Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
DR DANA
ALLIN, PROFESSOR
MICHAEL COX,
DR JONATHAN
EYAL, DR
ROBIN NIBLETT
AND DR
MARK WEBBER
9 OCTOBER 2007
Q100 Robert Key: Can I just ask about
the global role that America perceives for NATO and is Sarkozy
moving in that direction?
Dr Niblett: I would think not;
in the sense that that is something the French retain a nervousness
about, but they also know that the United States is going to be
very choosy about when it goes with NATO abroad as well. I think
they see the politics on the US side on that as well.
Dr Eyal: I am absolutely convinced
that the French are serious in their overture now on the integrated
military command structure. I think the key, as Robin Niblett
pointed out, is the fact that they will make no progress on European
defence with a large number of former communist countries from
Central and Eastern Europe unless the project is seen as being
another pillar strengthening, or parallel to, NATO rather than
in opposition or as a substitute. However, this is where it will
stop. I do not believe for a moment that the French will accept
NATO taking a larger role in, let us say, the Pacific area. I
think that this is one where they would look very much upon the
European Union, and especially if the European Treaty is adopted,
and a unified foreign policy of the European Union as leading.
Professor Cox: I have two very
quick points. It is a great moment and I do not think we should
underestimate that. France has gone through a crisis between 2003
and 2007. It had its Iraq moment and that collapsed around it
and we also know there is a whole debate going on inside France
about the economic model and all the rest of it, so Sarkozy is
coming out at the moment of a sense of decline and crisis and
the old formulas have failed both externally and internally and
I think it has to be taken extremely seriously and more seriously,
I think, than in the 1990s. In that sense, the 1990s does not
give us a guide to the possibilities that have opened up today.
I would simply, however, make two points, going back to the scepticism
which was, I think, expressed by Mark Webber at the very beginning.
One, can he overcome the French political establishment? I am
seriously doubtful. I think there are still very deep and imbued
views inside large sections of the political establishment and
the intellectual establishment. He is not an e«narque-iste,
Sarkozy. He comes from outside, he is an outsider, and I think
there are still powerful forces of resistance intellectually and
philosophically which are very deeply embedded into what I call
almost `French identity'. It, secondly, comes to another point
which is connected: can he overcome Gaullism? Gaullism is a coherent
philosophical doctrine which has defined and shaped French foreign
policy since 1956 again or 1958 when the President became President
of this republic. How deep is that Gaullism and can that be overcome?
If it cannot be and if it is so embedded into the French identity,
society and politics, then there are two philosophical opposition
positions here on global security in Europe.
Q101 Mr Jenkin: It is a brilliant
evidence session, but Robin Niblett has stolen the words from
my lips, that the reason why the United States cares less about
the ESDP is because it cares less about NATO and its disappointment
with NATO is tangible. Should we not be very careful about what
President Sarkozy is doing? Should the Americans not remember
that we only resolved the NATO crisis in 2003 before the invasion
of Iraq because France was not sitting in the military committee
and where does the British national interest lie in this? Is President
Sarkozy not seeking to supplant what has been a traditional Anglo-American
partnership with a Franco-American partnership? As our new Prime
Minister appears visibly cooler towards President Bush and his
predecessor, is President Sarkozy not jumping into the breach
and what should the British Government do about it?
Dr Eyal: First, on the episode
of 2003, you are absolutely right, that one of the reasons why
the French are now accepting their perhaps re-entry in the integrated
military command structure makes sense is that they have discovered
that their ability to veto issues around the Permanent Representatives'
table was limited with Lord Robinson reinventing the wheel and
deciding that this was a purely military issue which should be
left to the Chiefs of Staff. There is an element there and it
is not a secret that the Ministry of Defence in London is a bit
doubtful about the impact of France's re-entry into the military
structure and what it would mean. Nevertheless, I would submit
that it is a risk worth taking. I believe that it is not in France's
interest to paralyse the military structure which would be the
ultimate outcome of a bad scenario mainly because I am not sure
that anyone in Paris believes that they could now push what was
the traditional French agenda on the European Union. As Robin
Niblett reminded all of us, the Union today is not the Union that
Chirac wanted, dreamed of and ultimately obtained, so in that
respect it will not be one that will be manoeuvred by the old
traditional French ways. As to whether Sarkozy can supplant any
other European country in a special relationship with the United
States, I doubt it. I think that what Michael Cox has suggested
is extremely important. Please look at the French media, please
look at the whole French intellectual elite. Any president who
tries to supplant Britain in the special relationship with the
United States, to use the completely opposite example, would have
a very, very tough fight and the potential internal domestic benefits
in France would simply be too small. That does not mean to say
that Britain does not need to watch the situation very carefully,
but it does mean to say that Mr Sarkozy has a very long journey
to cover.
Q102 Mr Borrow: We ought to move
on to the relationship between NATO and the ESDP and the practical
difficulties in that relationship. To what extent are there difficulties
and what are the main obstacles to effective co-operation and
I would like you to touch specifically on the issue around Turkey
and Cyprus?
Dr Eyal: I think the Turkish-Cyprus
question is a difficult one, there is no doubt about it. It is
one on which everyone is tiptoeing both in NATO and in the European
Union, but I do not think that that is the crux of the problem.
The crux of the problem goes much, much deeper and at the end
of the day, having looked at it for years, and one could go into
all the details of who meets where, what the formats of the decisions
are, but my guess is that the institutions are not compatible
because they are bureaucratically incompatible. Despite the celebration
of a planning cell within the European Union, there is no military
culture in the European bureaucracy; they do not know how to deal
with NATO. What you have and what everyone tells you of is this
constant sort of periodic luncheons or breakfasts between the
President of the Commission and the Secretary General of NATO,
but this is at the formal, superficial level. The reality is that
the organisations will work only when there are docking mechanisms
between their bureaucrats at various levels, and institutionally
the European Union is incapable of realising that at the moment.
It just does not have the staff and it does not have the abilities.
It has the desire to acquire powers, but it does not have them
in practice and it does not know how to discharge them. That is,
I think, fundamentally the problem, quite apart from the usual
political issues that we all know.
Dr Webber: I would largely agree
with that. I think the Turkish problem is important, but I do
agree in the sense that a focus on the Turkish-Cyprus problem
often means that we overlook some of the others and there is a
real institutional issue. A lot of the crafting between NATO and
the EU over the last six or seven years has circled around institutional
design and through the Berlin-plus mechanism and so on which has
been successful to some degree. But what looms large now, it seems
to me, is that NATO and the EU work increasingly together, as
they have done in the Balkans to some degree, and they are, and
will, in Afghanistan as well. It is a working relationship between
NATO and the European Commission which, as far as I understand
at the moment, is completely absent. The Commission does not play
a leading role in the ESDP, but the Commission does play a leading
role in the release of funds for the ESDP and it has an oversight
role over the manner in which ESDP funds are used and how the
ESDP in its civilian dimension is exercised. Let us not forget
the upcoming EU role in Afghanistan where there will be an important
policing role, so the crafting of that relationship, it seems
to me, will be a real challenge. Some of the proposals, and I
think there was one at the WEU Assembly recently, is the notion
that some sort of working relationship be established between
the office of the Secretary General at NATO and the office of
the President of the European Commission. I do not know if this
is being actively thought on, but it is that sort of creative
thinking that needs to be looked at, I think.
Dr Allin: I think all of this
is correct. The lack of a kind of military culture in the EU is
a problem. Of course that is precisely what members who want planning
cells and so forth are trying to overcome, but it is a long way
from that and it seems to me that the basic question is if you
go back to St Malo and consider what was that all about, now it
seems to me what that was all about was an agreement, and this
is crucial, between a British Prime Minister and a French President
that in the context of what was happening in the Balkans and what
was brewing in Kosovo and what was happening in Washington in
terms of indecision and inter-agency fighting about whether intervention
was a good idea, there was a view that the British Prime Minister
shared the view that an important matter of European security
could not await the outcome of an inter-agency debate in Washington.
Now, if that is considered a problem and if that is still considered
a problem, then it seems to me that there are ways to overcome
these bureaucratic and cultural issues. If it is not considered
a problem, then it is not a problem, but it was then and it seemed
that there was a certain logic to it.
Professor Cox: I think the thing
I would say about the ESDP is that it can do some useful stuff,
but it cannot do the serious stuff and I think that is the way
we should approach it. It can do some very useful things usually
after NATO has done the serious stuff. That has been the history
so far for the Balkans and we can see the role of the ESDP in
Afghanistan today, almost zero, so it does useful stuff and I
do not think anybody should get too upset about it or too worried
about it. There was kind of a lot of nonsense being talked on
the other side of the Atlantic and around this city about it being
NATO-threatening and NATO busting and all that stuff and I do
not think that should be taken seriously. I think it just can
be used for specific purposes and I do not think anybody in Europe
really takes it beyond that any longer. Going back to the French
thing quickly, I think Sarkozy has drawn that conclusion as well.
The idea that you can have a European defence, a European Army,
a European wing which in a sense is going to balance NATO in any
fundamental way, challenge it or replace it, has simply gone out
of the window. It would be useful? Serious in terms of deep, hard
security? I think probably not. We are going to live with that
for a very long time to come and I do not think we should be worried
about it either.
Q103 Mr Jones: I agree with the analysis
but we have the unfortunate task sometimes of having to attend
meetings of European counterparts in the European Parliament.
I agree with your approach but there is clearly still a clamour,
if not a creeping, approach from the European Parliament. They
want one more control over foreign affairs defence policy. I do
not think they see the ESDP in the way that you do. I agree with
your position on it. They do think it should be a rival to NATO
and that is not just the French; that is also some of the British
who have gone native.
Professor Cox: I know. I lecture
frequently now in Brussels and you do meet that viewpoint. My
only response is: where is the beef? How much are you guys spending
per year of GDP on military and security? How much real coordination,
how much integrated military structure is there actually going
on here? Secondly, the Europeans themselves fundamentally disagree
on certain fundamental security issues as well, as we have seen.
The enlargement process brought in a number of countries from
the former Communist countries with rather different views on
the United States than some of what we might call old Europe,
if I dare use that phrase. Yes, you do meet that attitude, but
I would not get too worried about it.
Dr Niblett: First of all, at the
operational level, the ESDP type forces, Eurocorps and others
have been able to work reasonably well under NATO command in recent
years, whether in Kosovo or in Afghanistan, at a military level,
despite some of the intelligence cooperation limits that are important
and do limit therefore the total potential. Despite that, it is
possible for the ESDP—let us call them European defined
forces—to be able to work with NATO forces on common goals.
When we talk about the ESDP and NATO not working together, we
are talking about something bigger. We are talking about what
is force for and, in a way, it is a strange thing. When European
forces inside NATO talk about the ESDP, they seem to be talking
about different things. NATO seems to represent a view in which
military force is an important part of a solution. The ESDP is
reflecting a different purpose of force which is to pop in, separate
the competing forces, oversee the election, deal with the immediate
crisis, help with the peace keeping and get out ideally; and,
ultimately, military force ends up making the situation worse
rather than better. I am drawing a little bit of a straw man here
between the two organisations but I think it is important to get
to what is the problem. ESDP forces have been defined slightly
as an EU conception of what force is about in general terms. NATO
still comes out of an environment, a period, in which force was
used for very different purposes. Therefore, we see a mismatch
in the way of strategic concept and we have a mismatch of forces.
The battle groups are great concepts in a way but they are designed
to come in and get out. As a senior official in the European Defence
Agency commented recently, the need in the future is probably
only going to be for sustainable forces rather than for rapid
forces. My concern is that the ESDP is designed around rapid action
and NATO is trying to struggle with what is sustainable. Therefore,
the problems are much deeper in terms of Turkey.
Q104 Mr Hamilton: Following what
Robin has said, that sounds very much like the role of the United
Nations, not Europe. You have talked about the police coming in
and washing up. If I was a member of the public out there and
I thought about what the United Nations do, that is what they
do. All we are talking about here is duplication of work which
is ludicrous.
Dr Niblett: This is where subcontracting
comes in. Who will the United Nations subcontract that operation
to? Many in the European Union would like them to subcontract
it to the EU. Then it has the legal mandate. It is not either/or.
Q105 Mr Jenkin: This all begs the
question: should there not be a clear division of responsibility
between the EU and NATO? Should that not be achievable?
Dr Eyal: In theory, yes. One could
see the outlines of a grand bargain, as it were, fairly easily.
The European Union does have the staying power in financial terms
and in organisational terms. Please look at the administration
of places like Bosnia, for instance, to see that they can take
countries which need nurturing and build them up. Once they get
going on the peace reconstruction process, they are far better
equipped for that than NATO, both bureaucratically and in financial
terms. They do have one great asset that NATO does not have, which
is central funding. We tend to forget that. That is one of the
big banes of NATO, that it does not have central funding, with
a few minor exceptions. Therefore, there is a staying power which
would suggest that the EU should take one side of an operation
while the higher end—that is, the military side—should
be left to NATO. We are back again to ultimately a political question
and one of aspirations. Neither institution ultimately wishes
to be consigned to one role in these conflicts, partly because
we do not know what kind of conflicts there are likely to be in
the future, partly because both institutions in this context are
fighting for their survival as they see it.
Dr Allin: I think there is a logical
division of labour but it is not one that is very easy to spell
out in advance. It has a lot to do first of all in a particular
crisis with whether the United States is going to be involved.
It is going to want to be involved. You can imagine the European
Union being more likely to be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa.
I mentioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo example. I forget
which one of my colleagues was complaining about the idea of in
and out and not preparing for sustainability but this might be
something that battle groups can do fairly well because they are
more ready to go in at the service of the United Nations to try
to stabilise a situation but not having the political support
throughout Europe to imagine a prolonged deployment. I think it
is called punctuated intervention. It is an idea that I think
makes sense and to which the ESDP may be more suited than the
United States and NATO. Again, we can draw these notional ideas
about sub-Saharan Africa and specific cases, Europe to a large
extent, the Balkans and so forth but I do not really think you
can necessarily have hard and fast rules.
Dr Webber: I think there should
be a division of labour but I do not think there will be because
the tasks which both the European Union and NATO have increasingly
taken on are too complex and there is too much duplication. Any
grand bargain that should occur between NATO and the European
Union should not be a bargain simply between those two organisations.
The parts of the world they are now involved in involve other
actors to a very considerable degree, one of which has been mentioned,
which is the United Nations. Others perhaps we will come on to.
I do not think you can talk about grand bargains in the so-called
arc of crisis, through the Caucasus, central Asia, Russia and
China. A couple of organisations which are very obscure and consequently
always overlooked, the Commonwealth of Independent States and
the Shanghai Corporation Organisation, are of increasing importance
in that part of the world.
Q106 Mr Jenkin: Are you not all confirming
that this relationship between the EU and NATO is fundamentally
unstable? They are in fact very different organisations in that
the European Union has a much more legally superior structure
and, with the addition of the European Reform Treaty, which we
hear this morning is the same as the Constitution substantially
according to the European Scrutiny Committee on the advice of
Speaker's Counsel, how are we going to prevent the very duplication
and replication of NATO assets which we have always wanted to
prevent?
Dr Niblett: I find it hard to
see that they can a priori be incompatible because the
same countries are choosing to do things through different tracks.
To say they are incompatible is almost like saying your right
hand is incompatible with your left hand. To me, they are part
of the same countries in many cases.
Q107 Mr Jenkin: Your right hand and
your left hand do not try and do the same thing at the same time.
Dr Niblett: No. This is what we
are talking about. Can you get them to work in coordination and
not try to do the same thing at the same time? Just to state the
obvious, we cannot have a bargain between hard and soft power
where NATO does hard and the ESDP just does soft. Some of the
thinking in Afghanistan throws a strong light on why this would
be a bad idea.
Q108 Chairman: Why is that obvious?
Dr Niblett: I think it is obvious
because what potentially happens is that a particular chain of
command in which the US is likely to be dominant, because of the
size of the forces and the strength and sophistication of the
forces it has, is the hard power part and the European side, which
has much less of those forces on a sustainable basis, will be
involved inevitably on the soft side. Those two strategies will
not necessarily match because, as we have seen from national caveats
which seem to permeate all aspects not only of NATO operations
but definitely ESDP operations where you do not even have an integrated
military command, you end up with people doing different things
for different objectives. In Afghanistan we have in many cases
the US forces going round trying to kill people at the same time
as—
Q109 Mr Jenkin: It is the antithesis
of the comprehensive approach.
Dr Niblett: Exactly. That is my
concern.
Professor Cox: There is no fundamental
incompatibility at the moment but there is a potential incompatibility
and I do not think one can ignore that. The origins of the ESDP,
complex though they are, still arise out of a European desire
to frankly let Europe do more and not have the United States define
every single global agenda. The incompatibility will be managed,
it seems to me, as long as the ESDP is not terribly serious. If
the ESDP did get very serious, there may be an incompatibility.
Indeed, if the European Union—whether through a Constitution
or a Treaty; I would not dare comment on either—were to
become far more significant as a foreign policy actor, which seems
to be implied in what has been going on, again there could be
an incompatibility. There is an ambiguity at the moment which
could become a tension other things being equal and if things
were to change, but it is there. Maybe Robin and I do not agree
on this completely. I am not sure it is whether the left hand
is compatible with the right hand. I think there could be a point
where the left hand could start fighting with the right.
Q110 Mr Holloway: Is there not a
danger, when you have two organisations in the same place but
slightly at cross purposes, that you undermine the whole thing,
the British and American principles of counter-insurgency warfare?
If you do not have unity of command and unity of purpose, you
are starting from a very bad place.
Dr Niblett: I would argue that
that argues therefore for having greater unity of command and
the biggest case—for example, in Afghanistan—is that
we do need somebody who is able to coordinate precisely those
two parts. You are right. Without that greater concentration of
empowering a person or a group overseen by a person to dominate
that, yes, you could end up precisely with that kind of tension,
as we have seen right now. On the other hand, this idea that the
EU can bring different forces to the table in a post-conflict
environment is an important one. The police force, the gendarmerie,
the development support are more likely to be brought into a post-conflict
environment through an ESDP that is tied into an EU mechanism
than through a NATO one, unless we are going to end up with a
duplicating operation on both sides.
Dr Allin: The problems that we
see in practice are not problems that so far have been created
by a European Union aspiration. They are a factor of national
sovereignty and different national cultures. I speak here in terms
of Afghanistan or a country like Germany. German inhibitions and
national caveats are not caused by the European Union. They would
not go away if the European Union abandoned all ambitions in defence
policy.
Q111 Mr Jones: Have we reached the
outer limits of NATO? If we have not, what are the future prospects?
What are the consequences for the countries that are left out
if we say that NATO is now closed to new partners?
Dr Eyal: We have not reached the
outer limits. I am not persuaded by the argument that is very
frequently made that NATO had indigestion from the large waves
that came in. If one looks at the decision making processes in
Brussels, one would see that the same countries which created
difficulties in the past are creating them now and they happen
to be on what is called the old Europe rather than the new Europe.
The large influx of new members has not created any problems.
In fact, they have been rather scrupulous in their commitments,
probably more than most people expected. One should not put the
shutters down. At the same time, it is clear that we are talking
about very difficult countries, some of them fairly dubious countries,
that are putting themselves forward, with a much bigger geographic
dispersion. Talking about the Caucasus as being part of it is
understandable but it is not something that immediately comes
to people's minds in most of Europe as being part of the continent.
There is a problem in keeping countries out. The problem is that,
unlike the first or the second post-Cold War waves of enlargements,
where the European Union was able to walk step in step with NATO,
in the case of some of the countries left out, the European Union
has no better options than NATO, with the possible exception of
Croatia.
Q112 Mr Jones: When I visited Poland
and other countries before they came into NATO or the EU, some
of the former eastern European countries saw it as a badge that
you had to have on your lapel to see that you have advanced. To
what extent are we looking at it in terms of what they can bring
to the table rather than it just being a badge that they have
to get to say that somehow they have progressed from the old,
former Soviet Union days?
Dr Webber: This goes to a well
worn phrase: are new members consumers or producers of security?
Most of the new entrants into NATO have shown a great deal of
will in their willingness to go off on NATO missions and so on
but have brought very little economically. I personally do not
see that as a problem because I think NATO's strength historically
has been to pacify its membership as well as to project itself
externally. Part and parcel of enlargement, it seems to me, is
to continue with that process. Going back to the question, I think
NATO enlargement will continue. I do not think it has reached
its limits. The two most credible candidates, by the way, are
Finland and Sweden but they will not join in the sense that they
are not formal candidates, but they could easily be absorbed.
I think one should watch that in the very long term. There is
some possibility in the north. If you go to the south and the
east, it seems almost inevitable that Macedonia, Croatia and Albania
will join NATO. They will probably get an invite in 2008 and join
in 2010. That is the way the pattern has worked in the nineties
and in the early part of this century. A country joins the Membership
Action Plan or its forerunner, it then inevitably gets an invite
to NATO and then inevitably joins. The real crunch, it seems to
me, will come after these three states. You can envisage Bosnia
perhaps at some very large, distant future joining and even Kosovo
and Serbia as independents for the sake of completing the jigsaw
in that part of the world, but I think it is extremely unlikely
that Ukraine and Georgia will join, despite the fact that I know
Georgia is very much on the radar of American foreign policy.
They are very far from the criteria. It would cause no end of
trouble with Russia, which Russia is already exploiting. It seems
to me that the United States gets sufficient strategic advantage
with countries like Georgia bilaterally in any case without having
to go the route of having them in NATO.
Q113 Chairman: Yes or no? Do you
agree with Dr Webber's analysis of Ukraine and Georgia?
Professor Cox: Not exactly.
Dr Allin: Yes.
Professor Cox: Enlargement occurred
in the 1990s, not simply from external pressure but by demand.
It was demand driven. Namely, Poland wanted NATO membership. The
only qualification I would put to what Mark has argued is that
what happens if the Ukrainian Government duly elected comes to
NATO and says, "We want to join"? That was the dilemma
with Poland back in 1992, 1993 and 1994. There was no immediate
push to enlarge NATO in 1990 and 1991. I used to take my students
off to Brussels and give them 25 reasons why enlargement was a
very bad idea, not a good idea. It came about by demand from democratic
and newly elected governments. I agree with what Mark has said
but what happens if you do get democratically elected governments
in Ukraine or Tbilisi who say, "We want to join. We do not
want a half-way house where you want to call it something else,
PFP"? That could be the moment which formulates views about
should we be in favour or not of enlargement challenged by political
pressures on the ground, as it was in the early 1990s.
Q114 Mr Jenkins: That is the difficulty
we have at the present time. We have a NATO Russia committee operating
and trying to bring Russia into the centre of activities. I feel
that Russia has been isolated and put in the outer ranges and
the advancement of NATO across Europe for the security of the
American cloak rather than anything to do with Europe to save
the countries going back into the former Soviet Union or being
overrun by Russia gives us a major problem. Russia is now developing
and gaining lots and lots of money being sent there by Europe
by the truck load, to pay for the oil and gas. They are spending
more on the military hardware provision, like a 700 per cent increase,
and they are going to walk the world stage again as a super power.
Nobody will be able to get in their way while they are doing it
because now they have a white knight in charge of their country
who says, "You have been humiliated and I am going to put
you back where you really and truly belong as a super power, walking
the world stage." How is NATO going to be able to cope with
this, because it was arranged, developed and built to stop the
Soviet armies walking across Europe. If we perceive a slight instance
that it might happen again, will that not refocus the countries
in Europe to reconsider an old NATO?
Dr Eyal: I disagree fundamentally
with the Russian suggestion that it was NATO which was responsible
for the humiliation of Russia. The people who were responsible
for the humiliation of Russia were the Soviet leaders themselves
and the Russian leaders thereafter. A good argument would have
been that the end of the Soviet empire was a liberating experience
for the Russians themselves. This is what other countries, including
Britain and France, have ultimately made. It is not the argument
that Russian leaders, including Mr Putin, have made. To return
to the NATO issue, there have been enormous efforts to engage
in a dialogue with the Russians. There was a great deal of effort
after the Istanbul summit in 1999 to expand the dialogue. If the
Russians wanted, they could have had an enormous amount of cooperation
with NATO. Every single time, it was either rejected or simply
neutered. I know because I took part in a lot of this effort.
There were genuine efforts undertaken by NATO. What has happened—which
NATO could do nothing about—is that the Russians resent
the territorial status quo as established at the end of the Cold
War. They are in all their moves over the last 18 months trying
to reverse that particular status quo, the repudiation or the
withdrawal from the CFE being one classic example of a lot of
very spurious arguments that could have easily been addressed
with the Treaty being implemented. There are many things we could
have done better but I would not accept that it was NATO that
humiliated them. Although I know that this is the argument the
Russians make very often, I would not accept that NATO was not
aware of the sensitivities in Moscow.
Dr Allin: I disagree. It was an
argument that the Russians made and believed. The entire premise
of NATO enlargement was to ignore that, it seems to me. It is
fine if you think it is important enough but you cannot have it
both ways. I am not in any way defending anything that has happened
in Russia since the end of the Cold War and I am certainly not
defending the policies of the Putin government but it seems to
me that it is elementary that there was an understanding of a
peaceful end to the Cold War that had to preclude the expansion
of an alliance that was remaining for the new members basically,
an anti-Russian alliance. This was said at the very beginning
of our session here. From their point of view, that is the most
important that NATO was about. They required the security from
NATO to be defended from Russia? I do not think so. I do not think
Russia is threatening them but in any event we can ignore but
I do not think we can deny the Russian perspective in all of this,
which is that the West has taken advantage of their weakness.
I think that has caused us problems in our relationship with Russia.
I am not blaming NATO for everything that has gone wrong in Russia.
Obviously that has deeper roots but I think NATO enlargement has
been undertaken with a kind of strategic carelessness in these
terms.
Dr Niblett: I think Dana Allin
and Jonathan both make very good points. Even though they contradict
each other, I thought the most important point was Dana Allin's
point. You have to make a choice. We are trying to have it both
ways. We want Russia to like us. At the same time we want to enlarge
NATO and everyone to feel happy. You cannot have both. A choice
was made and I think it was the right choice, as long as we knew
why we were making it and what some of the potential implications
were going to be. A resurgent, strong Russia, as we have today,
alongside the countries who are currently in NATO not in NATO
would worry me more than the current situation we have now with
a resurgent Russia being annoyed that these countries are in NATO
and we are even talking about potentially expanding it a little
further. I would go along with the argument that there was a geopolitical
vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe in 1990 and vacuums are better
filled than not filled. Ultimately, the choices taken were the
right ones. What it means in terms of our relationship with Russia
going forward—I do think we need to be sensitive to their
sense of humiliation but my premise point on Russia is that at
the moment this is a country that sees the world through a very
different prism to the way we see it in the European Union. Russia
sees the world in zero sum terms that we are the most ill equipped
to deal with. An element of toughness will be respected and will
serve us better than the reverse.
Dr Webber: In an attempt to adopt
a middle position between those who have just spoken, it is very
easy to give Russia a bad press, particularly in light of some
of the developments of the last few months, the redeployment of
long range fighter flights across various parts of the world,
tub thumping over issues of energy security, the so-called suspension
from the CFE Treaty. However, I think Russia often does have a
case but it puts it very badly. Russian diplomacy, particularly
defence diplomacy, is often very incompetent. On two very technical
issues I think it has had a case and it has been rejected by the
countries of NATO. One is the CFE Treaty. It is a very technical
issue which we do not have the time or maybe the mental energy
to go into, but I do not think the Russian case of a revision
of the CFE Treaty is entirely wrong. It has been not entirely
correct of the NATO side not to ratify the amended Treaty and
not to push the Baltic states to join it. The second—and
it is equally technical—is the reluctance of NATO to formally
establish relations with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation
which is a Russian led military organisation which Russia takes
as a snub. It takes it as putting a firewall between itself and
NATO, particularly in areas of cooperation such as Afghanistan.
Q115 Mr Jones: Afghanistan has been
seen by many commentators as a great test for NATO. What lessons
do you think can be drawn from what happened in Afghanistan and
is it fair to say that we are seeing a development within NATO
in terms of force generation, willingness to fight or provide
assets, a two tier system where some members are prepared to do
more than others?
Professor Cox: I want to go back
on Russia but I will not. The history does not matter. We are
confronted with a real problem there and we do not have an answer
to it. Anyway, on Afghanistan, the only thing one can keep coming
up with is a series of obvious statements about it. It is the
largest deployment we now have and have ever had. Who would have
ever thought we would be in this situation today? Nobody a few
years ago. NATO was sidelined in the first part of the war in
Afghanistan against the Taliban. They have now become central.
There is clearly a very uneven contribution, blood and treasure,
through NATO allies. The war is not going very well, in spite
of what many people would say, it seems to me. The future credibility
of NATO really rests on the outcomes in Afghanistan. This is the
great test. NATO has never fought wars before. What are the marks
out of ten? On certain things you can tick certain boxes and say,
"Not bad, quite good, doing well", but who? The Brits,
the Canadians, the Dutch, the Norwegians? You go down the list.
I know that there are national cultures and peculiarities and
all the rest of it but at the end of the day it is a fighting
military alliance and has a meaningful contribution. That is undermining
and doing some really major damage not only in this country but
in other countries who are members of the NATO Alliance who are
contributing in blood while others are doing it less so, for all
sorts of peculiar and specific national reasons. Secondly, from
the United States, the United States is part of NATO in some points
but it is also acting in its own way relatively independently.
It is NATO but it is the United States which is still taking up
the bulk of the fighting in some of the most serious, dangerous
areas in Afghanistan. That also raises this question: is it really
only NATO? The United States would be there for its own reasons
anyway to do with it. Frankly, this is not an academic point of
view; it is a personal point of view just listening to what people
have told me: one has to think that there is a real crisis that
is going to hit us in about a year or a year and a half's time
on this issue, it seems to me. We are not there yet but we are
heading towards it and we have seriously underestimated a whole
series of issues here. That will be the brick wall we are going
to hit.
Q116 Chairman: What sort of crisis
are you talking about?
Professor Cox: Obviously the resurgence
of the Taliban, the ability of the Taliban to adapt their military
strategy to car bombing, differences between the British and the
Americans over what to do about the poppies, over the heroin.
It knocks on into Pakistan which is as important in this whole
debate as is Afghanistan itself. It hits on that relationship.
In a way, it is the worst kind of domino theory working against
the West. Iraq has clearly knocked into Afghanistan or Afghanistan
has knocked into Iraq and both are now knocking into Pakistan
which is knocking back. You cannot simply look at Afghanistan
as a single element or a single point in this arc of crisis. Each
one contributed to the other and unfortunately at the moment the
crisis in Iraq contributes to the deepening of the crisis in Afghanistan
which contributes to the deepening of the crisis in Pakistan.
As you may have gathered from my comments, I am rather gloomy
about the future.
Dr Eyal: Nothing that I say would
be in contradiction to Professor Cox on this point, I am afraid.
I am pessimistic as well. I am not so pessimistic about the links
between Pakistan, Afghanistan and what we may do in Iraq although
there is clearly a connection there. The biggest danger at the
moment is the cascading effect of national decisions to withdraw
or to stop contributions based on the dynamics in each individual
contributing nation. The figures are astounding. Something like
70 per cent of Germans are opposed to the continued contribution
there. There is a possibility of a vote of no confidence in the
Canadian House of Commons, bringing down the government there.
The latest figures published yesterday, done by the Dutch, of
their public opinion indicate really some amazing figures like
five per cent of those under 25 supporting the operation and at
no point more than 50 per cent of the nation, since the operation
began, supporting this project. Once the cascade begins, it will
become unstoppable and it will prevent NATO from even withdrawing
with a bit of honour, which must be a fallback position. It does
not need to end up in that grave situation but it could.
Chairman: What a profoundly depressing
thing to say.
Q117 Mr Holloway: How do you think
that will play out in terms of a possible disintegration of the
NATO allies in Afghanistan?
Dr Eyal: Of course we are guessing
here. My guess is that probably not as much as opinion leaders
in newspapers will write. People have written obituaries before
of NATO. What will happen is that people will try to suggest that
the decision to stake all of NATO's credibility on Afghanistan
was taken rashly, that it was taken within a particular historic
context, with countries trying to get away from the dispute with
the US over Iraq and therefore we went into it too rashly; that
we must pick up the pieces and there must be serious discussion,
but that ultimately this will not be the end of the credibility.
As always with credibility, you do not know. It depends what the—
Q118 Mr Holloway: How will it play
out, if Canada goes for example, in terms of who fills in? What
happens?
Dr Eyal: In practical terms, I
do not believe that there is any chance of anyone stepping into
the breach now. We are lucky to keep the Germans in the position
that they are in with the caveats that there are. I do not think
Dr Merkel can deliver on anything more within her government but
the status quo in terms of deployment. We may be lucky and get
more active French involvement and perhaps France fanning out
of Kabul if Mr Sarkozy is true to what he has hinted, but I do
not think we are talking large numbers. Any one of these pieces
of the jigsaw, if it drops out suddenly, I am afraid the entire
picture starts disintegrating.
Dr Allin: On the larger question
of the impact on NATO of failure, I agree with Jonathan Eyal very
much. NATO has an institutional staying power. Its credibility
in future crises will depend on the perceived stakes of the various
antagonists in those future crises, not what it did in Afghanistan.
The threat is in a sense because the greatest existential threat
to NATO is the United States, the relative disinterest it may
or may not have in the future. Obviously that would be increased
by failure in Afghanistan so it would damage NATO. If I listen
to what Jonathan Eyal has said about the polling results, I think
he is absolutely right about countries like Germany and the Netherlands.
If I consider what little I know about the difficulties of the
mission, even not being entirely clear how the mission is defined,
what do you do about a sanctuary in Pakistan? Some historical
theories of counter-insurgency would say that you cannot defeat
an insurgency that has this sanctuary; and yet some people are
defining NATO's very future viability on the basis of what can
almost be defined as an impossibility. Not knowing enough about
the situation, I would nonetheless say that there does need to
be greater NATO-wide consultation and discussion of what the really
achievable, strategic goals are in Afghanistan. They may not be
the maximal ones.
Q119 Willie Rennie: Can NATO survive
in the longer term when there is such a disparity in percentage
of GDP funding levels from the variety of people in the partnership?
Dr Niblett: The kind of NATO we
have been talking about today can survive. It is not the NATO
as we knew it but it is the NATO, at least as I have been talking
about it, that is more flexible to take a positive adjective and
maybe a little less united, one that picks and chooses the way
it constructs its operations, particularly abroad. I think that
type of NATO can survive with the disparity. The disparity within
the EU on defence spending is as dramatic as the disparity between
some of the top spenders within the EU and the United States.
It is clearly a problem. I am as much concerned by the problem
at a practical level that the US military is spending—and
has been now for over a decade—high amounts of money on
very sophisticated technologies and the ability to operate and
fight in ways that are fundamentally different to the way that
EU nations can fight. It is not just the amount of money; it is
how the money is being spent, what it is being spent on, the way
that doctrines and methods of fighting are evolving that are different,
that will make the separation of action that we saw in the 1991
Gulf War constantly be widened and exacerbated even further into
the future.
Dr Webber: I am not a defence
economist but the issue of disparity of defence expenditure may
be perhaps exaggerated by the way the figures are calculated.
NATO is now not just about defence; it is about security. The
disparity is quite obvious if you look at defence budgets but
if you look at overall spend on security issues, the United States
is still way, way out in front but, if you look at what the EU
NATO members spend on things like humanitarian aid, that is technically
not defence expenditure but it clearly feeds into issues of security
in some sense. That disparity, if you like, is less clear. Here
I have a link back to Afghanistan. It depends on what you choose
to spend your money on. In the case of Afghanistan, the US Department
of Defence spent $US116 billion on Afghanistan between 2001 and
2007. Money on diplomacy and aid during that same period was 9.7
billion, so there is a huge disparity in terms of the manner in
which money is spent for the same end which, in some senses, is
security. It is an age old question about the disparity of defence
expenditure within NATO but I think in some ways it misses the
point, the point being that there are different ways to spend
money other than simply headlining them under defence.
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