“Armed conflict is a human condition,
and I do not doubt we will continue to reinvent it from generation to
generation.”
General Sir Rupert Smith
Alphen, Netherlands. 13 June. How can Europe restore military
credibility? Three events this past week have led me to consider what makes
armed forces credible? The first was a brilliant (of course) intervention of
mine in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf
in which I again pointed out why what the Dutch government claims is a modest increase
in the Dutch defence budget is in fact not. The second, and not unrelated
event, was a visit by the NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to the
Netherlands during which he politely pleaded with Dutch Prime Minister Rutte to
increase their defence spending. The third, and most glitzy of all the events,
was London’s impressive Trooping the
Colour this past weekend to mark the official birthday of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, and her own ninetieth birthday. British military precision at its
best, topped off by a thirty-five aircraft flypast by the Royal Air Force. And yet,
it takes ever more effort by the British armed forces to put on a show that is
by historic standards relatively modest.
The problem in Europe is as ever primarily political. At this
point some right-on Leftist dude with political leanings towards the likes of Britain’s
Jeremy Corbyn would tell me that armed forces are in and of themselves the
problem. On the political Right Colonel (Retd.) Aubry Twistleton-Twistleton
Smythe-Ffrench would tell me that Britain (for example) needs to spend at least
10% of the public purse to keep Blighty safe from dangerous, bloody Johnny
Foreigner-types.
On one hand, the political Left tend to see their small armed
forces as the armed wing of liberal internationalism, particularly in Western
Europe. Over the past decade European leaders have come close to breaking their
respective armed forces by sending them on bottomless pit campaigns in the hope
of making the distinctly illiberal, liberal. On the other hand, the political Right
tends to see the military as solely devoted to preparing to fight a major war
in order to prevent it.
Ironically, the two political camps are both wrong and both
right. The world is such that there are of course occasions when armed force
needs to act as a kind of super police force, just as there are times when such
a force must demonstrably demonstrate its warfighting credentials through fighting
power. Can the European state strike a credible balance between the two?
Before that question can be answered a further question must
be addressed; against what must armed forces defend? There is a new way of war called
hybrid war in which disinformation, destabilisation, and destruction are fast
becoming one and the same. To mount a credible defence and preserve the
capacity for the offensive today’s armed forces need to operate together with
all security elements of a state (and allied states) across eight domains of
engagement; air, sea, land, space, cyber, information, knowledge, and
resilience.
The first step back to military credibility is to face facts.
According to its own figures the Dutch government spend 1.14% GDP on defence, significantly
below the 1.43% NATO Europe average, and far below the 2% GDP on defence NATO
calls for. In fact, if one applies the standard measure for measuring defence
expenditure the Dutch spend nearer 1% GDP on defence. In May Euroland leaders conceded
the principle of debt mutualisation. By so doing Euroland leaders also conceded
the need for the relatively few taxpayers of the relatively few Eurozone states
who actually pay for the mess that is the single currency (that is me!) to
transfer economic growth-annihilating billions of Euros to those that do not.
Therefore, the chance that a country like the Netherlands where I pay my taxes
would actually increase its defence expenditure over the interim is now highly unlikely,
whatever the spin. In the great struggle between European debt and European defence
the latter has been, is being, and will be repeatedly and consistently defeated.
The second step is to bring defence back to the heart of the
state. The only way a credible twenty-first century European defence can be
mounted is to place the armed forces back at the very heart of European state
power – civilian and military. That does
not I am proposing the militarization of the state. There are relatively small
forces, such as those of the British and the Dutch, which if properly embedded
in and backed by all state means, much of it civilian, and further-embedded in
demonstrably functioning alliances, could in turn generate the necessary ends,
ways and means to be mount a credible integrated defence and on occasions a
pre-emptive offence.
The third step is to either generate or have access to a
sufficiency of military firepower that matches the firepower of potential
adversaries. Size and strength does indeed matter in the race for a military
edge.
The fourth and most crucial step is for politicians to recognise
all of the above and to demonstrate an understanding of the utility of force and,
if needs be, in the worst of all circumstances; war. This week Dutch Prime
Minister Rutte, like so many of his European counterparts, again demonstrated that
he either lacks this crucial understanding, or that on balance to him European debt
is a more important strategic issue than European defence. Sadly, the politics
of contemporary Europe does make the choice between debt and defence mutually
exclusive.
In a follow-on to my 2015 book on Friday I finished a big,
shortly to be published, paper on NATO and the July Warsaw Summit (which is of
course brilliant) in which I pose twenty hard questions about whether the
Alliance can endure in a changing world. The questions I pose are all questions
politicians urgently need to answer at Warsaw, but will not. This is precisely
because a) Europe’s political leaders are still unwilling to face hard defence
facts; b) far from embedding their armed forces at the heart of the state, most
Western Europe’s leaders have spent the past decade pushing them to the political
margins by using defence budgets as debt alleviation funds; c) the very idea of
military firepower is to many in this generation of European political leaders
toxic; and d) many leaders simply do not understand either the political or the
strategic utility of legitimate force.
My conclusion? Most of Europe’s armed forces are today far
from being credible as armed forces, which tests not only their credibility but
their very legitimacy. Indeed, when set against threats Europeans face few if
any would be able to mount a credible defence, and that crucially undermines
their collective ability to deter.
Julian Lindley-French
