The European Defense Identity, NATO, and the United States: A UK Perspective

Remarks by Peter Gooderham,
Counsellor for Politico-Military Affairs,
British Embassy in Washington, D.C.,
IGCC–IR/PS luncheon, 26 June 2000

For decades, Americans have been asking the European nations to do more for their own defense and for global stability. We in Britain have always been serious players and done our bit—or more. Now we have decided that the time has come for Europe as a whole to get its act together. Should the United States be alarmed? I don't think so.

I have heard the question asked, why should 274 million Americans pay to defend 200 million rich Europeans against 100 million poor Russians? Now, this is not an image I entirely share. And I hope that all of you here today would acknowledge the importance of continuing U.S. engagement in the wider defense scene. Stability both in Europe and across the globe is in all our interests. But there is a point to the question.

It is surely wrong that Europe should only provide such a small proportion of the forces required to solve a problem on its doorstep. Over Kosovo last year we Europeans flew only a third of the sorties, and only 20 percent of the strike sorties. It was American military power that made the diplomatic campaign credible. True, the overwhelming majority of forces now in KFOR—over 80 percent—are from European nations. But deploying a force of a few tens of thousands, less than 2 percent of the total military personnel available to us, has stretched Europe's collective resources and forced Europeans to ask some very searching questions of themselves.

This is just not good enough. It is not right from an American perspective. Why should you take the weight of the risks? Why should you bear the majority of the financial burden? And it is not right from a European perspective. The European Union increasingly has an image of itself as a significant actor on the world stage, and this is increasingly an accurate image. But, as Kosovo demonstrated, when push comes to shove, a lack of European military capability makes it a potentially hollow image.

Together, in Europe, we are trying now to put that right. At the Helsinki Summit in December, the European Union took a major step toward addressing the capability problems so evident in Kosovo. We set ourselves a so-called Headline Goal to improve Europe's ability to put more forces into the field, and to put them there more rapidly.

Even this clear goal—a straightforward determination to improve our military capability—has been obscured by some with a political case to grind. I should like to take this opportunity to explain some of the background and ensure that, here in California, you understand what we are doing.

As a country which prides itself on our armed forces, and our serious commitment to defense, it is crucial to us that European defense arrangements should work, and work well. They should be coherent, capable, and efficient. They should reflect the likely challenges of the future. They should be flexible, adaptive and dependable.

To a great degree, this is something we already have. Our security, and that of Europe, rests fundamentally with NATO. The Allliance has been our guarantor of safety for over fifty years and we do not see that changing. As the Washington Summit last year demonstrated, and as the performance in Kosovo revealed, the Allliance has remarkable resilience and is able to modernize itself in the face of change. It is, without doubt, a tremendous success and something that is of enormous value to us.

So NATO adaptation is a sign of strength. So too are the changes we have been seeking in Britain and in Europe. When the Labour Government came into office in 1997, we undertook a strategic review of our defense and security structures. We wanted to take full account of the changes in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and restructure our forces to face the probable challenges of the new century.

Our review took some brave, but sensible decisions and we are now well on the way to restructuring the British Armed Forces to face the years ahead. We are modernizing the whole of our defense structure, from the farthest end of the procurement chain right through to our frontline capabilities.

Europe as a whole must do the same. In defense terms, many European nations are in a similar position to Britain three years ago. The European defense effort has not yet fully adapted to the post-Cold War world, let alone the world as it will develop over the next fifteen to twenty years. Europe takes a leading part on the world stage, economically, and politically. But with that role come responsibilities to international security.

This means that Europe must become more engaged in crisis prevention and resolution and should have the capability to be engaged in a meaningful way. The Anglo-French Summit at St. Malo in December 1998 sparked the debate. What we have seen since then is a succession of rapidly evolving ideas that led to the Helsinki European Summit a year later. These ideas are essentially practical. And they have been validated, by the clear lessons of the Balkans crisis.

Skeptics—particularly here in the United States—have tended to react by reciting that famous advertising quote: "Where's the beef?" A fair question. This will all take time and effort. But it is not just about spending more money, as some contend. Very frankly, that is not on the agenda for many European countries running sizeable budget deficits.

But in any case, as the Kosovo experience indicated, Europe's problem is not so much the quantity of its defense spending, but the quality. Europe spends 60 percent of what the U.S. defense totals. But, self-evidently, we do not generate 60 percent of the bang for our buck (or euro).

So, we need to generate more real, useable, military capability. That is what we are seeking to achieve. Not some fine-looking window dressing, but improvements in our collective ability to conduct operations in the real world. Not institutional change for change's sake, but changes that will permit us to be better at making a difference in the world. Change that will provide us with a collective military capability commensurate with the place that Europe takes on the world stage.

I want to stress not only what this will mean but also what it will not mean. We have no intention of giving Brussels bureaucrats a role in military command; and we have no intention of moving towards a trans-national "Euro-Army." We believe that would be damaging to NATO and consequently extremely dangerous, not least to our own national interest. We know what works—NATO does—and we have no intention of ruining an organization that has reliably provided Europe with its security for the last half-century.

For meaningful large-scale military operations, NATO remains, and will remain, the only game in town. It will be the sole organization for collective defense in Europe. It will be the organization that we expect to turn to for significant crisis management operations. The EU will only act where the Allliance as a whole is not engaged. For all practical purposes, this means when the United States, for whatever reason, does not wish to commit forces to an operation. We naturally hope that this will prove to be a rare occurrence. But we have to be realistic and honest with ourselves. It is not reasonable to assume that the United States will always feel able to involve itself in crisis management operations.

But even in these circumstances, the arrangements being worked out between the EU and NATO will allow for the EU to request the use of NATO's commonly-held assets and capabilities—principally its operational planning and C2—to assist in the planning and conduct of a European-led military operation.

This is an extremely important aspect of the initiative. We must avoid at all costs duplicative arrangements which would create transatlantic confusion or misunderstanding. Close EU/NATO cooperation will be the watchword. Equally important, it is simply not sensible, practical, or frankly, affordable to duplicate the NATO structure in some form of Euro-defense arrangement.

If you are still skeptical, I urge you to look closely at the language that came out of the Helsinki European Council. EU heads of state and government have committed themselves to be able, by 2003, to deploy rapidly and sustain for at least a year, forces of up to corps level—50–60,000 personnel—for crisis management tasks; as a contribution to a NATO-led operation, or for an EU-led operation. This is a challenging, but realistic target. Meeting it will require the modernization of Europe's armed forces. It will mean making them more readily deployable, and sustainable in areas where local infrastructure may be very limited, both major themes in our strategic defense review. It will tackle just those areas where Europe has proved itself to be weak.

So ESDI is all about enhancing military capability. It is not about political niceties. We are setting real-world, measurable targets for improvements in military capability. We are talking about improving our ability to contribute to coalition operations, be they within NATO, or without. When one considers the issue this way the conclusion should hardly be surprising: This is a "win-win" program for both Europe and NATO.

In summary then, the European nations are rich and populous. They are taking a leading part on the international stage. For that role to be credible, and for us to be able to influence the world for good in the way we would wish, we are going to have to improve our military intervention act.

The truth of the matter is that, at the moment, our collective ability to engage in such intervention is extremely limited, relative to the size, resources, and political will of the European Union. This is because there is something badly wrong with many of the military structures on which we, as Europeans, collectively spend so much but which deliver so little real capability. We must modernize them.

In Britain we have taken a practical lead through the medium of our strategic defense review. We have also taken the lead in energizing the debate that is a necessary part of the process of rebuilding forces Europe-wide. That debate is bound to be an active, and sometimes contentious one. I urge you not to allow the political rhetoric—of either Eurosceptic or Europhilic persuasion—to blind you to the true aim of the project set out at Helsinki, which is, simply, to obtain more useable military capability for every dollar (or euro) spent by the EU nations. The biggest mistake anyone can make is to see this as some form of contest between the NATO and the EU, let alone the United States and Europe. The European Defense Initiative will strengthen both the Atlantic Allliance and the EU. In doing so, it will help strengthen European security, and it will mean that Americans will have to shoulder less of the burden for European security in the future. These are, I hope, aims you can support.