Examination of Witnesses (Questions 304-319)
Mr Kees Klompenhouwer and Lieutenant-General David
Leakey
1 JULY 2008
Q304 Chairman: Good morning. As I think
you know, the Committee is carrying out an inquiry into the review
of the European Security Strategy and looking at its effectiveness
over the last five years, how useful it has been, what could be
done and should not be done in terms of reviewing it, and what
sort of instruments people who are doing the sort of things you
are doing feel would be useful to come out of the process. The
questions which we have raised with you that you have had a chance
to see touch on those sorts of areas. I would like to begin by
saying that in the Strategy there is this phrase calling on the
European Union to be more "active, capable and coherent".
To what extent do you feel over the five years since the Strategy
was prepared that the Union has been able to do this? You may
have an opening statement you would like to make on the general
themes.
Mr Klompenhouwer: As an
opening statement I would say that we have been engaged in a lot
of operations on the civilian side and are still engaged in a
lot of operations. One of the things we try to manage is the gap
between the political objectives and the situation on the ground
and the means that are made at our disposal. It is a constant
challenge and we are trying to do a better job every day, but
it remains a challenge. That is what I would like to say as an
opening statement.
Q305 Chairman: Thank you very much.
In terms of being more "active, capable and coherent",
how far has one moved in this direction in the last five years?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Maybe it is
easier for me to handle that, having had an acquaintance with
the ESDP and its instruments both out in the field and here in
Brussels at least since mid-2004. The first thing is one has only
got to look at the spectrum of operations, the geographical spread,
the number of them, the specificity of those operations in technical
terms, to recognise that we have certainly been active. I think
one can tick that box. Whether we have been capable, I would say,
and perhaps it is not for me to judge, from a technical point
of view highly capable and highly effective in some very discrete
areas. I have seen some of the civilian operations at firsthand,
for example some of the activities in Darfur, the police and the
EUPM in Bosnia, and I know Kees will probably talk about some
of those. Very technical, very effective, very efficient, very
targeted, very specific and, therefore, capable, tick the box
there. When you come to the military operations I would say we
have been capable and we have also been lucky. FYROM was not a
demanding mission. It was a good experiment, as it were, to try
the mechanisms out with some real people on the ground, but it
was not demanding, and it was well done. The first Congo mission,
Artemis, was more demanding, it was time limited, geographically
limited, task limited; I think it was well done. It was more or
less French led, so it was a national operation with an EU flag
on it but, once again, as a starter it was well done, it demonstrated
a capability. The next operation was really the EUFOR operation
in Bosnia. I am going to tell you it was very well done. It was
well done. The seamless transition for which there was a lot of
scepticism, the transition from NATO to the EU, from SFOR to EUFOR,
was indeed seamless by acknowledgement, including of the Americans,
who were the most sceptical, and possibly the Brits, who were
the second most sceptical. As one American described to me, in
fact SACEUR, he was astonished. It was effective and was well
done. In that EUFOR mission, and you have heard me say this before,
it was different from the SFOR mission and Solana himself told
me, and it was reflected in the OPLAN that I received, that it
was a "new and distinct", was how he described it, mission
and that EUFOR was to make a difference. We did things differently
from SFOR, we had some different tasks and tackled them differently.
It was the start of the comprehensive approach. I address the
"coherent" bit now, because the idea of EUFOR taking
over from SFOR was to get the various EU instruments better collaborating
in delivering an effect on the ground, and that happened with
some coherence. (The answer continued off the record) Since the
Bosnia operation, on the military side we have done another Congo
operation and Chad. The Congo operation demonstrated the capability.
We had the German Potsdam operational headquarters, which worked
and was not very good, but nor was PJHQ in the UK when it tried
to do its first operation either. However, it succeeded, so it
developed a capability which if it did it again would do it twice
as well. We put close to 3,000 people onto the ground for a limited
period of time with infrastructure, they delivered an operational
effect and we did not take any casualties. It was exposed to some
risk, both of security and risk to the effectiveness of the mission,
and I would say they were lucky because they were not seriously
tested. Had they been tested, I think the story could have been
otherwise. That is not so much to do with the European Union as
with national caveats, which is a common international problem
rather than an EU one. Then the Chad mission, another OHQ is being
tested. I was out there with the Sec-Gen a few weeks ago. I think
the Chad mission has had an effect on the ground. The doubters
and sceptics have been surprised. Even the NGOs in Chad and the
Central African Republic some of whom I saw last August when I
went on the recce and spoke to them and saw them again a few weeks
ago when I went out, said, "Okay, you're forgiven".
People have been surprised. There have been troubles with force
generation, we have got problems. (The answer continued off the
record) What has been encouraging, and where I took the greatest
encouragement, was the French Force Commander told me at the outset,
and I know him reasonably well because he did the recces with
me last year when we set up the missions, "I am very worried
that we are going to get a collection of contingents from small
and new Member States who can't do the business out here and we'll
have to carry them". Out on the ground he told me, "I
have been surprised. These small contingents have come out and
the soldiers have been willing to live in austere conditions,
at risk, under-resourced when they first arrived, no proper security
arrangements, just a bit of desert to live in with a tent, they
just got on with it. More than that, they have initiative, they
have been proactive and even some of the ideas they have brought
for living in an extremely austere place in the world, frankly
we French have learned a couple of lessons". That was some
accolade, I have to say.
Q306 Lord Anderson of Swansea: High
praise.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: That has been
good, that ESDP has got some of these Member States—we are
talking here of Ireland, Austria, the Swedes and so on—who
are not habitual Africa Corps experts. They have gone out there
and they have done the business. This has expanded capability.
Not too bad. On the coherence, Chad has not been a big civ-mil
operation. Co-ordination with the UN, the external agencies, has
been okay, and with the Commission. We did the initial recces
jointly. The UN and Commission came with me on the initial recces.
We did all the meetings together. We had our daily conferences
together to stitch the idea together, and I think the coherence
was good. On coherence, over the last five years I would say capability
has grown. On coherence we are getting the idea but there is a
long, long way to go and some of your questions will address where
it might go.
Q307 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: If
we could just step back, because our inquiry is about the European
Security Strategy and one of the things we are trying to identify
is what the interface is between the day-to-day work that you
are doing on ESDP missions and the broad and pretty brief but
very well expressed, in the view of all the people we have talked
to, concepts that were set out in the original Security Strategy
which are now being reviewed. It would be very helpful to us if
you two could say to what extent does the European Security Strategy,
in a way, guide your overall approach to policy, not defining
what you do in Chad or what you do in Bosnia, we know perfectly
well it does not do that, but is it of any relevance at all, or
is it irrelevant and unimportant? Are the people you work with,
the Chadians or the Bosnians, even conscious of what the European
Union's overall approach is as set out in the European Security
Strategy and does that matter? I know these things are terribly
imprecise but it is quite important given that a lot of witnesses
have told us that it is not really a strategy in the correct Staff
College meaning of the word "strategy", it is more a
concept and so on. What is its usefulness to an operator like
yourself, a practitioner, if any?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: It is well-written.
It covers all the bases. It is short, it is digestible and, therefore,
gives a hook for everything we do. There is nothing I do or Kees
does that is not hooked in the ESS. From that point of view it
is a good chapeau document for ESDP operations. In terms
of its future development there is one thing I am wary of and
one thing it should have. There are lots of small things, but
in general terms. The one thing I am wary of is making it a prescription
to cover absolutely everything. I know it has been described as
a Christmas tree which you hang every present off, and there is
a risk in that, but in a way you could say it is that already
because there is a hook for almost everything. What I think is
missing from it and which would help not just us in our work but
the Member States, and I have talked to Robert Cooper about this
and he acknowledges this and intends to try and tackle this with
some succinct, in his Cooper-esque way, paragraphs, is making
what is written in the Security Strategy more relevant to a citizen
in a Member State. We had real problems force generating for Chad,
and not just Chad but in NATO for Afghanistan, and for the UN
for any of their missions. Why is it? It is because Member States
do not see these operations as priorities. If the Security Strategy
is a priority, something that the European Union thinks it ought
to be doing and investing effort in, then we need to make the
linkage between all those bullets of activity with the vital interests
of Member States and their individuals. That linkage is made but
it is not convincing and compelling enough which is why the Germans,
for example, will not go to Chad. As you know, they hold their
hands up and say, "Why on earth is that in our national interest?"
We need to make the connection with the interests of the citizens
so that ministers find it easier to justify to their parliaments,
to their media and their constituents why we should send soldiers
to Chad, Afghanistan or the Caucasus or wherever it might, how
it affects national interests. That connection between the threats
and the menace in the Strategy needs to be more closely linked
to the vital interests and that section of the Strategy needs
strengthening.
Q308 Chairman: Mr Klompenhouwer,
you might want to add on that.
Mr Klompenhouwer: In the civilian arena
this is also an issue. There is a danger that we will see the
great number of civilian missions that we have now embarked upon
as nice things, nice to have, nice to show, but not as something
very important for either ourselves or for the countries concerned,
more a political gesture. There is a risk in that. If this were
to be the case then support would eventually erode. That is why
I think what General Leakey has said is also very important for
our civilian missions. What I try to make visible is that what
we are doing in the civilian sphere with our police missions,
rule of law missions and customs is a form of defence but not
in the military sense, in the sense of a minister of home affairs
who realises that he gets a lot of criminals into his country
and they come from somewhere. By employing our expertise in the
justice sphere outside our borders we could also contribute to
achieving objectives of domestic public order and domestic security.
This is important because it can help us to focus our work on
things that are of direct relevance to Member States. An example
is Bosnia where the EUPM mission is very active in the field of
organised crime and has actively helped the police in Bosnia to
make a number of arrests and the justice system come to a number
of convictions, which I think add up to about 200 years in jail.
This is about people who pose a risk to their societies, but inherently
may also pose a risk for us. This is important for focusing our
objectives, but it is also important to get the support of the
ministers of justice and of the interior because it is their personnel
we are using. That is very scarce and they have to make it available
competing with domestic priorities. When the Minister of the Interior
in the Netherlands has to choose between dealing with football
hooligans in the city of Rotterdam or—
Lieutenant-General Leakey: British football
hooligans!
Mr Klompenhouwer: --- public order in
Kosovo, you have to make clear why public order in Kosovo is of
relevance to him. I think that can be done if we make the international
effort and the effort of bringing evidence to this. Everything
I have said could be on the record, but particularly the following:
it is as if we are reaching a sort of capacity limit with the
missions that we now have, particularly since I have a very big
mission in Kosovo, EULEX, and we are doubling or significantly
increasing in Afghanistan. We may have to significantly increase
our presence in the Palestine Territories if the process goes
well. There was the Berlin Conference last week at which it was
very clear that building the capabilities of the Palestinian police
is a key element of the whole two state solution. Condoleezza
Rice referred to our EUPOL COPPS mission in the Palestine Territories
being an important tool. The political profile of these activities
is suddenly raised, which means that we will have to be stronger
on delivery, which means not only an effort on our side in planning
these missions but also an effort on the side of the Member States
who have to supply the scarce personnel. We are talking about
scarce personnel and areas of risk. Kosovo is a relatively benign
environment but, of course, Afghanistan is not and the Palestine
Territories can be tricky. All of these things play into the final
judgments of these ministers as to whether or not to make personnel
available. We have to deal with this. I hope that the next step
or the next version of the European Security Strategy will help
us in addressing these issues.
Chairman: I think the point of ensuring that
people realise the relevance of ESDP missions and how far the
Strategy can help in that, the point that General Leakey made,
is one which we will come back to.
Q309 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: The
steer that we have been getting so far from almost everybody we
have been talking to is that there is serious downturn potential
in revising the European Security Strategy. You may end up with
a weaker and much bigger document than you have already and as
it is not really read by anybody it seems to me you have got to
be quite careful fiddling about with this. It has not actually
stopped anybody doing anything they want to do in Europe anyway.
If you are a Conservative, like I am, you do not change things
unless there are very compelling reasons to do so. What we have
got to concentrate on is capabilities and I would really like
a steer from you. Do we need to be spelling out action plans?
Do we need timescales? Should we be saying something about defence
budgets? In particular people have been talking about helicopters
and police, which are the two key areas. I am interested, General
Leakey, by what you say that the Germans would not go into Chad
because it was not in their national interest. Is it not also
conceivable the Germans did not go into Chad because they were
seriously worried they did not really have the troops who were
trained to do the job? One of the problems that Europe has is
not numbers but actually there are not the people who are trained
and equipped to do the jobs that need to be done. Is that not
one of the weaknesses of Europe as it stands? There are plenty
of people standing about in uniform but whether you can send them
anywhere is another question altogether, is it not?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Addressing
that point directly, I would say if you can put Finns, Swedes,
Irish and Austrians successfully into Chad there is absolutely
no reason on God's earth why the Bundeswehr could not go there.
Q310 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: I have
had it suggested to me that the real worry that the Bundeswehr
has is that they will send troops, they will suddenly get caught
in an ambush and they will have an unacceptable level of casualties.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: That is a
different issue. That does not apply to the deployment in the
Chad region, they are not trained for the Chad region. (The answer
continued off the record)
Q311 Chairman: For example, the Swedes
have just completed their time as the Battle Group, how far has
the Battle Group concept been useful in helping them to start
thinking about this sort of thing and helping in the process of
internal transformation?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: From the Swedes'
point of view it has been the vehicle for that transformation
in their defence structure and defence spending, and others have
looked at the Swedes as a benchmark. Particularly those who participated
within the Nordic Battle Group have learned hugely out of this.
It has raised capability, and we see it in the willingness to
go to Chad.
Q312 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: What
do you want us to say in terms of capability?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Did you mention
defence expenditure across the piece?
Q313 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Yes.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: I forget what
the statistics are but it is all mostly bad news everywhere.
Q314 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: It is
all dropping, is it not?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: It is all
dropping. If it drops it is dressed as efficiency and more effectiveness
for your pound or your euro, but, to be honest, it means less
available capability by and large. The evidence for that is to
be seen now when we try and force generate.
Q315 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Do you
think we should put in timescales and those sorts of things for
things to improve?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: I would just
make four remarks. I categorise where we are at the moment with
the Europeans. When it comes to force generating for an operation
like Chad there are those Member States who "can and do",
and in this case France and Ireland and those who have gone. There
are those who "can but will not", that is, for example,
Germany and there are one or two others. Germany has got plenty
of capability and I do not accept that they could not have the
capabilities or the training, they could, but they are in a mindset
which prevents them, they just politically will not for their
own internal reasons. Then there are those who "would but
cannot", and I put the UK into this category. If the UK was
not in Iraq and Afghanistan I am sure they might have gone to
Chad with at least a Battle Group. Then there is this group of
countries that "would but cannot", a bit like the UK,
but for different reasons. Here I put, I do not know, Portugal,
Spain, Italy, some of the other new Member States, who have got
force capability, they have even got helicopters, medics, engineers,
infantry and so on, who are available in barracks, not on their
force deployment cycle, but there is not enough headroom in their
budget to deploy them, in other words the capability exists in
the Member State but the additional cost for deploying on operations
is not there. I have talked to CHODs about this and they have
been absolutely specific. I have gone down there and said, "What
about these and these?" and they have said, "Look, David,
of course we have those and they are sitting in the barracks.
They would love to go and we would love to send them, but I have
not got the headroom in my defence budget and the Treasury will
not give me, as we have, the contingency fund, the headroom cover
for that".
Q316 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: When
you go to Chad, who gives you your rules of engagement?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: It is done
in exactly the same way as it is done in NATO. NATO has the Council
of Ministers and the ambassadors represented there who give the
political guidance and directions to the operations, which includes
approval of the rules of engagement. It is exactly the same procedure
here in the EU, we have the PSC, the Political and Security Committee.
Q317 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: So if
the Germans contribute troops to a force that you have sent they
have to operate under the rules of engagement that have been agreed?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: No, absolutely
not.
Q318 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: So they
go, but they do not operate to the rules of engagement?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Yes, that
is called national caveats. Everybody agrees to the OPLAN agrees
to the rules of engagement, that all gets signed up to and everybody
ticks it off, and when they force generate they bring their force
but say, "No flying at night. No shooting at this".
Q319 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: The
problem is identical basically to the problem NATO has in Afghanistan
and the UN has worldwide?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Exactly that.
Mr Klompenhouwer: In civilian missions
you have that as well.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: You cannot
draw a distinction between NATO and the EU here, it is exactly
the same.
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