Continental Europe now on its own
Boris Johnson’s Brexit, coming on the heels of a recent tepid endorsement of NATO by Donald Trump’s USA, is another reminder that Europe, minus the UK will have to do more for its defence.
On occasion of the last NATO-summit the widening gap between Western Europe – Eastern Europe clings to the Atlantic security treaty because they are afraid of Putin – and the USA was papered over. Yet, the gap is real. Already President Obama moved the emphasis of American security policy from the Atlantic to the Pacific. His defence minister Gates was if not the first but among the fiercest critics of insufficient defence expenditure in Europe.
The US under Trump has now gone a decisive step further. No more talk from Washington about ‘the defence of the free world’ by the ‘indispensable nation’. Defence is a national affair, American assistance contingent to armaments purchase in the US, regardless of the ideological nature of the recipient. The present example is Saudi-Arabia.
After his election win, Boris Johnson wants to take the UK out of the EU in record time while keeping British most favoured nation state with regard to the single market. This is simply impossible due to the intricate nature of existing pan-European production and value chains, not to talk of the pan-European market for financial and other services. If he sticks to his schedule, Johnson will take the UK simply out of Europe, period. Which incidentally is acceptable neither in Scotland nor on the Irish Island.
Whatever the outcome with regard to cutting the ties in common economic and social policies, security policy will have to wait. While it is not excluded that the UK and the EU, after their separation, come to some terms of security cooperation, it looks very difficult. Much more likely that Johnson, in line with his mock Churchillian image, will bet on the ‘special relationship’ with the US and keep clinging to Washington’s coat-tails.
Now security policy within the EU is notoriously difficult. The UK has been if not the only but certainly the most efficient roadblock, to make the EU, with regard to security, equal but separate from NATO. That has now changed and thus the perspective of European armed forces is becoming a bit less distant. High time, too with challenges to European security in its vital ‘near-abroad’ increasing and the likelihood of American intervention decreasing. Take the present situation in Libya where the insurrection under General Haftar, enabled by Russian military and Arab money, is about to overrun the capital Tripoli with its internationally recognized government.
The ensuing streams of conflict-refugees of a major conflagration in the Maghreb, both from there and from below the Sahel zone will not knock on Moscow’s door but all embark on the perilous journey to Western and Northern Europe. All European countries are thus challenged to do more. Better and more defence capabilities not to defend national borders against refugees. Police forces and, in a wider context, a more efficient and more humanitarian refugee policy suffice for this task.
What is needed are both highly mobile yet sufficiently armed units that can be used for peace making through force as well as adapted security structures for the admittedly arduous task of peace keeping afterwards. A task that goes beyond traditional UN blue helmets; France’s present mission in Mali is an example, a country where Islamic extremism and terrorists riding this wave have threatened to take a whole country hostage.
In the first line of such muscular European armed forces stand the remaining European major powers France and Germany. It is a well commented upon fact that France has the vision and the army but not the economic base while Germany has the latter but lacks vision and combat ready soldiers. Much closer cooperation in defence matters between these two is thus a must. Both will have to take a leap of faith to accept German troops fighting abroad, including in Africa and for France sharing its cherished nuclear ‘force de frappe’.
The former German Minister of Defence Peter Struck said once that ‘Germany will now have to be defended at the Hindukush’. While then this may have sounded far-fetched for some, applied to North Africa and the Middle East now, it carries obvious logic.
Smaller European countries have their own defence forces, no longer needed for the historical task to defend their country on its national borders. It is evident that these have to pitch in, too to defend European – thus their own – interests where and when necessary, most likely in Africa and the Middle East. For, say Sweden, Belgium, Italy and why not also Switzerland the immediate task is thus to ‘europeanize’ armament development and procurement and then develop combat units that can be integrated easily into a European strike force.
It is true that this has been tried before with limited success. What is radically different now is the present security environment, marked by American retreat and the advance of illiberal, often aggressive governments in major parts of the world. If Europe wants to continue sitting on the principals table of world policy, the establishment of a serious and respected European defence identity can no longer be postponed.
Picture: European Council