No. 14. - (14/05/2004)

New members, new challenges for EU defense policy. Security Watch discusses the future of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) with Tomas Valasek, the Director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) in Brussels.

In an enlarged Europe, crafting a common defense and security policy with old members, who have already aired their policy differences over Iraq, and new members, many of whom remain wedded to NATO, will be a challenging task.

With the grand rhetoric over enlargement now fading fast, the real impact of the 10 new member states-including eight former communist countries-on crucial issues such as European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) may soon be felt. To what extent will the differing security visions of those states influence ESDP initiatives, the concept of a "two-speed" Europe, or US concerns about NATO's role alongside a new Europe? Those questions are at the heart of recent research conducted by Tomas Valasek, director of the Brussels office of the Center for Defense Information (CDI). Valasek, originally from Slovakia, is one of the leading experts on the impact of NATO and EU enlargement on European security and defense policy. He is currently editing a book called "The 'Easternization' of ESDP", which will include chapters from Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Slovak analysts. Valasek spoke to Security Watch on 4 May about the post-enlargement future of European security and defense policy. CDI is a Washington-based, non-partisan organization that conducts research on the social, economic, environmental, political, and military components of global security.

A more Darwinian, less Kantian, world view

Security Watch: You have written of the different attitudes toward security that the new member states are bringing with them into an enlarged Europe. Could you expand on that point?

Valasek: Having looked at the foreign policies of the new accession countries for a long time, I think it is fair to describe the new countries' security vision as being distinct from that of the established states. That means more emphasis on the Transatlantic relationship; a more Darwinian and less Kantian worldview; and one that is more open to the use of force and less wedded to the idea of international law as the ultimate framework for settling all international disputes. The mentality is different. They also have a different geographical focus, on Russia. That's less true for countries on the Western periphery of the new Europe, obviously for the Czech Republic, and even for Slovakia, but it's definitely true for the Baltic states and Poland. However, it will be equally useless to talk about this different vision if you don't look at two things: their ability to implement the vision at the EU level and the durability of the vision even within new member states. I am a little concerned about the ability of the new member states to make their voices heard in Brussels. There is a mindset that I see very often in Bratislava, in Prague, in Budapest of trying to essentially figure out what the European Union identity is and sort of going with the flow. Particularly on the security issues, that is the wrong approach, because there is no such thing as a European security identity yet, it is being formed.

Shaping Europe's security consensus

Valasek: This is one of the aspects of "Europeanness", if you will, that is still being developed. It has only been growing in any sort of robust, meaningful fashion since 1999. This is the one aspect of European policy where new member states could and should not simply try to figure out what the consensus is and ways to fit in and contribute, but should rather actively try to take a leading role in shaping the consensus, because there is not one. We did not have a European security strategy until December of last year. We did not have a meaningful force and force-planning guidelines until about a year, a year and a half ago - and they are still in a lot in flux. So there is still an awful lot that the new member countries could do to make sure that the European vision of security, when it emerges, takes into account their viewpoints just as much as those of France and Germany. I don't often see the willingness to make their case in Brussels. Partly it's the aspect of small states versus large states. The new members, with the exception of Poland, are small states that do not necessarily feel all that confident about their ability to put issues on Brussels' agenda. Partly it's also a product of the bureaucracies at home - there often isn't enough capacity to produce and sustain the sort of intellectual effort that it would take to wage or even be a meaningful party to the debates in Europe. It's more than simply producing a paper on European security. You would have to coordinate an awful lot of people within Brussels at the different forums, you would have to play the media game, you would have to make sure your points of view get across. That would entail expending enormous diplomatic and human capital that, frankly, not all of these countries are willing to spend on something such as ESDP. There are more important things in the short run - you have to pick your battles and priorities.

Two-speed ahead on European security and defense?

Security Watch: Do you think these differences could translate into a two-speed Europe on ESDP issues?

Valasek: One of the responses from the established EU member states to the expected difficulties after enlargement is the idea of a two-speed Europe. The Euro is used as a model. Some countries, such as Britain and Sweden, were simply not willing to go ahead on the Euro, but had no preference or no articulate point of view on whether others, like Germany or Austria, should have the Euro. So there was an agreement struck in principle that Sweden and Britain should not hold others back. Hence the creation of the European Monetary Union within the EU, which does not include all EU states, but allowed 12 out of the 15 before enlargement to produce a common currency. The same idea is being applied to foreign and defense policy. I think it's wrong and it won't work. It won't work because, unlike the Euro - where the three countries not party to the agreement do not necessarily have a preference for whether the rest of the EU should or should have the Euro - the common defense and foreign policy cannot help but make them associated with the common foreign and defense policy, even if they choose to opt out of it. It is very obvious that there are some elements of the EU foreign and defense policy that are not acceptable to everybody. We saw that during the very open and animated debate over the Iraq war, which clearly showed that there are very different strands of thinking among a lot of the new EU member states. Now what do you do in a situation where one group of countries decides to launch a foreign policy initiative with which another very significant group of EU countries does not agree? Are you going to have two competing policy initiatives pulling in two very different directions within the EU? I think that could easily be the case and so that's why the idea of a two-speed Europe on foreign and defense policy strikes me as really a non-starter at this point because it creates more problems than it solves.

Structured cooperation, a Catch-22

Security Watch: Some of these points also relate closely to the idea of "structured cooperation", whereby groups of states within the EU would work closely together on certain ESDP initiatives. What do you think of that idea?

Valasek: Structured cooperation is a Catch-22. If it's done right, it won't work. It will only work if it isn't done right, in which case it won't be structured cooperation. Structured cooperation, as it was originally proposed, would have involved doing precisely what I've warned against, which is creating groups of countries within the EU that could strike out in their own directions on particular foreign policy and security initiatives. The problem is that there are obviously differences within the EU on the relationship to the US, on the use of force, on the role of diplomacy, and on the role of international law in security and defense. And there's a problem with a particular group of countries. I'm not picking here on France, Germany, or Luxembourg - you'd have the same problem if Poland, Great Britain, and Slovakia struck out and then tried to present their own policy on, let's say Iraq, as EU-wide policy. The problem would be, of course, that there would be other countries that would be just plainly and simply opposed to it and would not want to be associated with it. Yet because the group of structured cooperation countries would be carrying the EU flag, they couldn't help but be associated with it. That I have a problem with, as anybody who lives in democratic Europe would. There is also nothing preventing two competing initiatives, two competing groups both striking out in different directions, each one laying a claim to the EU flag. What do you do then? Obviously, it's a mess. So the arrangement that will likely be adopted includes allowing certain countries to strike ahead only after the EU as such has approved the overall direction of the initiative. In other words, all 25 would have to sign off on whatever the particular security initiative was and then only the five or six that have contributed the capabilities, and the political and diplomatic and other capital, only they would be in charge of implementing the policy...At this point, this is not structured cooperation because obviously no controversial policy would ever get approved by 25 countries, of which 18 are against. The arrangement allows it to be done, but it really isn't structured cooperation anymore.

The changing US attitude toward EU defense

Security Watch: What do you think of the US attitude towards the "Easternization" of ESDP? On one hand, the Pentagon must be happy that more "friendly" states will now be a part of the ESDP discussions. On the other hand, some analysts have written about the Pentagon's attempt to sabotage the formation of ESDP. For example, Charles Grant of the Center for Economic Reform, has written that the Pentagon's "ambition is to maintain the wound between New and Old Europe, to practice a policy of divide and rule". He wrote that last year, referring to the April 2003 summit of Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, when they agreed to cooperate more closely on defense matters, including the initiative of establishing an EU operational planning staff in the Brussels suburb of Tervuren.

Valasek: I think what Charles Grant wrote was right at the time when he wrote it. I think the US view has changed since. I think it is more nuanced now. I think there is more of a recognition that the creation of defense structures, be it the Tervuren operational headquarters or the rapid reaction force, has less to do with a desire of France or others to balance the United States and it's more of a natural outgrowth of the European Union integration processes. I think the logic that drives it on the European side is less "evil" than the Pentagon planners might assume.

Security Watch: What has changed?

Valasek: British actions have showed them that there is something wrong with the Pentagon's calculations. If the creation of European defense capabilities was a balancing exercise, an exercise at limiting US power, why in the world would Britain go along? And Britain did. They have squeezed minor concessions out of France and Belgium, but eventually they said yes to operational headquarters - under different rules of engagement, a different size, different location - but they essentially said "yes". They said "yes" to battle groups [1'500-strong Rapid Reaction Force units], which may yet put a serious dent into the European countries' ability to put forces on the ground for NATO operations. These are all things that don't fit into the balancing, the zero-sum game or worldview that the Pentagon planners had built in their minds. We have not seen any of the rhetoric that was so typical in the early part of 2003: the statements of Nick Burns, the US ambassador to NATO, that Tervuren operational headquarters was the biggest threat to NATO in recent history, that's all gone by the wayside. I think they came around to see the point of view that if there is going to be a far stronger, far more autonomous European security and defense policy, they might as well try to work with it rather than take an a priori negative stance and then hence rule out cooperation for the foreseeable future.

New members' security vision wedded to NATO

Valasek: The new member states - at least governments and security strategists - think along the American lines. They are opposed to a separation of the EU and NATO, they do tend to associate NATO far more with security than the EU, they do tend to oppose any attempt at weakening the EU-NATO link, or any attempt at weakening the US role in European security. That's not because they take their instructions from Washington. That's because their own vision of security is much more wedded to NATO and Washington. That said, I don't how much the Pentagon planners can count on these ten new member states - or eight formerly communist states - to fight their battles in Brussels...

Britain and the new members - a force multiplier

Valasek: The combination of the 10 new member states and Britain could be an interesting new element...Britain has shown...that it is thinking of the enlargement as a force multiplier that will allow it to make the British voice heard much more loudly in Brussels. Unlike France, which has shown very little attempt to win the hearts and minds of the new member states, Britain is working actively to win them to its causes, and that could yet make a dent in the internal dynamics of EU negotiations. Britain has shown every interest in cooperating with the new member states on making both British and the new member states voices on security heard in Brussels, in a much more vocal way than we have seen before, for a simple reason: The British views tend to overlap with those of the new members on a variety of issues, be they the relationship with EU, the relationship with NATO, and so on. The new member states have approached security and defense issues with too much timidity and awe until now. But they could still get their footing and, in a coalition with the British, they could make a real difference. If they put money into security initiatives and put troops on the ground when necessary, they would win the sort of authority and power that would sway a lot of the structured cooperation discussions in the EU their way But if you are going to go with the British to the trenches, you want to be sure they are going to stay in the trenches - that they are not going to pack up and leave. A lot of the new member states, however, are a little concerned that Britain, with its somewhat half-hearted attitude towards the European Union, may not stay through the end of some of the fights, and they may be left exposed.

A positive element to new members relations with Russia

Security Watch: What do you think of the role of the new member states in crafting the EU security and defense standpoints toward Russia? Do you think it will be positive or negative?

Valasek: I think it could be both actually. Obviously, the leitmotif that you hear from the conversations here in Brussels is "Oh, my God these new members will bring this old-fashioned, somewhat paranoid view of Russia. It will torpedo any attempts to have a constructive policy with Moscow now". First of all, that's not uniformly true - some countries obviously have more emotional baggage with Russia and rightly so: three of them have been colonized by Russia. It's far less true for some of the Western Slavs, not to mention the Hungarians, but also there is a positive element to having had a close relationship with Russia. The new member states can bring an understanding of Russia's actions to the European Union's policymaking that is not always necessarily there. For better or worse, both Russia and the new member states still live in a far more realistic world, a more Darwinian world than Kantian. I think they understand each other's intentions far better than is often the case with some of the more established EU states.

Less Franco-German influence on defense policy

Security Watch: So, in the end, strong proponents of ESDP probably aren't too thrilled with enlargement, if we assume that the new member states might oppose the efforts of Germany and France?

Valasek: I would disagree with the way you have phrased the question. It seems to assume that the only possible form that ESDP will take is some sort of French-German vision. The fact is that the European Union is an organization of 25 democratic states, and its policies are the outcomes of common decisions by 25 member states. What will happen after enlargement is that you have a group of 10 states - eight of which were, until almost 15 years ago, communist countries. They come from a different part of Europe, geographically. They bring different emphases to their defense policies. Whether or not this will torpedo ESDP is really not the question, because what it will do is affect the ability of the 25 to produce a coherent security and defense policy. It will no doubt make it a more challenging process, and it will also make it less "French" and less "German". It may make it more likely that we will have different speeds or different directions within Europe, but I wouldn't necessarily call this the end of ESDP as we know it, because again that assumes that there is only one form for a common EU defense policy, and that is the one put forward by France and Germany, and that is basically not the case. The enlargement is showing that to be true.

Jeremy Druker is the executive director and editor-in-chief of Transitions Online (TOL, www.tol.cz), a Prague-based media development organization that produces news and analysis on Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union policy.

(In: ISN Security Watch, by: Jeremy Druker)