Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
Major-General Messervy-Whiting CBE and Mr Nick Witney
5 JUNE 2008
Q60 Lord Chidgey: This is bringing
us back to the growth if you like, the development, of the ESS.
For the record, thinking now in terms of the ESS being adopted
in 2003, at a time when the European Security Defence Policy was
only just getting off the ground, could the witnesses tell us
do they think the strategy should be revised to take into account
specifically the experience gained since then and the types of
crisis management operations that the EU has conducted in the
Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Africa, in the Middle East and in
Asia? I realise we have already talked about the fact that there
were operations in those various theatres but I am specifically
interested in the lessons that can be learned, the developments
that can be made in the strategy updating, modernising and recognising
the fact that it is 27 nations not 15 and so on.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: The update
will have to take account of lessons learnt from operations on
the ground. The EU does have a lessons learnt process in the same
way as NATO has a lessons learnt process from operations and,
I believe, so does the UN. To what extent there is going to be
anything particularly useful that will go back into the strategy
from that I am not sure, because from what I have seen of the
lessons learnt so far they tend to be things that are pretty obvious
and I do not think there have been any big surprises to practitioners
there. Most of the messages about the need for better co-ordination,
the need for a better capacity for advanced planning, the need
for Member States to act where there is an agreement to act more
quickly are already tagged in the strategy.
Q61 Lord Chidgey: Is there anything
specific? You have mentioned that there is a process, General,
obviously as one would expect, of reviewing what has happened,
but again we are talking about a five-year timescale and quite
a lot of investment in materials, human resources and so forth
in these various actions by the EU. We are looking for something
robust that has come from this to almost underline the importance
and effectiveness of the strategy and I am rather hoping to have
that confirmed so we can say, yes, this is really working so well.
It is all a bit down-key at the moment.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: Quietly
optimistic perhaps rather than down-key. I do not think there
have been any huge surprises, is what I was trying to say. There
are lots of specific things that have come out in terms of the
operations with recourse to maintain our assets and capabilities;
there is a general feeling now both within the European Union
and within NATO that Berlin Plus perhaps is a bit old, a bit archaic
for what needs to be done between the two organisations and can
actually be a bit of a hindrance in its bureaucracy nowadays and
there is a need to move on beyond Berlin Plus. In each and every
(however many it is) completed operations to date—there
are things like that that come out of it, but I am not sure how
much of that needs to be folded back into a document that might
remain that size.
Mr Witney: In terms of encapsulating
the lessons of five years of operational experience for the EU,
plus many other crisis management operations under other flags,
there is a case for the more self-conscious formulation of a doctrine
of stabilisation and how you deal with crises, failing states
and so on, but I am not sure that that would belong in this document.
If I might just pick up the point about lessons learnt, in my
view the EU is very bad at learning lessons—though they
may have a process—and as with most other things that on
the face of it can sound like criticism of them in Brussels, it
is actually criticism of the Member States. Operations take place,
they are finished, no one wants to trawl over what went wrong
and everybody wants to declare a success and move on to the next
one. It seems to me absolutely scandalous that it is only in recent
months that anybody has taken any notice at all of the shortage
of support helicopters, which has been the Achilles heel of every
crisis management operation in the last decade—one could
replicate that: lack of communications, lack of decent surveillance
capabilities. If there were a decent lessons learnt process all
of these would have been highlighted in some fashion years ago,
but somehow that sort of retrospective judgment never arrives
at the point of visibility, of people doing things about it.
Q62 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Building
on Lord Chidgey's question, is that of continuous revision over
the five years since the strategy was evolved. Yes, there has
been experience but also certain problems which were like a cloud
no larger than a man's hand at the time—climate change for
example has suddenly become centre stage. In your judgment how
flexible is the process, how open to amendment as a result of
new developments?
Mr Witney: To what extent is climate
change contributing to Sudan and Chad? I do not know whether conflicts
and migrations are driven by climate change or driven by traditional
patterns of tribal or ethnic antipathy. Yes, the EU needs to have
a policy on climate change, we need to act together on that, but
I am not sure how relevant these possible underlying causes and
contributory factors of the crisis we see in Darfur matter to
how the EU should think about addressing the way the problems
present.
Q63 Lord Anderson of Swansea: In
terms of migration, in terms of food security, it is relevant.
Mr Witney: Yes. I do not think we are
necessarily disagreeing on that, it is a matter of whether one
regards these as underlying factors or part of the presentation
of the symptoms of hungry people who are being shoved across borders
and ending up in refugee camps.
Q64 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Flexibility
is the point.
Mr Witney: Yes.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: Just
briefly, the tools to act if the EU is minded so to do are there,
currently in Article 17 of the Treaty on the European Union, and
the terminology used there, the old so-called Petersberg tasks
from the Western European Union, give the EU scope to do virtually
anything it wants to do provided the Member States are minded
to act and provided there is indeed a capacity within the Member
States to act. One of the problems that the EU has, along with
NATO and everybody else at the moment, is that there is not a
very great capacity to take on big new challenges from a military
point of view because the forces are by and large not there, they
are doing other things in other places.
Q65 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: I am
not at all sure that you have not really answered my question
because this is all about whether we are learning lessons from
Afghanistan and so forth, and if you were to say yes, we ought
to learn, we are talking about an even bigger pamphlet that will
be produced and I am quite keen on keeping it small and simple.
Surely the essence of what has come out of this is rather like
the experience of the British Army in Northern Ireland when there
was a massive evolution in tactics and how to deal with that problem
and so forth that went on for many years. Surely the most useful
thing we could be doing when the EU is involved in somewhere like
Chad is to learn the lessons from that and move them on to some
other theatre. We can all sit here speculating about what happens
if we get mass migration, global warming, starvation, but that
actually gets almost nobody anywhere. All that is actually useful
is to say we had a challenge in Chad, this is how we handled it
and this is where we got it incredibly wrong and we should learn
some lessons from it. Is there really anything useful beyond that
that we can do?
Mr Witney: I do feel that the tendency
towards corporate amnesia is one of several ways actually in which
the ESDP needs to become more systematic and more professional
in its approach to the operations it runs.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: Just
briefly, as Nick hinted there tends to be a two-level lessons
learnt process, as indeed with NATO. That is, there is the top-level
process which is signed up to by all the Member States politically,
which tends to be fairly bland, because no one wants to admit
that everything has not gone correctly, and there is the practitioners
lessons-learnt list which is more akin to what you were saying
about the British Army and learning over time. For each and every
step in a deployment process there is an underpinning, what the
EU calls a military concept document; those do get amended and
lessons are fed back from the practitioner point of view with
those.
Q66 Lord Swinfen: The European Security
Strategy calls on the EU to be "more active, more capable
and more coherent". What in fact does this mean in practice
and how could the improvements be made? Will the Lisbon Treaty
lead to greater coherence between the nations or not?
Mr Witney: Yes, that is indeed the heart
of it, these three words active, capable and coherent and at the
moment there is no doubt that the ESDP endeavour is falling short
on all three heads. Part of activity, as I read this document,
was to be prepared to get in there early and so far the record
has been that we are not; we arrive really very late in the day,
it is all emergency room stuff rather than preventative medicine
on the whole, and the time it takes simply to set up operations,
to get people to put their hands up and say "Yes, we will
contribute" is often embarrassingly protracted. Twenty operations
is quite a lot but it would be a mistake for anybody to say that
this is a sign that we have really taken the lessons of activity
to heart. On capability—you do not have several hours so
I will lay off military capabilities and just point out that there
is an illusion that the EU is replete with civil capabilities;
people say there should be a reverse Berlin Plus arrangement so
that the EU can lend its civil capabilities to NATO. The famous
catalogues talk of 5000 policemen and there are about 1500 earmarked
for Kosovo and a couple of hundred finding their way slowly into
Afghanistan, maybe a couple of hundred more, which in practice
drains the reservoir. So support might be hypothetically available,
but on the day it is far too often not. In terms of coherence,
when we conduct military operations run from one of seven possible
alternative locations across Europe and civil operations run from
an entirely different place within Brussels you find at the very
heart of direction of interventions complete separation between
civil and military, so we are not very coherent in that way. Of
course there is then the fundamental problem that you mentioned
at the end there, that the Lisbon Treaty does seem to address—which
is to try to ensure that it is not just the combined efforts of
Member States in terms of the military and the diplomatic side
but also that the aid and trade policies march more coherently
in step, which is something that, God willing, the Lisbon Treaty
will improve.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: Briefly,
the Chatham House workshop in March 2006 did try to look at the
15 ESDP deployments to date at that time and fit them into the
boxes of more active, more capable and more coherent, and it was
able to produce one to illustrate each of those boxes. Whether
that actually means that a strategic culture that fosters early,
rapid and when necessary robust intervention is a great deal nearer
than it was in 2003 I am not so sure, but that is all part of
the long term construction anyway and is unlikely to show short
term gains. The most difficult bit is the "more coherent"
bit, that is the toughest nut; even with the Lisbon Treaty, actually
getting the various bits of the Brussels machinery to in their
heart of hearts work together efficiently, singing off the same
hymn sheet, is the toughest nut of all, even though the Lisbon
Treaty will give them the framework with which to do that.
Q67 Lord Swinfen: Do you have a timescale
for long term?
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: If one
is talking about changing mindset and strategic culture it is
going to be something that will have to draw on training and education
of young people, whether they are bureaucrats or—
Q68 Lord Swinfen: Are you talking
about a generation?
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: I am
talking about a generation.
Q69 Lord Swinfen: At least.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: I would
hope to see some results at the end of a generation.
Q70 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Could
I just take up this point about the civilian capability which
you have referred to as also being a fairly shallow pond. Presumably
the problem is that in order to be able to deploy civilian capability
in Afghanistan or in Chad or wherever it may be countries have
to have a surplus over what they need to conduct their national
responsibilities in policing, judges, civil servants or whatever
it is, but that is not something that they naturally have, unlike
the military who by definition have a deployable surplus, even
if it is not a very big one. Unless Member States are prepared
to recognise that the pond will remain shallow presumably and
per contrary they do recognise it, the pond could be quite considerable
but then they would have to carry excess capability on their books.
Mr Witney: There is a third way, which
is the idea of a civilian reserve corps, as indeed the Prime Minister
advocated in his recent speech in America in the context of the
UN. But it could be more easily and effectively done closer to
home in an EU context.
Q71 Lord Anderson of Swansea: There
could be a fourth way in terms of the recently retired, because
police officers who have recently retired have a range of expertise
which can be used overseas.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: Absolutely.
Chairman: We will be looking at the papers
later on about a letter from the minister talking about a proposal
to double the size of the EU police mission in Afghanistan, and
at the moment it only is half the strength it should be, let alone
what it is going to be when it is doubled, so it does demonstrate
very clearly the real difficulty of deploying in that sort of
area. Lord Swinfen.
Lord Swinfen: Just as a matter of interest
what countries in the EU currently have a surplus of deployable
military personnel?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Presumably all
the people who have battle groups.
Lord Swinfen: But they are normally doing
other jobs.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Our battle groups
are.
Q72 Chairman: Can we ask our witnesses
to answer, please?
Mr Witney: If I may, I think there are
some countries which probably do have a surplus of deployable
military capability—the Spanish, for example, have Armed
Forces well into six figures and have an explicit cap of 3,000
on the numbers that they are prepared to deploy at any time.
Q73 Lord Swinfen: Are they well-trained?
Mr Witney: That is absolutely the issue,
is it not? We have nearly two million men and women in uniform
in Europe and yet by the Member States' own calculations only
some 30 per cent of land forces are trained or equipped to act
outside national territory, 70 per cent of land forces are not
fit for deployment outside national territory which does raise
the question of what on earth they are for. Across Europe we just
have not restructured away from the Cold War to meet the sort
of activities that we are all saying we should be preparing to
meet.
Q74 Lord Swinfen: Is it not really
just pie in the sky then?
Mr Witney: One just has to plug away
at pointing out the difference between what people say they are
going to do and what they actually then do when the next annual
set of decisions comes up as to how they are going to spend their
defence budgets.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: On the
non-military side some countries do have deployable police and
legal assets—I am thinking particularly of those with a
gendarmerie type of force and overseas territories or dominions
still as opposed to the British police model. As I understand
it, even in the British police forces there are designated forces
which do have pools of officers who are available and in some
cases on standby to go overseas, not least of which are in relation
to our own remaining dependent territories.
Q75 Lord Selkirk of Douglas: I wish
to ask a question about capabilities. You have in large measure
answered the first aspect of it which I wish to raise, which is
whether there is the right mix of civilian and military capabilities
at disposal and the necessary flexibility to apply them. The second
aspect related to capabilities is whether the strategy should
contain stronger or more precise references to such capabilities,
or whether you feel a level of generality is preferable, and the
third aspect is whether the EU has adequate capabilities to deal
with large scale natural disasters and emergencies outside the
EU as in the case of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and whether
such capabilities should be strengthened.
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: If I
may take the last one first—and it leads on from our previous
discussion—I am not sure that the EU certainly in the short
term would wish to do more than contribute to the international
effort to deal with such large scale natural disasters. The EU
in that sort of situation would always want to do something in
support of the United Nations or, if a regional organisation was
taking the lead, ASEAN or whoever in support of ASEAN, as indeed
it did in the Aceh monitoring mission on disarmament and demobilisation.
In those sorts of situations it is going to have to be an international
effort to which the EU contributes in the best way that it can,
and the best way might be diplomatic or financial or reconstruction
and not necessarily an ESDP operation.
Q76 Chairman: On the earlier questions
do you think it would be useful for there to be rather more explicit
reference to capabilities in the revision of the strategy?
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: In terms
of the mix of civilian and military capabilities the strategy
touches on that quite adequately at the moment, but it certainly
would do no harm. I referred to it as being the toughest nut to
crack to get the military and the civilian, the Commission and
the Council, and all the various bits working together efficiently.
It would do no harm to really pound the fist on that particular
point.
Mr Witney: In the area of capabilities
in the five years since this document was produced there has been
quite a lot of work one level down at, if you like, defining what
capabilities are needed, and the story is in fact identical with
the story that you hear in the other side of Brussels at NATO
about what it is that constitutes deployable, available and effective
expeditionary forces. Roughly speaking I would say there is no
shortage of analysis, in fact there is a surfeit of analysis,
an almost interminable analysis about what should be done and
the deficiencies. I quoted the example of helicopters before—the
arrival at a point of critical mass of impatience for people to
say let us actually seriously tackle this and see if we can do
something about it. I have an instinctive feeling, without being
an expert on the subject at all, that we ought to be doing more
on the humanitarian side. I do not know whether it would be useful
or helpful for the EU to common-fund and pre-stock materials.
I was quite interested at one stage in the concept of fast ships—it
always seems to me a bit ridiculous that our naval inventories
contain things that can only move at 25 to 30 knots when technology
allows you to move things over transoceanic distances at twice
that speed if you pay for it—it is rather a specific point
but it is something that I feel would be worth some attention
in the EU.
Q77 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Gentlemen,
at the level of the analysis of threats there would probably be
a reasonable consensus among the planners in the Kremlin and in
Washington if one were writing just a general document on global
threats; the problem I guess is implementation in part but also
when the EU strategy cannot be done within the confines of the
EU it surely will need to be or should be co-ordinated with what
the planners in Washington are saying and equally with what the
planners in NATO are saying and, to a lesser extent, what the
planners in the Kremlin are saying. We know for example on the
helicopter case you cited that we are now in discussion with the
Russians about surplus helicopters in Ukraine and so on. My question
is to what extent in the formulation of this new strategy there
should be, in your judgment, increased co-ordination between people
in other areas? If one looks at circles the closest circle would
be Washington and NATO and even more widely afield in terms of
the planners in the Kremlin and elsewhere, those countries which
have strategic partnerships with the EU.
Mr Witney: That is exactly right and
as I read this document it is one of the aspects of coherence—the
coherent word is not just a plea for an end of institutional turf
warfare in Brussels, it is a plea for the Member States to work
more closely together, it acknowledges the need to work more effectively
with partners in other multinational institutions and other centres
of power as you describe. Dialogue with NATO has its well-known
problems at the moment but probably one of the successes of the
ESDP in the last five years has been increasingly close and productive
involvement with the UN. An area where the EU needs to beef up
its dialogue very substantially is its direct dialogue with Washington—that
will come—and the Kremlin.
Q78 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: What
you have both said about this document which is now being reviewed
puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that it is short and clear
and readable and that indeed it is more a kind of public policy
statement than it is a guide to individual policy-making in individual
crises. Does it not therefore seem a little odd—but perhaps
you could comment on this—that it has so low a public profile,
that nobody seems to know about its existence and that the institutions
of the European Union do not seem to have taken much trouble to
popularise it or to socialise it—to use that ghastly NGO
phrase—and yet that is surely what it ought to be ideal
for. Would you have any suggestions, if you agree that that is
a weakness, about how a reviewed strategy could be better promulgated?
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: A lot
of this comes down to the extent to which Member States are willing
to push an EU product and that will vary between Member States.
I really do not have a feel, for example, as to what extent this
is known to the average citizen in France but I would not suspect
it is a topic of discussion in the local bistro in Marseilles,
but I am not sure that it should be however. This is an area where
the Lisbon Treaty hopefully—if and when ratified—should
be helpful because at the moment there is a Commission representative
in London with outposts in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and
the poor chap's job is to try and sell this but it is not actually
at the top of his priority list, I think fishing at the moment
is at the top of his today's priority list, but when that becomes
the European Union External Action Service representative in London,
maybe issues from Pillar 2 will be nearer the top of the list
than the Pillar 1 issues that are there.
Q79 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: You
do not think that the Member State governments have any responsibility
there at all?
Major-General Messervy-Whiting: I do
actually but it would be nice if the EU representative in each
capital, if this were to happen, would be able to occasionally
remind officials in foreign offices that this was there and needed
a bit more visibility perhaps.
Mr Witney: The advantage of the bureaucratic
coup that was effected in order to produce this document in the
first place is that you get something which is such a good document;
the disadvantage is that nobody takes ownership of it and ESDP
is nothing if it is not the possession of the Member States, it
is an inter-governmental exercise. My beef about this is that
you have got a great document which people do not actually follow,
because vast swathes of European opinion do not believe it, they
do not think we should be being more active, they do not think
that the frontline against terrorism is on the Hindu Kush, they
think terrorism is best combated from underneath the duvet. There
is a whole process that never happened with this in terms of taking
this out to national parliaments, to opinion-formers, to try to
make the case for more active, coherent and capable European policies.
In some ways, therefore, I regret that it looks as though the
revision is going to be an inside-the-Brussels-ring-road stitch-up
again, but at least there will be a document which is new and
I very much hope that in 2009 governments will find their voices
to advocate it and present it. It should be debated in all national
parliaments it seems to me; the last one was debated by the Finns
and that was about it.
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