" European Defence: European Union's other model?"

by Christophe Réveillard, Doctor of Contemporary History, is member of the Centre of European History and of international relations at the modern and contemporary doctoral School of the University Paris-IV Sorbonne. Deputy Manager of the review Current Conflicts ("Conflits Actuels"), he has also published "Sur quelques mythes de l'Union Européenne" (On some myths of the European Union) (FX de Guibert) and "Les dates clefs de la construction européenne "(The key dates of the European construction) (Ellipses).

History withholds a double paradox in the European process of defence implementation speeding-up. In fact, this speeding-up first of all results from the continuation of the United States awkwardness in their response to the proposals formulated by NATO Member States concerning the creation in its bosom of a European security and defence identity. Then, European defence, will have to many surprises, taken advantage of the impulse due to Great Britain's definite shift in traditional politico-strategic position both vis-à-vis its European partners as well as its American ally.

If it is evident that any matter remains related to a multitude of more or less random parameters which render potential reversal of economic situation feasible at any moment, nevertheless it remains that a tendency toward Europe's defence realisation has appeared during these last years. Phenomenon all the more remarkable, and noticed in particular across the Atlantic, that the new data in European defence industry plays a considerable role with the promise of eventual strong potentialities in a surprisingly close future for this field accustomed to very long term strategies.

It is consequently interesting to study at the same time the context, the movements and the institutional model, policy which Europe's defence could inspire to a European Union in search of a new political breath in the lack of really effective institutions and realistic objectives. Thus, far from being only a fourth pillar of the European Union, the European defence policy could become emblematic, if the political courage of responsible persons follows, in this other way of building Europe.


A revised strategic opposition.

In view of the geo-strategic upheavals of the beginning of the 1990 decade, France, at the time of the accession to power of a new President of the Republic in 1995, had suggested a NATO reform, organisation considered effective but created and organised within the framework of a situation already bygone. The objective of this proposal was, in particular by granting to a European General Officer the command of NATO' s southern sector, to constitute internally a European security and defence identity. The French proposal had been carefully prepared with much prudence and moderation even specifying in beforehand that Paris would not require this command position for one of its officers. However, one remembers that the United States itself answered rather brutally and caused its rejection from the internal European Union by a discordance of the most annoying effect. With the rather direct request addressed to France " not to dream of illusions " (1) as to the use of a certain number of arguments without direct relationship to such a question as for example that of the Command of the VIth American fleet in the Mediterranean in occurrence not concerned, in particular one observed a smoke screen constitute itself to occult the basic true problem.

With the new geo-strategic deal, the question was no more only for the actors concerned to ensure Europe's defence but also to counter its device. Within NATO, command is structurally within the hands of Americans and, for certain European countries, to have wanted even just to solely rebalance it internally created a challenge. In the same order of ideas, responsible American did not lose a single occasion to recall the necessity to regard the United States as a European power. Furthermore, despite the Warsaw Pact disappearance and the East/West antagonism, they allowed the de facto extension of NATO intervention area. But concomitantly, Americans excess of confidence in the European divisions between Atlanticists and partisans of certain autonomy prevented them from seeing the danger of the emergence of a properly European vision of European security.

Between a unicist management of the Balkan wars and multiple incomprehension on both sides of the Atlantic, the events speeded-up this process of maturation. American awkwardness is all the more to be stressed that it enhanced the reconciliation of the two positions defended hitherto in Europe mainly by England and France and, a priori, not easily reconcilable. That, while at the same time London did not seem to consider the evolution that it was about to give to its positions concerning European defence as being able to prejudice its privileged relations with Washington, nor shade American strategic objectives in Europe.


Accelerated evolution.

However, it is at the Franco-English Saint-Malo Summit December 3-4, 1998, that the project of an organised Europe defence system within the framework of the European Union and with military and institutional means will know a decisive progress; it will be the first evocation of an autonomous action capacity and the European Council's responsibility to decide on the progressive development of a common defence policy within the framework of foreign and common security politics (PESC) (2). If some of the British evolutions causes are domestic or European (the mediocre British presidency of the Union January-June 1998 and the refusal of the Euro convinced Tony Blair that the situation was not bearable any more: defence was the only field where its country could bring something decisive to Europe, other causes concern historical obviousness: European impotence to control its own crises, such as in Bosnia and in Kosovo; United States hesitations to engage in European crises; finally European concerns (British) in front of an erratic American policy, arising fear of unforeseeable behaviour in European crises (3). In this respect, the wars both in Bosnia and in Kosovo will have been revealing, particularly with regards to the American tendency to go it alone and to obstinately apply, sometimes to the detriment of properly European interests, their strategic objectives. In Kosovo, the limit was obviously crossed and this, doubly, taking into consideration the means used.

Consequently, decisions will rise logically from this new trend. Before evoking them, it is however not useless to return to specifically institutional framework defined by the European Union and having allowed the development process of a European defence policy to occur. The Maastricht Treaty (4) signed on February 7, 1992, and which came into effect on November 1, 1993, created, ex nihilo, a foreign and common security policy (Article J) in which was included the whole set of questions relating to the European Union's security, including the definition in the long term of a common defence policy, which could lead, in due time, to a common defence (Article J.4-1); rather obscure sentence reflecting the type of synthesis operated between the various positions of the Member States and which had given place to hard confrontations between more integrationist countries (France, Germany) and those more Atlanticist (Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands). Institutionally, the Maastricht Treaty was to give the European Council (5) the central place since it is this one which defines the principles and the foreign and common security politics general orientations (Article J.8-1) of which one observed that the policy of common defence formed part. Finally, a political committee was created composed of political executives (6) following the international situation in the fields concerned with foreign and common security politics contributing to the definition of policies by giving opinions to the Council's attention (Article J.8-5). The Treaty also specified that the European Union should solicit the Western European Union (WEU), which forms an integral part of the European Union development, to work out and implement the decisions and the actions of the Union which have implications in the defence area (Article J.4-2). WEU became thus the European Union armed instrument and the Atlantic Alliance European pillar as it was reaffirmed by the WEU Member States declaration of December 10, 1991 and also by NATO at its Rome Meeting November 1991. In the PESC framework, the European Union had thus capacity to use the WEU all the more that the latter was reinforced with a planning cell since 1992 and with a satellite centre based in Torrejón in Spain since April 1993 (exploitation of the satellite HELIOS images).

The Treaty of Amsterdam signed on October 2, 1997 integrates the missions of Petersburg (7) in the European Union Treaty, gives orientation competence to the European Council with respect to the WEU and decides that the General Secretary of the Council will also be a PESC high representative, disposing at its sides of the policy and fast alarm planning unit (UPPAR: Unité de la Planification de la Politique et d'Alerte Rapide). Previously, it was the expressed British obstruction at the time of the 1996-1997 intergovernmental Conference preparing the new treaty, which had prevented the integration of the WEU into the European Union as of Amsterdam.


A reinforced action capacity.

After France, last State to do it, ratified the Treaty of Amsterdam March 1999 and allowed its entry into effect, the Member States expressed at the time of the Cologne Summit June 3-4 1999 their will to equip the European Union with the means and the capacities necessary to assume its responsibilities in order to follow a true common European security and defence policy. The Union must be able to have an autonomous capacity of action supported by credible military forces, to have the means of deciding to resort to it and to be ready to make it in order to react to the international crises. In this device, the European Union having or not recourse to NATO means and capacities, the Council was to occupy the central place and the Member States undertook to make the European military means resulting from the national formats even more operational. The Council is also in charge of defining the methods of inclusion of the WEO functions that will be necessary to the European Union to assume its new responsibilities. This is what was precisely discussed at the WEU Ministerial meeting November 16, 2000 in Marseilles marking the end of its properly operational functions.

Then, after the will, the means: at the Helsinki Summit of December 9-10, 1999, the Member States made the decision to create within the Council new organs and new political and military structures (political and security committee, military committee, Headquarter Staff), in order to allow the Union to ensure political orientation and strategic direction necessary for the planning and control of the Petersburg operations. This architecture was implemented in a temporary form March 1, 2000 while waiting for the final decision-making architecture for the prodding and control of operations whose constitution was confirmed at the Nice Summit of December 7-11, 2000. The implementation of its real operational capacity should be ratified at the European Summit of Laeken in the second half of year 2001. Helsinki was also the place where the means relating to the Petersburg missions were specified: the global objective consists in being able in 2003 to deploy, within sixty days and for a period at least equal to a year, a force of rapid reaction, if need be of the importance of an army corps, need be in total for the terrestrial component of about 50 to 60 000 men, as well as air and naval elements whose capacity are coherent with the terrestrial component. This force will have to be autonomous, i.e. to dispose of its own means of information, command, control and logistics. Finally, the European Union should have the capacities of command, control, information and transport logistic to obtain the autonomy of evaluation, decision and action for all the range of Petersburg missions. It is also in Helsinki that was recalled the importance of the Council's General Secretary and High representative for the foreign common security politics and posts occupied by Javier Solana, since November 1999 also the WEU General Secretary.

In the meantime, in Washington April 23-24, 1999, the Atlantic Alliance during the meeting celebrating the NATO fiftieth anniversary evoked European defence and the consultations and co-operations necessary between the two organisations, in particular European Union's access to defence planning and NATO operational means of command. The inherent conditions for the strategic framework in which the European security and defence policy should be carried out were recently recalled by the French Minister of Defence, in particular starting from the European Union's relations - Atlantic Alliance: safeguarding the Union's decision autonomy; the difference in nature of the two organisations; the will to base their relations on the need to determine the appropriate answer for each crisis (8).

It is thus instructive to observe the notable evolution of the circumstances and of the political good will with respect to Europe's defence. Indeed, from an attempt too quickly led by the Americans of sole command readjustment inside NATO by the means of a hypothetical European defence identity, the European countries succeeded in making Washington accept a policy of European defence decided in an autonomous way by the European Council within the framework of the Union, hence outside, but in collaboration with NATO. However, this evolution is obviously not finished.


A gradually carried out common armament policy.

At the industrial level, another properly British example could also illustrate the matter: at the time of the general process of defence industry reorganisation started both in Europe and in the United States, certain American industrialists suggested transatlantic mergers which revealed such an imbalance in the sharing that Europeans would hasten to try to reinforce themselves mutually in order to avoid feared American absorption. Thus, when the American Lockheed-Martin proposes to the British GEC Marconi Defence, closer industrial links leaving only the first one with exclusive control over research and development, the British Bae repurchased GEC to avoid in particular the American OPA.

While reverting backwards slightly, and without at all evoking the existence of a common armament policy coherent and voluntarist, it is however useful to raise the fact that the Treaty of Maastricht had considered the creation of a European Agency for armaments and that the Treaty of Amsterdam had evoked a co-operation with regards to armaments for the definition of a common defence policy.

Various steps of co-operation between European States were thus carried out to organise their request. Thus, in particular the Western Europe armament group (GAEO) was formed in 1992 by the ten full WEU members working at the implementation of a European armament market and framing the research program EUCLID (1990), then the joint organisation of co-operation regarding armament (OCCAR) has been launched by Germany, France, Italy and United Kingdom to manage the armament program produced in co-operation (10). Finally, to enhance the industrial reorganisations six countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden) decided to apply harmonised rules to their armament programs undertaken in co-operation as regards to supply security, exports control, information confidentiality, needs harmonisation, etc. The European political leaders consequently show clearly the way of regrouping defence industrialists.

Thus enlightened, the industrial reorganisation will follow. In particular shall be proceeded the merging of GEC Marconi with Finmeccanica to form Alenia Marconi Systems and in 1996, the formation of Matra Bae Dynamics (MBD) will take place. In October 1999, the alliance of the German Dasa with the French Aerospace Matra to form the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADSC) soon joined by the Spaniard CASA and the Italian Finmeccanica, will have been followed shortly after that described above Bae-Systems - GEC Marconi Defence of January 1999, as well as the fusion of Matra High Technologies and Aerospace in France. In the defence electronics, after the Franco-English Thalès, the amalgamation of the English Racal with the French Thomson-CSF. Finally, very recently the imminence of a European regrouping between EADS, Bae Systems and Finmeccanica was revealed to create the second world missilery MBDA, in front of American Lockheed Martin and Boeing and a few lengths away from the leader (American) Raytheon. MBDA will be present at the same time in the missiles, missiles systems and the electromagnetic autodirectors, alone in the world to hold such a line of goods and three principal European markets (Italy, France, Great Britain) with objectives in Spain (Indra, EADS Spain ex-CASA and Izar ex-Bazan) and in Germany (BGT and LKF) to consolidate the European missile industry (11).

To summarise, this boiling industrial reorganisation seems to be on the way to give the European groups the necessary size to resist and even compete with the American groups effectively and especially to give them the capacity of investment necessary for the projects of high technology, the defence industry principal challenge. The following stage already largely started is the accompaniment of this evolution by the European States that should almost systematically make the choice of European hardware. The credibility of European security and defence policy quite simply depends on it. At the present time, the choice of weapons system either NATO, or European, induced automatically the integration to a whole set of systems. If the choice of a European country is today, as some continue to do so, favourable to an American system of weapons, the only environment allowing it an optimum profitability will be inevitably and mechanically NATO integration. The choice of hardware and European systems for European countries is thus far from being neutral. It even conditions, not only the industrial, commercial and technological dynamism of the European defence companies but also and especially their capacity to continue to create a whole chain of independent systems of weapons, in particular of NATO standard.


First reports, first lessons.

The step engaged to render Europe defence viable and credible reveals in hollow the dead end of the supranational integrationist project whose vain application is attempted in the European Union. Indeed, in the defence case, the European Council sovereignty, namely that of each State, is the rule. The intergovernmental architecture's character and the European security and defence policy are not only institutionalised but are even the condition of its existence. And, it is by assisting the Council that the High representative General Secretary has an essential contribution to bring to foreign politics and common security effectiveness and coherence and to the development of common security and defence policy. General Jean-Pierre Kelche, the French Armies Chief Headquarters, describing the objectives, hence to reach a certain level of military capacities, to possess entities allowing effective decision-making and to form part of the existing global or regional organisations network in order to co-operate together, although it may be necessary to resist the temptation to embed them in an inextricable and paralysing technocratic imbroglio (12). He reaffirms that concerning foreign politics and common security and its defence section, the adopted framework is clearly intergovernmental. What the French Minister of defence had confirmed previously by making even the guarantee of his success: We exclude any supranational dimension in Europe from defence and I think that it is one of the keys of successes that we have reached. The definition in Helsinki of the capacities objectives does not result by any means in transferring towards Brussels the determination of the means strategy. Indeed, the military programming will remain national competence (13). This is why the various device elements, confirmed in Nice on December 7-9, 2000, all draw their authority from the Council: whether of the political and security Committee (COPS) composed of the Member States representatives and exerting under the authority of the Council, the political control and the strategic direction of the crisis management operations; the military Committee composed by the armies headquarters chiefs represented by their permanent delegates and formulating opinion and recommendations to the COPS; from the Headquarter receiving its directives from the military Committee, etc (14).

The success of Europe's defence seems to be within the range of the most engaged European States, i.e. France, England, Germany, and Italy. These States represent eighty percent of the European Force means of combat of fast reaction gathering all average soldiers being able to be placed at the disposal of the European Union to contribute with an autonomous capacity of decision to the management of the crises. The format of these means arises from the forces catalogue, aimed at by the General Affairs Council (with the Ministers for Defence) on November 20, 2000 in Brussels, catalogues displaying 100 000 men, 400 fighters and 100 ships. To obtain the guarantee of a certain continuity of the process engaged, it will not only be enough to have passed the phase of the permanent structures operational aptitude, nor to have sufficiently developed a preferably European spirit to instigate European industrial capacity to create systems of autonomous weapons (15). The responsible persons of the various countries concerned will primarily have to tend to backup the intergovernmental orientation of Europe's defence process. The European Union, from its ontological political impotence, will daily serve the interests of its Member States, the richness of Europe being the fact of its various entities not of technocratic supranational organisations primarily obsessed by the American federal example and the creation of a large transatlantic single market. Consequently, Europe's defence potential success could cause this conscious awakening that only these nations personalities can enhance a strong European identity and promote a true political organisation's objective of confederal or intergovernmental nature against supra-nationality and integration which have as a result to de-politicise the official reports and thus to abolish any independence.

Christophe Réveillard, Doctor of History, (Centre of European History and of international relations at the modern and contemporary Doctoral School of the University Paris-IV Sorbonne. Deputy Manager of the political studies university review Actual Current Conflicts ("Conflits Actuels"). Last publications Sur quelques mythes de l'Union Européenne (On some myths of the European Union) (FX de Guibert) and Les dates clefs de la construction européenne (The key dates of the European construction) (Ellipses); to appear: Communautés européennes et fédéralisme. Histoire d'une tentative 1944-1954 - FX de Guibert.

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