Memorandum from Dr Christoph O Meyer
INTRODUCTION
0. This submission discusses briefly discussed
the relationship between the EU and NATO and associated problems.
My approach to the relationship relies rests on three main arguments
that can only be stated briefly here.
1. It does not make sense to discuss the
relationship between NATO and the European Security and Defence
policy, but what is at stake is the relationship between the European
Union and NATO, ie both organisations per-se. ESDP cannot be understood
in isolation from the organisation it emanates from, the broader
common foreign and securty policy it is a part of (CFSP) and the
EU's other external policies such as trade, aid, development,
asylum, migration and policing, accession and membership policies.
2. The debate about the relationship between
NATO and the EU regarding security issues cannot be understood
from nor should it be evaluated primarily by considerations of
efficiency. The trajectory of national defence and security policies
is influenced first and foremost by political factors and dynamics
and is constrained as well as facilitated by deep-seated but not
immutable norms about the ends and means concerning the use of
force and role of a nation in international affairs. If electorates
decide that the two organisations pursue different aims by different
means, then "duplication" of, for instance planning
and command facilities, is perfectly justifiable if more costly.
3. The primary source of friction between
the EU and NATO are not the organisations per se, but members
of both organisations who for their own geopolitical or historical
reasons have divergent attitudes vis-a-vis how to co-operate with
the US and in particular, to what extent the EU is entitled to
different and even conflicting views and approach to security
challenges than the US. The second source of friction originates
from members who are part of one organisation and not the other
(non-EU NATO members) and who fear that the evolution of the EU
as a security actor will diminish their influence on key security
issues and the value of the alliance they are part of.
THE STATUS-QUO
AND ITS
PROBLEMS
4. NATO and the EU are very different organisations,
with different purposes and different memberships. They are overlapping
with regard to missions that could be broadly defined as crisis
management with clear authorisation of the UN. These are now the
most frequent and likely missions that European states are engaging
in and both organisations seek to play role in these areas. These
missions also tend to be "missions of choice" and raise
complex issues about the ends and means of each mission, including
questions of costs and legitimacy concerning the use of force.
5. NATO has substantially expanded its membership,
established the NRF and "gone global". NATO has only
launched one mission since the Prague Summit—Aghanistan—which
is still ongoing and in serious difficulties. NATO is no longer
just the collective defence organisation that it once was after
the demise of the Soviet Union, but neither is it clear what it
is now. US wants to turn it into an instrument in its global foreign
and security strategies, but prefers after the Kosovo experience
to resort to coalitions of the willing when it comes to high-intensity
war-fighting. There are divergent views among EU members of NATO
about the purpose and direction of the organisation. NATO's internal
decision-making structures are not designed for generating the
political will that is necessary to underpin crisis management
situations and new wars of choice. Moreover, NATO lacks the multi-facetted
civilial tools that contemporary peace and nation-building requires.
It is unlikely to ever develop them and will depend on the EU
and individual states, most notably the US, to provide them. Nor
is it well equipped to deal with new sources of insecurity arising
from economic, environmental and demographic factors.
6. The EU has expanded from 15-27, established
the ERRF and formulated its first ever security strategy with
global reach but regional emphasis. The EU has launched 16 ESDP
missions since its inception, the overwhelming majority of them
policing and monitoring missions, but also one, which involved
small-scale but robust combat (ARTEMIS). The EU is a regional
political organisation with a wide policy-scope, both in internal
economic policy, but also increasingly in the domain of foreign
policy. The EU has many of the characteristics, some of the institutions
and procedures and virtually all of the instruments of a globally
influential foreign policy actor. The EU is big enough not to
take the work as given, whereas its individual member states are
not. ESDP is the manifestation of the political will to underpin
this policy also in the domain of hard security even if the main
emphasis of its security policies is on conflict prevention. The
EU currently lacks the military and political capapity for high-intensive
and large-scale combat missions. The EU (or rather its member
states) will depend on the US support for such missions for the
foreseeable future, within or outside the NATO framework.
7. Problems of overlap and friction between
both organisations have emerged as the EU moves into the hard-security
crisis management realm and establishes institutions, committees,
procedures and forces underpinning this autonomous security and
defence policy. Attempts to ensure institutional synergies and
close co-operation between organisations have been much less successful
than those relating to co-operation among militaries and in the
area of defence procurement.
8. The underlying conflict is, however,
essentially political and concerns the rebalancing of the relationship
between the United States and Europe after the end of bi-polarity
and their respective roles in a gradual emergening multi-polar
world order. NATO was originally designed to ensure the US engagement
in Europe and it worked because of a shared threat and a set of
shared ideas about NATO's contribution to "the West's vision
of the world". However, the common threat has gone and the
ideational glue is evaporating gradually ever since. The Bush
administration's approach to international affairs in general
and its European partners in particular, has only brought to the
fore the insight that a common political and economic system,
a shared history and a high degree of economic interdependence
are not in themselves sufficient to ensure a convergence of foreign
policy objectives. On the contrary, it is fair to say that in
recent years a number of factors—economic, demographic,
and cultural—point to a divergence of norms and values underpinning
American and European views of international issues. "The
West" has become a contested concept. Given these seismic
changes, NATO is badly equipped to act as a political forum for
exchanges between the US and EU states about these different views
and re-establishing a shared meaning and purpose of "the
West".
THE WAY
FORWARD
9. NATO is in crisis as an organisation
and its fate may well be decided in how it handles Afghanistan—at
least from the perspective of the US. The EU has settled some
of the institutional uncertainties with the Lisbon Treaty and
equipped itself with institutions and procedures that are—for
good or for worse—unlikely to change for the next ten years
or so. While CFSP common actions and ESDP missions are still subject
unanimity, the trajectory of the EU as a whole is relatively clear
and the momentum for a more capable, coherent and effective foreign
policy, including on security issues, is strong. It would be in
my view futile to think that the EU's aspirations to become comprehensive
security actor can be somehow reigned in again, made subject to
US/NATO prior approval or limited in their scope to only civilian
missions. The genuinely open questions are in in view the following:
10. The division of labour between the two
organisations with regard to missions that require high-intensity
combat. My view is that the EU should be realistic in the types
of combat missions it can engage in for the foreseeable future
and will have to rely NATO and/or the US for Serbia/Kosovo-type
operations. The battlegroups are likely to be effective only vis-a-vis
adversaries in Africa. Yet, high-intensity and large-scale operations
against non-African adversaries are likely to be quite rare if
not impossible and NATO is well equipped to deal with them. The
EU in contrast is quite cabable of successfully supplying the
military component for smaller-scale UN-sanctioned operations
and smaller European crises—especially once it fully exploits
its different means of addressing the problems of inefficient
national defence and procurement policies. The wider and more
detailed implications for military planning and procurement are
better addressed by other witnesses.
11. The co-operation between NATO and EU
on missions that require a mix of military and civilian elements.
The Afghanistan mission has been already compromised by an overreliance
on military means and an insufficient emphasis on "winning
hearts and minds" through a careful mixture of military,
police, economic, educational and developmental instruments. Instead
of seeking to equip NATO with civilian instruments that it is
ill-equipped to wield (Berlin-Plus in reverse), drastic changes
need to be made to the political context of mission planning between
EU and US so that military and civilian aspects are considered
in an integrated fashion. This would also require spending equal
attention to civilian as well military headline goals. What would
be needed first is a new consensus between EU and the US on these
missions, the adjustment of procedures/chains of commant between
NATO and EU could follow from that, including for instance, putting
a Civilian into overall comand of such missions. The working group
on Human Security has made some important recommendations in this
area.
12. Finally, the political framework for
dialogue and co-operation between the EU and the US on security
and defence issues needs a root-and-branch reform. It is true
that NATO has been increasingly bypassed and hollowed-out as the
forum for such a dialogue, even on security and defence matters.
Instead, a new political structure needs to be found to ensure
a more institutionalised and comprehensive dialogue between the
EU, the US and other interested third-countries across a range
of issues, including but not exclusively on security matters.
Once such a structure has been established, NATO can be re-focused
to provide any newly emerging consenus with the means to put it
into practice.
I am happy to elaborate on any of these points
if the committee feels the need to do so.
King's College, London
3 December 2007
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