The ambitious French Presidency of the EU, running until the start of 2009, has not had quite the start it hoped for. Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has stolen much of the attention and vision Sarkozy’s government was hoping to bring, and, as ever, kept the EU in its endless circle of stumbling from one crisis to another.
One of the headline grabbing policies that did get through into the public domain was the announcement of the revival of the 1999 Helsinki European Council goal that the EU should be capable of deploying a 60,000 strong force. Whilst rumours that the French would command British aircraft carriers were far off the mark, support groups of naval and air units to bolster the 60,000 strong EU force are definitely envisaged.
On the NATO side, reform is also in the air. Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Schefer said, in a 7 July speech in Paris, that NATO-EU relations could only get closer. He expressed concern that Europe is still the weaker partner in the Atlantic alliance, with low defence spending, and reiterated the need, supported by President George Bush, for more Europe, not more North America, in the alliance.
The Secretary General outlined the logic for closer EU-NATO ties. They work predominantly in the same theatres of action: in Darfur, in Kosovo, in Bosnia; consistently NATO and the EU find themselves working alongside each other in the same crises. And as Sarkozy moves France closer to rejoining the alliance, the areas of overlap will grow.
The relationship between NATO and the EU is managed by the Berlin Plus agreements, which give the EU access to NATO assets, command structures and facilities. Yet de Hoop Scheffer sees this relationship as too stringent, using the word ‘straitjacket’ to describe the agreement. Despite the fact that the EU is now based in NATO headquarters, de Hoop Scheffer wants even more integration, arguing that the rigid separation where the two organizations find themselves working together, between the EU doing police work and NATO doing military work, needs to become more fluid and dynamic. The Secretary General called for an entirely new set of arrangements, arguing that Berlin Plus is now out of date.
To make himself absolutely clear, and to show where the thinking in NATO truly is, Scheffer stated “If we are to be truly complementary it seems natural that we should have convergent, even overlapping strategic documents”. Convergent implies convergence at some point.
The ever closer knitting together of NATO and the EU’s defence ambitions, and the duplication of NATO’s functions by the EU, does undermine further the rational for NATO. But before we consign it to history’s dustbin, it may just be possible that the EU would rather keep the brand name going, for political purposes. It would be highly useful for the EU if it could carry out controversial projects and interventions to further its foreign policy ambitions under the NATO name, rather than smear its own image in potentially risky operations abroad. This is particularly true on Russia’s borders; it is surely better in the minds of European elites to increase the EU’s military power along the ‘Eastern front’ under the auspices of NATO rather than the EU – that way the US will get the blame and fall out.
This leads us to another, deeper cunning at work. Russia is extremely annoyed at the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and the US plans for missile defence, which claim to be aimed at Iran rather than Moscow. Yet, according to Vladimir Shumeiko, Professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia does not fear attack from NATO, but rather is smarting at the loss of its large arms markets in Eastern Europe. The US has used NATO to largely force out Russian military sales in Eastern Europe, and close down this important market for Russian military exporters. However, as we have seen, NATO is becoming weaker as it is ever subsumed into EU plans for common defence and security, and by its own funding arrangements (costs lie where they fall, as opposed to the EU systems of subsidizing poorer states). In weakening NATO, the EU is subtly weakening the US. As the Commission desperately tries to create European ‘champions’ in every area of industry, including arms manufacturers, it is also slowly accruing the Eastern European markets for itself. Russia was evicted in the 1990s. Now, slowly but surely, the EU is evicting the US.
Glen Ruffle, The European Journal, September 2008.
