is vital that Europeans confront the reality of the mass disruptive and mass destructive information war, cyber war and hyper-fast future war that is headed their way and the artificially-intelligent, machine-led battlespace of the future that according to Chaillan an ethically-unburdened China is pioneering.

NATO, autonomy and responsibility

The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept should ideally drive the much needed transformation of the Alliance, but that will only happen if NATO is more politically cohesive and the burdens of Europe’s future defence shared more equitably across the Euro-Atlantic area.  A transformed Alliance would be a more global NATO that can help meet the challenge of China, pivotal for strengthened deterrence and defence against Russia, has a strong role in combatting international terrorism with a renewed focus on Europe’s South, and at the hub of a more global partnership network with a much more ambitious strategic partnership with the EU.  NATO must also take the lead in developing strong NATO capabilities to meet the threat posed by ethics-free hyperwar and the potential use of it by China and Russia.

And yet, in an interview in the New York Times this week the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire signalled something very different. He suggested that the key challenge was for the EU to become independent from the United States so that it is able to defend its [French?] own interests, whether economic or strategic. First, defend with what?  Second, in the same interview Le Maire implied equivalency in the French elite mind between the democratic US and autocratic China. Unfortunately, for all Macron’s protestations of love for NATO his vision of strategic autonomy is ultimately an EU defence that is not just autonomous from the US, but independent.  Macron’s justification is that AUKUS has revealed both the US and Britain to be unreliable allies. Unreliable for whom?  In any case, the need for greater European strategic autonomy has nothing to do with the reliability or otherwise of either the Americans or the British and there are enough graves across continental Europe of young Americans and Britons to find Macron’s inference of unreliability plainly insulting.  Rather, European strategic autonomy is needed but to help transform NATO, not to replace it.

Therefore, European strategic autonomy will only ever work if it is a metaphor for greater European strategic responsibility and the only chance of that happening is if it is also done with the Americans and inside NATO. Yes, the EU would be a beneficiary of such power, but not its driver.  Given its structure and culture all the EU is ever likely to do is potter around the country lanes and byways of real power trying to find its way through the fog of its own contradictions with a strategic compass that like some demented satnav offers Europeans a whole host of attractive destinations, but absolutely no idea how to get to any of them.  The EU certainly has a role to play helping to make its Member-States more resilient, but that part of Brussels will never be a driver of the twenty-first century super-highway of hyper military power which ‘strategic’ autonomy implies. 

Folie de grandeur?

Once the AUKUS ruckus has died down (as it will) and the French presidential elections are over one can only hope that France, the US and UK reset their strategic relationship.  Don’t hold your breath. It is not a given that Macro-Gaullism is simply a ruse to attract domestic support in the run-up to the French presidential elections.  President Macron really does seem to believe his own hype.  In such circumstances, it can only be further hoped that a new Berlin government also heralds a return to German statecraft that used to be so good at preventing European problems becoming transatlantic crises.  This is because the ultimate paradox of ‘l’autonomie strategique a la Macron’ is that far from heralding the age of a strategic Europe it could well destroy it, and do NATO an awful lot of damage in the process.  

Power is power precisely because power does. It is European weakness that has rendered Europeans dependent and it is vital that European democracies become more powerful if they are also to be responsible and take their proper place alongside the world’s other democracies in maintaining the twenty-first century peace. Some Americans suggest that how Europeans become more effective allies really does not matter.  They should be careful what they wish for. Thankfully, the chance of Macron’s strategically independent Europe being realised is about as likely as Boris Johnson being invited to join l’Academie Francaise (“Donnez-moi un break”?).  

There are also a host of European states that have no interest in French ambitions to decouple Europe from America and subordinate Britain.  Rather, the more likely outcome if Macron persists is that France will simply isolate itself from powerful allies.  So, yes, Macron is right to call for Europe to become a serious strategic actor, and with more power Europeans will also develop more autonomy.  However, if European strategic autonomy is at the expense of the future NATO Europe will be neither serious nor strategic. Folie de grandeur?   

Julian Lindley-French