Beyond Integration: Globalization and Maritime Power from a European Perspective

James H. Bergeron

It is common in discussions of U.S.–European Union (EU) relations to point out a supposed difference in strategic viewpoint between the two. The United States is often depicted (especially in Europe) as being overly committed to a neorealist vision of international relations—a world of friends and foes, deterrence, power, and conflict. In turn, European political culture is often described (especially in the United States) as immature, insular, naïve in its reliance on supposed international norms, and overly focused on diplomacy, development aid, and crisis management solutions to international problems. At the heart of these differences (and there are differences, although they often are distorted out of proportion) lies competing visions of globalization, based on different (but intertwined) historical experiences. This chapter explores the European concepts of globalization and examines how they have changed over time, particularly since September 11, 2001. It will then consider the implication of the European global perspectives for EU maritime doctrine and the future of its force structure.

Europe is at a crossroads in its global vision, a situation that has been developing since the end of the Cold War but has become an imperative issue since September 11 and the potential changes in U.S.–EU relations that may come in its wake. European states do not view the world similarly, but it has been the case the most European states have, since 1945, focused their vision on the European integration project to the exclusion of wider geostrategic concerns. This was partly and understandably due to the roles played by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during those years as the guarantors of Western defense. In contrast, the 1990s witnessed a slow development of European strategic consciousness at the level of EU institutions, culminating in the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and the development (at least on paper) of a European Rapid Reaction Force. All of this has been accelerated since September 11. The post-September 11 world creates both challenges and opportunities for Europe different from anything they have had to address for over 30 years, and for many EU member states, the revival of an old conundrum: the need for Europe to act as a global, rather than a regional, power.

European Integration as a Surrogate for Globalization

A linkage has always existed between the parallel European projects of integration and defense. Thus it was at the beginning. It is now mostly forgotten (especially in Washington) that the United States was among the main promoters of the failed European Defense Community initiative in the early 1950s. Instead of a separate European defense alliance, what developed was a selective European Economic Community (EEC)—guided by France and West Germany—with security provided by NATO, whose membership extended beyond the EEC.¹ By the 1960s, Europe was an economic, political, and security part of a grander transatlantic whole, of variable geometry, and with high tensions. It was the era of the Berlin airlift, the Cuban missile crisis, and the John F. Kennedy assassination. The Cold War was truly cold and threatened to become hot.

The period between the failure of the first EEC applications of the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1962, and the final accession of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark to the community in 1973 witnessed a substantial transformation in the global context of European integration. U.S.-Soviet relations stabilized. President Richard Nixon initiated a policy of détente with the Soviet Union and opened a diplomatic door to China. U.S. defense spending fell, the Navy shrank. The threat, such as it was, existed more in Southeast Asia than in Europe. Although at the epicenter of nuclear confrontation, the very enormity of such a confrontation reduced the likelihood, in the eyes of many Europeans, of a nuclear war ever occurring in Europe. Détente and the advent of arms control agreements reduced the nuclear specter still further. In Europe, the world of détente had become a more peaceable one, and it made possible the emergence of a different kind of EEC.

For just at that time, in the late 1960s, began the construction of a more autonomous, civilianized European Community (EC) that represented an inward shift in the global paradigm for many European states. Although the De Gaulle plan for a European Political and Defense Union had come to naught, his historic rapproachment with Konrad Adenauer in 1962 had created Franco-Germany as the center of gravity of a European project that would have a more commercial and social focus. The expansion of EEC economic and social law, including especially the free movement of persons, and the expanding constitutional law of the EEC Treaty emerging from the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg provided a foundation for a view of Europe as a quasi-federal entity, a constitutional legal order based on treaty.

This new Europe was one of trade and travel, of increasing labor and capital mobility, competition law and economic regulation, a bright Europe whose new optimism (at least within the EC institutions) was unblemished by the defense and security concerns that were the responsibility of the United States or the member states acting through NATO. Or perhaps, from an institutional perspective, the new Europe was a project of national foreign ministries, trade ministries, other ministries such as labor, environment, and finance, judges, lawyers, corporations, business and interest groups. Ministries of defense and the military had almost no role within the scope of the community and so naturally took their lead, and their focus, from NATO.

In effect, the common market had created a space for positive European cooperation, outside of the sphere of superpower confrontation (although supported by the United States for political and economic reasons). It also played an important psychological function, in making the EC member states masters of their own destiny, albeit within a narrow confine of interests, in an era of decolonization, the economic domination of the United States and growing economic rivalry of Japan, and the arrival from the late 1950s of new immigrant populations from the former colonies.² European integration itself thus represented a form of globalization, based on the rule of international law, supranational institutions, harmonization of laws and policies, and the free flow of goods, persons, capital, culture and ideas. It was a rational or planned globalization, brought about as an act of the sovereign wills of EC member states pooling their sovereignty. It was a very “European” globalization based on the assumption of managing technological forces through cooperation and legal regulation.³

The presence of the United States, in Europe and globally, was of course an essential precondition for this Brussels worldview. Defense could be ignored within the corridors of the European institutions precisely because it had been the first European market to have been integrated, through NATO.⁴ With defense sovereignty pooled in NATO under the leadership of the United States—and thus depoliticized from an internal European perspective—the EEC could develop a remarkable power-sharing model that gave influence to smaller states and the European Commission. In particular, the “big four” powers—France, West Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom—did not exercise the kind four-power directoire over Europe that might have been the case were political and security policy issues in play in the Council.

Ironically, the more stable world of détente allowed for the creation of a greater space for European foreign policy, at least in the sense of formal political declarations. The early 1970s witnessed the emergence of an informal European Political Cooperation in the Council of Ministers, European support for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (against U.S. policy wishes), and the rebuff of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s “Year of Europe” attempt to reexert a more robust U.S. foreign policy hegemony. The new emphasis from the 1970s to the 1990s was on the internal market, employment policy, competition, regulation, state aids, cohesion and development funds, free movement, economic and monetary union, subsidiarity, European citizenship. External relations were primarily concerned with economic relations, in particular the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, but also trade association agreements, and preferential agreements for former colonies and developing countries.

Yet it was in these years of European development, the heyday of the EC in the view of many, that Europe as a set of institutions withdrew further from security and defense concerns. It is noteworthy that during the Second Cold War following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and through the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces crisis, the Community developed no significant autonomous security policy or institutions. NATO, led by the United States, remained firmly at the helm of European defense policy. This was also the era of declining European defense expenditures and of a growing gap between European and U.S. military capabilities, as the United States turned to computer and information technologies to reinvent the art of post-Vietnam warfare.

The Cold War Ends: First Crack in the Assumed Security Paradigm of Europe

In 1986, the great European initiative was the completion of the internal market—the creation of a Europe without frontiers. Three hundred directives were to be implemented by the member states in areas such as banking and financial services harmonization, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, technical standards, and labor mobility. The process was to be completed by January 1, 1993. In fact, by that date, history had moved forward so quickly that the ambitious schemes of 1986 appeared as safe, technocratic, almost nostalgic in their orientation. In the interim period, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union had dissolved, a war had been fought in the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia collapsed, and the Balkan wars had begun. The member states of the EC, seeing the changes of the late 1980s and fearing in particular the prospect of a reunited Germany not solidly integrated into larger European structures, rapidly negotiated and signed at Maastricht the Treaty on European Union. The new treaty included plans for economic and monetary union, introduced the concepts of subsidiarity and European citizenship, and established two intergovernmental pillars for European cooperation in the areas of foreign and security policy, and in the area of justice and internal affairs. After 30 years of slow functionalist groping toward a political end, the process of European integration shifted into high gear.

This was so because the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union had partly undermined the foundations on which the détente model EEC had been built. The decline of Russia recreated the possibility of achieving the long-stated NATO goal of a “Europe whole and free,” but it also meant a reintegration project for Western Europe of gigantic proportions. American leadership in NATO, although not challenged, was less of an imperative of survival than it had been, and indeed substantial U.S. forces were withdrawn from Europe as part of the peace dividend. NATO was casting about for a role in the world. After 30 years of successful European integration, it was no longer clear that—as a sardonic adage maintains—NATO was needed to keep “the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.”

In response to the new situation, all major international security actors—NATO, the EU, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United States, and the European member states—attempted a reinvention of their missions. With the threat of invasion and war receding, policy emphasis shifted to instability and engagement as the practical justifications for NATO, ESDP, U.S. forward presence in Europe, and the defense budgets of the major European powers. General George Joulwan, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), summed it up in 1995: “Instability is the Enemy.” Across the transatlantic world, policy staffs set about building partnership programs, military to military contact programs with Eastern European states, a NATO Mediterranean dialogue and EU Barcelona Process with the southern Mediterranean states, a South East European Initiative for the greater Balkans, innumerable engagement plans attempting to prioritize engagement in favor of states representing both vital interests and high instability. By 1998, it was hard to justify military forces on the basis of defense alone.

Although the détente EEC has been undermined by the demise of the Soviet Union, a surrogate was provided during the 1990s by the prospect of security—but not defense—cooperation. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty on European Union created a European Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the pursuit of the Petersberg Tasks of peacekeeping and crisis management, including peacemaking. Although the CFSP chapter envisaged a future common defense policy, and perhaps in time, a common defense, all accepted this to be a distant and contentious aspiration. For the foreseeable future, security cooperation would be about solving other people’s problems, would not alter of central role of NATO in the defense of Europe, and would not put too great a burden on national defense budgets. The use of the term European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) was apposite—what was at stake in the first phase of the CFSP was the project of European state building and identity formation, to which a foreign and security policy was intended to contribute. CFSP/ESDI reflected a new awareness of global forces, and their potential impact on Europe, but these forces were viewed through the Balkan paradigm, as rooted in ethnic and religious strife, and having as consequences mostly human rights abuses, immigration flows, and perhaps the export of criminal activities.

ESDP and the Regionalization of European Global Vision

The end of the Cold War offered the EU the opportunity to create itself as a powerful entity and strategic partner of the United States in dealing with the challenges posed by peacekeeping, crisis management, and humanitarian intervention. But that opportunity was fumbled for almost a decade. In 1994, NATO agreed to a compromise in the form of the European Security and Defense Identity, a plan for separable but not separate European forces acting as a combined Joint Task Force, under the command of the Western European Union (WEU) but still within the overall NATO structure. Despite extensive doctrinal development, the WEU-led combined joint task force (CJTF) concept went nowhere. Divisions over recognition of the new Balkan states exacerbated—some would say caused—the onset of the first Balkan conflicts. In 1994, the EU was not able to take common action in Bosnia, leaving the initiative first to the United Kingdom and France, and then the United States. European states were once again startled, as they had been in the Gulf War, by the scale of American military superiority. They were also aware of the antagonisms that the dual-key UN–NATO arrangements had created, and of the evident desire of the United States for NATO to henceforth act outside UN control, perhaps without UN authorization. The hard bargain forced by Richard Holbrook at Dayton reminded the Europeans that, once engaged, the United States would insist upon the right to lead and set the terms of both conflict and closure.

The crunch came in Kosovo. Under U.S. leadership, NATO conducted an air campaign to force the secession of ethnic cleansing. Whether the air strategy was a success is debatable. But what was beyond debate in the capitals of Europe was the immense superiority of American air power, their command and control (C2) systems, satellite intelligence, strategic lift, and logistics, proven once again in the skies over former Yugosloavia. With almost 4 million men under arms, the collective member states of the EU were unable to rapidly deploy even 40,000 troops to Kosovo. Command and control relations were strained in the conflict, with several states demanding target list approval, and rumors of senior U.S. officers waiting until the allies were absent from the targeting table to “get down to business.” Even the United Kingdom felt a sense of exclusion from decisionmaking.

The NATO command structure was problematic in Kosovo, raising in clear relief a tension always latent in it: the role of the NATO SACEUR, the U.S. four-star general who was also combatant commander of the U.S. European Command. When NATO went to war, was SACEUR to act as an ally or as an American? Was he at liberty to consult with the members of the North Atlantic Council or heads of member states, or did he take direction from the Pentagon? As Wesley Clark notes in his recent book Waging Modern War, Washington was solidly of the latter view.⁵ General Clark’s difficulties with Washington and his early transfer from the SACEUR position convinced many in Europe that the NATO command structure was moribund, never to be used again. And not only because of a U.S. unwillingness to share decisionmaking with allies, but also because of an internal unwillingness in Washington to split decisionmaking between two top U.S. officers—the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and SACEUR.

Kosovo represented a moment of truth for the EU, and especially for France and the United Kingdom, the two remaining great powers in Europe. A sense of relative weakness in security capabilities coincided with a new Suez feeling that the United States could not always be expected to act in accordance with European wishes. For the United Kingdom, the experience of Kosovo coincided with the felt need of the new Labor government in Britain to exert more influence of European Union affairs, a prospect daunted by their nonparticipation in the Economic and Monetary Union. The result was the December 1998 communiqué of Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac at St. Malo, calling for the rapid development of a European Security and Defense Policy and the establishment of a credible, rapidly deployable European force for peacekeeping and crisis management operations. The European Summit in Helsinki confirmed the new Anglo-French initiative as a European project and established a Headline Goal process that would allow the EU to field 50,000 to 60,000 troops, plus required naval and air assets and to sustain them in the field for one year. The EU held a Capabilities Commitment Conference in November 2000, and a follow-on in November 2001, to develop its catalogue of force contributions. At Nice in December 2000, the European Council set out its proposal for cooperation with NATO, and the establishment of EU security institutions in the form of a Political and Security Committee of the Council, an EU Military Committee, and an EU Military Staff.

The emergence of ESDP is a foreign policy challenge for Washington, which has long called for greater burdensharing on the part of its European allies, while reluctant to accept a diminution of America’s leadership role in NATO that a more powerful Europe would demand. NATO–EU cooperation is a fraught issue and has not yet been resolved. In the aftermath of the St. Malo declaration, the United States took a hard line on ESDP, insisting that the EU not duplicate the planning role of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, and that EU force planning and generation be integrated with NATO in the person of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the senior European officer in the NATO command structure. The United States also sought regular meetings between NATO and EU committees, a form of diplomatic escalation dominance. In return, the United States agreed to grant the EU “assured access” to common NATO planning and command and control assets, and on a case-by-case basis, U.S. capabilities such as intelligence, reconnaissance, and strategic lift. NATO and the EU agreed a verbal formula that ESDP would be undertaken “where the Alliance as a whole was not engaged.” Whether that meant that the United States has a right of first refusal, or only whether the decision to take action must first be presented to NATO for agreement by consensus, has been left constructively ambiguous.

These so-called Berlin Plus negotiations between NATO and the EU continue and are in stalemate due to the Cyprus dispute between Greece and Turkey. An associate member of the Western European Union, Turkey considers the ESDP to undermine its strategic leverage in the eastern Mediterranean. It is concerned that the EU could take action in that area, and especially in Cyprus, without a Turkish veto as would be the case in NATO. The efforts of Greece to achieve accession of the island of Cyprus in the next round of EU enlargement, to the extent of threatening to veto any enlargement that does not include Cyprus, has added to Turkish concerns. Although promising negotiation between the two Cypriot governments are ongoing, no break in the Berlin Plus negotiations appeared to be on the cards at the time of writing.

Notwithstanding the lack of a formal cooperation agreement, NATO and EU political cooperation has been effective because of the excellent working relations between Secretary General Lord Robertson and Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for CFSP. There has also been very efficient coordination on the ground in Kosovo. As a French diplomat recently said, apparently with great concern, “NATO–EU cooperation works well in practice, but not in theory.”

Split in European Global Vision: The Neutrals

The European neutrals—Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Ireland—have watched these developments with interest and caution. The trend in European security relations after 1991 presents substantial challenges and opportunities for nonaligned foreign and security policy. The NATO Partnership for Peace and the establishment of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council shifted the defense debate away from questions of neutrality toward those of capabilities. Whether formal mutual defense agreements existed ceased to matter. With the threat of a unifying Soviet land invasion gone, not all NATO members would provide forces for every operation, and many of those contributing would be not members but partners. A new NATO convention was developing in which influence and even command responsibility would depend on the level of contribution, not the fact of NATO membership. Coalitions of the willing, based on individual and common interests, would go forth when necessary—a model followed in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. This change meant that the neutrals could play a greater role in international security affairs on a case-by-case basis without joining NATO or abandoning their formal neutrality. Of course, for those who associated neutrality with nonintervention except for UN peacekeeping missions, this was also a portent of deeper involvement in a detested realpolitik of international relations, in cooperation with a “nuclear alliance.”

For traditional peacekeeping, the experiences of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia and then NATO in Kosovo marked the end of an era. Bosnia was not ripe for a peacekeeping mission, and the UN forces were tragically incapable of carrying out their mandate. Peacekeeping had become peacemaking, not only in that case, but in paradigmatic terms. The UN, although still central to the global peacekeeping mission, increasingly mandates command and control to regional organizations such as NATO and perhaps the EU or to lead nations. Especially in the Balkans, support for peacekeeping would have to be done under UN authorization but NATO command. Having a voice in NATO operations meant having a voice in NATO, via the 1994 Partnership for Peace initiative.

The Irish example is illustrative of the difficult path between EU membership and security alliance. In the aftermath of Kosovo, the St. Malo declaration and Helsinki Summit propelled the EU into the security realm, making the decision by Ireland to earmark a light infantry battalion and Ranger platoon—850 soldiers—to the EU Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) a politically volatile one. In his November 18, 2000, announcement, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen laid out the concept and framework for Ireland’s participation in ESDP.⁶ In the view of the Irish government, the RRF provides the EU with the opportunity to engage in humanitarian and crisis management operations, including both military and nonmilitary aspects, while fully respecting the principles of the UN Charter. The RRF will not affect Ireland’s policy of neutrality, as Irish Defense Forces would participate only when UN authorization is in place, when the requirements of Irish legislation have been met, and on the basis of a specific government decision. Irish involvement with EU/NATO operations would occur only where Irish peacekeepers act under the UN flag. Of interest in the foreign minister’s speech was the lack of any linkage between collective capability and de facto alliance, based on political solidarity and economic interdependence. ESDP exists to provide peace and stability elsewhere; it is reactive but not defensive. In short, it is seen as optional—a morally nice thing to do.

This pacific view of EU security and defense functions was not shared by a growing section of the Irish public, which recognized—whether in favor of defense cooperation or isolation—that a de facto alliance was emerging in the EU toward which Ireland and the other nonaligned EU member states would be expected to show loyalty. It also sits ill with the EU vision of itself. EU Commission President Romano Prodi told Eastern European states in September 2001 that the security that EU states enjoy by membership of the Union “is of the same level” as NATO membership. An EU state “cannot be damaged or attacked without reaction from the EU. Otherwise there is no Union.”⁷ Although the reference is to de facto solidarity, the message is nonetheless clear that EU member states—including the neutrals—were pooling their essential interests to such an extent that mutual support was a high expectation, notwithstanding the lack of a formal mutual defense treaty commitment.

The New European Maritime Posture: Doctrine and Forces

Europe’s maritime posture is a good indicator of its global vision, and during the waning years of the Cold War, that posture was strongly defensive. NATO non-U.S. maritime forces were focused mostly on antisubmarine warfare (ASW), mine countermeasures, sea control, and interdiction. The guided missile or ASW frigate, supplemented by the conventional submarine, was the paradigm European naval unit. Although most large European states maintained carrier strike and amphibious capabilities, these forces were modest.

Although European defense budgets have not improved in recent years, there have been interesting shifts in procurement and force planning. Of greatest significance in the maritime area has been the development of amphibious capabilities. A number of European navies are investing in amphibious lift and C2 capabilities as part of the European Amphibious Initiative (EAI).

EAI brings together amphibious forces from the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Spain, and Italy, including the United Kingdom/Netherlands Amphibious Force built around three commando Royal Marines, the Spanish-Italian Amphibious Force, and the French amphibious force, possibly augmented to brigade strength by a German troop contribution.⁸ Currently, the core of this force could be organized around the amphibious assault ship HMS Fearless and amphibious assault (helicopter) ships HMS Ocean, Netherlands amphibious assault transport dock (LPD) HrMs Rotterdam, and Spanish LPD Galicia. To remedy national and combined weaknesses in amphibious lift and C2, Spain plans to add a second Rotterdam-class vessel. Likewise, the United Kingdom has agreed to purchase four Royal Schelde Enforcer design Bay-class LPDs to enter service in 2004, replacing its old Sir-class landing ship logistic vessels, which will serve alongside its new landing personnel dock replacement (LPD[R])ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. The Netherlands has ordered a modified Rotterdam-class LPD to be named Johan de Witt, scheduled to enter service in 2007. Of note, the new craft (referred to as LPD–2) will be capable of hosting a 400-person headquarters staff for a CJTF of up to division strength. It will also have a sophisticated command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) infrastructure, with the American command ship USS Mount Whitney as its model.⁹ The EAI navies have long had the manpower to deploy an amphibious division. With these improvements in amphibious lift and C4I, a European capability to project and sustain an embarked amphibious force, roughly equivalent to a U.S. marine expeditionary unit/amphibious ready group, should be in place by 2008.¹⁰

European carrier strike capabilities have also gradually developed, including the deployment of French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle, the recent return to service of HMS Ark Royal, and the combat experience of ITS Garibaldi in support of coalition operations in the war against terrorism. However, given the relative scarcity of carrier strike assets, ESDP planning probably will need to emphasize nonopposed landings, or, if opposed, operations in areas where substantial land-based air force strike capabilities could be brought to bear in a supporting role.

The maritime concept of ESDP may take on a stronger institutional form as a result of an initiative at the Chiefs of European Navies (CHENs) Conference of May 2002 to consider a NATO Channel Committee proposal for a European Maritime Initiative (EMI).¹¹ The EMI paper sets out a vision of the enabling role that naval forces will play in ESDP joint operations. Substantial emphasis is placed on amphibious operations and, to a lesser extent, carrier strike capabilities. EMI was motivated by a sense of overemphasis on land forces in the European Headline Goal establishing the Rapid Reaction Force, and the intent of the European naval chiefs is to convince their military and political masters of the key enabling role that naval forces play in joint operations. It is interesting to note that the CHENs initiative is replaying many of the arguments raised during the development of joint operations within the Department of Defense, leading to the reorientation of U.S. naval forces under the naval strategic vision...From the Sea.

EMI identifies European naval weaknesses in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; theater ballistic missile defense; interoperable CJTF headquarters facilities; and logistics. A joint procurement program for the Airbus A400M heavy lift transport plane is at an advanced stage, and the development of autonomous satellite positioning and intelligence system (Galileo) was approved by the European Council at the March 2002 EU Summit in Barcelona. By 2008—if current plans are implemented—Europeans will collectively possess a credible force capable of carrying out the range of Petersburg Tasks, albeit at a higher level of risk than the United States (with its more robust capabilities) would need to accept.

The period from the high point of the Kosovo operations to the September 11 terrorist attacks saw a shift in European strategic thinking, including their concept of globalization as applied to military and naval forces. A new European appreciation for dangers of instability in the greater European region emerged, as did—even more important—a conviction that Europe needed the capability to address these challenges on its own. However, the focus remained regional, and the threat remained instability European defense budgets are at best stagnant, and some are in decline. The demographics of an aging population do not bode well for further defense expenditures, and domestic regional and employment priorities in many states constrain governments from moving away from the static land force structure of the Cold War toward a lighter, more mobile force. Most of all, there is no certainty that EU foreign policy during 21st-century crises will be any more coherent than existed during crisis moments in Bosnia, Kosovo, or indeed Afghanistan.

That being said, however, it should be noted that within the maritime realm, there are some contraindications of a “merely ancilliary” status for European forces. During Operation Enduring Freedom, many European nations (along with Japan and others) found it easier to provide support for U.S. efforts in the form of warships and naval units than land forces—for very practical reasons. For one thing, many European land forces are not globally deployable or are primarily deployable in very small numbers or through American logistical support. Seagoing warships are generally designed to deploy independently and are easier to sustain via overall NATO maritime capabilities. Also—perhaps somewhat cynically—sailors were less likely to suffer casualties than soldiers in a war where there were no opposing naval forces, thereby lessening the prospects that European voters might call their countries’ participation in the counterterrorism war (particularly the phase against the Taliban and al Qaeda) into question. On the other hand, the forces provided at sea were combat-capable: British and French naval aircraft conducted combat sorties. The French contribution of the newly operational aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was a strong symbolic show of support—and, while not as large as U.S. carriers, she was a potential substitute for U.S. carrier airpower. As noted, Italy also sent its primary naval assets, the aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi and her escorts.¹²

More importantly, command of the interdiction patrol tasked with preventing al Qaeda forces from escaping by sea (focusing on the coast of Somalia as a primary terrorist destination) was eventual turned over by the United States to a German admiral—another very symbolic act of multilateral solidarity, this time in the U.S.-to-Europe direction.¹³The obvious suggestion is that even with the disparity in capabilities identified by the European naval chiefs of staff, maritime operations are primary areas where European forces could make more than a “very junior partner” contribution.

World Turned Upside Down: September 11 and Revival of a European Global Paradigm?

To the observer on September 10, ESDP was bound for rapid institutional, but slow military, growth; its mandate would be limited to Europe or its very near abroad. Some form of NATO–EU cooperation would be agreed eventually, and defense issues would remain largely external affairs, focused around peacekeeping, crisis management, and constructive engagement. U.S. commitment to the Alliance was assumed to be strong, notwithstanding the gradual drawdown of U.S. forces in Europe. U.S. strategic presence in Europe would maintain the strategic status quo. And instability and insecurity was consensually seen as an externality, part of the state of anarchy that exists outside the realm of peace and stability that is the nation-state.

September 11 changed all that. The United States has been seriously attacked on its soil for the first time in living memory. Both NATO and the UN define this situation as, if not war, then at least war’s closest surrogate in the world of modern international law—an “armed attack” triggering the right of individual and collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, as well as the NATO Article 5 collective defense guarantee. Alliances shifted: Pakistan, who could have been condemned as a promoter of the Taliban regime, became a partner in Operation Enduring Freedom. Russia threw its weight solidly behind the United States, and even China acquiesced in the need for action in Afghanistan. The members of NATO stood as one in declaring an attack on the United States as an attack on them all; as a Le Monde headline put it, “We are all Americans.” The European response demonstrated that, whatever the future of NATO as a formal structure, Atlanticism—in the sense of shared basic interests and values—was alive and well. But the expressed conviction that September 11 “could have happened anywhere” was not only rhetoric; there was (and is) a very real appreciation in European capitals that international terrorism, the sharp end of instability, now has a prodigious capability to inflict domestic harm. Globalization could no longer be viewed as something that happened to other people, and military intervention as a moral option. The European paradigm of globalization is likely to expand yet again.

September 11 has pushed the trans-Atlantic relationship into new territory. Post-September 11 America is seen as pulled simultaneously toward unilateralism and multilateralism—as a country coming to grips with the simultaneous realization that its power and its vulnerability are much greater then previously perceived. The wave of national unity following the attacks took many European commentators by surprise. Nor was it lost on the Europeans that the United States, while welcoming allies, intended to fight its war on terrorism by itself if necessary. NATO served only an ancillary, although important, role. The NATO command structure was not utilized (although, particularly at sea, NATO procedures were utilized in organizing task force operations). Operation Enduring Freedom demonstrated once again the substantial and growing capabilities gap between Europe and the United States at the sharp end of war fighting. Several commentators, Paul Kennedy most recently, have argued that the United States has pulled so far ahead of all allies and rivals that the NATO alliance cannot expect to exercise a decisive influence over U.S. decisionmaking.¹⁴ The hand of those who argue for a strategic reorientation toward an arc of instability ranging from the Mahgreb to the Central Asian republics, toward the Pacific, or indeed in favor of “fortress America,” have been strengthened. Europeans are aware that they soon may need to look to their own devices and to take on a greater security role in their own backyard. They are also increasingly aware that their capability of influencing U.S. policy globally—a policy in which their fortunes are very much implicated—will rest on their own global capabilities.

As did détente and the fall of the Berlin Wall, September 11 has upset the underpinnings of the emerging European security order. As Dominique David wrote, the September attacks “place the United States permanently in the position of a target, which corresponds to the extent of its power.”¹⁵ For the first time in the post-war period, the military capability and central global role of a state were seen as a direct form of vulnerability. It was not war in the normal sense of a conflict between territorially based groups, nor a war capable of being waged or countered by conventional means. Most fundamentally, as David notes, the attacks challenged the prime assumption of U.S. security policy: the primacy of technologically advanced societies. At stake was the proposition whether “the overall vulnerability of sophisticated societies increases more rapidly than the technical means to remedy it.”¹⁶ Technology became recognized as part of the strategic problem, as much as the strategic solution.

Faced with a challenge of such magnitude, the U.S. Government appears to be rethinking its global defense strategy. It is too early to see the direction of future policy, but some trends do stand out. Emphasis is shifting to homeland defense, from the low-tech level of a greater guard presence at airports to high-tech plans for missile defense. It is likely that U.S. forces will draw down in the Balkans, in tandem with other contributing states but motivated by U.S. needs elsewhere. The Bush administration’s continuing emphasis on the need for further military action against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and perhaps states, indicates that this war is not over. It is surely not over from the point of view of the terrorists. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was very clear at the 2002 Munich Conference on Security Policy that NATO support was welcome, but ancillary to, the U.S. effort.¹⁷ Even in Mediterranean operations, the United States may choose to go it alone and not employ the NATO command structure in operations (let alone allow a NATO political veto) in its own backyard. Increasingly, there have been calls for the recognition that the United States—the 800-pound gorilla—can no longer be constrained within the Alliance, even as the EU has moved naturally toward an economic and foreign policy caucus different from, although close to, that of the United States. Given threats in other parts of the world, the undeniable linkage between Middle East presence and policy (particularly in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq) and anti-American violence, and the need to redistribute resources, it is possible (although by no means certain or desirable) that the United States will gradually disengage from European security structures, ceasing to be effectively “a European power” and becoming an “American power, occasionally in Europe.”

September 11, the war on terrorism, and the prospect of U.S. disengagement from European security structures raise crucial questions for ESDP and come at a decisive time in the history of European integration. The euro went into full effect in January 2002. In December 2002, the EU will decide on the next round of enlargement, probably bringing 10 states within the EU by 2008, with ultimate plans for a European Union of 27 states. EU expansion to that level cannot be achieved on the current institutional model, and an intergovernmental conference has been planned for 2004 to create a constitutional charter for the EU. Europe is faced, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the possibility of aggression against itself by the forces of international terrorism using weapons of mass destruction. The impact of the war on terrorism may unsettle vital European interests in the Middle East. And U.S. engagement elsewhere may require the European Union to take on defense, as well as a security, roles.

Given the continuing coincidence of U.S. and EU vital interests and the financial reluctance of the EU states to invest in defense, it is likely that the scope for an autonomous ESDP will be directly linked to U.S. decisions about its European presence. Should the status quo be generally maintained, ESDP will remain somewhat minimalist: a UN Security Council resolution would be required for EU action, few states would contribute more than token forces, and there would need to be a broad European consensus to undertake action under the EU flag. Given the current political split in Europe between the new center-right governments of Jose Maria Anzar in Spain and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, and the traditional Euro-elites, that consensus would need to be wide, indeed. Greater political opportunities may lie in First and Third Pillar initiatives to intensify internal police cooperation, increase intelligence surveillance, and promote financial transparency in the antiterrorist campaign.

Greater challenges would confront Europe in what seems the most likely outcome: a gradual and moderate American disengagement from Europe. The U.S. war on terrorism may lead to a substantial drawdown in Balkans forces. With aircraft carrier or amphibious ready group presence only intermittent in the Mediterranean, U.S. naval presence would be considerably curtailed, an effect not offset by the presence of air force jets in northern Italy or soldiers in Germany. Reduced U.S. presence in Europe might increase pressure to surrender one or more top NATO commands. The United States might keep SACEUR, but of course this would be a somewhat Pyrrhic victory as NATO would have become a defense services organization—a kind of OSCE with weapons. The EU would need to assume responsibility for Balkans peacekeeping (which they currently resist), and probably for any future crisis in Eastern Europe or the Maghreb. Europe might even obtain a larger role in mediating the Middle East crisis.

ýor Europe, this is the option that is officially espoused but quietly feared. The financial cost of creating viable forces for regional power projection will be substantial, and defense budgets would have to rise significantly in the face of an aging population and increased social spending. European political solidarity would be put to the test in the foreign policy area. And in a deeper sense, the European project would need to find its equilibrium sans the role of the United States in Europe. For smaller states such as Ireland, there is a danger of the emergence of a four-power directoire of the greater European powers, a possibility already foreshadowed by British, French, and German meetings on defense policy prior to the Laeken summit last December, Tony Blair’s famous foreign policy dinner, and recent ideas that have been mooted for a UN Security Council-like arrangement in the European Council, with the larger states having veto power. For national foreign policy, dangers may exist not so much in the theory of participation but the greater risk of losses at the sharp edge of Petersberg Tasks.

A final possible outcome, although very remote, must be considered. Should unilateralist tendencies in the United States predominate, or should a second and larger terrorist attack shake American confidence, a partial drawdown of U.S. forces from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf is not impossible. As the United States draws most of its energy supplies from non-Middle East sources, its primary strategic interest in the Gulf is based on the commercial vulnerability of Europe and Japan to a loss of energy supplies. In a more vulnerable international environment, the U.S. Government could decide to demand a greater European role in the policing of these regions. The EU would have to take on a super-regional hegemonic and deterrent role, requiring substantial power-projection forces. In a smaller version of the U.S.–EU capabilities gap, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy would clearly dominate such European efforts. For the neutral states, and indeed Germany, this option is the least appealing. Lacking U.S. responsibility for defense of the larger global infrastructure of energy, trade, and finance, the EU would be forced to take on a more aggressive foreign policy stance; to speak in terms of vital interests, escalation dominance, and warfighting, not peacekeeping; to plan military options should the EU need to participate in (if not lead) the repulse of an Iraqi invasion or a Saudi revolution, or broker a forced peace in Gaza or the West Bank.

Regardless of the exact endstate in U.S.–EU relations, Europe must now address the possibility of an Atlanticism that may no longer be based on traditional NATO alliance structures and political assumptions. A U.S.–EU grand coalition, the weakening of NATO, and an increased defense role for the EU are all serious options at present. The new international environment will put the European Union on the world stage as a security actor and place Council solidarity under intense pressure. It is probable thatý under these conditions, the EU will rather rapidly coalesce into a stronger state model, possibly to the detriment of smaller countries. But is it also possible that the EU may crack under the strain. It is a turning point in the project of European integration. Robert Schuman, the famed post-World War II French finance minister and premier, once said that Europe would not be built all at once but by small steps. The next step is large indeed.

James H. Bergeron is a law professor at University College, Dublin (on leave). He currently serves as NATO–EU Policy Officer on the staff of the Commander, United States Naval Forces Europe, in London. The author thanks Sean Colman, Simon Duke, and Terry Terriff for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes

¹ In July 1961, when the Irish government applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC), a number of capitals were concerned that Ireland, given her non-membership of NATO and stated policy of neutrality, would be unable to play a full role in the development of European integration, including French initiatives to bring about a European political and defense community. The Irish government of the day was under no illusion—and indeed was reminded several times—that EEC membership in 1961 was part of a much larger geopolitical package including the role of Western Europe in the confrontation with the Soviet Union, the primacy of NATO in European defense, and the leadership role of the United States. See Dermot Keogh, “The Diplomacy of ‘Dignified Calm’: An Analysis of Ireland’s Application for Membership in the EEC, 1961–1963,” Chronicon 1, no. 4 (1997), 1–68. BACK

² See James Henry Bergeron, “An Ever Whiter Myth: The Colonization of Modernity in European Community Law,” in Europe’s Other: European Law between Modernity and Postmodernity, ed. Peter Fitzpatrick and James Henry Bergeron (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 3–26. BACK

³ See James Henry Bergeron, “Europe’s Emprise: Symbolic Economy and the Postmodern Condition,” in Fitzpatrick and Bergeron, 67–92. BACK

⁴ See Paul Kapteyn, The Stateless Market (London: Routledge, 1996), 51–59. BACK

⁵Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2001), 77–106. BACK

⁶ Brian Coward, “Ireland’s New Duties in a Changing Europe,” Irish Times, November 18, 2000; Jim Cusack, “Infantry Battalion will be Irish RRF Contribution,” Irish Times, November 21, 2000. BACK

⁷ Briffni O’Rourke, “EU: Prodi Seeks to Reassure Candidates on Security,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 6, 2001, accessed at <http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/09/06092001114157.asp>. BACK

⁸ Joris Janssen Lok and Richard Scott, “Amphibious Lift Bound by a Common Thread,” Jane’s Navy International (January/February 2002), 1621. BACK

⁹ Ibid. BACK

¹⁰ It should be noted that this improvement is based on planned capabilities. It remains to be seen whether—like other recent European procurement plans—the improvements will be developed as envisioned or will be scaled back in the face of increasing cost estimates. BACK

¹¹ Joris Janssen Lok, “Promoting a European Maritime Initiative,” Jane’s Navy International (Web version), December 12, 2001, accessed at <http://jni.janes.com/docs/jni/search/shtml>. BACK

¹² Paolo Valpolini, “Italian Combat Forces to Join Coalition,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, November 14, 2001, 4. BACK

¹³ See Michael Nitz, “Germany to Take Command of Task Force,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, May 22, 2002, accessed at <http://jdw.janes.com/jdw01452.htm>. BACK

¹⁴ Paul Kennedy, “The Eagle Has Landed,” The Financial Times, February 1, 2002, accessed at <http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchieve/article.htm?id=020201011552&query=NATO+>. BACK

¹⁵ Dominique David, “The First Strategic Lessons to be Drawn from September 11,” Paris Politique Etrangere (October-December 2001), 766–775. BACK

¹⁶ Ibid. BACK

¹⁷ See “U.S. Ready to Go It Alone, “ BBC News, February 2, 2002, accessed at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1798000/1798132.stm>; Gerold Buchner, “What is Security,” Berliner Zeitung, February 4, 2002, accessed at <http://www.berlinonline.de/suche.bin/>. BACK