" Europe and defense: mystifications and realities."

By General J.G. Salvan. *


In " The large chess-board ", published in 1997, Zbigniew Brezinski saw in the Atlantic Alliance " a hegemonic power (the United States) surrounded by a unit of vassals." As for Madeleine Albright, she declared: " the United States is a European power." Which conclusions have the Europeans drawn from them?
Since the beginning of March 2001, the questions on the nature of the European Union cannot be eluded any more: ectoplasm or embryo? Stacking up of evanescent structures or skeleton lacking muscles? Gathering of weaknesses and cowardliness, or extreme prudence vis-a-vis significant risks? But of the Europeans palinodes vis-a-vis the drifts of the Euro, nuclear waste problems, epizootic diseases, or Macedonia's destabilization by Kosovo's guerrilla lead to think that we have neither policy, nor strategy, nor means of a true autonomy to solve the problems of our continent in the beginning of the XXI° century.


The plethora of organizations.

There is first a profusion of organizations which claim to unify Europeans: the Western European Union (WEU), created by the Treaty of Brussels in 1947, and modified in 1954, is always existent, with 10 members, 6 associate members, 5 observers and 7 associated partners. Besides, the Atlantic Alliance and the Organization of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO), created in 1949, regroup19 members, with 9 candidates. To offer a partnership to the Warsaw Pact before the implosion of the USSR, there has been the North-Atlantic Cooperation Council, then the Partnership for Peace. It should be noted that since 1996, there exists within NATO a European Identity of Defense and Security, gathering16 members. A European chain of command exists, an assistant of the American commander-in-chief is in charge of the relations between NATO and WEU. To use NATO means, the Europeans must obtain the authorization of the Americans, without speaking of the one from the Turks... In 1973, one added the Organization for European Security and Co-operation (OESC), intended to improve the relationships with the East; today, after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, this authority includes 55 members. Then the European Union, daughter of the Maastricht Treaty (1991) arrived, also in charge of defining a common policy of security and defense, compatible with the participation of the majority of the European States in NATO. The EU counts 15 Member States and 15 candidates. As pointed out by the Balkan crises, it is not possible to make abstraction in Europe of the United Nations (UN) and its 189 Member States...

These ill-assorted structures never gather the same ones. But if one can understand that a partnership with the United States, Canada and the States of the Mediterranean South is essential for the OESC, it is necessary to wonder about the place of Japan and the Republic of Korea here.

If one looks at the EU, three States refuse the single currency (Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden); three are neutral (Austria, Sweden, Finland), one refuses adherence to NATO, namely Ireland. Ireland, Austria, Sweden and Finland do not accept article V of the modified Treaty of Brussels, and are not members of the Atlantic Alliance. They also refused paragraph 158 of the Madrid Declaration, in November 1995: it mentioned the European nuclear power. Norway, is a NATO member however belonging neither to the EU, nor to the EUO has constantly refused the presence of nuclear weapons on its territory. How to achieve a common policy or strategy with these carps, rabbits and soft dreamers meetings? If one holds oneself to the stacking of treaties and declarations which claim to organize Europe's defense, we would not have anything to fear. From the Treaty of Maastricht to the Summit of Nice passing by Feira, the texts abound. From Saint-Malo (1998) to Nice (2000), passing by Toulouse (1999), there are hardly any meetings where our leaders have not affirmed their will to transform the European Union into a major actor on the international scene. In Cologne, did one not claim: " The Union must have an autonomous capacity supported by some credible forces, have the means to decide to resort to it and be ready to do so, in order to react to international crisis, without damages from actions undertaken by NATO." In Helsinki, one claimed to want to have " an autonomous capacity of decision."

The root of the problem, is primarily the weakness of the military budgets. As I have repeated it for fifteen years, it is in these military budgets that true strategic choices appear. These budgetary choices have as consequences the too small number of combat units, of long distance air or maritime transport capacities, of monitoring means from space.


Alignment on the United States.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, whatever the political leaders may say, the Europeans have aligned themselves on the United States at each crisis, whether it be a question to liberate Kuwait (1990-1991), to hold oneself up to ridicule in Somalia (1993), to claim to want to stop nuclear proliferation, with the known success since 1998, or " to maintain a multiethnic society in Kosovo " (1999). The bogging down of the document prepared by NATO General Secretaries and of the PSCO (Political and Security Committee) is the last proof. This document laid down a possibility for the European Union to use NATO planning capacities and its means. The Turkish refusal to ratify this document was foreseeable, following the European positions on the Armenian genocide.


What does one want?

Indeed, one created committees and headquarters. But a policy like a strategy supposes that one has an intention, a concept, a project to be promoted, and that one agrees on action doctrines. The project, which one is it? The doctrine, where is it? Which military capacities are financed? With the exception of Great Britain, which is the European State whose military budget is not in free fall, dollars or constant francs, since 1989?
A declaration of military engagement capacities, set up in Brussels on November 20, 2000 was approved in Nice. The objective would be to align 60 000 soldiers, 400 fighters and 100 navies. If one draws up a balance sheet of the announced capacities, the air transport facilities allow the air transport of a battalion and the maritime facilities, the disembarkation of another battalion. The Euro-corps, created in May 1992, joins together German, Belgian, Luxembourg, French and Spanish forces. After having paraded in Brussels and Paris, it was used to relieve the first forces deployed in the Balkans.

Can one elude the nuclear power?

But can one speak of autonomy today without approaching the nuclear strategy, and defence against the missiles, which abound around the Mediterranean Basin, in the Near and Middle East? Because, contrary to a frequent speech in the Occident, held in particular by the groups Pugwash, Green Peace and the SIPRI (International Stockholm Peace Research Institute), the military atom serves always certain policies. India and Pakistan recalled it in 1998. The American Senate, more careful than France, refuses to sign the nuclear tests prohibition treaty. It should be reflected that, who would actually dare to take a plane built only from simulations? At the time of the Kosovo war, Bill Clinton made the bombers B2 take off from the United States, whose initial vocation was to carry nuclear weapons, to reach Serbian objectives with traditional weapons: it was indeed a dissuasive operation, a signal to Russia. And Poutine hammered to Westerners that it was better to let Russia regulate the Tchetchene business calmly, because Russia always disposed of thousands of atomic weapons: we understood that well...

Let us speak first of atomic proliferation: the failure of Western non-proliferation policies is obvious. The Indian and Pakistani tests in 1998 did not really raise an outcry, nor involve reprisals. There were thus imitators to join the first five nuclear powers: The United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and China, and the following three nuclear powers: Israel, India and Pakistan. The South African Union gave up unilaterally in 1994 its atomic weapon, but this case remains unique; Iraq was forced to under constraint since 1991. Iran and North Korea seem to dispose of the potential necessary to obtain a rudimentary nuclear weapon. How long time will Japan agree to be the only Asian power stripped of nuclear military potential? Let us recall that the American Senate refuses to ratify the nuclear tests prohibition treaty (CTBT, comprehensive test ban treaty). The Americans like the Russians always dispose of " tactical " weapons (substrategic weapons), " intended for a limited and very selective use of nuclear weapons... definitely distinct from a strategic striking, but with a sufficient level of violence to convince an attacker, which would not be aware of our resolution, that it must stop its aggression and withdraw itself, under the threat of being confronted with a devastating strategic strike." It is afflicting to note that the Anglo-Saxons perfectly understood the concept of ultimate warning which we had worked out, and for which we had developed Hadès, but that we have stupidly deprived ourselves from since 1992. However, during the next decades, our armies will be fatally opposed to armies having either chemical weapons, or of " low scale" nuclear weapons. How to counter, without precise and with moderate power nuclear weapons, States which would threaten or strike certain parts of the territory or some of our forces with massive destruction weapons?

True questions and of bad answers.

From Henry Kissinger (1978) to the Admiral Turner (1984), the warnings did not fail: American dissuasion protects only the American territory and interests. Moreover, the majority of the American sub-strategic weapons, formerly stationed in Europe, were repatriated in the United States from 1989 to 1995. Thus, in the event of a major crisis, the British and French nuclear forces will have to ensure the dissuasion from the EU territory and the guarantee of the committed European forces in interventions out of Europe. However, this question of nuclear dissuasion from Europe is seldom tackled publicly. Perhaps do our leaders think of it? Do they judge it inappropriate to discuss it? The Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Erkki Tuomioja, in the March 2001 issue of the National Defence review (p.17) allows us to think:

" This article does not speculate at all on what common defence could be... I have the feeling that one is not ready to go ahead and that there is no reason to take new decisions in this direction... It was not convenient, before the implementation of decisions, to draw lessons from it, to complicate the task by an endless dialogue on the new stages to cover. Their hour will come if such is the destiny, however at the right time and when a real need exists." The only problem arising from this method is that it is too late to think of getting equipped at the inducement of a crisis.

Can one imagine that Europe could become a major international actor, beside the United States, China, India and Pakistan, without having nuclear weapons? It would be to place us for a very a long time under American protectorate. Can one conceive of a European nuclear doctrine without a President and a true European executive power? Can one extend the French and British dissuasions? How far? Which European vital interests could justify the threat of nuclear power use? Who has to decide as last resort? Can one concert between Europeans on nuclear dissuasion starting from existing systems?

In 1994, the French White Paper on defence declared: " national independence that of Europe in the future, is without any doubt linked to the possession of such weapons (nuclear)."

It should nevertheless be reminded that 10 out of 15 European States have criticised our series of nuclear tests in 1995. In Nuremberg, December 9, 1996, a common Franco-German concept was approved. The two countries affirmed: " that they are ready to engage in a dialogue concerning the function of nuclear dissuasion in the context of European policy defence." How far has this dialogue reached? Let us remember that one could read in the German White Paper on defence, in 1994: " the non-proliferation of massive destruction weapons constitutes a priority task for the years to come." What the German deputy, Freimut Druve, explained in the journal "Le Monde" of August 24, 1995: " Germany has, once and for all, given up the nuclear weapon and is considered today beyond partisan differences, as the non-proliferation engine. Accordingly, the dialogue could only mean that Europe jointly organises the renunciation of this unsuited technique at the time."

United States and Europe.

Furthermore, articles J3 to J5 of the Treaty of Maastricht, and especially article 7 of the Treaty of Amsterdam force the EU to respect: " on the one hand, the obligations which arise for certain Member States from the North Atlantic Treaty, and on the other hand, the specific character of the security and defence policy of some of them." In other words, it is to the North Atlantic Council and to the Group of nuclear plans that it would be advisable to act in concert on a common nuclear policy laid down by the United States. However, the policy and the general strategy of the Americans, that we should know of, aim at keeping us under their supervision.

Let us be clear: certain European States do not perceive any threat against them or their neighbours. Others refuse the idea of a powerful Europe, and thus to have a finger on the nuclear button. Others are ready to all the distortions to reduce the historical weight of France and Great Britain. The obvious interest of the United States since 1990 is to support all those who seek to mutilate Europe of nuclear weapons: they have never hidden it. Ten years ago, one could read in the document " Defence planning guidance for the years 1994-1999, Washington, February 1992 ". " Our prime objective is to prevent the appearance of a new rival, whether on ex-USSR territory or elsewhere, which could present a threat to the order formerly posed by the Soviet Union. Finally, we must maintain proper mechanisms to dissuade potential candidates from ever aspiring to a vaster regional role or a world-wide role. The world-wide order being in last resort supported by the United States, these must be able to act independently when a collective action cannot be orchestrated, or when a crisis requires a fast answer." However, for the Americans, like Misters Heilbrunn and Lind wrote in the January 4 1996, New York Herald Tribune: " the fact that the United States has more enthusiasm than their European allies for Moslem Bosniacs reflects the new role of the Americans as head of an abstract group of the Balkan Gulf Moslem nations. The United States is the dominant power in the area of the Gulf. In Europe, the principal role of NATO nations, for the foreseeable future, will be to serve as weapons area in view of American wars in the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Gulf. America again establishes its suzerainty on the empire of the former enemy, and extends its hegemony to Eastern Europe, and to formerly neutral Yugoslavia. " Apparently, this kind of declarations leaves Europeans impassive."

For me, Europe chose Hong-Kong or Singapore as models: something small, rich, and which does not annoy anybody.

HOME