WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION
Dr Glen
Segell
Abstract
The latest enlargement of the NATO alliance, the fifth in its 55-year history came on March 29, 2004 to 26 members. The enlargement came weeks before a strategic enlargement of the European Union on May 1, 2004 – also the fifth enlargement in it’s 47-year history to 25 members. After the two enlargement processes, the two organizations will have 19 members in common. Clearly the two enlargements are intertwined since members of each entity will not be able to function independently or commit forces simultaneously. This article captures a moment of history: a) detailing NATO enlargement (2004) and b) informing of relations between NATO and the European Union showing the emergence of a viable EU CFSP/ESDP.
Introduction
Historically the relations between the USA and Europe in NATO have never been smooth from Kennedy’s Grand Strategy to Nixon’s attacks on those ‘free-riding Europeans’ and from the INF debate to Clinton’s Transatlantic Agenda of the 1990s, furthered by the question of burden sharing in manpower and equipment. Despite this NATO has continued where the latest enlargement of the alliance, the fifth in its 55-year history took place on 29 March 2004. The enlargement came weeks before an enlargement of the European Union (EU) on 1 May 2004 – the fifth enlargement in it’s 47-year history. NATO is a very different organization to the EU. NATO is a Cold War political-military alliance for ad hoc opt-in/opt-out missions once referred to as ‘To keep America in, Russia out and Germany down.’ The EU is a federal union that has a single currency, a judiciary as the highest court of appeal to citizens of the EU, a functioning civil-service, an elected parliament and agreements on social, culture and health issues to name just a few. Between march and May 2004 the mass media highlighted that ever increasingly European individuals are finding their political identity with the EU rather than with sovereign states especially since the 25 EU states are not homogenous to the over 100 nations that reside within its borders. For example, EU citizens may vote and stand for election in their EU country of residence which is not necessarily their country of citizenship. The mass media surveyed that with the development of the EU’s common foreign and security policy, it’s subordinate European security and defense policy (CFSP/ESDP) and with EU enlargement is the understanding that NATO is less relevant to the territorial defense of European states. There are no massed armies on the European continent threatening invasion of the external borders of the EU. Shipping in the Atlantic Ocean is not threatened. The internal security of the EU is handled by local police coordinating through the EU agency EUROPOL given the open orders between member states. Furthermore the USA out of its own considerations is ever increasingly reducing its military presence on European soil.
The future of NATO in its present structure is in doubt. This does not in any fashion imply that NATO will cease to exist. It does not imply that the values and missions of NATO are in risk. The considerations of individual members states of NATO shows that if NATO is to continue it will need restructuring. Restructuring and indeed enlargement being a well accepted and ongoing process of NATO since its inception. Options are offered by considering the recent enlargement decisions of NATO and the EU. Although there is no indication that the enlargements of NATO and EU are formally linked in any fashion they are clearly intertwined given that there are now 19 states that have membership of both organizations. It is humanly not possible for political and military elites in these states to make decisions without considering the three options – 1) an independent stance, 2) with the EU or 3) with NATO. The sovereign members of NATO and EU have expressed in membership of the two entities that there is a common set of norms and values. This was evident when President George W Bush (Bush 2002) addressed tens of thousands of people in the Romanian capital Bucharest, praised the new members for bringing ‘moral clarity to NATO’ and reminded the world that ‘When NATO was founded the peoples of these seven nations were captives to an empire... They endured bitter tyranny and struggled for their independence. They earned their freedom with courage and perseverance, and today they stand with us as full and equal partners in this great alliance.’ The common norms of NATO and the EU are expressed in membership criteria including: democratization, preservation of the rights of individuals; free market economic systems and the opening of borders. Clearly there is clearly an excellent working relationship between the two organizations – both headquartered in Brussels Belgium.
However, vacillation and indecisiveness prevails since prudence surely dictates obsolescence of NATO and the EU striving to do similar missions of security and defence – surely there could at least be a division of tasks to ensure a maximization of resources? It is therefore natural for sovereign states in Europe to question as part and parcel of their domestic decision-making ‘How do these two entities, the EU and NATO, play a role in my countries defense and security - and which one is more important?’ The question is more prevalent with the larger states such as Britain, France and Germany who are aiming to determine policies such as EU CFSP/ESDP while the USA leads in NATO transformation and deployment. The smaller states tend to find this somewhat irritating since they lack the resources and manpower 1of deploying to both the EU and NATO simultaneously. Nevertheless the smaller states are not less important since they have an inherent veto and could well be the arbiter of determining whether NATO collapses or whether EU CFSP/ESDP becomes more than just policy deliberations amongst the more powerful EU states. Further and integral to any debate on the future of NATO is a contentious and cumbersome subject – this being the lack of compatibility in equipment of most EU countries with America due to the asymmetrical technological and quantitative dominance of the later. It follows that any major NATO military operation remains American dominated.
Despite such military realities the most obvious reason for NATO to continue to exist is political. The trans-Atlantic alliance is a proven success of like-minded states. The missions of NATO cannot simply be transferred to the EU. It follows that both the EU and NATO continue to co-exist despite having similar tasks and missions. The following question then arises so why not rationalize NATO to three members: the EU, USA and Canada. First, neither France nor Spain is yet fully integrated into the NATO structure yet are established members of the EU. Secondly, European countries such as Austria, Finland, Sweden and Ireland preserve, for different historical reasons, their neutrality. Further the USA and Canada are not eligible for EU membership yet are integral to European defense – out of their own interests and choice and by invitation of European states. In time with the development of a EU CFSP/ESDP and NAFTA this may change. In consideration of these issues, the objective of this article is to capture a moment of history March – May 2004: a) detailing NATO enlargement (2004) and b) informing of relations between NATO and the European Union. This will be in a chronological pattern following the NATO (2004) enlargement process under three headings: Wither NATO; NATO (2004) Enlargement; and The EU Looks at NATO.
Wither NATO?
Enactment of NATO enlargement is a process of many years hence it was mere coincidence that in 2004 it occurred at roughly the same time as EU enlargement which is also a process that takes many years. In both the EU and NATO there is Treaty provision for additional states to become members. For NATO such enlargement is noted in Article 10 of the Washington Treaty (4 April 1949). This states that membership when invited to do so by the existing member countries is open to any ‘European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area’. Such attitude to membership rests on the rationale of NATO creation at the commencement of the Cold War with membership of like-minded states proposing democracy and free market economics in opposing dictators and the spread of communism. Since NATO’s creation in 1949, the Alliance has taken in new members on five separate occasions in 1952, 1955, 1982, 1999 and 2004. In this way, the 12 founding members - Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States - have grown to 26.
The original Treaty remained the basis for the alliance’s beliefs and practices though each enlargement process had its own pragmatic rational. The first round of enlargement took place in 1952 and brought in Greece and Turkey, thereby extending security and stability to South-Eastern Europe. Three years later, in 1955, the Federal Republic of Germany became NATO’s 15th member after the refusal of the French Parliament to ratify a proposed European Defence Community. Spain became the Alliance’s 16th member when it joined in 1982 after the end of the Franco rule in order to bring it into the fold of Western European states. In the wake of German reunification in 1990, it was natural for the whole of Germany, including the territory of the former German Democratic Republic, to come under NATO’s protective umbrella – even though this was not considered a formal enlargement process. These suited Cold War strategy to counter the Soviet Union’s policy of proxy expansion of communism in the form of Leninism-Stalinism.
Following the end of the Cold War specific programmes were established to promote links with former Warsaw Pact countries such as NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP - 1994). This was proven to be successful when the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were invited to begin accession talks at the Alliance’s Madrid Summit in 1997 and on 12 March 1999 became the first former members of the Warsaw Pact to join NATO. The purpose of this last enlargement shows that during the 1990s, in the immediacy after the demise of the USSR and Warsaw Pact, NATO became an agent of political stability and reform to the Central and Eastern European region in addition to an alliance of political-military necessity. This practice in its own right provided a sound rational for the continued existence of the alliance even though it no longer faced the enemy that had given rise to its creation. Despite the emphasis on enlargement it was also fortuitous that NATO continued as a military alliance given the advent of conflict in the Balkan region in the 1990s. This ethnic based conflict showed that military operations would remain a feature of the European landscape as would the need for the support if not the leadership of the USA.
The Balkan’s conflict (Kosovo War 1999) was a turning point for the survival of NATO. Lack of European capability yet the necessity for action led to the invocation of an American led NATO military mission. Combating “Ethic Cleansing” in the Balkans ensured the continuance of NATO as a political alliance even though it was clear that NATO as an effective military organisation was badly in need of reform. Human and equipment resources were not suited for the Balkan mission nor was strategy and tactics well thought out. NATO’s lack of restructuring since the Cold War almost proved its impotence to successfully meet actual needs. Both NATO and the EU took the Balkans crises as a pivotal point to contemplate practical ways forward. Ingo Peters (2004) writes that for the EU this meant decisions on the ongoing review and reflection to defense, foreign and security policies initiated in the 1981 London Report to the EEC and the Genscher-Colombo initiative. The NATO stance is detailed by the NATO Public Diplomacy Division ‘Issue Update’ on 2 December 2004 <http://www.nato.int/issues/nato-eu/eu-responsability.html> pertaining to NATO’s relations with the EU updating NATO Handbook (2001) Chapter 15. <http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/#CH15>
The contents of this ‘Issue Update’ depict the understanding that since the early 1990s after the end of the Cold War, after German unification and after the accession of the unified Germany to NATO, that steps needed to be taken by the European members of NATO to assume greater responsibility for their own and common security and defense. Understood was that America was reducing its presence in Europe notable since 1991 when it sent forces to liberate Kuwait in 1991 from its European bases but did not return these forces to Europe. The ‘Issue Update’ refers to CFSP that appeared officially for the first time in 1992 in the EEC Maastricht Treaty, referring to the Western European Union (WEU) as an integral part of the development of the EU. It explains why the WEU Council in June 1992 adopted the ‘Petersberg Declaration’ detailing ‘Petersberg Tasks’ for European forces: humanitarian and rescue tasks; peacekeeping tasks; and tasks of combat forces in crisis management. By 1994 the concept of Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) emerged for the EU to have an identity within NATO but also to develop with its own initiative for operations that NATO could not or would undertake as an alliance. Further at their meetings in Berlin and Brussels in 1996, NATO Foreign and Defense Ministers decided that the European efforts should be in tandem with NATO enabling European members to make a more coherent and effective contribution to the missions and activities of NATO. The FT (2002) reported that at the Summit Meeting in Madrid in July 1997, NATO Heads of State and Government welcomed the major EU steps taken with regard to the creation of ESDI within NATO. The French-British summit in St-Malo 1998 cleared the way, in spite of prevailing scepticism, for a European crisis management dimension, well coordinated with NATO.
Given such steps it was clear that NATO needed to clarify and to coordinate efforts amongst its member states and with the EU. The Summit meeting in Washington in April 1999 agreed on the ‘Berlin Plus’ arrangements (Para 10 of the 1999 NATO Washington Summit Declaration). These comprised four elements: 1) assured EU access to NATO operational planning; 2) presumption of availability to the EU of NATO capabilities and common assets; 3) NATO European command options for EU-led operations, including the European role of Deputy SACEUR; and 4) adaptation of the NATO defense planning system to incorporate the availability of forces for EU operations. To enact these and following the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty on 1 May 1999, the European Council met in Cologne in June 1999 to give the EU the means and capabilities needed for the implementation of ESDP. Hence at its ministerial meeting in Marseilles in November 1999, the WEU transferred the functions it originally had to conduct the Petersburg tasks to the EU. The EU ‘Helsinki Headline Goal’ launched in December 1999, - since superseded by objectives set in the ‘Headline Goal for 2010’ - foresaw the creation of a rapidly deployable corps-sized European military capability. This was the clearest manifestation of the objective for the EU to deploy and sustain for at least one year, military forces of up to 60 000 troops to undertake the full range of the ‘Petersberg Tasks’. Such forces would, by virtue of resource limitations, be the same forces deployable to NATO and to the EU.
Diplomatic means to enhance NATO capabilities was simultaneous to negate the need to utilise such forces on the European continent, not to provoke a new arms race, and to placate Russian apprehension. Part and parcel of these diplomatic efforts was an agreement to permit Central and Eastern European (former Warsaw Pact) countries aspirant to NATO membership to participate in the Membership Action Plan (MAP). MAP, being NATO program of advice, assistance and practical support tailored to individual needs has as it’s main features the submission by aspiring members of individual annual national programs on their preparations for possible future membership. This covers: political, economic, defense, resource, security and legal aspects; a focused and candid feedback mechanism that includes both political and technical advice; annual meetings between all NATO members and individual aspirants at the level of the North Atlantic Council to assess progress; and a defense planning approach for aspirants which includes elaboration and review of agreed planning targets. These include providing evidence: that aspirant states have a functioning democratic; a political system based on a market economy; that they treat minority populations in accordance with the guidelines of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); that they have resolved outstanding disputes with neighbours; that they have the ability and willingness to make a military contribution to the Alliance and to achieve interoperability with other members’ forces; and are committed to democratic civil-military relations and institutional structures. In short a programme suited to alleviate any identifiable causes of the Balkan conflict and thus to pre-empt the need for military action!
With this in progress, and with announcement that the EU was also due to enlarge, it was natural in July 2000 to establish NATO-EU ad-hoc working groups to accelerate progress in four specific areas: 1) defining security arrangements for Europe; 2) developing permanent arrangements for consultation and cooperation between the two organizations; 3) defining modalities for EU access to NATO and assets; and 4) implementing EU capability goals. The same month, NATO and the EU Council Secretariat established an interim security agreement key to their working relationship governing the exchange of classified information between the two organizations.
An exchange of letters between the Secretary General of NATO and the Presidency of the EU on 24 January 2001 marked the beginning of institutionalized relations between the two organizations. Envisaged were at least three meetings at Ambassadorial level and one meeting at Ministerial level every six months. The first formal meeting of NATO and EU Foreign Ministers took place in Budapest in May 2001 in the margins of the Ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council. In spring 2001, the Secretary General of NATO was invited for the first time to brief the EU General Affairs Council on NATO policy. Since then, regular meetings of the EU Political and Security Committee and the North Atlantic Council have become a normal feature of security cooperation.
It was in this forum that the real test for NATO’s continuance arose after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA. These terrorist attacks led to the first ever invocation of the NATO collective self-defense clause namely Article V ‘an armed attack against one or more [allies] shall be considered an attack against them all’ - by European members of NATO and not by the USA. The USA, quite rightly so, was apprehensive and wary to permit any foreign troops and equipment onto its shores given that she was not certain from whence the attacks originated or why. Subsequently EU decision makers were given cause to question if America would be able to defend Europe if America was under attack at the same time as Europe, maybe from different sources, and if not what provisions would be needed inside the EU to defend itself independently.
In realization of its limitations to assist the USA and indeed to assist itself independent of the USA, the EU was prompted in November 2001 to create the European Capability Action Plan (ECAP). The aim of ECAP was to identify required capability (by procurement or non-procurement initiatives) and to implement concrete projects through acquisition or other solutions such as leasing, multi-nationalization and to consider possibilities for role specialization. To operationalize such capability the EU also created permanent military structures, including a Military Committee and a Military Staff that are subordinate to the already formed Political and Security Committee. In doing so there was emphasis to develop arrangements for full consultation, cooperation and transparency with NATO and to ensure the necessary dialogue, consultation and cooperation with European NATO members which are not members of the EU on issues related to European security and defense policy and crisis management. For example, Segell (2004) details how EUROPOL handed over all its data to America to assist anti-terrorist operations within days of the 9/11 attacks while a formal EU-USA Treaty was signed shortly afterwards.
Whilst NATO and the EU found their footing seven Central and East European states gave formal indication that they wished to join NATO and were given approval to commence accession talks. These were Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia, all formerly part of the Warsaw Pact, and Slovenia. Three further candidates - Albania, Macedonia and Croatia - were turned down as they not yet met membership criteria on democracy and reform, though were informed that the door remained open for their future membership. The BBC reported the Secretary-General of NATO George Robertson (Robertson 2002) when announcing the invitation stated ‘This round of enlargement will maintain NATO’s strength and its vitality as well ... Since its inception NATO has never been exclusive ... NATO’s door is still open.’ He also stressed that the enlargement was not aimed against Russia.
In order to formalise the enlargement process a Summit was held in Prague (2002) where agreement was also reached for the creation of a NATO Response Force and the streamlining of the NATO military command structure. Further NATO abolished 142 of its 467 internal committees and aimed for a new partnership with Russia. A NATO missile defense study was also undertaken to ascertain if America could provide a missile shield for Europe in the same fashion that it had once provided a nuclear umbrella. Specifically SACLANT which had once held responsibility for shipping in the Atlantic Ocean become Allied Command Transformation (ACT) to integrate doctrines and technologies while SACEUR responsible for massing large land and air forces in Europe and Africa became Allied Command Operations (ACO). Initially ACO was detailed to form two Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) capable of deploying on a global basis for anti-terrorist operations and for humanitarian and peace-enforcing missions with visions to migrate into a more mobile, versatile and specialist NATO Response Force (NRF) by 2004. To suit this a Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI), was launched in December 2002 to complement the Prague Capabilities Commitment, designed to improve overall Alliance military capacities. NATO is open about these changes and continues to publish relevant documentation and updates on its web-site <http://www.nato.int>
NATO (2004) Enlargement
It was agreement at the Prague Summit (2002) that formerly gave consent for NATO enlargement (2004). Once it was clear that the aspirant countries were capable of meeting criteria of democracy and reform a timetable was established based on several issues, including existing MAP objectives. From such ‘Partnership Goals’ – four reasons emerged why such NATO enlargement should take place: 1) enlarging NATO was viewed as making it politically stronger; 2) enlargement secured the democratic gains in Eastern Europe; 3) enlargement fostered regional stability; and 4) enlargement erased Stalin’s artificial dividing lines of Europe. In sum NATO enlargement was seen to reinforce confidence among states, and the overall tendency toward closer integration and cooperation in Europe - a goal that coalesced with EU enlargement criteria.
To achieve NATO enlargement in a coherent fashion, five steps were formulated in the NATO accession timetable that is detailed by NATO <http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/2002/0211-prague/more_info/membership.htm>. The first step was the formal accession talks (December 2002 - March 2003) comprising a series of meetings between a team of NATO experts and individual invitees to discuss and formally confirm their interest, willingness and ability to meet the political, legal and military obligations and commitments of NATO membership as laid out in the Washington Treaty and in the Study on NATO Enlargement. This included their contribution to NATO’s budgets – that depended on their economic well-being. This was not only suited to NATO membership but was of direct relevance to stability and progress in the European continent as a whole.
At the same time the EU, on 13 December 2002, issued a Declaration on the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Similar to the NATO Prague Summit (2002) intentions the EU confirmed that it intended to establish rapid reaction ‘battle groups’, consisting of nine units, each with up to 2000 soldiers, for quick deployment to hot-spots anywhere in the world operational by 2007. The training for commitment to these two forces (EU and NATO) and indeed the forces themselves would be near identical given that neither entity has standing permanent forces ensuring that in reality it is independent states, as members to each organization, that commit these forces to the chosen organization and undertake the training. Clearly the nature of the decision will be political on a national basis as to which organization to deploy for each specific operation.
Individual states therefore coordinated domestic preparations for the first step of NATO enlargement with their aim to implement ESDP leading, on 14 March 2003, to the signing of a landmark agreement by the Secretary-General of NATO (Lord Robertson) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece (George Papandreou) on behalf of the EU Presidency. This NATO-EU Agreement on Security of Information (NATO 2003) was essential to incorporate daily practices of NATO with those of the EU. It is thus evident that a two-way street of defence arrangements exists between the EU and NATO, albeit with US dominance in NATO and a lack of singularity in EU policies.
As an effort to develop more effective military capability requirements common to the two organizations, the NATO-EU Capability Group was established meeting for the first time in May 2003. The first goal was to ensure consistency between activities underway in the ECAP and the Prague Capabilities Commitment, and the coordination between the NATO Response Force and the EU Battle Groups. Simultaneous was the second step of NATO enlargement (January 2003 - March 2003) entailing the invitees to send letters of intent to NATO confirming their interest, willingness and ability to join the Alliance.
The third step of NATO enlargement (March 2003) was the signing of the accession protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty where the aspirant states became signatories to a series of agreements relating forces as well as technical and information matters. There was thus consent to the concept of ‘Status of Forces’ that covers the terms under which the forces of Allies may operate in a NATO country, for example in relation to exercises or operational military deployments. This was of direct relevance to the EU given that the aspirant states were consenting to opening their borders to other NATO forces – also the first step towards an integral aspect of membership of the EU being the free movement of people and goods. Subsequently representatives of the invitees were permitted to attend North Atlantic Council meetings and most NATO committee meetings as observers. In doing so each aspirant state had to implement measures to ensure the protection of NATO classified information, and prepare their security and intelligence services to work with the NATO Office of Security.
This paved the way for the first case of practical military co-operation between the EU and NATO. The EU launched its first military operation ‘Operation Concordia’ in March 2003, taking over from NATO when Operation Allied Harmony officially terminated in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia while making recourse to NATO assets. This cooperation was so profound that the operational Commander of the EU-led mission was NATO’s Deputy SACEUR, the number two of the NATO military chain of command, wearing a second European hat. The operation including the use by the EU of NATO’s assets and capabilities, was the first successful test of ‘Berlin Plus’ agreements. This EU-NATO co-operation was furthered between 19 and 25 November 2003 when the first joint NATO-EU crisis management exercise (CME/CMX 03) was held with discussions a month later for the termination of NATO’s stabilization force in Bosnia (SFOR) and its transition to a new EU mission. The EU’s first police mission started on 1 January 2004 when more than 500 officers, wearing their national uniforms but with an EU insignia, took over the operation led by the United Nations.
Out of formality and without any EU objection the fourth step of NATO enlargement was enacted - for the governments of existing NATO member states to ratify the protocols of accession, according to their national requirements and procedures. For example, the United States required a majority of two-thirds to pass the required legislation in the Senate. Elsewhere, for example in the United Kingdom, no formal parliamentary vote is required. With the ratification of the protocols by the French Senate on 5 February 2004, all NATO member states had completed the process. Once the ratification process was complete, the NATO Secretary General invited the prospective new members to become parties to the North Atlantic Treaty.
This opened the way for the fifth and final step of the NATO enlargement process, namely accession to the protocols by each invited country in line with its own national procedures, followed by the deposit of the ‘instruments of accession’ with the US State Department, the depository of the Washington Treaty, at a ceremony at the White House in Washington DC on 29 March 2004. A flag raising ceremony to mark the accession of these seven new members of NATO took place on 2 April 2004 in Brussels. With the admission of the new countries, NATO now has 26 members. These successes highlight NATO (2004) enlargement may not be the last. At present, three countries - Albania, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - are members of NATO’s MAP.
The newly enlarged NATO (2004) is also a restructured organization in line with the Prague Summit (2002) intentions: a new command structure; a series of initiatives to improve military capabilities; a new committee structure; and a NATO Response Force. All of these suggest a move from a regional collective defence organization to an entity capable of global military operations for peacekeeping, against terrorism and against states rogue to the norms of arms control instilled in internationally negotiated and agreed upon treatise. From the onset it was noted that NATO enlargement was not just symbolic. NATO has a single air space where Belgian F-16 aircraft began to immediately patrol the new Baltic NATO members – a practical demonstration of the alliance’s collective security arrangements where only fifteen years ago the same Baltic republics were part of USSR and fell under the air defence umbrella of the Warsaw Pact. Further NATO has deployed to Afghanistan as ISAF and is training Iraqi forces. These are an indicator of commonality of the norms and values of NATO and EU based upon their common membership. Such relations are confirmed in the EU Security Strategy produced in December 2003.
The EU looks at NATO
Despite the close working relations between NATO and the EU, the shared values and goals and the commonality of membership of 19 sovereign states there are fundamental differences between the EU and NATO. This pertains to the inherent differences between defence and security. Sovereign states consider NATO as a collective defence organization for the defence of state borders and the projection of values on a global basis with a Rapid Response Force. National armed forces committed to NATO are trained to fight with heavy industrial or technological capabilities such as tanks, aircraft, artillery and electronic means. This does not satisfy the security needs of sovereign states in the EU for the protection of individuals against crime and terrorism. Member states have not granted NATO the competency or remit for the gathering of data on individuals for anti-crime purposes in drug and human trafficking and organized crimes such as money counterfeiting and laundering – tasks that are also suitable for anti-terrorist analysis and action. It is highly unlikely that NATO will ever be granted such a remit. To do so would permit the alliance to intervene in the internal affairs of its member states on the basis of ‘internal threat’ rather than ‘external threat’. Hence within the EU as in the USA and Canada the task of security is the remit of local agencies such as the police. In the EU there is security and policy coordinating agency (EUROPOL) – an EU agency of ‘Justice and Home Affairs’ and not that of ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy’.
Essentially NATO as an alliance has little if any value within the borders of the European Union as a federal union of sovereign states. The sovereign armed forces available to NATO are not suitable for ethnic, religious or localized conflicts within Europe or elsewhere. To this end France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands signed an agreement to create the 3000-strong European Gendarmerie Force (EGF), to be operational by 2005 and based in Vicenza, northeastern Italy. The EGF is designed for international deployment: to restore public order; to bolster peacekeeping missions; to fight organized crime; and to monitor, advise, and train local police forces. The plan is for the new gendarmerie to be sent to places where law and order has deteriorated but not completely broken down, or where a conflict has subsided and heavily-armed troops are no longer needed. The EGF will have a core of 800-900 members ready to deploy within 30 days and a pool of 2300 reinforcements on standby. It will include elements from the French gendarmes, Italian Carabinieri and their equivalents from Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. As a prelude the EU has already established a European police structure that has carried out missions in Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia with a view to helping the three countries build modern police structures in accordance with European standards.
Such differences between defense and security do not diminish the value of NATO enlargement and restructuring in their own right as momentous events. However, placing the events in context shows that the defining event of spring 2004 may turn out to have had little to do with decisions taken directly within NATO committees and meetings. The motivating force and deciding organization for the future of European security is ever increasingly in the hands of the European Union. The EU began with six member states in 1957 promoting a sharing of resources to prevent another war between France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux states. In 1973 the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined the EU to make the membership nine states. Greece followed in 1981, and Portugal and Spain in 1986 - Spain at the same that it joined NATO. Austria, Sweden and Finland made in 15 in 1995.
To be sure a few weeks after NATO enlarged, the European Union opened its doors to ten new members, including eight former Warsaw Pact countries. The new member states in 2004 are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. This in 2004 makes the EU’s population 450 million, making it the world’s largest trading bloc covering the whole of Western and Central Europe with a Judiciary above that of its member states, a single currency in 12 of its states and a constitution under debate! Unique are open borders, permitting free movement to goods and people thereby reducing the need for standing armed forces for border defence. In this EU enlargement is a dialectic progression engendering a significant shift in the spatial reach of networks and systems of social relations to transcontinental (or inter-regional) patterns of human organization, activity and the exercise of power.
Given this EU integration is per se the process by which a number of historical world societies of 102 nations in 26 sovereign states are being brought together into a single system of governance including that of political-military relations. Increasingly the European Union may well be the dominant military and political actor in Europe and not NATO where French President Jacques Chirac (2001) could not have defined this more succinctly when stating ‘The Purpose of the European Union is to establish lasting peace on our continent. This is its task’. During the Cold War NATO and more specifically the USA through NATO was instrumental in promoting this but now the task appears to have moved directly to the institutions of the EU while NATO has developed roles more outside of Europe than on the continent.
Indicative of the growing global role of the EU is the ongoing assumption by the EU of NATO missions. For example in 2004 the EU took over two NATO missions – SFOR in Bosnia and ISAF in Afghanistan. In the former the EU force EUFOR took over from NATO in Bosnia deploying 9000 troops nine years after the Bosnian war ended. This was a seamless transition from the NATO mission (SFOR) - 80% of EUFOR troops changed their NATO badges for EUFOR badges while a permanent NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo (NHQSa) opened. In the later, NATO ISAF V under German Command had been a unique first for NATO being a deployment outside of NATO’s traditional ‘in-area’ regional role but handed over to ISAF VI under French command which in effect gave the five nation EUROCORP control of ISAF.
These are not ad hoc missions. The 263-page Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, unveiled in June 2003, creates the post of EU foreign minister entrusted with formulating EU-wide own foreign policy. Specifically Article 15(1) explicitly creates a federal national security structure superior to that of any member state, with EU competence ‘cover[ing] all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union’s security.’ Member states, according to Article 15(2), must ‘actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy’; ‘refrain from action contrary to the Union’s interests or likely to impair its effectiveness’; and ‘uphold the Union’s position’ in international organizations, including the UN Security Council. For the first time, policy will be formulated and managed by a powerful federal national security apparatus rather than national governments likely to consolidate EU-wide advances on issues such as conscription and procurement coordination.
Article 40 of the same constitution states that, ‘until such time’ as the common defense policy materializes, ‘the participating Member States shall work in close cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.’ No provision is made for cooperation after that time. Although the constitution states that the proposed common security and defense policy will ‘be compatible with’ that of NATO, NATO’S involvement in European security affairs once the constitution takes effect will be limited to providing life support for certain European national armed forces until the EU, in whole or in part, decides that ‘cooperation’ with NATO is no longer necessary. As a whole, the constitution makes clear that NATO is ultimately superfluous to EU security policy.
This will not happen overnight! Despite the apparent underlying judicial agreement for such a Constitution there is notable tension to implementation. For example in lead-in to the Iraq War (2003) the intra-EU crises was so deep that one point France and Germany, together with Belgium and Luxembourg, hatched plans for a ‘core Europe’ defense organization that excluded the United Kingdom. There were even proposals for two contentious parts of the EU draft constitution: the article committing members to defend each other if attacked; and that allowing a group of countries to move ahead with a defense avant garde. There was also a Belgian idea for the establishment of an independent EU operational planning staff in the Brussels suburb of Tervuren viewed in Washington as an attempt to create an alternative to NATO. It was only the end of hostilities in Iraq and astute diplomacy that ameliorated the crises but not the suspicion. There are also specific internal EU disputes to resolve - there is no need to look further than the historical and ongoing bickering between Turkey and Greece to realize what complications could arise.
Conclusion
The narrative of this article considered NATO (2004) enlargement and relations with the European Union. There is no doubt that NATO enlargement has served its intended purpose: to ameliorate tensions; to break down borders in Europe; to promote peace; and to enhance the democratic values and liberalisation of markets in former Warsaw Pact countries. This justified its existence as a political entity. To justify its military value NATO underwent a restructuring and migration of roles. These processes were detailed at the NATO Prague Summit (2002). At the same time the EU CFSP/ESDP and EUROPOL attained practicality while the EU also underwent a process of enlargement. It was noted that European defense differs from that of European security where the EU has progressively assumed roles, tasks and mission previously undertaken by NATO.
The first conclusion from the narrative shows that both NATO and the EU have similar views on the role of Response Forces set up by both organizations for roles outside of Europe. This is not surprising given the construction of norms for the use of force by 19 members states common to both organizations promoting the same set of values and foreign policy perspectives. In this NATO attains both strength and weakness. The strength is through unity where the institution of NATO provides a forum for consultation. The weakness arises should the EU and NATO consider the need to deploy a Response Force at the same time but to different geographical areas. The 19 states with common membership to both organizations clearly do not possess the capability to commit human and equipment resources to both entities simultaneously. In this CSFP/CESDP and NATO are mutually reinforcing.
The second conclusion is that there is rationale for the EU to have its own CFSP/ESDP and JHA for defence and to secure its internal security independently comprising three logics: 1) making the European Union’s voice and its values heard across the world; 2) deepening the EU integration process and 3) making the EU stronger to either please or to challenge the US either to strengthen the European contribution to NATO or to gain autonomy from US influence. These logics arise with the abolishment of frontiers between EU member states. Defending the security of the European Union from its most immediate threats will lie not in the hands of the armed forces of NATO. It will lie in the hands of internal agencies such as police that have both intelligence capabilities and executive authority in the use of armed force across borders with a European Union wide arrest warrant. Most of the needed security skills of the European Union are beyond that of NATO’s defense ken and lie in the hands of coordination of EUROPOL and EUROJUST with local authorities.
An analysis of this kind cannot avoid looking at the larger picture. The value added of NATO lies in its experience, the mutual defense commitment, and above all in the transatlantic dimension. So the obvious question is – ‘Is this dimension maintaining its relevance today?’ Even if perfect equilibrium between the US and Europe is not foreseeable, NATO is still an organization that can achieve ‘effective multi-lateralism’. History shows that America, Canada and Europe, working together in security, were a winning ticket for two World Wars. There is therefore good value to construe a viable and workable division of labor between NATO and the EU, functionally and geographically. Clearly neither NATO nor the EU will go away soon so long as there political will, courage and the vision to chart a course together towards a shared future. In Belgium, the relationship between Evere (NATO) and Cortenbergh (EU) is going to be there for many years though will probably go through cycles. It follows that the shaping of the European Union’s security architecture and its chosen strategy may determine NATO’s future role on the continent – the ‘in area’ decisions and operations. In turn it follows that the shape of NATO’s security architecture, such as the post-Prague organizations of Allied Command Transformation and Allied Command Operations, may determine both the EU and NATO’s future global role – the ‘out of area’ decisions and operations.
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