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McNair Paper 60, April 1999, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Allied Perspectives

4.

Europe and the RMA 

General Considerations

The RMA has emerged at a time when Western Europe is going through multiple transformations at once.  Military strategy and associated technological change will occur within the context of the "new" Western Europe emerging out of these bundled changes.  Military issues simply do not have a priority to be considered by themselves and are not at a high enough level in Western Europe to be considered an independent variable.  Using the language of social science, the transformation of Western European militaries today and the influence of the RMA are dependent variables.

The Western European model of development is undergoing profound historical change.  The place of the Western European economy, culture, and polity within the process of globalization is at the core of this historic debate.  How can Europe ensure a competitive place in the new global economy?  Which changes are necessary to enhance competitiveness?  Which legacies need to be overcome, transformed, or jettisoned? 

The impact of America and Asia upon Europe is a core part of the debate about the transformation of the European model. Meeting the challenge of the American economy, culture, and polity is a key driver for change in Europe today.  The growing impact of Asia upon Europe is evident in the currency crisis; French and German banks and firms have been deeply affected. 

The decision to adopt a single currency zone for a number of key Western European States represents an historical watershed to be crossed.  The emergence of a common currency, the "Euro," in 1999 will create the second largest economic grouping in the global economy.  The Euro zone will overwhelmingly be the largest economic interlocutor with the United States.  The requirements of a common currency will clearly drive economic restructuring and define political debates for many years to come.

The twin processes of the emergence of the Euro zone and globalization of the economy will drive the transformation of high- technology industries within Western Europe.  Partnerships within Europe and outside will significantly redesign the landscape within which technology policy is made and the operation of European firms and governments.  The impact of organizational redesign in the United States and the restructuring in Asia in response to the currency crisis will accelerate change in Europe.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left in place a Western European military posed to defend itself against a threat that increasingly had disappeared.  Western European military forces, doctrines, and technology quickly appeared to be "legacy" systems, rather than core requirements for national defense.

In response, the key states in Western Europe have all, in one form or the other, adopted force mobility and power projection as the new motif for the transformation of their militaries.  There is little consensus upon what this means and what this requires, but the project to transform militaries to provide for power projection is clearly a driver for change.

The RMA for Western European militaries is confluence of several challenges.   First, there is the need for individual European states to come to terms with the United States and other European allies in reshaping the military instrument.  No Western European State has the economic capacity and will to shape a national response to the RMA.  The inter-allied dynamic¾  European and trans-Atlantic¾ is a core aspect of a Western European RMA.

Second, the challenge of combining the transformation of European high-technology industry with new technologies for the military is central as well.  As Europe shifts from "legacy" systems to new ones, how will European governments redesign their procurement systems, force structure choices, R&D processes, and working relationship with industry (in Europe, the United States, and Asia)?  How does globalization of technology industries affect strategic choices in the domain of military technology?

Third, there is the question of the purpose for deployment of new technologies?  Which threats and what requirements are preeminent in shaping defense-planning options?  How can one transform extant military structures most effectively to meet longer term threats and requirements?

Fourth, there is the challenge of semisovereignty for the defense policy of Western European states.  Membership in the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for individual Western European states carries with it shared sovereignty to meet national interests.  How can one shape a "national" defense policy within key Western European states in a semi-sovereign environment?  How can key states effectively combine the requirements for fiscal support for economic and military transformation in a semi-sovereign environment?

In short, the RMA for Western Europe is part of a broader transformation challenge for the Western European model of development.  If Europe simply combines its strengths to become a mercantile power, then the RMA will not receive much support.  If Europe seeks to combine economic strength with diplomatic clout, then the RMA is part of a broader transformation of the military instruments available to Europe.

                   The Europeanization Challenge

The decision by the Atlantic Alliance to expand its membership is an important one, but equally important has been the decision to seek its military transformation and to seek to provide greater European capacity to operate jointly military forces in crisis settings. The decision taken in the Berlin conference of NATO in June 1996 to "Europeanize" the Alliance has been the catch-phrase to encompass the twin efforts to alter the military structure among Western European members of the Alliance and set in motion a process of power sharing with the United States in setting the missions and political-military tasks of the Alliance in specific operations.

After years of conflict over the question of the legitimacy of a European security concept coexisting with NATO, the ministers adopted a position embracing a European concept within NATO.  In the Final Communique for the June Ministerial it was argued that:     

Today [June 3], we have taken decisions to carry further the ongoing adaptation of Alliance structures so that the Alliance can more effectively carry out the full range of its missions, based on a strong transatlantic partnership; build a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within the Alliance; continue the process of opening the Alliance to new members; and develop further strong ties of cooperation with all Partner countries, including the further enhancement of our strong relationship with Ukraine, and the development of a strong, stable and enduring partnership with Russia.¹   

It was then added that "this new NATO has become an integral part of the emerging, broadly based, cooperative European security structure."² 

In the communique, the ministers went on to identify a number of key steps to implement the new concept, but most significantly they underscored the challenge of adapting Alliance structures.   

An essential part of this adaptation is to build a European Security and Defense Identity within NATO, which will enable all European Allies to make a more coherent and effective contribution to the missions and activities of the Alliance as an expression of our shared responsibilities; to act themselves as required; and to reinforce the transatlantic partnership.³ 

In the rush of publicity in dealing with the twin challenges to expand the Alliance and to build a partnership with the Russians, it is easy to look past the older challenge¾  now embraced by the June communique¾  of Europeanizing NATO.  In a book published by one of the co-authors in 1991 the importance of Europeanizing the Alliance emphasized:

 

To deal with the European security challenges of the 1990s and the superpower goals in the period ahead, Europeanization will become critical to the viability of the Atlantic Alliance and to the future of collective security within Europe.  Rather than being a sideshow to the dynamics of the evolution of the Atlantic Alliance, Europeanization will become central to the viability of the Alliance in the decade ahead.⁴ 

    But Europeanization is more difficult than a turn of phrase or a quick sweep of the institutional broom.  It requires meeting some fundamental challenges (even before taking on the even more difficult challenge of including new members and bargaining the Russians into a new European security framework).  As one NATO official confided, the danger for the Alliance is that the task of change within may be too difficult, so the way out may be to expand. If the Alliance is to remain useful militarily to its members, it is critical to ensure its viability in the years ahead, or we simply make the Alliance into the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or so ineffectual that member states will work bilaterally or multilaterally outside of the Alliance framework when serious threats occur. 

The first challenge for Europeanization is to come to terms with the security framework for European military operations.  Western Europeans are going through a profound historical debate about the development of the European Union.  Deliberations about a common currency, the national efforts to restructure budgets, reworking national budgets, and trying to make Western Europe more competitive within the global economy are a core dynamic in today=s politics.  The role of the EU is seen to be central in this debate by both elites and publics.  The European Union is also recognized by the United States to be a key player in the expansion of Europe and the bargaining with Russia to create a more stable and secure European continent. 

EU is a key partner in the transatlantic relationship, yet shows up in the NATO relationship only through another treaty organization, the Western European Union.  The June communiqué is both a breakthrough and a step backward on the important issue of eliminating structure duplication.  It has been recognized that it is no longer useful to maintain an ESDI outside of NATO and to duplicate organizational efforts.  Logically this should end the Western European Union (WEU) as an organization but keep it as a treaty.  The EU relationship to NATO should now become direct and replace the WEU as an organization interfacing with NATO.  The EU has the financial resources and organizational experience to bring to bear on the decisions and the resources for the political and financial tasks required by Europe.  It lacks the military instruments, but NATO will supply these, particularly as Europeanization proceeds and develops.

Task one is to eliminate the WEU as a confusing intermediary between the EU and to create a direct institutional link between the EU and NATO.  One NATO official pointed out the incongruities in the current arrangement.  In a crisis, the European ministers would meet as the EU, then as the WEU, and then move across town to participate in the NATO council.  Why the intermediate step, given the recognition of the ESDI in the new NATO?

The second challenge for Europeanization is to connect the RMA effectively to the transformation of European and American military structures.  As we have argued earlier, the United States is in the throes of a revolution in military affairs whereby new technologies are fostering organizational changes.  More joint operations, new command structures, new uses of intelligence data, an emphasis upon the use of technology to provide for battlefield awareness, the use of offshore platforms for deep strike, and the building of a "system of systems" to tie all of this together are driving the formation of a new military structure in the United States. 

But what is the relationship between the new dynamics seen in national U.S. structures and those of the Alliance?  Are the new technologies to drive the creation of a new military structure in NATO?  Or is the innate conservatism of the organization coupled with expansion of the Alliance going to exclude such innovation?

If Western Europe cannot shape some sort of RMA to work with the United States, the threat is that there will be a multiple-tiered Alliance.  The United States will be working in its own world, Western Europeans in their own, and the new member states trying to connect to their "partners."  It is difficult to have a real military alliance in such conditions, and the threat of this happening is real.  This challenge requires forging a European RMA center of innovation as well. If there is explicit emphasis upon Europeanization as a means to foster a Western European RMA, then the United States might see the benefits of changing the Alliance beyond the diplomatic shift of an expanded role for WEU and/or for new links between EU and NATO.  For example, the creation of new functional commands in NATO whereby the Europeans would work together to do power projection or combined operations together might form a useful learning test bed for the development of a European RMA. 

The most useful technology for the RMA is a new command and sensor system, which is most effective when knitted with joint operations.  Such operations are beyond the scope of most European national forces and budget levels.  Having interallied requirements would allow some of the new enabling technologies to become most desirable.  In a time of budgetary stringency, it is difficult if not impossible to get national commitments to such new technologies without a European (not merely a transatlantic) purpose to these technologies.  Western European governments are prioritizing the liberalization of telecommunication markets and the adoption of new telecommunication technologies.  These civilian efforts provide important bedrock for the possible commitment to new military uses of these telecommunication technologies.  But as the effort is European in the civilian domain, without a European focus in the military domain it will be difficult to encourage this aspect of an RMA.

The third broad challenge associated with Europeanization and the RMA is to accelerate defense industrial restructuring in Europe. The United States has undergone a radical restructuring of its defense industries in the past 5 years, and this restructuring will continue.  The reduction in budgets and the growing salience of commercial technologies and global markets will all continue to encourage defense industrial restructuring.

But defense industries on both sides of the Atlantic are more one another's competitors than partners, at least so far.  Indeed, unless there are effective efforts to forge joint technology projects, it will be difficult to sustain budgets in Western Europe that local defense industries believe beneficial to them.  The difficulty of cooperative defense procurement is legendary but in today's effort to Europeanize the Alliance it has now become a strategic requirement to encourage joint development and purchases by Euro-American defense industrial partnerships. 

In today's Alliance, the building of effective military forces requires connecting factors into a force development cycle (figure 1).  The Europeanization of defense industry might lead simply to a European preference option for the procurement choices of European ministers of defense (MODs) and might in turn reinforce the innate conservatism of Western European militaries.  Europeanization needs to be blended with a transatlantic RMA forged around specific interallied joint technology force-enabling projects. 

FIGURE 1.  The European military transformation dynamic

      The effort to alter the military structures of Western Europeans will be shaped as well by the impact of Asian developments. As argued above, the United States is in the throes of innovation in security policy with its Asian allies dealing with new threats and challenges.  Unburdened by slowly moving Alliance machinery, the United States can seek to innovate on a bilateral or multilateral basis with key allies.  Challenges from North Korea in the near term and China in the long term are driving concerns of key allies of the United States in Asia.  These allies do not have old defense industries and in today's competitive marketplaces can seek defense industrial alliances that provide cost-effective new technologies.  Without doubt, the experience the United States has in working with Asian allies will shape attitudes and approaches toward NATO allies.  There can be a reinforcing learning cycle or a cycle of innovation in Asia and a retrograde one in Europe. 

A final broad challenge for Western European States associated with change in the Alliance is the question of relevance.  In the politically correct world of European diplomacy, the two key threats that make a transatlantic Alliance necessary are not often discussed openly¾  the military threat from Russia and the cultural, economic, and eventually military threat from fundamentalist Islam.

The military threat from a Russian autocratic state is a key reason Poles would wish to be in the Alliance.  The Russians have for a long time worried that some sort of Europeanization would emerge that could indeed counter their military power and leave the United States free of excessive need to focus upon European defense.⁵  But will the key states in the Alliance allow the Russians to leverage the Europeanization and expansion debates and to significantly weaken military capability for an expanded or Europeanized Alliance? 

The threat from fundamentalist Islam is the underlying concern of several southern European governments.⁶  The competition between secular Islam and fundamentalist Islam is one in which Europe is a principal participant.  There is a growing and significant Islamic minority in Western Europe, which interacts with relatives and friends in North Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East.  Fundamentalist Islam is both an internal and external problem for Western European States and a key legitimizer of keeping an Alliance with the United States and for building a Europeanized Alliance.

NATO started to develop a more explicit Mediterranean policy orientation, but this has been put on the back burner for the moment in part because many players in the Alliance are uncertain about the wisdom of having an explicit policy orientation toward the Mediterranean.  But if the Alliance does not, or cannot because of political correctness, deal with the twin threats it faces¾  the Russian military and Islamic fundamentalism¾  its value and relevance to publics will not be evident.  Europeanization will simply be a step in the growing irrelevance of the Alliance, rather than a necessary passage for its revitalization.

And finally, Europeanization should not be seen as the means to better enhance Europe's ability to deal with "future Bosnias," a point often made by European statesmen.  This has the aura of preparing for the last war about it.  It is not clear that the next threat is another Bosnia or Kosovo.  Europeanization should mesh the ability of European militaries to operate in a variety of threat settings and to enhance interallied operations using new technologies as well.  Preparing for future Bosnias may be a chimera and look very much like preparing a military arm for the new NATO cum CSCE.  This is important but not enough to deal either with the threats Europe faces or to shape the strategic partner, which the United States needs and requires in the decade ahead.  

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Notes