Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
DR DANA
ALLIN, PROFESSOR
MICHAEL COX,
DR JONATHAN
EYAL, DR
ROBIN NIBLETT
AND DR
MARK WEBBER
9 OCTOBER 2007
Q80 Mr Jenkin: Is the survival of
NATO still one of our most fundamental national interests and
can you express what our national interest is in relation to NATO
and perhaps Dana Allin would like to express that view from the
point of view of the United States' national interest?
Dr Eyal: I will try to answer
Mr Jenkin's point. It depends of course to whom you talk in terms
of the definition of the British national interest. My suggestion
is that there is no European structure in purely European defence
that could match NATO's habit of co-operation and NATO procedures.
Of course it could be invented and one of the oddities of the
academic intellectual debate is that whenever you mention European
defence, people nod very sagely and say, "This is an urgent
project", but the moment you mention NATO, they say, "What
do we need the organisation for?", so presumably we do need
a collective security organisation. I think the onus is on those
who suggest that this current security organisation no longer
serves a function. The onus is on them to prove why it does not.
If you ask me the way I interpret British security interests,
they are to maintain a formal link with the United States because
any other link with the United States is unlikely to befall. The
poodles are likely to be discovered much more quickly if there
is not a NATO than if there is a NATO. Number two, it is to maintain
NATO as a military structure and not as a fuzzy, political organisation.
We have got plenty of these structures around and they all issue
communique«s. Number three is to try to maintain or improve
the ability of the Alliance for force-generation and that has
been the bane of NATO's problems for decades and it has been exposed
much more since the end of the Cold War. These, I would say, are
British national security interests, as I see them.
Professor Cox: I kind of give
a three-point response to the question of national interest and
it is very unfashionable now in international relations to talk
of such things. If you take the British national interest, to
be very precise about it, since 1956 the first British interest
has been to remain close to the United States and the best and
most useful means of doing that and in an organisation or an international
institution which still has high legitimacy in the United States
is NATO, so if part of the national interest of Britain is defined
not simply in terms of what it does, but also in terms of the
relationship it has with the major players still in the international
system to the United States, then NATO serves that purpose. There
is no other body that the United States wants to look towards
in terms of its security and in terms of definitions of global
security other than NATO. It does not want the ESDP, it does not
want to look to European institutions. They may be an addition,
but they are not fundamental. Secondly, Britain is a global player.
It has global foreign direct investments around the world, it
is a global trader and it always has been and it will remain so
and even if you do not believe in the linguistic nonsense which
comes up with the globalisation theory, you can still accept that
Britain is a global player and most of the threats in the world
today are not going to come from armies steaming across the frontiers,
but they are going to come from sources around the world which
we do not even know are going to happen in the next few years.
Who would ever have believed that Afghanistan would become a serious
global threat, so in that sense NATO, it seems to me, again is
the only force projection organisation that exists and Britain
plays a role in that. Let me also conclude with one other thing,
being an old Cold Warrior intellectually at least, I studied it
for many years and still do, and that is do not forget Russia.
NATO went away because the Soviet threat has gone away. Well,
lots of people are now talking Russia up as a new problem and
of course for many people essentially in Eastern Europe the existence
of NATO is reassurance. If it is reassurance for them, then presumably
it does serve the British national interest.
Dr Allin: Well, I was asked from
the American point of view and I would say from the US perspective
that a warm, strong, amicable and good working relationship and
a good working link with European allies is an extremely important
and probably a vital American interest. I think the evidence for
that is that Europe is kind of the canary in the mineshaft in
terms of American isolation. If America cannot maintain this relationship
and convince Europeans of common purposes in the world, then I
think it is highly implausible that it is going to be anything
but isolated.
Chairman: We will come on to the American
view of NATO actually in just a few minutes.
Q81 Mr Hancock: When Jonathan Eyal
said there are those people who say, "Why NATO?", I
am always curious to know who these people are who say, "Why
NATO?".
Dr Eyal: I think that this is
a fairly widespread view.
Q82 Mr Hancock: But of whom?
Dr Eyal: In the academic community.
I did refer to the academic community. It may not count, but it
does. At the end of the day—
Q83 Mr Hancock: I did not say that
it did not count, but I was curious to know where it was.
Dr Eyal: It is an intellectual
fashion and I was just pointing to the contradiction which is
very widespread and it is widespread in the media as well that
the moment you mention European defence and the imperative of
creating a European defence structure, everyone nods very sagely
and says, "Let's do it by yesterday", and the moment
you mention NATO and say, "Let's improve NATO", people
say, "Well, what's the organisation for?" and I would
submit that the same "What's it for?" could apply to
the European Union security structure, but I was merely referring
to this curious contradiction that very often an existing, functioning
security organisation to which most of us are bound with very
strict, legal obligations is questioned almost as an intellectual
fashion.
Dr Webber: I wanted to return
to the question just asked, the degree to which NATO serves the
UK national interest. It is an unquestioned assumption, it seems
to me, in hearings of this sort and in the commentaries that NATO
does serve British national interests. In hearings of this sort,
nobody questions, the fundamental link which UK defence policy
enjoys through NATO to the United States, for instance, so in
that sense hearings like this and commentary on NATO tends to
be problem-solving about how NATO can be repaired, how it can
be made to better serve the functions one presumes it undertakes.
In a wider setting, however, insofar as it is possible to define
a national interest which is a difficult job in itself, NATO is
only one of a number of things which serve a presumed national
interest. I think sometimes the trouble with NATO is that it crowds
out alternatives and the very nature of NATO transformation over
the last ten years has been to take on more and more roles for
itself and to some degree encroach upon the roles of others. I
have no doubt we will go into Afghanistan in great detail in a
moment, but the fact that NATO is now engaged to some degree in
reconstruction and humanitarian missions is a crowding out of
other agencies which could perhaps perform the job to some degree
better, and I think a similar process occurs intellectually. The
assumption that NATO is, was and must be at the centre of British
defence thinking crowds out other creative alternatives, one of
which clearly is the relationship with the European Union and
the development of the ESDP, for instance, and empowering global
organisations to a greater degree. Insofar as NATO wants to be
a global actor, one should not forget that there is already another
one out there which is the United Nations, so I think the presumption
that NATO is at the heart of our British national interest should
not necessarily be taken at face value, but it should be questioned.
Q84 Mr Jenkins: One of the difficulties
I have got is when I walk the streets and talk to people and say,
"Now, I want you to make a choice between NATO and the European
defence, let Europe defend us", and people say, "Europe?
Do you mean that bunch of bureaucrats who can't get anything right
or NATO, a rather clean-cut military group who have actually improved
their expertise over 50 years in our defence?". How do I
get the concept of what the public across Europe feel when I think
our country is pro-NATO, but across Europe how do I get the concept
of how the European people feel with regard to what they see as
being the future of NATO? Do they still value NATO and still think
it is the way forward or do they think they want to go for a European
defence force?
Dr Niblett: I agree again with
a lot of the points raised by both Dr Allin and Mick Cox in particular.
If you need to answer that question, "What is its value?",
I am afraid I would agree with you, that I think it is a fair
question to ask. In other words, when Member States of the European
Union try to come together to look at foreign policy and security
questions, there is a fragmentation which seems to naturally take
effect. As countries look out, there are different aspects of
priority around their periphery. In some countries of Europe,
it is Russia, if you are in the south of Europe, it is North Africa
and in certain parts it is Libya or the Middle East, and if you
are here in the UK, maybe it is global interests which stretch
way beyond Europe's periphery, so it is very difficult, I think,
to make it an either/or question, "Is it NATO or the EU?".
In my opinion, from the British national interest perspective,
the UK has interests around the world. They are in the future
of Pakistan, they are in Afghanistan, they are in parts of East
Asia in terms of our economic interest, they are in Africa, they
are in the Middle East and ultimately our ability to pursue those
is going to be insufficient either by ourselves or with our European
partners alone and they are much more likely to be pursued in
collaboration with an institution that brings the United States
into that mix as well. I would note, however, that the members
of NATO and the EU are mostly the same, so when we create this
dichotomy between it being either NATO or the EU, in fact we are
talking about the same people wearing different hats, sometimes
arguing against each other in different ways. From a military
perspective, members of all the European armed forces that I am
aware of, including the French, one might add, are highly committed
towards operations within NATO because they see them as being
very valuable to achieving their military goals, so it is not
a case of their wishing that Europe was doing more or that NATO
was doing more, but it is a matter of which institutions are best
at doing which things and how can we get them to work better together,
and I know we are getting on to that later on.
Q85 Chairman: Could you comment also
on Brian Jenkins' question about the public support for NATO as
opposed to the public support for the EU?
Dr Niblett: Yes, I understood
his comment to mean that it is very hard to build up public support
for European defence and it is easier to find support for NATO
because there is a residual support for NATO, so in that sense
I suppose I am agreeing with him. If one wants to explain to the
British public why NATO remains valuable, I think you can point
to Afghanistan as a first point. If Afghanistan and its future
are vital to the British national interest, which I happen to
believe they are, the ability of UK forces to be protected and
operate well there more often than not depend on US close-air
support than they do on support from any of their other European
partners who are perhaps not as committed to that operation. Therefore,
having the United States as a close ally within a NATO context
is an important part of that mix. On the European front in terms
of public support, I think a much stronger case can be made, and
should be made, for the role that the European Union and the EU
institutions can play in promoting British security, but it is
a much broader realm than in the military realm per se and I think
that case can be made in terms of foreign assistance, in terms
of post-conflict reconstruction and in terms of the role of police
forces to be able to win the peace after you have won the war.
Dr Eyal: To answer Brian Jenkins'
point, it is fair to say that NATO does suffer from an image as
being a US-dominated institution and that clouds the kind of responses
that one gets in terms of public opinion in certain European countries,
so when you put a bland question like the one you have suggested
which is, "Which one would you prefer?", my guess, and
I suspect it would be proven by opinion polls, is that the majority
of the French and probably, as a numerical symbol, a majority
of Germans would say, "We prefer a European structure"
for precisely the reasons of starting on your own, looking after
yourself and not listening to the Americans, the sort of broad
slogans. However, I think it is the wrong question. I think the
real question which should be put is, "Are you prepared to
pay for this European construction?" and the answer there,
well, the members of the Committee know fully well from the record
of most, not all, but most European countries. I would like to
address one point which I think needs to be addressed of Dr Webber's
which is about NATO crowding out other institutions. There is
an element of that, although I would submit that the European
Union tends to crowd out almost any institution, but there is
also a point which ought to be remembered which is that NATO has
over the last 50 years worked as an agency, in effect the sub-contractor
of the United Nations. It has done so in the Balkans, both in
Bosnia and in Kosovo and it has done so in strictly legal terms
in Afghanistan as well, so far from being outside the international
legal system, they could make a very good case that it is a very
important pillar of the international legal system in the absence
of standing United Nations' peacekeeping forces.
Dr Allin: I do not personally
see an irrevocable choice to be made between NATO and European
defence policy. There are obviously going to be frictions and
tensions, and we are largely talking about the same forces, but
it all has to depend on a prior question which Europeans have
to ask themselves, and are asking themselves, which is, "Are
there places where European power as Europe should be projected?".
I am speaking to a group of British politicians where this question
is fraught, but looking from the outside, not only do I think
the answer is yes, but I see a couple of examples where it has
been very successful, such as in Congo, so I really do not see
an irrevocable choice and I do not necessarily think that the
European public need to have it presented that way.
Chairman: We will come back to this issue
of the EU and NATO in a few minutes, but now I think we ought
to get back to the issue of the United States' attitude towards
NATO.
Q86 Mr Hancock: Dr Allin has already
answered part of the question from the American perspective, but
I would be interested to know what the rest of the panel feel
about what importance the United Nations attaches to NATO. How
has the Alliance's place in American foreign policy changed over
recent years and what kind of alliance are the United States seeking
from NATO in the next decade or so?
Dr Niblett: I think the United
States still attaches importance to NATO. I have not put a qualifying
adjective in front of it because I think probably, in the sum
of it, it attaches less importance to NATO than it did for obvious
reasons during the Cold War, but NATO remains important. It remains
important for some of the reasons that Dana Allin mentioned earlier
on which is that ultimately when the United States needs to operate
in theatres abroad, having allies to be able to go in with it
can be useful both in terms of political support and also in terms
of manpower, material and so on. Ultimately, they are looking
for a NATO that is effective; and this is one of the deep concerns.
I think it is less a NATO that is a forum within which the United
States is able to convince and marshal European allies around
a common, strategic vision of what needs to be done in the world
and it is more a place where, once decisions have been taken quite
often by perhaps a small group of European countries and the United
States or within the United States and they have then been able
to convince others in Europe that military forces are part of
the answer to a particular problem, then NATO is a vehicle to
be able to pursue that particular goal. This has been paraphrased
into the toolbox metaphor meaning NATO provides a good forum within
which the integrated military command retains a usefulness, along
with training, common standards, doctrine, logistics, et cetera,
and I think there is some truth to that description within US
perceptions. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think
as the United States looks at security threats around the world,
whether they be in China or in the Far East, whether they be in
terms of the kind of relationships they are trying to build up
with India, NATO does not feature as yet as much in that particular
answer. There is a clear effort going on which cuts across, and
I think this is very important, the political divide between Democrats
and Republicans in favour of a more global NATO, a NATO that can
operate internationally, and I am sure you have seen the commentary
made by various presidential candidates about enlarging to Israel
and Australia, et cetera, et cetera, and we can talk more about
that, but I think what this reflects is a perception that the
threats are far more global, they are far more dispersed and being
able to have allies that can participate in that would be the
ultimate goal. I do not think there is a huge amount of confidence
yet in the United States that this particular global NATO will
necessarily emerge.
Q87 Mr Hancock: So why have they
had a problem then convincing their NATO colleagues of the importance
of having a global role and a global perception? Why have the
Americans not been able to win that argument?
Dr Niblett: My personal belief
is that most European governments still think of security in a
regional and peripheral sense, that it is the Middle East, it
is North Africa, it is Central and Eastern Europe maybe stretching
to Russia. What they do not want to do is to get pulled into what
is perceived to be, especially after the recent George W Bush
Administration, a zero-sum approach to international relations
in which China has to be hedged primarily and then engaged with
and that if you let NATO go global, you are going to get wrapped
into and drawn into an us and them zero-sum approach to international
relations. That is the concern and that is why the resistance
has existed. Not to go too far into the Committee's later commentary,
I think we are at a moment where that perception could be changed
and it could be helped to be changed because of changes both within
governments in Europe and prospective changes in the United States,
but I will leave that for the moment.
Professor Cox: For me, it goes
back to the question about the British national interest. I think
the United States looks at NATO and says, "Does it serve
our national interest?" and it is as simple as that. In the
Cold War, it was a very simple answer to that question. After
the end of the Cold War, without getting too historical, clearly
there was not an easy answer to the question of what NATO was
actually for and that was not just an academic question, by the
way, that was an American question and indeed a question for everybody
in Europe, "What's it for when there is no longer an enemy
to fight?", and that was one problem for NATO and from the
American perspective on it. Secondly, there is no longer any threat
in Europe and it had always been a European-based organisation,
so "What's it for?" is another question. There is then
that huge question of the capabilities gap and "What are
the Europeans for?" and, "To contribute to a military
organisation, what are they for?". Okay, the Brits do a bit
and the French in their own unambiguous way do their bit, but
what are the rest for? As you saw, the military spending gap grew
and grew and grew through the 1990s, so most Americans would ask
from a national interest point of view, "There are several
nice theme parks in Europe, but what's it for militarily?",
and then of course we had the whole thing over Kosovo where clearly
the Americans came out of it and Dana has written about this with
great skill and he knows more about it than I do, but they came
out of Kosovo saying, "Fighting war by committee is a problem.
Why should I kind of consult with guys who don't want to do what
I want to do militarily when I want to do what I want to do militarily?".
I think that when you get into the post-9/11 situation, it is
actually noticeable that NATO actually does not look terribly
relevant immediately after 9/11. Article 5 is declared and I think
the response in Washington, at least within some circles of the
Bush Administration, is, "So what?" and then immediately
in the first days, weeks and months of Afghanistan, the United
States clearly did not go through NATO. It seems to me that they
have had to come back to NATO for a variety of reasons partly
which I think are to do with the disaster which is currently Iraq,
partly because Afghanistan is still an ongoing problem and partly
because I think in the end they do see that NATO is in the national
interest. However, I do think that the world we are now living
in, a world where the threats are different, where pre-emption
has become the military doctrine of the United States and where
the definition of alliances has moved over to things called `coalitions
of the willing', I think that does raise a series of major questions
about what an alliance of a stable and permanent character is
for a power as strong as the United States. Why should they give
consultation rights to those who do not contribute militarily
to international security and who do not pay the same amount on
defence and security as they do, and those are very legitimate,
but tough questions that Americans ask in America and we have
got to know that they do ask those questions because they may
be very polite when they come to Europe, but they ask these questions
very seriously on the Hill.
Q88 Mr Hancock: Do they understand
the Europeans' changing view of NATO because, if they do, why
are they surprised when they make bilateral arrangements on missile
defence with Poland and the Czech Republic and the rest of NATO
find that a rather strange occurrence?
Professor Cox: Well, the powerful
do what the powerful do.
Q89 Mr Hancock: But that means they
do not understand then?
Professor Cox: I think they simply
act like a very, very, very powerful nation which sees NATO as
one part of an overview it has of the whole world and it will
deal bilaterally and in its own interests on certain things it
would do and it will not get a pink permission slip from anybody
to do it. In certain other areas, such as NATO, where it has to
seek collective consultation, it will go in that direction. I
think there is a contradiction there.
Q90 Mr Hancock: Yes, a big one.
Professor Cox: I accept the point.
Dr Eyal: First, on the point of
a missile defence, looking at it from the American perspective,
they would argue that missile defence has been discussed in the
NATO context for quite some time. The European answer has been,
"We can't provide you an answer. It's all too difficult with
the German coalition and France's elections", et cetera,
et cetera, and the feeling was at the end that the only way that
there would be an impulse or a push is by the Americans going
in with the Poles and with the Czechs. I think they do understand
the concerns of Europe, but, as Professor Cox says, at the end
of the day they cannot understand why they must continually pay
a political price for people who are not prepared to invest in
their defence in an adequate manner, and they know that it would
not be the same kind of investment, but not even in an adequate
manner. I would like to pick up the point you mentioned about
why the NATO global outreach has failed, just to strengthen the
points of Dr Niblett. There are a few proposals, there is a dialogue
going on with Japan, there is one going on with Australia and
there is even a dialogue going on sotto voce, very quietly, with
China. There is of course the Mediterranean dialogue which NATO
has launched and a special one with the Gulf States. The reason
it has not worked is that this is where Mark Webber's point about
crowding out does make sense. The reason it did not work is that
the European Union is pledged in economic terms to maintaining
a unified position and the two simply could not be made to match.
It is very difficult to see what NATO could offer to Japan and
the Japanese were very interested to find out, but they have never
got an answer, and it is very difficult to see what NATO could
offer Australia. It is very easy to see what NATO could do in
the Mediterranean, but then we have got the Barcelona Process
and another process about to be launched by the French now, so
I do not think that there is much scope for NATO enlarging its
activities, despite the innumerable plans that are put on the
table.
Dr Allin: First of all, Professor
Cox is absolutely correct about the lessons that many Americans
drew from the Kosovo war. I would only want to add that that lesson
is entirely perverse because there would have been no Kosovo war
unless it was fought through NATO, but it only made sense in that
way and its legitimacy, as opposed to its legality, was only established
as a NATO operation. We cannot talk, or it would be idle to speculate,
about when this might happen again and military strikes against
Iran, well, it seems implausible, but one cannot imagine a place
where it would be more plausible than within the UN Security Council
and it could make a difference. On the global NATO issue, I think
I may disagree with my colleagues a little bit. First of all,
Afghanistan is not in Europe, as far as I know, so the sort of
out-of-area issue is not really an issue anymore, that has been
solved, but if you are talking about a global NATO where everyone
is together as an alliance with the scope and the ambitions and
the responsibilities sort of paralleling the United States, I
think that obviously is not plausible and it is not going to work.
Where is the United States likely to be, or not likely, but where
is the United States possibly going to be involved in military
action? There is a possibility of a war with China over Taiwan
and that is a real possibility. I do not think it is plausible
or necessarily even a good idea to ask NATO to sign on to something
like that.
Dr Webber: I would not disagree
with most of what has been said, but there are just a few points
which in a sense back up some of the observations. It seems to
me that NATO has been, in the post-Cold War period, an organisation
which the United States has tried to fashion in a way which serves
its foreign policy interests, and part of the difficulty with
NATO at the moment is that the utility of that strategy is no
longer working perhaps in the way Washington and particularly
the Pentagon would like. In the 1990s, there was a lot of success
for American foreign policy in this respect. Enlargement was largely
American and to some degree German policy, the strategy of NATO-Russian
relations was largely led by Clinton and his very dynamic Deputy-Secretary
of State, Stobe Talbott, the intervention in Kosovo, although
Tony Blair played a fairly significant role in galvanising the
Alliance, was certainly executed, by and large, by the United
States and the current agenda of military transformation is largely
led by developments in the American military in order to make
NATO more interoperable still with American Armed Forces. Now,
it seems to me that those successes served the United States rather
well. It preserved its influence in Europe and extended its influence
in Eastern Europe. Talk of a global NATO is a way of consolidating
American influence in Central Asia and to some degree also in
the South Caucuses, so in that sense NATO remains of some use,
but the notion of a global NATO, it seems to me, is where the
strategy hits the buffers because NATO is not, I think, well-geared
to play that role. There is clear dissent within the Alliance
on whether it should play that role and over the last year there
has been some back-pedalling on this sort of rhetoric in any case.
I think if that division becomes more obvious, and it was fairly
hidden in the Riga Summit Declaration, the last Defence Ministerial
hardly mentioned global partnerships, and it will be interesting
to see whether the upcoming Defence Ministerial does either, so
I think it may be an idea that is running into the sands, even
though it is still one favoured in Washington.
Q91 Willie Rennie: Could you see
a circumstance where you would have a series of global treaties
between the different partners with the US at the centre of each
of them and, if that was the case, one with, say, Australia and
one with, say, Japan and another one in development with the US
common to them all, what would be the impact on NATO if those
organisations were to develop?
Dr Niblett: Do you mean a series
of global treaties between NATO and those countries or the United
States?
Q92 Willie Rennie: The United States.
Dr Niblett: My only point on that
is that I think the United States has most of those treaties already
lined up with Australia and New Zealand and with Japan in particular.
Q93 Willie Rennie: And what about
the impact on NATO from those treaties?
Dr Niblett: Maybe my colleagues
know better than I in terms of how deeply integrated they are,
but I know in the Japanese case that there are US troops deployed
out there already and with Korea, they have troops deployed out
there. These are quite integrated and quite elaborate arrangements
that they have already, so to a certain extent you could argue
that the United States already has that global network of alliances
established and set up in many cases in treaty format and the
North Atlantic Treaty happens to be the bit for that area, but
what perhaps is different in terms of coming back to this discussion
of a global NATO, a lot of this is designed also for domestic
politics, I think some of the push that is going on for Rudy Giuliani
to mention, "We must enlarge NATO to Israel", you do
wonder a little bit how much of that is domestic politics and
how much of that is strategy. One should separate these things
out, but one should not forget, and maybe this does get to your
point, Mr Rennie, the United States has made a shift, and while
it is hard to generalise about the United States, many of those
involved in high-level politics and those involved in government
have made a shift in terms of how they think about NATO from an
alliance to a pool of allies. I do not think they necessarily
think of it as an alliance as much anymore. They do see it as
a pool of allies who happen to be conveniently and well-integrated,
as I said earlier, around a military command, around a certain
disciplined structure in which the United States can be heavily
involved in debating, in engaging as an active member at the table
not under a caucusing role and they can actually set out a plan
for the future. We should not forget that missile defence was
designed very much as a domestic strategy that started off with
missile deployments in the Aleutian Islands and in which Europe
has now been put into a mix as a US priority. The kind of alliances
I was talking about earlier with Japan and with Australia which
are being strengthened right now are very much part of this looking
around the world at the mix and match of priorities that serve
very much a US interest and, as a result at the same time, the
United States has become much less doctrinaire about how it thinks
about the European Union's defence capabilities and they, in essence,
let us worry about it. There is less of a theology about NATO
right now within US thinking; NATO does not help that much with
homeland security which is a huge priority for any US government.
You said we would get on later to the issue of the ESDP-NATO linkage,
but I think the United States steps back much further from NATO
than it did in the past.
Q94 Mr Hancock: I was in Brussels
recently, meeting American ambassadors there to NATO and to the
EU. The issue that they raised was that there was a fundamental
shift in their policy and that they were no longer up for peacekeeping
and that the war-fighting capability was one thing where they
now accepted that they had made a mistake in saying that they
did not do peacekeeping. Do you perceive that to be the case at
all, that there is a definite change in policy?
Dr Eyal: The simple answer is
yes, there has been. I would not say it is definite, but it is
definitely a marked shift. One could see it in the adoption of
a comprehensive approach to Afghanistan, the so-called `comprehensive
approach' which basically tries to embrace what are increasingly
seen in that context as superficial distinctions between imposing
peace and maintaining peace, all the usual arguments of the last
20 years. There is a feeling that if NATO is going to be involved
in any conflict, it will need to have ideally the high-intensity
and the low-intensity warfare capabilities at the same time. The
problem always with the Europeans is that they used to argue that
a while back to the Americans and now they are getting rather
worried that the Americans are arguing back to them because the
feeling now is that NATO could be relegated to the lower end of
the spectrum, mopping up after the high-intensity operations which
the Americans may have launched. I think one could trace exactly
the point that you make, the shift in the American view, to the
departure of Mr Rumsfeld from the Defense Department; it is clearly
there.
Professor Cox: The word `Rumsfeld'
immediately precipitates a kind of wry snigger around most tables
these days, but Rumsfeld used a term which actually Robin also
used, but in a different form. When Rumsfeld said, "Basically
we're looking for a coalition of the willing", all the hands
went up around Europe and in the UK with people saying, "My
goodness me! What does this mean? It's a highly opportunistic
approach to the definition of what was a formally structured alliance",
but Robin, who is not Donald Rumsfeld of course, talked of, "We've
moved from an alliance to a pool of people we can deploy".
Well, by any other name, that strikes me as a coalition of the
willing, so Rumsfeld may have departed the political stage and
everybody rubs their hands and says, "Well, thank goodness
the Bush doctrine is now dead and buried", which I do not
believe for one minute, by the way, but Rumsfeldian kind of thinking
about what is the purpose of alliances in the age of the War on
Terror and in an age of American military predominance and in
a way where we do not have fixed threats as we did in the past,
I think that kind of thinking has not disappeared at all.
Q95 Mr Holloway: But, Professor,
was it always thus?
Professor Cox: How far are we
going back now?
Q96 Mr Holloway: Is it not always
going to be the case that states, whatever alliances they are
involved in, are going to commit big or commit symbolically based
upon how it impacts them?
Professor Cox: Well, in some deep
sense international relations has not changed for 2,000 years,
so in that sense it has been ever thus, that there are some fundamentals
of international politics and power and relations with states
and other states and coalitions and the causes of wars, and I
do accept that point, but I do think that something fundamental
changed because of the end of the Cold War, to make the obvious
point, when you removed a single magnetic north in your strategic
thinking called the Soviet Union around which you then constructed
a clearly focused European alliance. You knew exactly where you
were and what you were doing and I think that has changed post
the Cold War.
Chairman: I do want now to throw France
into the mix.
Q97 Robert Key: Please can we focus
on France. In the dying days of the Chirac presidency, as part
of this inquiry, I went to the Elyse«e for a briefing with
the President's military advisers on the French perception of
NATO and I was quite surprised to discover that even the Chirac
regime recognised the significance of NATO as the ultimate guarantor
of France's nationhood. I also was fascinated to talk to academics
who seemed to agree that when it came to France's relationship
with Europe and the European defence policy, France would always
talk the talk, but never walk the walk. What difference has it
made with President Sarkozy in post and what perception does Sarkozy
have of NATO and what perception of France does America have of
France's role in NATO?
Dr Webber: If I could just say
a couple of words on Sarkozy, I think it is well-known now that
his position on NATO has seemingly shifted, but what is significant
is that he has laid down certain conditions for French re-entry
to the NATO integrated military structure, and I would just repeat
the two in order to demonstrate possibly how problematic they
are. One is that there should be progress on European defence,
for which read `ESDP' which we will come to, and the second, and
this is the one on which it is likely to falter and where it faltered
in the mid-1990s when Chirac had a similar position, is that there
should be a more prominent French position within allied structures.
Now, I think it was in 1996 that a similar proposal hit the dirt
because Chirac insisted that a French commander head AFSOUTH in
Naples and the Americans were not happy with that and resisted
and the French resented it. If Sarkozy keeps to the conditions
he has laid down, I do not think we can expect a French return
to the integrated military structures. Any return may be more
formal than real in any case. The French, despite the fact that
they do not sit on certain committees, are well-integrated in
many respects in NATO. Over the years, I have visited a fair number
of NATO command structures and the French presence is always very
visible, the French role in defence thinking and strategic thinking
is always very obvious and the French role in advising on military
transformation is always very evident. The French have 1,000-plus
in Afghanistan at the moment and they played a very prominent
role in KFOR and in SFOR, et cetera, et cetera, so the Sarkozy
position may be more words than substance in the sense that there
is a continuity to the French role in NATO and I think the French
have always regarded NATO as very important. However, the contradiction
of course is that they regard a Europeanisation of defence as
equally important. It did not happen in NATO in the 1990s in ESDI,
so the acronym shifted to `ESDP' and I think that is where the
real crux of the matter lies, the relationship between those two.
Dr Allin: Sarkozy is important
because I think he clearly has personally fewer dogmatic inhibitions
about these issues, maybe not quite to say that he is congenitally
pro-American, but he clearly has greater affinities and understanding
or less worry about maintaining a particular French line, so in
those circumstances, although these conditions are very important
and could, as in the 1990s, torpedo the whole thing, perhaps he
will be more flexible and I think that is at least probable. Of
course the French military circles—
Q98 Chairman: And would the Americans
be more flexible as well?
Dr Allin: That, I do not know.
Whilst I think it is true, as I think Dr Niblett said, that Americans
have kind of given up being so worried about ESDP, I think we
could revert to the problem that the United States, because of
its power, can basically feel that it can deliver more ultimatums.
I just do not know the answer to that and I do not know how the
political constellation is going to go. I would think that the
difference between one Presidential candidate and another on this
score could actually be very important. French military circles
have always wanted to be closer to NATO and, as I have suggested,
in many ways they are. It has been more of a diplomatic idea to
insist on French separation, but I think one thing I have noticed
in France which is dawning and is sinking in, and not too soon
as far as I am concerned, is the understanding that it is structurally
impossible to pursue European ambitions, to build European structures,
European unity on what is even perceived as an anti-American or
an anti-NATO basis; it just does not work. It did not work with
the old European Union and it certainly does not work with the
new European Union and I think the French understand this. When
I talk about an anti-American basis, I do not even necessarily
think that is the right word, but they have come to recognise
or they are coming to recognise that if it is perceived as an
anti-American project, that is already a problem.
Dr Niblett: I completely agree
with Dr Allin's last point there and perhaps I could enlarge on
that and make two other points. Number one, I think that there
is a realisation that a separate France that is anti the United
States, not only can it not achieve its goals vis-a"-vis
ESDP, but it is actually weaker within Europe and within the European
Union, so I think we do have a fundamental change here and I would
go more for this being actually quite an important moment. Whether
it is successful because of tactical, political issues, we can
worry about, but I think that the further enlargement of the EU
has fundamentally changed the balance within the EU. France cannot
rely on a partnership with Germany to be able to pursue its own
goals anymore. Germany is pulled more in the centre of Europe,
it is pulled in more directions, so France has to strike out more
on its own and it cannot rely on a Franco-German solution in the
way it did for being able to further its own cause within the
European Union. In essence, therefore, looking out and looking
for new options and breaking the mould and the consensus is an
important part of what Sarkozy and his team, I think, have realised
they need to do and there is no more totemic thing to take on
than this. I think it is also part of Sarkozy trying to shake
up the French bureaucracy and, as we know, Quai d'Orsay, the foreign
ministry, has traditionally been more anti this and the French
military, as I have mentioned, has been more pro and I do think
it is well-known that President Sarkozy's view of the Quai d'Orsay
is not particularly positive and I think he is taking them on.
Q99 Robert Key: Has the Pentagon
woken up to this change?
Dr Niblett: I think the Pentagon
more possibly than other parts of the American system. But the
other audience you often need to look for in Washington is the
Congress, and this is where, I think, President Sarkozy has been
especially clever and I think he is clever partly because he has
been very well advised by Jean-David Levitte who, as you know,
was the Ambassador there who was recalled to service as Sarkozy's
adviser and he knows Washington very well, they are saying things
to gain the confidence of Washington. The commentary about Iran,
the tough language, it has an effect and it permeates through.
It counters a little bit the freedom fries perspective of France,
and I will not use all the other descriptions for the sake of
the record, but I think that they have realised that they need
at least to talk the talk at the beginning if it is going to be
possible for the Americans to let them walk the walk, and this
is where I think it does become important because I think the
United States, which is my third point, has a different view.
We had a visit by a senior US official to Chatham House just last
week where this issue was heavily debated. You cannot take one
official's viewpoint on this to represent the whole Administration,
but their view was, "Come on, let's talk about it".
The view of ESDP today is not the view of ESDP or the ESDI in
1996—not for necessarily good reasons for NATO. I think
the US is much less altruistic and it is much more self-interested,
so it does not care as much about NATO, but that does open up
an opportunity. It is a more flexible organisation. France will
not join the NATO of 1996 if it rejoins in 2007, if you see what
I mean, some form of integrated military command structure and
I think this is an important moment.
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