A British Opinion on ESDI
by Bruce George, chairman of the UK Parliamentary Defence Select Committee
March 1, 2000

In the report on the UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in September 1998, the Defence Committee noted that the SDR White Paper had "done nothing to clarify or advance the development of the European Security and Defence Identity [ESDI]".

It also seemed to us "inevitable that the European dimension of our security policy will take [on] an increasing significance".

We revisited the subject in our report on the future of NATO that was published early last year. By then, the government's policy towards the European dimension of defence had changed dramatically, initiated by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Portschacht Summit in third-quarter 1998 and carried forward at the Anglo-French St Malo Summit in December that year.

The committee noted then a growing consensus in Europe's capitals that the European powers had to address the question of their deployable defence capabilities and the circumstances of their use. We recommended the formation of a second, European-led, Allied Rapid-Reaction Corps.

The Helsinki European Summit, following on from the second St Malo Summit, formulated the 'headline goal' of such a corps: 50,000 to 60,000 personnel, deployable within 60 days and sustainable for a year. We took evidence on the practicalities of achieving this goal from UK Secretary of State for Defence Geoffrey Hoon on 16 February, and will report our conclusions soon.

The Helsinki Summit also sounded the death-knell for the Western European Union (WEU), since its functions are to be absorbed into the EU from year-end. When questioning the secretary of state, we explored the problems this potentially creates in providing for institutions to accommodate the non-EU NATO members and the non-NATO EU members in the complex geometry of these new arrangements. However, as we had heard at NATO and SHAPE the previous week, one should not be too blinded by the notion that clear lines of command on paper mean little under the pressure of crisis management.

Despite these moves, the real state of development of European defence is rather indefinable. The way NATO's ESDI relates to the EU's Common European Defence and Security Policy is far from clear, and the ways the institutional arrangements are going to work in practice once the WEU disappears is still uncertain. However, some issues are beginning to become clearer. The secretary of state stressed that European defence is about building crisis-management capabilities in Europe, not offering an alternative to NATO. NATO, particularly Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, remains the cornerstone of collective defence for all the allies. The key to making European defence work is not tinkering with wiring diagrams for institutional change, but rather building an enhanced, usable, European defence capability that lies at its core.

My committee will be watching to see how the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe delivers the forces to meet the Helsinki aspirations. And as both NATO's Defence Capabilities Initiative and the WEU's audit of capabilities demonstrate, the European powers are still seriously lacking in intelligence, command and control, strategic lift, communications and other key areas without which they can never boast an autonomous and credible crisis-management capability. To remedy these shortfalls will almost certainly require increased defence spending as well as more effective co-operation, and my committee is still unconvinced that all our European allies are fully signed up to that.

In part, the current debate about European defence is an extension of the lengthy transatlantic discussion about more equitable burden-sharing for NATO. This debate has been argued at least since the creation of the integrated military structure. Current US policymakers in the executive appear to view the enhancement of the ESDI as a positive advantage in the transatlantic burden-sharing debate. However, while many in the USA appear to have been reassured that an enhanced ESDI will not undermine NATO and will not serve to exclude the USA and other allies from key decision-making, opinion in Congress and elsewhere appears more divided and sometimes hostile.

From the UK perspective, the most promising way forward, which commands the greatest level of intra-allied consensus, seems to be in developing a 'toolbox' of forces and equipment maintained by NATO member states. The EU would have some degree of access to this 'toolbox', over which processes of consultation and decision-making would be streamlined. European forces could be more closely tied in to NATO structures and genuine operational capabilities increased.

France's role in a reformulated NATO represents another element in this debate. French politicians have long accepted the need to embrace a reformed NATO as a pre-requisite to effective security in Europe. Indeed, intense French concerns with security in the Mediterranean and Southern European theatres have increased its stake in a successful evolution of the alliance. Paris is also keen to develop its role in peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention, where the use of NATO assets is difficult to avoid. Political problems between French and US perceptions of NATO's future are likely to remain for some time, however, and have the potential to cause the alliance major problems. For the German government, thecreation of an integrated European defence industry appears to be an essential element of the ESDI, something the USA is likely to view with suspicion.

European defence means many different things to many different nations. That is perhaps inevitable. But aspirations about a better European defence capability have been around at least as long as NATO. The next year or two will demonstrate whether this time Europe is prepared to put its money where its mouth is. My committee will be watching closely.

In: Jane's Defence Weekly by Bruce George,
chairman of the UK Parliamentary Defence Select Committee