Alphen, Netherlands. 9
January. The world is playing stud poker, whilst Europe plays bad chess. Last week’s stern warning from US NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder that Europeans should use the money saved by withdrawing from Afghanistan to reverse crippling defence cuts was surely just another tiresome American whinge? In fact Daalder is dead right.
Daalder and I have not
always seen eye to eye but he knows what he is talking about. Nor is he just another gung-ho American. Born in The Hague he is as European an
American as one could possibly find and by and large sympathetic to the idea
of a ‘Europe’.
The facts speak for Daalder. Last month’s authoritative “European Defense
Trends” by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) demonstrates
conclusively a disconnection between Europe’s on-going slashing of defence spending
and the hikes taking place in the rest of the world. According to CSIS European defence spending
fell by 1.8% in 2012 on top of the up to 30% cuts from between 2008 and
2011. Contrast that with defence
spending elsewhere revealed by my own research.
Russia aims to inject about $775bn/€593 by 2022 for new armaments and a
more professional military. Beijing grew
the Chinese defence budget by 11.2% in 2012 (although slightly lower than the
12.7% in 2011) which is but the latest double digit increase. Indeed, China has been growing its military
at that rate since 1989 and the official figures are probably ‘conservative’.
Even Europe’s overall defence spend conceals a
dangerous capability gap BETWEEN Europeans.
The combined 2011 defence budgets of NATO Europe totalled some $235/bn€180bn
compared with a 2009 U.S. defence budget of $658bn/€503bn, even though the size
of the two economies is roughly the same.
Of that $235bn/€180bn France and the UK together represent 49% whilst
the so-called ‘big three’ (Britain, France and Germany) spend some 88% of all
defence research and development in NATO Europe. Sixteen of the twenty-six NATO Europe members
spend less than $5bn/€4bn per annum and much of it inefficiently. In spite of economic difficulties Britain
plans confirmed spending of some $261bn/€200bn on military equipment alone over
the next ten years.
It would be easy
to say that Europe’s appeasement of strategic reality can all be put down to
the Eurozone crisis. Clearly, that is an
important factor. However, there
are other deeper forces at work. When I
worked on what became the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy a decade
or so ago there was still a sense that European defence would in time provide a
new set of defence benchmarks wholly ‘made in Europe’, rather than imposed by
America. Sadly, whilst the EU has indeed
made limited progress towards a European defence market today those Euro-benchmarks are honoured only in the breach. More than one senior EU official has told me privately
that each time a force goal is missed EU member-states either move the
goalposts, hide the facts or more often both.
America has some
responsibility. Washington’s strategic
mistakes and poor leadership have helped to create the pacifism from which much
of Europe now suffers. However,
ultimately Europeans must take responsibility for their own defence. Sadly, too many Europeans lack the
appetite to create the big picture strategic analysis upon which sound strategic
defence decisions are made. Consequently
I can guarantee I will waste a lot of time this year at conferences listening
to the same self-serving, short-term ‘strategic’ nonsense official Europeans
serve up to justify defence meltdown. This
will no doubt be supported by ‘evidence’ of meaningless deployments whilst reality-sapping
national caveats and swingeing cuts will be quietly ignored.
Daalder’s
essential point is therefore correct; one cannot establish a credible defence on a military vacuum. At a time when NATO's collective defence architecture is in desperate need of modernisation to cope with the technologies of a new age Europe
cannot detach itself from geo-politics or pretend balance of power politics are
a thing of Europe’s past. Like it or not Europe’s
defence effort is a key test of European strategic seriousness. Europeans cannot expect Americans to invest in Europe's twenty-first century defence if Europeans do not. Moreover, with an over-stretched America
increasingly focussed on Asia-Pacific Europe’s defence appeasement will drive
dangerous world change not stop it. Sadly, lacking a
strategic concept worthy of the name, mistrustful of American leadership and
organised around a Germany the more influential it becomes the less military continental
Europe will likely become more pacifist and more neo-isolationist.
What will it
take for Europe to stop disarming? Europeans
must stop appeasing reality by pretending they live in the Euro-world they would
like and face the world as it is; a world in which others now make the
rules. In other words, Europeans must
stop playing bad chess, whilst the rest of the world plays stud poker. Winston Churchill once described an appeaser as “one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last”. If Europeans do not finally get their defence act together Churchill’s crocodile will one day
bite...and hard!
Julian
Lindley-French
