Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2000
THE RT
HON GEOFFREY
HOON AND
MR RICHARD
HATFIELD
40. In which case, is it not a bit unhelpful
that we talk about a European security and defence identity and
we talk about a common European defence and security programme
or process? When we were in NATO last week, I picked up from several
people we spoke to—I am not at liberty to reveal who—that
this was not about defence at all; it was about security and crisis
management. Is it not unhelpful to have this word "defence"
in there because it shows confusion and, secondly, perhaps in
the signals it sends across the Atlantic to people who then think
the Europeans are going to do their own thing and therefore we
should withdraw or downplay or change our attitude to what is
going on?
(Mr Hoon) I think there is probably some
intellectual force in what you say. In a very technical way, you
properly analysed the problems we had at the outset and we continue
to have in the various acronyms that are used to describe these
different exercises. It may well be right in terms of a specialist
group with considerable knowledge about what is going on to talk
about security policy, for example, but in order to get across
what we are talking about, which is the use of force, the word
"defence" frankly is the word that most people recognise
and understand. We are about communicating what we do. I think
there is a further, more practical point as well to recognise
and it is something again which I would like to emphasise in terms
of the kinds of debates that take place comparing different institutional
responses. In the end, the reality is you are using the same people.
You have limited numbers of people available for all of these
operations. It does not matter what sort of acronym is at the
top; the reality is you are using the same forces. It is important
not to lose sight of that fact because sometimes that is lost
in the debate about a European army. What we are talking about
are ways in which individual countries collectively make available
their armed force for different purposes. In that sense, to try
and distinguish quite as precisely as you do between defence and
security policy is not always helpful.
41. Given that you have accepted the validity
of the logic of what I said, would you say that your fellow European
Union defence ministers have the same understanding of it?
(Mr Hoon) That would be a difficult question.
I could not answer precisely for all 14 of the others but, broadly
speaking, the main ones, yes. There is a logic, is there not,
about what you describe in relation to does a neutral country
have a defence minister.
42. Several that I know do, yes. Finland does.
(Mr Hoon) Those are the kinds of issues.
We tend to use language, I accept, fairly loosely in this context,
but I think there is some intellectual force in what you say.
In getting across what we are involved with, particularly the
use of force, "defence" is still a word that is broadly
recognised as covering that sort of area.
Mr Hancock
43. I thought, when you were speaking about Petersberg
tasks, that they would be interpreted as and when and by whom
to suit the purpose. If you were slapping people around, it would
be a Petersberg task; if it was a peace keeping exercise, it would
be interpreted accordingly. The suggestion from ESDI is that we
are going to have this rapid deployment force. Considering NATO
was hard pressed to get 40,000 men ready during the course of
a two and a half month aerial war and still was not able to get
them on the ground if possibly the air war had gone on for another
two and a half or three weeks and it would have had to be engaged
on the ground, how on earth is it realistic to live up to the
headline goal behind all of this, of having 50,000 troops deployed
within 60 days, sustainable for a year?
(Mr Hoon) That is the precise point of
all of this. Because of the criticism that you rightly made of
our inability to deploy effectively, whether that had a NATO hat
or a European Union hat or whether it was the collective response
of a group of sovereign individual nations. The reality was that
the European nations were not able to get forces into the field
sufficiently quickly to sustain them there as much as we would
have liked. That is why we have worked both through NATO and the
European Union to improve that capability and why the Helsinki
headline goal is something that we have concentrated on as a practical
response to precisely the difficulty that you describe. To go
on from that and to suggest that this is somehow unrealistic by
the year 2003 I cannot agree with. I will give you one simple
reason. I am afraid I was not able to get more up to date figures.
In 1997-1998, 15 States of the European Union had very nearly
two million people in their armed forces, in uniform and available
to those 15 Member States.
44. They could not get 40,000
(Mr Hoon) We were, as you say—
45. They could not get 40,000.
(Mr Hoon) Exactly, but it seems to me
that is precisely why it is important that we emphasise our efforts
to make sure that we can achieve what is, in my view, a very modest
goal set out at Helsinki and, frankly, a very relaxed timetable
to make those forces available. If we pay for across the European
Union nearly two million members of the armed forces, I accept
that it is a very considerable criticism of our capability that
we could not get enough people into theatre quickly in Kosovo.
That is why we are doing something about it and that is why I
emphasise the practical, military aspect of this rather than the
esoteric debate about institutions and constitutions that too
often we get embroiled in.
46. To get those 50,000 men and women, you would
need probably 200,000 trained personnel over that period, to sustain
it for a year.
(Mr Hoon) A year is perhaps an exaggeration.
A six monthly tour of duty ought to imply maybe double that number,
but I am not going to quibble because I recognise and emphasise
the importance of sustainability in terms of the rotation of forces.
47. I would imagine 40,000 men in Kosovo might
have been engaged in a little more than a week long battle if
they were going to push on into Serbia. Realistically, the headline
goal said—not my words, not yours, but from the people pushing
for ESDI—50,000 men for a year. The NATO countries between
them collectively could not provide 1,500 policemen to take the
pressure off KFOR in Kosovo despite the special plea from the
Secretary General. How on earth, out of those two million people,
40,000 of them sitting on Northern Cyprus looking out over the
Mediterranean and another 300,000 looking across the Aegean, but
most of them with rifles which could not shoot for much more than
a few hundred yards, let alone do anything effective—if
you take out of that two million those who are conscripts and
badly trained and ill equipped, where on earth are you going to
come up in three years' time, knowing how much it would cost to
get 200,000 people ready and willing? Some NATO countries ask
for volunteers. Norway, if they go on an operation, send out a
volunteer shift. They cannot order their men to serve overseas
because they are all conscripts.
(Mr Hoon) I am sorry if I appear pedantic
in response to your question but I think it is necessary to analyse
what was the problem. The problem was rapid deployability. There
is not actually the same degree of problem, say, after a year,
of having the time to plan at the end of a year to get forces
into theatre. Indeed, events in Kosovo have demonstrated that
actually we have been able to sustain the initial forces by a
broader group of countries who, after a period of time has elapsed,
are able to get forces into theatre. I know it sounds a little
pedantic and I broadly agree with your emphasis in terms of ensuring
that there is sustainability and that there are forces available
to rotate. As Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom,
one of my concerns has been that we have been effective in getting
our forces into theatre quickly but sometimes we have not always
had other forces available to rotate to allow our forces the opportunity
of getting out of theatre sufficiently quickly. That is something
that I have sought to emphasise in the short time that I have
had this responsibility. I think it is important to understand
the problem before we criticise too harshly the solution. The
problem is that rapid deployment capability, and that is what
Helsinki is about. After a year, we ought to be able to find more
forces than would be available from the 50,000 or 60,000 to be
able to rotate into that situation. It will clearly depend on
the nature of the situation at the end of the year. If we are
still involved in war fighting, I accept that the problem will
be more difficult but if we are involved in the kind of operation
that we are engaged in at the moment in Kosovo it has proved easier.
We have had a number of countries volunteering to provide assistance
and that has been very welcome. I do not think the problem is
necessarily a problem of finding the rotation for the indefinite
future. The essence of the difficulty that we are seeking to address
is this question of rapid deployability. How do you respond quickly
to a crisis when you need to?
48. I sat at a meeting of the NATO Council ambassadors
on Monday with the WEU members. It was interesting there that
many of them would volunteer instantly people to fill slots in
this force, but the reality of that is that most of them would
also be honest enough to say that they were less than capable
of matching what was coming probably from the United Kingdom,
France, Germany and maybe Holland. There would be lots of deficiencies.
How on earth is there going to be a proper check that the reality
of the situation would be that some of these people would be less
than qualified for the role they were going to do? Who would accept
that responsibility? How on earth would they be integrated into
the system when you consider that some aspirant countries into
NATO could barely produce a company, let alone a battalion, of
people who would be able to qualify for this rapid deployment
force?
(Mr Hoon) With the greatest respect,
I think you are trying to be prescriptive in the sense that what
you are trying to do is to say that in all circumstances, for
example, every single country would provide a war fighting, rapidly
deployable company, for the want of a better example. The reality
is that this is exactly the process we have to go through. It
is necessary to judge what kind of forces we need in order to
resolve the particular situation that we face. You mentioned police.
One of the problems the United Kingdom has had in providing police
forces into Kosovo is that we do not arm our police officers,
with some exceptions, and those exceptions have made a tremendous
contribution, but we do not routinely have officers trained in
the use of fire arms. One advantage might well be in some of the
countries that you are by implication referring to is that they
have militia organisations, which might be the perfect sort of
organisation to go into a situation like Kosovo where they are
effectively dividing ethnic groups who are anxious to attack each
other. You have to look at the circumstances and look at the range
of capability that is available and then decide accordingly what
kind of forces you will make available. That really is what we
are driving at here. One of the clear deficiencies is that initial
war fighting capability of rapidly deploying effective forces
into a particular theatre. I accept the description of the countries
that you have given, particularly the United Kingdom. We are extremely
good at that. I would like us to be still better, but it is something
that we do very well. In trying to work out what would be an appropriate
European or NATO response, because the issue arises just as clearly
in both the EU context as it does in NATO, what other forces do
we require to sustain that initial war fighting capability. They
may take a variety of different forms, including the kind of militia
organisation that might really be very useful in Kosovo as of
today.
49. You have fallen into the same trap as myself
and others have done when we have spoken in the same terms to
our European colleagues. The suggestion that they come across
is that there will be two tiers. One will supply the technology
and the knowhow; the other will supply the foot soldiers who will
take the bullets and fight the war. That was what the Secretary
General of NATO and the NATO Council were trying to avoid, the
them and us, the two tier NATO system.
(Mr Hoon) I am not accepting that description
for one moment. Different countries will have different capabilities
that they can make available. One of the most impressive things
that I have seen in the time that I have been Secretary of State—and
I have seen a number of impressive things—is a combined
force that exists between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom,
a combined commando force, where they train together, where they
have very common equipment to use, where they work very effectively
as a joint organisation. That kind of cooperation between a larger
country and a smaller one is a tremendous example of the kind
of cooperation that we need to develop in fulfilling the headline
goal. I do not accept for a moment that there are some countries
that will do the war fighting and others that will not. What we
need to develop—and this is work that is going ahead—is
a recognition that we are all capable of working cooperatively
together and fulfilling the headline goal and finding the different
ways of achieving it.
50. How on earth would this organisation be trained?
How on earth will it be financed with so many of the European
NATO partners reducing expenditure on defence and many of the
others scared stiff of the thought of having to spend more? Is
the 50,000 a commitment or a target?
(Mr Hoon) Again, I am being pedantic
and I apologise. The use of the word "organisation"
gets you off on completely the wrong basis because what we are
doing is planning. What we are essentially saying is do we have
the capability if it is necessary. To call it an organisation
in that sense is to lead you along an inappropriate track. Your
first point about training is, I am afraid, where you start going
wrong, because—
51. Does the Eurocorps have to be brought together?
(Mr Hoon) Let us not get into Eurocorps
at the moment. There may be questions about that in due course.
What we are talking about is the ability of the European nations,
should it be necessary, to put this kind of force into the field.
I am not saying that they will wait there on some island off western
Europe in order to be ready. Each country would identify its contribution
and that is work that is underway. That means that the training
point does not really arise because they will still be training
in precisely the way they are trained, broadly speaking, within
each country although, as I emphasise in my illustration of cooperation
between Britain and the Netherlands, I see tremendous potential
there for more combined operations and for ensuring that some
of the very high standards, for example, that the United Kingdom
has in this kind of area are passed on and communicated around.
That is the problem with setting off with the word "organisation",
which leads you into training. Training will continue in precisely
the way that it is at the present time. Similarly as far as financing
is concerned. We are not financing this collectively. What we
are saying is that each country will make an appropriate contribution
in order to deliver that headline goal. It is a goal and that
is the answer to the third point. It is a target; it is something
we are for the moment aspiring to, but I would want to repeat
what I said earlier: I do not see any particular difficulty about
achieving this by the year 2003 because of the sheer number of
forces that are presently available. It ought to be something
which European countries which are capable of putting two million
people into uniform ought to be able to satisfy and deliver.
Chairman
52. You have expressed a very charitable view.
Your European colleagues will be very supportive. I think it will
be a hell of a task to equip, to train, to arm and to move these
forces. I think it will be very difficult. However, the only consolation,
as far as I can see from our visit to NATO and the EU last week,
was that they said this will be a test of the European Union.
If the European Union cannot coerce—they did not say coerce;
induce—its members to live up to what they have signed up
for, then the European Union will be considerably damaged. I think
the task will be enormous. The Germans, for instance, are undergoing
a defence review. I do not know if they have the resources or
the will to change their conscript system. I would be delighted
if they are able to. Running through all the members of the alliance
the idea of continuing to train in the same way as they have done
in the past is a recipe for a response in the future as we have
had in the past. Will the forces earmarked for the SDR be available
for NATO crisis management operations or would they be considered
to be always additional to forces earmarked for NATO, except in
an Article 5 emergency?
(Mr Hoon) What I have emphasised is that
we are dealing here with the same group of armed forces available
right across the European Union and across NATO. It will clearly
depend upon the precise institutional decision making process
as to how and where they are deployed, but we are talking about
the same forces. Clearly, yes, they could be available for other
operations depending on the circumstances at the time. I cannot
exactly forecast when and how we would be required to make these
deployments. One of the challenges that the United Kingdom has
faced in recent years is both maintaining our presence in Bosnia
as well as deploying in a very similar manner for a very similar
crisis into Kosovo. I do not want to say that these forces are
going to be separated off because that clearly is not the case.
The reality is that this is a planning process, the kind of planning
process that NATO engages on already and which we think would
make a useful contribution towards the ability of the European
nations, through the European Union, to be able to develop.
Mr Hancock
53. Will the achievement of the headline goal
be the end of the process or can we expect more forces to be earmarked
for the ESDI and the CDESP in the future? In general terms, what
do you both consider, on the political and policy side of military
capacities, to be appropriate to meet the full range of this unit's
possible tasks?
(Mr Hoon) I hope it is not the end of
the story. I hope that, having achieved the headline goal, European
nations will recognise that they could do still more and that
this is a good test of their ability to satisfy the kind of requirements
that we are likely to face in the modern world and this will be
a lever in some cases—we have been through this process
with the Strategic Defence Review, as the Chairman has indicated;
other countries are going through a similar process at the present
time—to change the way in which we address the deployment,
largely speaking, of our forces. We are moving away from putting
large numbers of infantrymen into the German field to confront
the Soviet Union. Too many European nations are still organised
largely along those lines. It has been a difficult process for
us to readjust over the years to a different kind of capability.
I hope that the headline goal is both underlining the need for
change and also perhaps spurring certain countries into action
in that respect, but I do not think it is the end of the process.
I accept that in 2003 we may have to look again. There may be
a different kind of capability that emerges at that stage, but
certainly I am confident that, in terms of the assessment that
we as a country have made—and clearly similar assessments
are made at NATO level—it is this kind of capability that
is desperately needed and, for the foreseeable future, will continue
to be needed.
(Mr Hatfield) I think there is still a fundamental
misunderstanding because you used the word "unit" in
your question. This is not a unit; this is a pool of forces, most
of which, certainly for the ten countries which are also members
of NATO, are forces which would be available for NATO and are
already in principle available for NATO. They will be trained
to NATO standards, certainly for the countries who are members
of NATO. That is part of the answer to your original question.
I suspect a bigger part of the answer to your question, when we
have done it, will be connecting the development of the headline
goal—and the next step is to define it in a bit more detail
and break it down—to the NATO force planning system at least
for NATO countries but probably for all of them because we do
not want inconsistencies. We do not want duplication of bureaucracies.
NATO has a very good force planning system. Probably, a way of
taking this forward would be to do something like, once we have
defined the headline goal in a bit more detail, a NATO force generation
conference which gets all the countries together to work out how
a force can be produced. You might have something like that on
a generic basis. We want a pool of 15 combat brigades. We want
X hospitals and Y logistics. What are you going to offer and,
by the way, can you make the 60 days criterion? Then we have to
put it together like that. Part of the answer to the question
is also contained in your original question. You talked about
the number of conscripts and how difficult it is to deploy. You
used the Norwegian example. I suspect some countries will have
to adapt their force structure. They may not have to change its
size but maybe they will have to produce a deployable unit made
up of professionals and separate that out as part of a contribution
to this as a rapid deployment contribution and continue with the
bulk of their forces in another way. There are many different
possible answers to this question. The British and French have
already addressed it in their own defence reviews. The Germans
have a major defence review going on now and I think lots of other
countries are looking at the problems raised. Things will have
to change but it does not necessarily mean huge amounts of extra
expenditure because the scale of the goal is small in relation
to the total size of European capability. What we want is a relatively
small but high quality and usable capability.
Mr Cann
54. We appear to be asking each of the individual
nations to allocate a certain amount of combat troops that are
available and support services to be available at any time, which
is all well and good; although we have difficulty doing it ourselves
to an extent and we are the best organised of the lot, as everybody
in this room would accept. It seems to me we are tackling the
problem from the wrong way up. If we can only get the bureaucracies
of all the 16 nations reduced, if we could only get cooperation
in medical services and support services of every type organised
under one heading and keep our own fighting forces, and get rid
of the conscript system—what point is there in having conscripts
you cannot use anywhere, for instance? It is a nonsense. It must
be unemployment statistics that are involved here—and if
only we could reduce the amount of money we spend unnecessarily,
we could all provide the combat forces that are required, probably
more than are being asked for under this scheme.
(Mr Hoon) I might not agree with every
aspect of what you say but I agree with the general thrust of
your observations. Firstly, I have said already that I do not
believe Helsinki and the achievement of the Helsinki goal is the
end of this process. We will be looking at other ways in which
we can work more effectively together and in cooperation. That
is a wholly good thing and maybe some of the examples you give
are areas where we might more effectively look at providing a
common organisation to respond in particular circumstances. I
do recognise that there is a need to do more and I think we can
take that process further.
55. The point seems to be that we are asking
everybody to put another few per cent on top of their defence
expenditure, when most of them would not be willing to do it.
You said yourself it was an aspiration.
(Mr Hoon) It is a target.
56. No; you used "aspiration". You
qualified "target" with "aspiration". Your
words will be well chosen. It is an aspiration, is it not?
(Mr Hoon) Today it is an aspiration.
In 2003, we hope it will be an achievement. We have not got it
as of today so I accept the word "aspiration", but perhaps
I am reverting to my previous profession and quibbling over words.
What I think is absolutely important is that there is this commitment
by the EU states to satisfy the obligation. Whether they satisfy
it by spending more money on defence and providing a new capability
or whether they simply spend the existing money that they spend
in a different way is a matter for them, as is conscription and
other questions. What they have signed up to is delivering this
target by 2003. How they need to go about that really is a matter
for them. All defence ministers face spending pressures. My judgment
would be that they would be better off making sure that their
existing spend was spent in a way that allowed for the delivery
of their contribution to the capability. Ultimately, it is a matter
for them and how they deliver. They have signed up to it and we
would expect them to deliver.
Chairman: If the Prime Minister wants
to lead Europe, maybe reversing the decline in defence expenditure
might be a useful way in which it could be done.
Mr Brazier
57. The headline goal also requires troop commitment
to be backed up by appropriate air and naval assets, by logistics,
intelligence command and control and so on. Have targets for this
elements of the force generation also been set? If they have not,
when are they likely to be set?
(Mr Hoon) Those are the kinds of practical
details we are working on. I am not ducking the question. We set
the goal. The means by which you achieve getting that force into
a theatre is something that we are working on now. How each element
is generated, which countries make the appropriate contribution,
is something that we will work through in the course of meetings
that are now underway. A good deal of effort is being made in
that direction already.
58. I must confess I listened to some of your
answers to Mr Hancock and the Chairman just now with some disbelief.
You said, if I heard you right, Secretary of State, that this
is not an organisation we are talking about. A military force
that goes into what could turn into real fighting that is not
an organisation would not appear likely to prosper. Can you tell
us in a little more detail? Do you know of any example? What is
the possible scenario in which you can see a collection of ad
hoc forces brought together from different countries who have
not exercised, trained and worked together ever succeeding anywhere
in real fighting?
(Mr Hoon) The Second World War. It is
quite a good example.
59. We are talking here about forces which, at
a relatively low level—brigade level, Mr Hatfield suggested,
but possibly even at lower than brigade level in some of the scenarios—are
being pulled together at short notice having never exercised together
before.
(Mr Hatfield) You are drawing an unfair
and untrue distinction. This is a pool of forces. We have used
brigades as the main component, if you like, in describing it
in public but there would be lots of other things. They will train
together. In NATO for a start there is an exercise going on, starting
tomorrow I think, the WEU and NATO exercise in the crisis management
arrangements to pull this together. It is not dissimilar from
the ARRC. The ARRC is not a standing force although it has units
declared to it. You pull them together for an operation as required.
The same is true of Eurocorps. Of course people will train together
but it is not a standing force. There is no permanent organisation
but it is not just a collection of ad hoc units on a list
and, by the way, will they turn up on the day. We are trying to
create the embryonic capability to pull them together for a particular
operation.
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