To mark the publication of my third Oxford University book Future War and the Defence of Europe, below is a piece that I wrote and which appeared last week on the website of Oxford University Press.
The future of war and defence in Europe
BY JOHN R. ALLEN, FREDERICK BEN HODGES, AND JULIAN LINDLEY-FRENCH
MARCH 23RD 2021
We face a critical challenge: unless Europeans do far more for their own defence, Americans will be unable to defend them; but there can be no credible future defence of Europe without America!
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift of
power from West to East, revealing a host of vulnerabilities in Europe’s
defences and making major war in Europe again a possibility. The lessons of
history? From D-Day to the creation and development of NATO, the importance of
sufficient and legitimate military power has been at the heart of credible
defence and deterrence, whilst shared innovation and technology have been
critical to maintaining the unity of effort and purpose vital to upholding
Europe’s freedoms.
However, Europeans now face a digital Dreadnought
moment when strategy, capability, and technology could combine to create a
decisive breakthrough in the technology and character of warfare—and not in
Europe’s favour. The future of peace in Europe could well depend on the ability
of Europeans and Americans to mount a credible defence and deterrence across a
mosaic of hybrid war, cyber war, and hyper war. To remain credible, deterrence
must thus reach across the conventional, digital, and nuclear spectrums. If
not, Europe will remain vulnerable to digital decapitation and the imposed use
of disruptive technologies.
The threat
Critically, if the defence of Europe is to remain
sound, both Europeans and their North American allies must squarely and
honestly face the twin threat of hostile geopolitics and disruptive
technologies, and they must do so together and with shared purpose:
·
Russia:
Russian economic weakness and political instability allied to the overbearing
cost of the Russian security state and its development of new weapons poses the
greatest danger to European defence.
·
Middle East and North
Africa: state versus anti-state Salafist Jihadism and
the impact of COVID-19 are exacerbating deep social and political instability
across the region. The Syrian war has also enabled Russia to further weaken
Europe’s already limited influence therein, with transatlantic cohesion further
undermined by conflict over what to do with Iran and its nuclear programme.
·
China: the
rise of China is the biggest single geopolitical change factor; Europe’s
nightmare is China and Russia working in tandem to weaken the US ability to
assure Europe’s defence. US forces are stretched thin the world over and could
render European defence incapable at a time and place of Beijing and Moscow’s
choosing. The Belt and Road Initiative and the indebtedness of many European
states to China is exacerbating both European weakness and transatlantic
divisions.
The dilemma
“Could
Europe alone defend Europe? No, and not for a long time to come.”
Can NATO defend Europe? Only if the Alliance is
transformed; for if it fails, any ensuing war could rapidly descend into a war
unlike any other. Europe must understand that if America is to provide the reinsurance
for European defence, it is Europe who must provide the insurance. NATO is thus
in the insurance business. It is also an essentially European institution that
can only fulfil its defensive mission if Europe gives the Alliance the means
and tools to maintain a minimum but credible deterrent.
Could Europe alone defend Europe? No, and not for a
long time to come. Given post-COVID-19 economic pressures, the only way a truly
European defence could be realized would be via an integrated EU-led European
defence and a radical European strategic public–private sector partnership
formed to properly harness the civ-tech revolution across Artificial
Intelligence (AI), super-computing, hypersonic, and other technologies entering
the battlespace. Can Europeans defence-innovate? They will need to.
The future
Europe must quit the comforting analogue of past US
dependency and help create a digital and AI-enabled defence built on a new,
more equitable, and more flexible transatlantic super-partnership. A super-partnership
that is fashioned on the anvil of an information-led digital future defence
against the stuff of future warfare: disinformation, destabilisation,
disruption, deception, and destruction. A partnership which at its
defence-strategic core has a new European future force able to operate to
effect across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge.
The
future of European defence is not just a military endeavour. COVID-19 has
changed profoundly the challenge of defending Europe. It has also changed the
assumptions upon which the transatlantic relationship has rested since 1945 and
changed the relationship between the civil and military sectors—and even
between peace and war. Therefore, Europe’s future defence will depend on a new
dual-track strategy: the constant pursuit of dialogue between allies and
adversaries together with a minimum but critical level of advanced military
capability and capacity. Only a radical strategic public-private sector
partnership that leverages emerging and disruptive technologies across the
mega-trends of defence-strategic change will the democracies be able to defend
themselves.
If not, then as Plato
once reportedly said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
John
R. Allen, President, Brookings Institution, Frederick
Ben Hodges, Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, Center for European Policy
Analysis (CEPA), and Julian Lindley-French, Senior Fellow, Institute for
Statecraft.
John
R. Allen is President of the Brookings Institution. He was previously Commander
of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in
Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, and is the recipient of numerous US and foreign
awards.
Frederick
Ben Hodges holds the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for
European Policy Analysis. He was previously Commander of the United States Army
Europe from 2014 to 2017.
Julian Lindley-French is
a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Statecraft. He is also founder and chair of
The Alphen Group, a high-level strategic 'do-tank'. His publications and
high-level reports combine policy experience and academic expertise, and
include A Chronology of European Security and Defence (OUP, 2008) and The
Oxford Handbook of War (edited with Y Boyer, OUP, 2014).
