European Security And Defense Policy (ESDP)
As A Transatlantic Positive-Sum Game

Antonio Missiroli

If, during the week of May 28, 2001 in Budapest, the North Atlantic Council eventually delivers on the contentious issue of assured access to NATO assets by the EU for EU-led peace support operations, we will have come full circle.

In fact, it was Defense Secretary Les Aspin who, in late 1993, first raised the issue of what would soon come to be known as Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) and, in that context, of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within NATO. In the following years, much time and energy were devoted to sketching feasible scenarios for CJTFs, including WEU-led ones. It is a fact, however, that the ‘Berlin’ and ‘Berlin-plus’ talks ended up in the sand precisely because of the still controversial modality through which Europeans would be allowed to “borrow” NATO assets for operations not involving US forces: case-by-case, semi- or automatically at all. It is fair to say that without at least a well-founded presumption of free access to NATO capabilities - especially in the domain of C 4 ISR - the mainly French argument whereby it would then be wiser to “duplicate” was and is more difficult to counter. In turn, however, the duplication “threat” was fundamentally weakened by the lack of resources that the same Europeans made available to that end - hence the political and operational deadlock of the years 1995-1998.

It is equally fair to say that the deadlock has been broken by the development of ESDP inside the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) framework. ESDP has created a dynamic within the EU, a drive towards pledging (and hopefully delivering) limited capabilities and reforming national force structures. In little less (or little more, depending on when one thinks it all started) than two years the EU member States have set in motion developments that were unthinkable before, from the so-called Headline Goal and the resulting engagement of forces for the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF), to the widespread enforcement of the transformation of national armies (from mass conscription to professionalism), up to a slight increase in defense spending (11 out 15 EU countries have done so, albeit marginally, over the past two exercises, thus inverting a decade-long trend).

My first point therefore is that ESDP has overshadowed ESDI but for the better: if Budapest delivers and solves one of the trickiest issues in transatlantic security relations. ESDP may even end up vindicating ESDI and the original notion of “separable but not separate” by firmly establishing a EU crisis management capability in conjunction with NATO. On top of that, the solution of the assets-issue would make it easier for the EU as a whole to eventually adopt NATO command, control and communication standards as the normal operating ones for any EU operation, which would enormously facilitate interoperability and would be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the Union’s members (including the non-allied ones). In actuality, in fact, most of the forces committed to the ERRF and most of the officers involved in the new Brussels-based military bodies of the EU are either answerable to both the Union and the Alliance or even formally “double-hatted.”

This is why, at least potentially, ESDP may become a positive-sum game in which everyone wins. The latest developments on the American side of the Atlantic – from the ongoing revision of the two-major theater war standard to the new focus onto the Pacific, up to the streamlining of ground forces – seem to confirm this impression. Much as it may sound unfair to American ears, it is easier for most Europeans to deliver on capabilities and commitments if it is done in the name of a European project rather than in order to meet indicative Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI) targets. Benchmarking and peer pressure work much more effectively inside the EU than inside NATO – and it shows. In addition, public opinion supports that: if you look at the polls taken by Eurobarometer, the support for CFSP and ESDP has enormously risen all across the EU and is now well above support for the euro and for enlargement. And this is because – to respond to the recurrent either/or question that many Americans ask – ESDP is basically about both integration and capabilities: the two policy goals are not simply consistent and not alternative, they ultimately reinforce each other.

This said our American allies and friends should not expect a dramatic increase in our defense expenditure over the years to come. The constraints of the stability pact for monetary union, on the one hand, and the very structure and orientation of European societies on the other, make such a development very unlikely – especially in the absence of a tangible existential threat. Yet there is much room for streamlining at the national level – spending more is difficult to decide but easy to implement, and it does not necessarily increase effectiveness – and for investing jointly at the European level: no single European country today has the resources to develop strategic capabilities nationally. In the medium long term, more European integration in this field may allow for a substantial reduction of the many (and to a certain extent inevitable) duplications that exist among EU members. At the end of the day however, if Europeans will perform better – and they are already doing their part on the ground (as well as financially) in the Balkans – it will be just another case of “no taxation without representation: a more fair share of the burden – and this is my second point – should also translate itself into more political clout inside the Alliance.

Finally, ESDP – not unlike NATO’s PfP program – aims at involving “third countries.”

Operationally, the European Council held at Nice last December issued a report that envisages different formats for both consultation (“up-stream”) and implementation (“down-stream”) with non-EU members. An ad-hoc forum at 15 + 6 is foreseen for operations resorting to NATO assets (the six clearly are the European members of the Alliance), while in any case the general formula is rather 15 + 15, where the other 15 are the 6 mentioned above (4 of which are also candidates for EU membership), 7 are the other EU applicants that are also in NATO’s Membership Action Plan, and the remaining 2 are Cyprus and Malta, that are negotiating entry into the EU but are neither NATO members nor PfP partners. Given the not entirely overlapping memberships of EU and NATO, and given the lingering issue of assured access to NATO assets, this probably is as far as the EU could then go. In practice, it means that the political decision over a given operations ultimately rests with the 15 member States, but that the operational reality could be expressed as 15 – x + y + n, where "x” is for the non-participating EU members, “y” for the participating non-EU members, and “z” is for the added value of acting together - NATO included. From close up, and with the benefit of the doubt arising from the lack of test, that looks very much like a quintessential CJTF scheme.

In any case, applicant countries have pledged forces to the ERRF and are already involved in political dialogue with the newly established Political and Security Committee (CoPS, following the French acronym) that presides over ESDP and crisis management. It may therefore prove sensible, since the EU and NATO have at last established direct channels of communication and consultation at various levels, to start talking enlargement – or enlargements, in the plural form. The two expansion processes started out a few years ago in a completely different fashion – NATO’s stressing strategic and political priorities, the EU’s setting stringent criteria and monitoring them through the Commission – but with a roughly common purpose: the stabilization of post-Communist Europe. Yet they have been seen by the applicants as politically equally important, mostly complementary and, to a certain extent, even interchangeable. Today, the two enlargement processes look increasingly alike in that they both combine functional and political criteria, have applicants that partly coincide and partly differ, and have to come to terms with an expectations-sustainability gap. It may be wise to somewhat coordinate the next steps: Prague 2002 and Copenhagen 2002 are only a few weeks after each other, and the risk of negative feed-back effects on the countries that could be left out is high. Once again, it may turn out to be a transatlantic positive-sum game.