"The International Security Situation in Europe"

A German View

Prof. Dr. Margarita Mathiopoulos

Senior Advisor European and North American Markets, BAE SYSTEMS ; Professor of US-Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Security Relations, Technical University of Braunschweig; currently head of an International Commission reviewing the Greek Strategic Defense Requirements 2000- 2015

Is Europe willing to be a global player?

Any credible assessment of the New Security Environment can not overlook the realties of today’s post-Cold War world. The United States is the only superpower left, and it is economically, politically, and strategically and militarily stronger than ever before. But despite all of America’s muscle, it is , according to Samuel Huntington, “a lonely superpower that can’t do much alone.“ In order to deal with the threats that will surface in the 21st century- fundamentalism, ethnic strife, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and both traditional and new forms of terrorism - Washington needs a global partner who can act together with the United States as a global power. Europe is still the best candidate if it has the political will to project power, in fact if it is willing to become a world power in the 21stcentury. This new partnership will need to address the other political challenges of a multi-polar global environment, both old and new: The post-war period in the Balkans, India and Pakistan, the Turkish-Greek-Cypriot crisis, the situation in the Middle East, as well as a growing Russian- Chinese- Indian rapprochement. All this indicates a global trend: New global challenges require a new NATO.

The new NATO strategy decided on at the Washington summit celebrating NATO’s 50thanniversary, set the Alliance on its way to becoming the security organization of the 21stcentury. But new global challenges demand a newly strengthened and enlarged NATO, complete with new structures and new mechanisms of burden-sharing. Most importantly, there needs to be a more equal partnership between the US and Europe, one in which Europe is a strong pillar. Before this ideal scenario can be realized, however, there are preconditions that we Europeans must achieve.

Ten Years after the fall of the Berliner Wall the Cold War Europe can hardly be recognized any more. By creating a common European currency EU member states have bound their fate more closely together than ever before in European history. At the same time the EU is opening up to the East thereby overcoming the artificial division of Europe. With the irrevocable European Monetary Union (EMU) and the beginning of a ESDI and European Security and Defense Policy ESDP the Old Continent is on its way to become an equal partner to the US and a global player. Isn’t that reason enough to create new dynamic optimism in Europe? However, the prevailing mood after the Nice-summit in Europe is reluctance. Europe and especially its political elites seem to be more than indefferent vis-a-vis its own revolutionary accomplishments.

Is there a lack of ideas, visions and political will to make Europe a global power? Yet for the first time since 1945 the Old Continent has both the power and the freedom to allocate all this resources “to make Europe safe“ for the competition of the 21st century. The question is, whether Europeans have the political guts to do so. Meeting the challenges of the 21st^t century Europe needs a Grand Design.

· Europe‘s first priority must be the success of the European Monetary Union. In this century Europe can only become a global economic player- and be taken seriously by Washington- if it becomes economically efficient and competitive. In order to achieve this, the European Central Bank (ECB) must be strictly independent and apolitical, focusing solely on its monetary mission.

· The second priotity for Europe in its quest to become a global player is the successful restructuring and consolidation of its aerospace and defense industries, precondition to transatlantic defense consolidation which will narrow the technological gap between Europe and the United States.

The new Strategic Concept of NATO includes the request for a “cooperation in infrastructure, defense, and logistics“, and the need to create trans- atlantic synergies in procurement policies, and to develop further cooperation of the defense industries over the Atlantic in order to contribute to safeguarding inter- operability, scale advantages, competition, and innovation and to guarantee that NATO’s armament activities meet the developing military requirements. Also the Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI) signed by all member states at the NATO Summit in Washington and the High Level Steering Group instituted at high level for its implementation were necessary and overdue measures in order to merge strategy, defense planning, armed forces planning and their realization in equipment planning and available interoperable equipment and to render the highest political and military decision levels transparency. This initiative reaches far beyond the previous obligation of NATO planning and represents a decisive step towards binding common military demands and equipment planning as a principle precondition for defense cooperation within NATO and within the Euro- Atlantic relationship.

Against this background, the trans- atlantic defense cooperation has political, military and technical-economic dimensions: with regard to security policy, the cooperation in armament and defense forms a cohesive element in the Alliance and promotes the inter- operabilitty to stage joint military operations. As to the economic policy, a cooperation in armament and defense is required as it would be a waste of resources to develop and produce simultaneously some various types of combat aircraft, tanks or ships. Budget-wise, governments must jointly develop and procure, if possible, due to common military demands in order to use scarce resources economically. It is after all important to concentrate the technological top know-how available in the nations and to jointly use it. This is the only way how within the Alliance a changed complex security environment after the Cold War, the Gulf War and the Kosovo Crisis can be met with the necessity of more multi-laterality, more balanced defense budgets, an increasing specialization and competition and rising cost pressure.

Europe should recognize its economic and strategic interests and act politically and militarily accordingly. Europe needs a new NATO with a more global agenda, in which members will no longer just apportion resources and costs, but will share decision- making, risks, and privileges. The United States currently carries virtually all the risk of defending common vital interests where they are most threatened, both within Europe’s borders- as seen in Kosovo- and beyond. The Americans are slowly growing impatient with the European reluctance to use force beyond their own borders. Europeans must be made to see that if they do not assume their fair share of that security burden, the United States may not protect their vital interests forever. This might be especially true for the new incoming Republican Administration under George W. Bush.

Europeans will be asked to commit their forces to a more global power projection of the Alliance whenever common vital interests are threatened. This of course does not mean that all NATO members will have to join in all missions. Given previous experiences like that in Bosnia, NATO strategies and institutions could be restructured both to allow NATO members the option of non-participation, and to give non-members the chance to take part. Whatever the compromise is between collective defense, collective interests, and collective risks, the common global and regional interests and risks of the United States and Europe both demand and justify a new strategic concept and a new dynamic in the transatlantic partnership.

In many sectors, the operations of NATO in Kosovo signified painfully - now common knowledge - the technical and technological supremacy of the US in decisive sectors of military equipment, and revealed embarrassing military weaknesses among European nations, particularly in the areas of strategic lift, aerial surveillance and precision- guided weapons.

Europe is not yet the strategic actor it wants to be, neither the globally thinking and active partner the Americans would like to have.

· Europe’s third priority must be embracing ESDI and enhancing its defense capabilities with the kind of vigour seen in Britain, which has gone from being ESDI brakeman to being its engine. At Saint Malo, Blair insisted that military cooperation within the EU would never replace or compete with NATO, but rather would make NATO’s European arm more credible, thereby reducing the Continent’s dependence on the United States. Therefore the US have always supported stronger European defense cooperation, although some believed that this was only because such cooperation was never more than a vague , unformulated notion. Once it became clear that defense cooperation could actually become a reality, however, American policy- makers reacted quickly and positively. US- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright summed up the American position elegantly with the 3D- policy: no duplication, no de-coupling, no discrimination.

With Britain ready for the first time in four decades to participate in a Common European Foreign and Security Policy and to support ESDI, it appears old Franco-German “club of two“ is about to be replaced by a fresh trilateral relationship between London, Paris and Berlin, reflecting today’s new realities in post-cold-war Europe. Blairs concept of European crisis management catches on rapidly, dominating the agenda from Pörtschach to Saint Malo to the various summits in Washington, Cologne, Helsinki, Feira to Nice.

· Europe’s fourth priority must be opening to the East. NATO and EU likewise. At its anniversary, NATO made history by opening its doors to three new Central European members: Poland, Hungary ant the Czech Republic.

Throughout the Washington Summit, the allies stressed that they would not just pay lip service to NATO’s open- door- policy. Supporting the transition of the Central European economies by making EU-membership happen by 2004 is also in the West’s best interest, to ensure stability for all of Europe. Let me be clear: in the Euro-Atlantic context further EU and NATO- enlargement is imperative.

The basic decision, taken in the early 1990s, to admit the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was an important political step. Ten years later, Europe must again demonstrate political vision and courage to bring the project to a successful conclusion. But the project does not end with a successful first round of NATO- and EU enlargement. European unification- which we declared a decade ago as our historic mission and political responsibility after the fall of the iron curtain, will not be fullfilled until all aspirant countries become members of NATO and the EU.

And as NATO- Secretary General George Robertson stressed again and again one lesson of Kosovo is the value of the ongoing enlargement process. Not only did we benefit directly from the addition of three new Allies- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland- NATO received consistent support from many of the Partner countries which aspire to join NATO in future: Slovenia and Slovakia, namely Bulgaria and Romania. They showed that they, too, were willing to shoulder the burden when it comes to contributing to peace and security in Europe. Membership entails political and military responsibilities that aspirant members should be ready to assume.

The Membership Action Plan sets out more clearly defined targets for aspirant countries, and provide them with more feedback on their progress in meeting NATO standards.

Having said all this it seems obvious to draw the conclusion that after the fundamental changes in Europe and outside Europe and our experiences in the Balkans, Europe’s role is bound to grow.

Building European Defense Capabilities yes - but not against the Atlantic Spirit

The new security environment requires the Europeans to assume greater responsibility in crisis prevention and crisis management, when and wherever European and Atlantic security interests are involved. The new European spirit in matters of defense is also, of course, a result of progress in the integration of Europe. It is inconceivable that we can build a Europe able to cope with the challenges of a global world without having a more effective foreign, security and defense policy.

The efforts to strengthen Europe’s role in political and military crisis management should be guided by two principles:

First: Strengthening the transatlantic link will remain the central part of a policy aimed at achieving peace, security and democracy throughout the Euro-Atlantic area. No-one should believe that the importance of the new NATO and our American allies for European security would be reduced if Europe had a greater capacity for action. We have to avoid by all means that the nascent European defense force becomes a possible threat to NATO cohesion, as the designate Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, pointed out this week.

Second: Generating a European Security and Defense Identity by strengthening the European pillar of the Alliance and creating the political and structural prerequisites for a European Security and Defense Policy of the European Union are two sides of the same coin.

As for the necessary military capabilities, one should be clear: While collective defense will remain NATO’s business, effective crisis management will leave NATO and the EU with the same military requirements.

Our forces must be more mobile to deploy our equipment more rapidly; they must be more sustainable to ensure logistic support over a longer period of time and over long distances; they must have better command and control for more demanding missions; they must be available for more effective engagement in a wide array of missions; they must have a greater capacity for survival and, of course, they must be more interoperable for multinational operations.

Europe’s deficits in a number of these key areas are recognized. NATO’s Defense Capabilities Initiative, the EU’s Headline Goal and the EU’s Collective Capability Goals that were agreed upon at the Helsinki Summit in December 1999 complement each other. Both of these approaches will force national governments to do better in adapting their forces to the new requirements.

Like the United States, every European country has only one set of forces and one defense budget. So it would be seriously wasteful of resources to create new planning bureaucracies and autonomous force planning structures. Instead we should- by means of close NATO-EU co-operation –build on and use the existing NATO defense and force planning tracks. The agenda ahead is ambitious.

With regard to the EU, the tasks ahead are even more demanding:

· The EU’s Headline Goal of establishing a rapidly available land force totaling up to 60.000 troops and appropriate air and naval forces provides ambitious targets. By the year 2003, the EU wants to be able to deploy and sustain forces capable of accomplishing the full range of Petersberg tasks, including the most demanding, in operations up to corps level.

· At the EU Summit in Nice in December, the EU specified the basic structure of these forces, including command structures, command support and combat service support, naval and air components. And it structured the forces in a way that it should ensure their sustainability for at least a year.

· The EU is for the first time developing efficient mechanisms for political consultation and practical cooperation between NATO and the EU. This includes devising practical arrangements that permit NATO plans, capabilities and assets to be provided to the EU when needed, as decided by NATO at the Washington Summit.

· Last November, 20 EU members did specify their contributions to the Headline Goal at a Capability Commitment Conference. But the Defense Ministers did not explain though exactly at their December Brussels meeting how the new European Army is going to be funded.

Therefore Americans remain concerned that Europeans just talk big and will ask for American military emergency assistance again when push comes to shove. One of the reasons why Washington repeatedly insisted on and reminded its European Allies of NATO’s Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI). DCI is asking us Europeans for very good reasons to either underpin our new strategic claims both financially and technologically or just forget about it. There is a serious transatlantic capability gap. Only half of the 58 DCI measures decided on in Washington have been initiated by the Allies, thus reads the meager result.

Why NATO's future does also depend on transatlantic defense consolidation

Cornerstone of real compatibility will be the development of a transatlantic defense industry as a supporting pillar on which the future of NATO will rest. During a NATO- Workshop in Berlin last June, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rudy de Leon said: “If the Alliance is going to train and fight together, then we are going to have to build our military capabilities together. Indeed, the collaboration of the trans- atlantic defense industry is one of the critical pillars upon which the very future cohesion of the Alliance will rest.“ De Leon reffered to the US- Defense Trade and Security Initiative (DTSI), which was announced by Madeleine Albright at the Spring Meeting of the NATO Foreign Ministers in Florence last year and which will might serve Washington to bring a turn to its military export policy towards its Allies. The US- initiative is supposed to be based on the idea of a new understanding that a fair industrial, technological, and defense-related political cooperation between the Europeans and the Americans is the precondition for an equal and strong NATO partnership. As the cohesion of NATO in the future will depend very much indeed on transatlantic defense consolidation it will be crucial that the new US-administration makes this issue a key-point on its agenda.

For sure: neither America nor Europe can be interested in a transatlantic two- class society as it has developed in the wake of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).

This is especially true for Berlin. Europeans will have to spend in realistic terms two per cent of their GDP for defense if they want to reach their ambitious goals. Germany, the largest nation within the EU, is currently spending 1.3 per cent of its GDP on defense- a level undercut only by Luxembourg, the EU’s smallest nation. As far as investment in defense is concerned, Germany ranks on place 14 within NATO. These budget asymmetries will lead sooner rather than later to a shift in the European and transatlantic balance of power, if they are not corrected.

Germany has adopted its obligations related to DCI and the European Headline Goals. Therefore Berlin has to underpin its security and defense policy by providing the neccessary means, otherwise German security policy is threatened to become second class.

European defense will remain a bureaucratic paper tiger if its realization is not linked to a set of similarly tough and binding criteria as in the case of EMU. But first and foremost DCI and ESDI must be compatible to avoid the creation of a second bureaucracy next to the Alliance. DCI and ESDI I would like to repeat are the two sides of one coin. A serious enhancement of ESDI and ESDP can only be sensible if the EU uses NATO- bodies for its military planning. The outgoing US Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen invented at Birmingham the other day a formula which can meet the needs of the transatlantic security agenda in the 21 st century: ESDPS, the development of a European Security and Defense Planning System, which implies a unitary, coherent, and collaborative approach. This is an important opportunity for NATO and the EU not to miss, otherwise we might risk a weakening of the Alliance. A strong European defense and enhanced European military capabilities should be understood as a crucial step towards an equal partnership with the US and towards strengthening the transatlantic security agenda in the 21 st century to meet the new security challenges, ahead. America is a European power, and Europe is also an Atlantic power, and we need the Americans as they need us, to manage and balance together future evolving crises.

London, Paris and Berlin have to do their homework ...

My last point is that the transatlantic partnership is not suffering from too much America, but from not enough Europe; Europeans are facing today a unique historic opportunity, which is worthwhile not to miss: The EU summit in Nice was the beginning of the end of a special Franco-German relationship: therefore the road to a strong trilateral partnership between London, Paris and Berlin must be the strategic achievement for the first decade of the 21 st century. Meeting the challenges of the 21. century, Europe needs a new and credible Grand Design if it wants to become a mature partner of the US and a global player.

To be sure: Paris belongs into NATO, London into EMU and Berlin is urged to do its homework, setting its strategic priorities, defining its foreign policy goals and drawing the respective military, technological and security- related consequences. Strengthened by fulfilling such an agenda, a trilateral partnership between London, Paris and Berlin could become the turbo engine of European Integration. This also means that all three will have to agree very soon on four crucial policy issues:

- a common strategy and a binding time frame for further EU and NATO enlargement;

- a consistent European policy towards Asia that takes into account the latest developments in China, India and Japan;

- a European answer to the American NMD initiative, which is also in the European interest;

- and last but Not least a new realistic policy towards Russia.

Europe, which sees itself rightfully as the cradel of democracy, in the 21 st century has all the potential to stay a relevant factor in global affairs. To achieve this, however, all European states must be ready to accept and conduct in a common effort the role of a global power.

With the European Monetary Union in place the economic precondition for that role has been laid. If the Europeans make an effort to act coherently together politically, economically, and militarily, the markets will react positively. Given new global risks and conflicts of interest, though, it will not suffice to position Europe as a worldpower only economically- it also has to develop its military capabilities. A European Security and Defense Identity and Policy is not, to repeat, in competition to the United States or to weaken the transatlantic partnership, but, on the contrary, to strengthen the European pillar within the Alliance.

However, this European pillar will only be strong enough if Europeans are ready to underpin their political claim both strategically and in military and technological terms.

In the 21 st century the call for a European political will to assume the role of a global power is all but an imperial reflex. Rather Europe has to become a global player in order to prevent European civilization from becoming second class. Europe has given decisive impulses to a democratic global culture. Preserving and further developing this heritage is a challenge to European policy. The political will to exercise a global power- role is the prerequisite for a competitive Europe in political, economic and military terms, and for a Europe which cares to preserve its cultural identity, and the prerequisite for a mature partnership with the United States and a strong and balanced Atlantic Alliance able to meet the new challenges anytime- anywhere.