Europe's Security and Defence Policy and Enlargement: The Ghost at the Feast?

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EUI WORKING PAPERS

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European University Institute 3 0001 0034 3842 3 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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EUI W orking Paper RSC No. 2000/69

Edwards: Europe's Security & Defence Policy and Enlargement: The Ghost at the Feast?

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The Robert Schuman Centre was set up by the High Council of the EUI in 1993 to carry out disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the areas of European integration and public policy in Europe. Research publications take the form of Working Papers, Policy Papers and books. Most of the Working Papers and Policy Papers are also available on the website of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies: http://www.iue.it/RSC/ PublicationsRSC-Welcome.htm. In 1999, the Centre merged with the European Forum to become the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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EU R O PEA N UNIVERSITY IN ST ITU TE, FL O R EN C E ROBERT SCHUMAN CENTRE

FOR ADVANCED STUDIES

Europe's Security & Defence Policy and Enlargem ent: The Ghost at the Feast?

Ge o f f r e y Ed w a r d s

EUI Working Paper RSC No. 2000/69 BADIA FIESO L A N A , SAN D O M E N IC O (FI)

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No part o f this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author.

European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I - 50016 San Dom enico (FI)

Italy © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Programme on Eastern Europe

The Working Papers series

The Robert Schuman Centre’s Programme on Eastern Europe promotes the development of interdisciplinary research focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. Challenges, opportunities and dilemmas confronting the European Union in its relations with Central and Eastern Europe are at the centre of attention. The scope and style of papers in the series is varied, however, two areas of research have been prioritized:

1/ The EU Enlargement Eastward: Utility, Visibility, Implications 2/ Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe

Visitors invited to the Institute under the auspices of the Centre’s Programme, as well as researchers at the Institute, are eligible to contribute.

This paper was written within the project on The Eastward Enlargement of the European Union: the Cases of the Baltic States - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which was set up by the Robert Schuman Centre through the support of the Academy of Finland. For information on this and other projects on Eastern Europe at the Robert Schuman Centre, please contact Professor Jan Zielonka (zielonka@iue.it). © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Introduction

The debates and negotiations on the EU’s enlargement have so far largely ignored issues surrounding security and defence. Of the 31 ‘chapters’ being negotiated with the candidate countries, chapter 27, which deals with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), has been provisionally closed with all 12 countries (negotiations with Turkey not yet having begun). At the same time, the EU’s enlargement has not been a particularly contentious issue in the negotiations on the European Security and Defence Policy launched back in December 1998 with the Anglo-French St Malo Declaration and carried forwards with considerable dynamism to the Helsinki and Feira European Councils of December 1999 and June 2000.2 The Feira Council reached some conclusions on both the principles and the modalities for allowing EU accession candidates (and, indeed, other non- EU European NATO members) to contribute to the EU’s military crisis management - and welcomed the contributions offered by Turkey, Norway, Poland and the Czech Republic. But while the Heads of State and Government were prepared to see a ‘single inclusive structure’ in which all fifteen countries concerned might cooperate with the EU, they also reminded them of the need for ‘full respect for the decision-making autonomy of the EU and its single institutional framework’.3 That seemed to add up to offering the EU candidate countries a regular dialogue on security and defence matters - including one meeting at ministerial level during each Presidency - which would be intensified in any pre-operational phase of a crisis and an ad hoc committee of contributors in an operational phase stricto sensu. Turkey, which has long experience of political dialogue with the EC/EU, was not impressed.4

The absence of contention within the Feira European Council does not mean, however, that the evolution of ESDP and enlargement can be easily separated; they cannot. Elements of the debate over enlargement play into those on the very purpose, nature and scope of the ESDP, others exacerbate possible problems, including the relationship between the EU and NATO and the United States. Ostensibly, of course, the ESDP is limited to crisis management, despite the ‘defence’ element in the title. The overall aim remains that of providing the EU with a military capacity for crisis management within the framework of the CFSP. It is not designed, in what has become almost a mantra at least in the UK, to replace NATO’s role in Europe’s collective defence or to create a European army. NATO remains the cornerstone of European defence. But the interaction between the two is likely to be highly complex. Moreover, NATO is itself publicly committed to its own further enlargement, the Clinton Administration has spoken strongly in support, and, certainly, the declared aim of the non-NATO countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been to seek NATO membership as early as possible. They may be disappointed but the linkage between their

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perceptions of security and how best to guard against insecurity, and their expectations of the EU as a security system makes for greater difficulties in the debate on an ESDP.

Principles and Problems

Given the disagreements over the WEU and security and defence at the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference, the rapidity of the changes that led to the Helsinki European Council agreements has been impressive.5 The momentum that has built up over the last two years may yet carry the Member governments to reach agreement, even in time for the Nice European Council. Although enough differences remain to instil a sense of déjà vu and scepticism, as Philip Gordon put it (from a hitherto more sceptical position), ‘Apart from the hoopla surrounding it, this latest initiative seems more serious than its many predecessors...’6. But, as François Heisbourg has argued, there has been

a certain studied imprecision about the eventual destination [that] has also been essential to the progress of ESDP. The strategic purposes o f the “headline force” and the budgetary means necessary to give substance to ESDP have been more or less shrouded in a European version of “constructive ambiguity” .7

His view was that the virtue of ambiguity had been reached its limits if force planners were in fact to operationalize the ESDP. However, the ambiguities remain and are likely to continue to do so; for many Member governments they are politically too important to be readily reconciled.

The differences inevitably become more acute when attempting to define the more demanding end of the responsibilities enumerated at Petersberg - though Heisbourg, among others, points out that humanitarian intervention can be considerably more demanding than might appear and cites the case of Operation Provide Comfort in Kurdistan in 1991, which involved more than 30,000 troops. But would the intervention in the Gulf have been within a reasonable interpretation of Petersberg? Would intervention in East Timor? As Gilles Andréani has suggested: ‘The French would certainly be reluctant to have a priori geographical limitations to future EU operations although we know in the real world the further you go the less you are going to be engaging in high intensity and demanding operations...’.8 For his part, too, General Klaus Naumann (a former chairman of NATO’s Military Committee), sees positive benefit in the Petersberg tasks over NATO’s mandate:

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they have one decisive advantage, there is no regional limitation to the Petersberg tasks. So in contrast to the NATO strategic concept where we always have a little bit of debate whether this is in the NATO Treaty area or just beyond, the Petersberg task allows you to intervene ... ’9

On the other hand, it has been held that the German government would be reluctant to agree on a geographical spread that could be stretched to a Gulf-like action.10 Yet with enlargement to include Cyprus, for example, Beirut becomes little more than 200 km from the EU’s borders. With Turkey as a candidate country, there is the prospect of the EU sometime in the future bordering not only Syria, but also Iraq. Enlargement, in other words, pushes Europe towards some highly sensitive boundaries. The present minimalist position that seems to suggest little more than policing within the existing EU area with perhaps some, limited projection towards the ‘near abroad’ may not be quite so limited in the future.

The crises in the Balkans have pointed to both the importance of high intensity warfare to contain the conflict and the need for significant, long-term policing in any peace-building operation. While many of the EU Member States (and the candidate countries) have been prepared to contribute to peace enforcement operations, as in Kosovo, there has been little consensus over the scope of an exclusively European role, that is separate from that of the US. The assumption generally continues to be that in any ‘serious’ operation around Europe’s northern, eastern and south eastern borders, the US would want to be involved. And yet it was because the US had shown itself either ambivalent about being involved in such operations in post-Cold War Europe, or somewhat unilateralist if it was, that led to the ESDP initiative. As Chris Patten, put it:

... the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the whole landscape of Europe. We had always known what we were against. Now we had to work out what we were for. And we needed to tackle instability on our borders. Europe’s weakness was exposed, in particular, by our humiliating ‘hour of Europe’ in Bosnia when we could neither stop the fighting, nor bring about any serious negotiation until the Americans chose to intervene. Europe’s subsequent reliance on US military capacity in Kosovo had a similar galvanising effect. The Member States recognised that they needed a genuine Common Foreign and Security Policy to reverse this trend."

But if the Balkans have shown only too clearly Europe’s dependence on the US, it has not been the only area where insecurity and instability have been key concerns for EU Member States. With the accession of Finland and Sweden to the EU in 1995, a good deal of discussion focused on the ‘northern dimension’ of the EU’s security. At the same time, NATO was also negotiating with the CEECs on Partnership for Peace agreements and then in Madrid in 1997 agreed to expand to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Those three countries have subsequently been strong supporters for further expansion,12 along

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with the Clinton Administration, which had been instrumental in maintaining an ‘open door’ policy at the NATO Summit in April 1999. However, there was (and remains) a strong body of opinion in the US against further expansion, especially to include the Baltic states.13 As a result, the US also pressed the case for the EU to open accession negotiations with all the countries of central and eastern Europe, rather than the only with the so-called ‘Luxembourg Six’.14 The Helsinki European Council decision to include Turkey as well as the other CEECs was regarded as something of a bonus. But Washington had been particularly concerned about the consequences for the Baltic states of a ‘double rejection’, from NATO and the EU:

The Clinton administration has put pressure on the EU to compensate Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius by including them in the first EU enlargement “wave”, since a “double No” from the W est’s two security organisations might otherwise have a de-stabilising effect on the region and send the wrong signal to Moscow that the Baltic states were (at least for the time being) outside the W est’s security parameter’.15

Hitherto, however, Russia’s response to the prospect of EU enlargement has aroused little of the hostility created by NATO’s expansion, though this may be in part because of ignorance of the EU or because little credibility has been given to the prospect of the enlargement of an EU with a substantive security and defence policy16.

It remains the case, however, that the inherent quality of the EU as a security organization - or security community in the Deutschian sense17 - is not one that is politically accepted by all Member governments. There remains a somewhat simplistic assumption that, on the one hand, NATO and the US can remain responsible for collectively guaranteeing security, while, on the other hand, the EU should be limited simply to managing crises. But even if the primary focus was to be on managing more local instability in or around Europe rather than in any wider projection, it remains difficult to gauge whether all the Member States envisage a force that would have been able to intervene in Kosovo without the US - even if with access to NATO assets. Agreeing on a force of 50-60,000 marked an impressive change, but there is an implicit belief that, within the year such a force could be sustained, the crisis can be resolved and the problems settled. With the emphasis in all the current discussions on operationalizing new forms of crisis management, it is perhaps not surprising that little is said, in public at least, about crises that refuse to be managed and which escalate. Again, perhaps the assumption is that if they did escalate within the NATO area, then NATO itself would be brought into play, ultimately, if it involved an attack, under Article 5. But, if the crisis escalated and threatened an EU non-NATO Member State, or even a candidate-EU non-NATO State, what collective defence system would then come into play? If the threat to stability became too serious, the

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expectation would probably still be that the US would intervene - on both the Balkan precedents and as the Administration if not Congress has supported further NATO enlargement.

But this raises difficult questions about the nature of the existing EU and the consequences of folding the WEU into the EU, or perhaps the extent to which WEU may be folded into the Union. For many it is difficult to imagine the survival of the Union if Member States did not come to the assistance of one of their own number. So far, though, it has been only the French who have argued that WEU’s Article V guarantee should be included in Pillar II; the non-allied, it is usually held, would face considerable problems domestically if such a measure was proposed.18 But even if a ‘virtual’ guarantee might be regarded as being applicable to the EU Fifteen, that still leaves the candidate-EU, non NATO states, one of which, Cyprus remains divided after invasion (by, of course, a NATO state, which complicates matters still further). Cyprus and Malta are, in fact, the only candidate states which are neither WEU Associates nor Observers and are therefore not linked to the WEU. It may be that the WEU’s Permanent Council meets ‘“at 27” every other week’, but this, according to Alyson Bailes, is ‘Precisely because it does not lay claim to a NATO-type self-defence role...’.19 In such circumstances, it would appear logical if, to many, inconvenient that the non-NATO EU candidate countries have sought a greater certainty through NATO membership.

The absence of consensus on a common strategic vision limits any greater certainty through the EU route. The EU Member States remain divided over whether the vision ultimately involves autonomy of defence or the rather more modest autonomy of decision-making on security and defence. Naumann, among others, charges the French with attempting to work towards autonomy of defence20. This fits the usual NATO stereotype of France and certainly creates complications with the US. And there remains an element of French exceptionalism insofar as the French Foreign Minister declared in November

1999:

It is true that, in military terms, in terms of organisations, there are different proposals for the moment. As for France, we think in terms o f a European pillar in the Alliance or autonomous; we wish to maintain both options. We are the only ones to say this in this way..’21

Others have not thought it particularly helpful to do so.

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Operationalizing Divergence

Without a clear idea of the nature of the tasks for which it is to be prepared, it is inevitable that the EU has had difficulty in operationalizing the type of force projection required. A basic problem, according to the British Secretary of State for Defence, is that too many European nations are still organised on a Cold War footing, and ‘putting large numbers of infantrymen into the German field’.22 Shifting towards a capacity to provide the necessary pool of 200,000 or more troops with air and naval support to allow for the 60,000 agreed at Helsinki, all adequately and interoperably equipped, requires a major commitment, even if the forces may be double-hatted and simultaneously assigned to NATO. The divergence of views in the debate over continued conscription in Germany contains but one aspect of this. The EU’s Political and Security Committee (COPS) and the Military Committee have been working since March 2000 on an interim basis with the initial priority of identifying needs and resources, and the Feira European Council in June singled out the centrality of improved military capabilities ‘to the credibility and effectiveness’ of the CESDP.23 Hence the importance attached to the work of the Capabilities Commitment Conference that begins in November 2000, though whether the forces exist or can be committed before fuller planning has been carried out remains open to question. The NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI) and WEU Military Capabilities Audit may well be particularly useful in showing up strengths and deficiencies etc, though the French tend argue that the EU should not be constrained by such exercises - ‘The French position is that the EU itself should decide on its own military requirements and come up with a new and innovative Euro-centred military plan’.24 But, as Tim Garden had pointed out, the 60,000 target is the easiest element to identify. What is more difficult - and makes him pessimistic about the pledging conference - is meeting the gaps the DCI has already identified. These as cited by Garden include the lack of capability in: strategic intelligence systems, modem real-time tactical reconnaissance, integrated command and control systems, sea lift, air lift, useful aircraft carriers, air-to-air refuelling, all weather precision bombing, electronic warfare and suppression of enemy air defence. ‘No amount of re-dividing and re-tasking the current forces will provide these expensive force enablers’.25

Garden’s pessimism about the budgetary implications are shared by many who see a CESDP as moving beyond simple policing operations (for which, presumably, the Feira Council’s agreement on a headline goal for police forces would presumably suffice)26. Few probably underestimate the budgetary commitment that is likely to be required - whatever the ultimate strategic vision adopted - if the outcome is to be taken seriously. Indeed, Charles Kupchan cites one American sceptic as telling the US House of Representatives: ‘the Europeans

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are so clearly unwilling to increase their defense expenditures ... that their real capacity for independent military action may not exist for decades to come...Thus, one could say that the saving grace of the new European enterprise will be its ineffectuality’. 27 Anand Menon underlined the problem, not least for the French given their view on autonomy, by citing the figure of some $50 billion for acquiring half the strategic airlift capability of the US. As he went on: 'No West European state - least of all ironically, those bound by the stipulations of the monetary union's stability pact - has the resources to invest in the kinds of hardware that a truly autonomous defence would require’.28 Although there are few signs that European governments are eager to increase defence spending significantly, there are some. Given Mr Blair’s role in initiating the current moves towards the ESDP, the rise in the UK’s defence budget of 0.3per cent in real terms over the next three years is telling. Klaus Becher has reported that in Germany, there may well be savings to be made through reducing numbers, improving management methods, and selling off bases and some old weapons systems but: ‘Tricks like these ... cannot hide the fact that, unless the defence budget increases by about 10%, or DM4-5bn per year, the announced reforms will not be achieved’.29

One means suggested of maintaining political pressure has been that of setting convergence criteria. The Anglo-Italian Summit in 1999, for example, suggested that criteria should be set for improved and strengthened capabilities and effective performance which would be ‘underpinned by’ peer review including at least one joint Foreign/Defence Ministers General Affairs Council per EU Presidency.30 In February 2000, Alain Richard, the French Defence Minister, suggested setting defence capital spending at 0.7% of GDP. Other headline figures have also been suggested,31 though with little agreement as yet - in part because there is still no agreed definition of defence spending. But certainly convergence criteria and peer review have worked effectively in other areas.

So far these discussions have been conducted on the basis of the EU Fifteen, with little reference to the EU candidate countries - except, as at Feira, to welcome '.any contribution they might wish to make. Although The Military Balance 1999-2000 reported that the three new NATO members who are EU candidates have set higher targets for defence spending, it also added ‘they are likely to give greater priority to wider economic and social objectives in order to meet the criteria for EU membership.’32 Their contribution is, in other words, unlikely to lead to an overall increase in NATO spending. Indeed, much of the discussion during the late 1990s concerned the additional costs to NATO and its members of NATO enlargement. A Rand study in 1996 suggested that the admission of Poland, Hungary the Czech Republic and Slovakia would add up to

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$42 billion over ten years.33 It became rapidly clear, however, that help with the modernisation of the CEEC’s equipment etc. was not going to be forthcoming from existing NATO members given budgetary constraints and ‘the failure of NATO states to meet interoperability criteria, even among themselves.’34 Modernisation programmes have also been adversely affected by intense and sometimes wasteful competition among intra-NATO companies, while others may have been discouraged by the taint of corruption in some of the CEEC programmes. Much of the modernisation, though, requires the upgrading of Soviet-made equipment which depends very largely on the Russians and they, unsurprisingly perhaps, have not proved particularly enthusiastic in supporting such programmes among NATO allies.35 Nor have all NATO’s efforts been regarded as successful. As the IISS points out: ‘Defence exchanges should continue, but they should move away from “military tourism” toward specific long-term programmes which contribute to developing interoperability of forces and doctrines’.36

More useful, perhaps, for the EU candidate countries as well as for avoiding some duplication among existing NATO/EU Member States have been the plans for pooling common activities through bilateral and multinational cooperation. Many EU Member States already participate in several such ventures. Heisbourg has a useful fist, significant among which are those which already begin to straddle the NATO-non NATO, the EU-Non-EU divisions.37 Among them are multinational forces such as the long-standing UK-Dutch Amphibious force, the German-Danish-Polish force (the Multinational North-East Corps), and the Lithuanian-Polish Battalion, in addition to the Eurocorps (France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg and Spain) and the ACE (Allied Command Europe) Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). Many others are reported to be in the making. However, as Heisbourg concludes: ‘most European multinational forces still represent little more than political symbolism and paper forces’.38

Other moves have been suggested but they remain politically and/or economically sensitive. ‘Role specialisation’, for example, was often discussed during the Cold War, but as Garden has pointed out, ‘Even with a common view of the mission, nations were reluctant to become reliant on other Allies for particular capabilities’.39 Defence procurement on a European basis has been so long on the political agenda, that the surprise comes when common action is actually undertaken. Until 1999, at least, little had been achieved either at the intergovernmental or the inter-industrial levels. Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which together represent some 75 per cent of European spending on defence, had signed an agreement to establish a new European Armaments Agency, the Organisme Conjoint de Coopération en matière d'Armaments (OCCAR) and these four governments together with those of Spain and Sweden

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signed a further agreement in July 2000. These agreements were in addition to the industry-led ventures such as European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (Aerospatiale-Matra and Daimler-Chrysler plus the Spanish CASA, with the prospect of a privatised Italian Finmeccania). However, British Aerospace’s failure to join because it was somewhat more preoccupied with a merger with the defence sectors of GEC Marconi to participate was regarded as a serious setback to the project.40 The UK also dropped out of the major naval collaborative project, the ‘Horizon’ frigate in May 1999 which then collapsed, while the French dropped out of the Multi Role Armoured Vehicle Programme (MRAV), which will be one of the first managed by OCCAR, preferring to pursue a national programme, the VC1. As Roper concludes:

Thus, while there were some bilateral mergers, both internal to some countries and between countries, in spite of another fall in aggregate European defence expenditure, there was no real sign that armaments cooperation would be the motor pushing European defence cooperation, from defence industries, from within Ministries of Defence, or from political sources.41

But even if the pressure for a military capacity was successfully maintained and the Helsinki ‘headline goals’ attained by 2003, there remain problems to be resolved as to how any operation in which European forces are used might be funded. Monar and Rees have pointed out how vague the Helsinki texts are on funding. Costs may be shared but:

‘If there is no pre-established mechanism on cost-sharing in operations (which is difficult to arrive at in a system in which all Member States remain free to decide whether or not they commit national assets), there is a risk o f major controversies. Past experience within the CFSP has also shown that member States may be reluctant at a later stage to meet obligations to which they had initially agreed.. ,42

Thus, the credibility of the whole exercise is inevitably intimately bound up with budgetary commitments, and the difficulties most governments will have in rearranging existing priorities against a widespread lack of public interest.

EU-NATO and the United States

Running throughout the debate has been the relationship between the EU and NATO and the United States. Differences - which admittedly cut across simply US-European lines - over an ‘open door’ approach to NATO expansion have been one aspect. Discrimination by the EU against non-EU NATO members has been another, the third in Mrs Albright’s ‘three D’s’ of ‘no duplication, no decoupling and no discrimination’ ,43 But there has been a degree of ambivalence bordering almost on schizophrenia in American thinking which has been marked

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in this as during other European efforts to establish a more autonomous security and defence policy. In this, again as in other instances, there have perhaps been some grounds for suspicion for, after all, while most European leaders continue to emphasise NATO and continued US support as the cornerstone of Europe’s security, they have also gone on record declaring that the end of the Cold War and subsequent American policy have been a primary factor in stimulating the move towards an ESDP. Mrs Albright’s three negatives might be explained as yet another American reflex, this time made more publicly since there seems to have been little if any consultation with the US in the run up to the St Malo initiative. But the shift in European thinking can be illustrated in the changed attitudes in the usually strongly Atlanticist British House of Commons Defence Committee. It responded to the US Secretary of State by declaring that the CESDP: ‘should involve no disengagement from the common purposes of the Alliance; no delegation of the manpower-intensive, high risk elements of the Alliance’s operations (such as ground operations where the risk of casualties is higher); and no domination of the political processes of the Alliance’.44 While eschewing any alphabetic trinitarianism45, the head of the WEU Institute also provided her own not unexpected list of dichotomies which included: ‘Cooperation essential, subordination unacceptable’ and ‘Discrimination prohibited, differentiation legitimate’. On the former, her concern was that the EU should not have the status of a NATO subcontractor ‘any more than the Alliance can be treated as a secondary organisation in matters of European security’. And, more acutely, ‘If the United States is earnest in its wish to share the burden of crisis management, it will have to acknowledge the European Union’s political autonomy. If the Europeans wish to act in partnership with America, it is from within the Alliance that they will be able to exert the greatest influence’. 46

Not everyone in positions of influence in the United States view this with much equanimity. - Charles Kupchan, in his Survival article, drew attention to the most prevalent concerns being expressed.47 Firstly, there is anxiety that the EU’s moves would result in ‘the loss of cohesion and coherence that could befall NATO should America’s pre-eminent position within the alliance be called in to question’. Related to that was the worry that ‘a more capable and self-confident Europe will not only hinder decision-making, but could also fuel a transatlantic decoupling’. And that ‘a stronger Europe could actually become a strategic competitor of the US’. This last view, which, as he points out, has some strong supporters in Congress, has not been weakened by ‘French references to the importance of replacing unipolarity with a multipolar world and creating a counterweight to America’s hyperpuissance [which] have helped to fuel this particular brand of anxiety, if not consternation’. But while such views have also been expressed within the Administration, Kupchan’s point about Congress is important, not least when it might be influenced by the prospect of possible

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constraints over US policy. These he illustrates with reference to the evidence before the House of Representatives from the American Right, quoting Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation, for example, that: ‘hamstringing and weakening US global leadership by insisting on UN mandates for every overseas military operation or other multilateral action could undermine the will of the United States to lead’.

It remains the case, however, that for the EU the relationship with the US remains critical, not simply in terms of Europe’s collective defence through NATO, but because of the need to have access to NATO/US assets for those crises and operations in which the US does not wish to participate. The EU’s defence ambitions hinge crucially on the availability of NATO hardware. The 60,000 force may be large enough for the EU to be able to deal with a wide range of crises but it is certainly not large enough to meet all the security needs in Europe. Thus the French have argued: ‘In this respect it can undermine neither NATO nor the strategic links between the US and their European Allies. On the contrary, it will allow the EU to share a larger part of the burden of security in and around Europe, as it has been asked for a long time by the US.’48 There remains, however, a considerable need for care in persuading different elements within the US of the rightness of such logic.

But it is also the case that it is not just a question of gaining US approval to gain access to NATO assets. In view of Turkey’s hostile reaction to the Feira Council, it is clear that the US may not be alone in needing to be persuaded of the merits of the EU’s case. It is not necessarily automatic as the Turkish Defence Minister made clear. He was reported as saying: ‘We are a member of NATO. In NATO decisions are adopted unanimously. The sentence incorporates everything’.49 Turkey, geopolitically and as a NATO member, WEU associate and EU candidate, is in a unique position and demands that it should be recognised. As Mr Ecevit put it in March 1999: ‘Certain Western European countries, guided by the psychology of asserting their identity, are, to a certain extent, trying to distance themselves from NATO in defence issues and render the WEU the military force of NATO’.50 And he and his government have lobbied hard on the basis of ‘equal rights’, the ‘indivisibility’ of European security, the ‘inconceivability’ of European security without Turkey and so on.

Moreover, Turkey has been joined in its criticism of the EU - even if in more temperate language - by the three new NATO members who are also candidate countries. As Jan Kavan, the Czech Foreign Minister put it, in March 2000, one of the tasks ahead of the three newcomers to NATO was to reach agreement on an: © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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institutionalized mechanism whereby those European members of NATO, who are not yet members of EU, would be able actively to participate in the decision-making process, so that we can actively take part in discussions concerning the future European defence, which after all is a discussion about what will happen in Europe, how Europe should bear a greater responsibility for the management o f crisis on our own continent, so that once again there won’t be a situation o f somebody else taking decision about us, or taking a decision without us that also concerns u s .. .5I

In some respects, this could be regarded as a transitional problem - negotiations are under way with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, even if those with Turkey have not yet begun. Yet it clearly matters to the candidate countries and, without necessarily being conspiratorial about it, to the United States that they should all be involved as far as possible in such discussions. Mrs Albright and others have been firm in their strictures on non-discrimination, whether in her

‘three Ds’ or subsequently.

Yet Feira is as far as the Member States appear to be prepared to go at least in formal terms by way of involving non-EU states in allowing for dialogue and a role in ‘shaping’ decisions. While recognising the basis for cooperation as ‘shared values, equality and ‘a spirit of partnership’, the Feira Conclusions pointed to the differences of ‘nature’ between the two organisations and the need for each to treat the other ‘on an equal footing’. Mrs Albright’s concern over discrimination was met in the final principle, that, as ‘institutions’, there would be none against any of the Member States. Four areas were identified for developing the relationship: security issues, capability goals, the modalities for EU access to NATO assets, and the definition of permanent consultation arrangements. These included complex proposals relating to various stages in the evolution of any operation - pre-crisis, pre-operation and operation participation. But, the first principle also declared that consultation and cooperation ‘must take place in full respect for the autonomy of EU decision-making’. And it is this that has tended to be emphasised, not least by the French, as President of the Council, July- December 2000. Hubert Védrine, the French Foreign Minister put it, after meeting (with the EU’s High Representative, Javier Solana, and the Commissioner for External Policy, Chris Patten) the American Secretary of State:

...I think that the mutual information and consultation mechanisms are being put in place wholly satisfactorily, but the tempo has to be that of the establishment o f Defence Europe. The consultations can’t take place before the mechanisms exist or have been decided on by the Fifteen.

The Fifteen are totally open to everything to do with information and consultation, but that can’t mean a country which isn’t in the European Union taking part in the Fifteen’s decision-making processes...52 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Whether the EU Member States are negotiating on more autonomous decision making on security and defence issues or moving towards greater autonomy of defence, the negotiations presage a change in the nature of the EU. Despite America’s best efforts, third parties are likely to have to wait, as so often has been the case with the EC/EU, until the Member States have reached their own conclusions or even agreement. In terms of the nature of the EU, the Member States are involved in what has been termed somewhat dramatically the ‘militarising of the EU’ .53 The provision of some sort of military capacity for the EU not only extends the external policy instruments available to the EU, it also marks the end of the chapter of the EU as a ‘Civilian Power’. Creating a capability may, of course, raise expectations without necessarily closing the gap between them. However, what is clear is that the ESDP is to be foreign policy- led, to use the phrase current at the time of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review of 1998 (which, incidentally barely mentioned the EU, a further indication of the speed with which the EU has moved over the last two years), or, as Nicole Gnesotto put it ‘No defence without a CFSP’.54 However, as she and many others have pointed out, the CFSP has not been noted for its efficiency, effectiveness or success. This has a number of dimensions, not least sub-optimal decision-making processes and procedures, the issue of unanimity and the question of closer cooperation and accountability - all of which inter-relate with the issue of enlargement. Many of the arguments relating to them have been rehearsed frequently in the past. Briefly, however, they here boil down to the association of the Commission in decision-making on security and defence issues, the efficacy of the constructive abstention provision of Amsterdam and the role of Parliaments.

The Feira Council emphasised the need for the EU candidates (and others) to respect not just ‘the decision-making autonomy of the EU’ but also ‘its single institutional framework’. The inter-relationship of the three pillars of the Treaty on European Union, and the overlapping responsibilities of institutions and individuals for foreign and external policies are issues in which the candidate states may have an interest but, along with others, are likely to remain observers. There are, as so often in EU politics, practical issues and bureaucratic politics that sometimes barely disguise more fundamental beliefs. On the one hand, the External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, has been urging the Member States to avoid trench warfare in the interests of a common enterprise and the ‘indivisibility’ of European foreign policy. 55 There are inherent problems in establishing working relationships with a newly created post designed to have a significant political profile, the EU’s High Representative, as well as with the Political and Security Committee (COPS) and the Military Committee, against a The N ature of the EU and Decision-making

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The High Representative, himself, Javier Solana, declared at the launch of the COPS in Brussels:

Our aim is to equip the Union to respond effectively to international crises using all the tools at its disposal: diplomacy, economic measures, humanitarian assistance and, ultimately, the use of military forces. The ability to integrate these measures will set the EU apart and allow it to play an international role consistent with its responsibilities and the expectations of its citizens’..56

However, as the British Political Director put it: ‘I would be exceedingly hesitant about offering the Commission any right of initiative on a matter pertaining directly to defence. My aim is to eliminate that.’ And, while he recognised that the Commission would be involved in crisis management:

‘..1 do not want the Commission to stray into the question of the deployment o f troops because it has no technical competence; nor do we wish to give it legal competence. In the end, we are talking about matters that are sovereign to Member States’.5’

In some respects the British position is artificial although it is supported by others, including the French and Danes. As the French Presidency showed in its meeting with Mrs Albright in October 2000, the Commission, and the High Representative, as the EU’s representative ‘troika’, are party to discussions on ‘Defence Europe’.58 The Commission will inevitably have been intimately involved in the preventative diplomacy before any crisis, and will be vitally involved in the re-establishment of peace programmes and therefore in peace making diplomacy during the crisis. Moreover, practice in Brussels, while continuously one of ‘turf-battles’, has also been one where, at least at official levels, there has been constant interaction and dialogue between those from the Member States and the Commission, the Council Secretariat and now, given ‘double-hatting’, increasingly representatives from WEU/NATO.

The position of seeking to retain an intergovernmental basis for policies that are at the heart of traditional concepts of national sovereignty may in part be a theological one, but it may well have an impact on the future character of the EC/EU. To some, the EU is little more than an arena for bargaining with all the log-rolling, package dealing etc that that entails, qualified majority voting as a near norm, and the consequent uncertainty of outcomes. To others, the EU as, at least, a civilian power allowed for improvisation and flexibility. However, as Simon Nuttall has put it:

background of an already cumbersome decision-making processes.

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...if the EU is to project military force, it would clearly be irresponsible as well as ineffective to leave the modalities to inspired improvisation. Lives are at stake... Furthermore, the credibility of military intervention depends to a considerable extent on expectations, which by definition are low if action depends on ad hoc solutions.59

He goes on to explain the ‘stultifying’ truth about the CFSP: ‘that the more serious it gets, especially over the use of force, the more it needs to operate within solid legal structures, and the more it operates within solid legal structures, the less likely it is to be able to react flexibly to unforeseen challenges.’ At the level, too, of the command and control of any operation, there are those such as General Naumann who argue:

We need a capability to execute command and control, both in political and military terms. That is something which you cannot do by ad hoc-ery, as the French believe from time to time. So, if you do not have the capability to run an operation, you will end up in difficulties, and that is one of the deficiencies that I see in the Helsinki accord...

However, the French have, indeed, argued that:

For crisis management, it is ... necessary not to have compulsory commitments. A common assessment of a situation can lead to a common decision to act, but leaving the EU members the freedom to act in different ways. As the opting out option stays always open, there should not be any difficulty for a given country to support the decision o f an intervention, even if it does not want to participate in the military part of the action. The freedom o f action implies that the EU politico-military and military bodies stay in the second pillar. 61

The issue thus becomes closely tied to that of ‘closer cooperation’ or flexibility, in which the candidate countries have frequently expressed concern.62 Closer cooperation became a key item on the agenda of the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), including its extension to the second pillar, a proposal that had not been accepted at Amsterdam in 1997. In its place in the Amsterdam Treaty is provision for a ‘constructive abstention’ mechanism (TEU Art 23), whereby Member States can abstain from voting without preventing a decision being adopted which commits the Union as a whole. The article specifically excluded decisions having military or defence implications. However, as the ESDP evolves, the question becomes one of whether the existing provision is appropriate for security and defence issues or whether there is need for a more specific enabling clause to allow for closer cooperation.63 At the Amsterdam IGC, France and Germany usually appeared as the proponents for a closer cooperation clause, while the majority, the NATO/WEU members led by the UK and the Netherlands, and with the non-allied in support, preferred the constructive

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abstention mechanism, which allowed a coalition of the willing and able to go ahead on foreign and security issues on a mandate agreed by the Fifteen.

A closer cooperation clause for pillar two is, however, once more on the IGC agenda. In some respects, given the difficulties the Fifteen have experienced in the past in agreeing to consistent policies that move beyond the merely declaratory, the prospect of enlargement only makes the problems more acute rather than raising anything new. The larger the number of Member States, the more opportunities there are for decisions to be vetoed on the grounds that important national interests are at stake, in which case the Heads of State and of Government take the final decision in the European Council. However, although the constructive abstention mechanism has not so far been used, few governments have held that, in an enlarged Union, it would necessarily increase the certainty that the EU will be able to take action along the lines of the Petersberg tasks. The advocates of incorporating a closer cooperation provision, argue therefore that certainty would be enhanced insofar as it would lay down a coherent procedure for taking decisions among those willing to act, while providing safeguards for all the Member States, and the integrity of the Union itself. Those who remain unconvinced that such a clause is necessary emphasise the importance of solidarity with both an external and an internal dimension. Externally, the credibility of the Union is not enhanced simply by means of an enabling procedure and when, only too clearly, even those who have proved willing to envisage the use force have taken each case on its own merits. Internally, within the EU, it would not enhance the sense of solidarity if, on issues that related, say, to security in the Baltic, the countries of the Mediterranean lent no support at all, even the moral support of a vote in favour, and, similarly, if in a Mediterranean dispute, the Baltic states opposed action. For their part, among the candidate countries, the Poles have expressed themselves in favour of caution in extending closer co-operation to the second pillar, largely on the grounds that it is:

a new area, undergoing very rapid change, where a range o f important decisions have to be taken, including, for example, a stronger involvement o f non-EU NATO Member States; it would be therefore advisable to postpone the debate on the issue until the principles of ESDP functioning are specified.64

Other cross-cutting ties may counter any centrifugal forces that may arise, except that on issues of security and defence, where domestic consensus within Member States is of paramount importance, opinion will be even more sensitive to the action or the inaction of others. Hence the added importance o f accountability. Moves towards ESDP clearly demand major political choices, not least over budgetary priorities. Whether these choices are openly made or downplayed and depoliticised as far as possible will, of course, be up to individual governments.

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But, insofar as any commitments will be the responsibility of national governments, they will remain accountable to their national parliaments. However, as Monar and Rees have pointed out, if the EU does participate in any crisis management operation, ‘we are likely to see some differentiation, with Member States participating to a varying degree in certain measures. All this will make it more difficult for parliaments as well as citizens to understand when, how and why a certain decision was taken.’65 Many of the new bodies established, including COPS, have responsibilities that overlap and whose workings - if the High Representative’s recent actions are indicative66 - will be undertaken in considerable secrecy, well beyond the formal scrutiny of national parliaments or the European Parliament. Whether this enhances the likely acceptance and legitimacy of EU action among its citizens, whether of existing or new Member States, is debatable. The question of closer cooperation might make this even more complex and difficult to explain.

Forging the CESDP?

Given the difficulty of resolving many of these issues, the prospects of successful outcome to the Helsinki decisions must be mixed. In view of the importance of Kosovo in European thinking, many have argued that there has never a been a better chance of success in bringing about a ESDP. But, as that memory fades away and domestic considerations begin to weigh more heavily in the negotiation of detail, is the EU destined for a further failure? Has a real momentum built up that can carry the Member States along? There seems, after all, to have been a spectacular progress over the last two years, and among the Fifteen, not merely a small and potentially divisive group, but is it enough?

The UK, under Mr Blair, was key to the renewed effort to create a European defence dimension. If the factors that led Blair to take the initiative still pertain, then at least one powerful voice will be on the side of a successful conclusion. At one level, assessments of UK policy agree that the Prime Minister was strongly influenced by a belief that the United States had become less dependable in the post Cold War order and by the embarrassment of Europe’s humiliating role in the Kosovo crisis.67 In addition, there was an equally strong wish to take a leadership role in Europe. This, though, was undermined by Britain’s exclusion from the single currency, which threatened Blair with a marginalization not wholly dissimilar to that of his predecessor, John Major. If an initiative was vital to ensure the British and New Labour’s position, then the security and defence field offered the best hope. As Shearer shows, there was a growing eagerness for change, the Strategic Defence Review notwithstanding, within the Ministry of Defence as well as in the Prime Minister’s own Policy Unit. However, the Blair government now also faces a general election and a

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referendum on the euro. And while the government itself does not always appear united on Europe and membership of the single currency, the Conservative Opposition has taken an increasingly hostile position (under the slogan ‘in Europe, not run by Europe’). Meanwhile, the media, on which New Labour relied so heavily, is also very largely Eurosceptic and anti-euro. Moreover, as we have seen, the US has not foregone opportunities to try to exercise influence through the UK government. Mr Blair, in other words, may not prove quite so redoubtable as hitherto.

However, while it is unlikely that the British government would revert to the hostile position it adopted during the Amsterdam IGC, the French government has remained firm in its long term strategy of Europeanising Europe’s defence. It may be the case that the President and Government are divided on the finalité politique, and such differences may be exacerbated in the run up to Presidential elections, but few commentators see any serious fall off in support. The German government, also remains committed, though there, too, there is some room for doubt.68 There remains support for the concept of Civilian Power, the experience of Kosovo was not liked, and the problems surrounding Bundeswehr reform, and particularly its funding are likely to be ‘messy and drawn out’69. There is also a growing wariness about the euro and, indeed, about the potential benefits of enlargement.

Nonetheless, such difficulties continue to be swept aside by the more optimistic, who point to the fact that all the Member States have repeatedly committed themselves to the venture over the last two years at successive European Councils. As Nicole Gnesotto put it:

That all countries o f the Union - whether ‘large’ or ‘small’, from north or south, NATO members or not...having an interventionist tradition or not - now subscribe to the political and operational aims set out at Cologne and Helsinki, is certainly a major political revolution.70

Absent from these lists are, of course, the countries seeking accession to the EU. Their input has been negligible, their potential contribution ignored, even their potential ‘risk’ seemingly undiscussed. In some respects, the candidate countries have only limited interest in the evolution of the CESDP; they are after all rather more preoccupied with other, increasingly difficult areas of their EU accession negotiations. Moreover, those that are already members of NATO tend to look, with gratitude, more to the US for that achievement, rather than to EU Member States, some of which had expressed their concern over NATO expansion. Those still outside NATO also look more towards Washington for support. Such views tend merely to reinforce the lack of incentive on the part of the EU to change

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established practice of negotiating only among themselves. Whether those negotiations and the revolution that has so far occurred in EU thinking reaches a successful conclusion remains to be seen. They are carried forward with the establishment of the new institutions and a growing frequency of discussions within the European framework. But perhaps the biggest factor working in favour of some sort of ESDP is the prospect of the costs of failure. The loss of any credibility if the governments fail to reach a substantive conclusion will be profound. Timetables have, of course, not always been adhered to in the EC/EU’s history; clocks have been stopped. But given the ‘hype’ surrounding the ESDP, it would have to be a very serious crisis, indeed, that could be used to justify further delay.

Geoffrey Edwards

Pembroke College, Cambridge

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Endnotes

1 This paper was originally presented at the RSC Working Group on the ELTs Enlargement chaired by Horst GUnter Krenzler at the EUI 15- 16th September 2000. I am grateful to Dr Krenzler and the Group for their comments and particularly to Jan Zielonka. My colleague in the Centre o f International Studies at Cambridge, Julie Smith also read and commented on an earlier draft. Needless to say, I remain responsible for remaining linguistic infelicities and any substantive errors.

2 The Helsinki European Council agreed that the Member States will be able to deploy rapidly and then sustain forces capable of the full range o f Petersberg tasks as set out in the Amsterdam Treaty, including the most demanding, in operations of up to corps level (up to 15 brigades or 50,000-60,000 persons). These forces should be militarily self-sustaining with the necessary command, control and intelligence capabilities, logistics, other combat support services, and additionally, as appropriate air and naval elements. Member States should be able to deploy in full at this level within 60 days, and within this to provide smaller rapid response elements available and deployable at very high readiness. They must be able to sustain such a deployment for at least one year. This will require an additional pool of deployable units (and supporting elements) at lower readiness to provide replacements for the initial forces. See the Finnish Presidency Conclusions. At the informal meeting o f EU Defence Ministers under the French presidency in July 2000, the figure was raised to 80,000.

2 References here are to Appendix 2 o f the Portuguese Presidency Conclusions

4 Turkey has also had experience o f association with the WEU: see Milnever Cebecci (1999) ‘A Delicate process o f Participation: the question of participation o f WEU Associate Members in decision-making for EU-led Petersberg tasks, with special reference to Turkey’ Occasional

Paper 10 Paris WEU Institute for Security Studies

5 The Amsterdam Treaty (Art 17 TEU) spoke o f the WEU in terms of it supporting ‘the Union in framing the defence aspects of the common foreign and security policy . ..’ with the compromise agreed by the ‘Europeanists’ led by France and Germany and the ‘Atlanticists’ led by the UK, that ‘The Union shall accordingly foster closer institutional relations with the WEU with a view to the possibility of the integration of the WEU into the Union, should the European Council so decide. It shall in that case recommend to the Member States the adoption of such a decision in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The ‘Petersberg Tasks’ referred to were agreed by the WEU in 1992 and are incorporated into the TEU in the same article, as including ‘humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking.' For a full discussion of progress from Anglo-French Declaration at St Malo to the Helsinki European Council see John Roper (2000) ‘Two Cheers for M r Blair: the Political realities of European Defence Cooperation’ in Geoffrey Edwards & Georg Wiessala (eds) The European Union; Annual

Review 1999 Blackwell

6 Philip Gordon (2000) ‘Their Own Army?’ Foreign Affairs July/August p 12

7 François Heisbourg (2000) ‘Europe’s Strategic Ambitions: The Limits o f Ambiguity’

Survival 42 p 5

8 Gilles Andreani, IISS in evidence to the House o f Lords Select Committee on the European Union The Common European Policy on Security and Defence Evidence HL Paper 101-1 p20 9 General Klaus Naumann, recently retired chairman o f the NATO Military Committee ibid p 88

10 Klaus Becher ibid p 83

11 Chris Patten (2000) ‘A European Foreign Policy: Ambition and Reality’. Speech given to IFR, Paris, 15lh June 2000.