In a previous issue of the Defense Monitor, we presented the European Union’s efforts to build a defense force separate from NATO (“European Security and Defense Identity,” Issue 1/2000). European Union (EU) leaders introduced the plan at a summit in Helsinki in December 1999. While it became known as ESDI in the United States, the EU’s communiqués refer to the initiative as the Common European Security and Defense Policy, or CESDP. In this article, we examine the details of the policy and its potential benefits and costs to the United States.

Substance of the EU’s Defense Proposals

At the heart of the European Union’s plan is the proposal to build an autonomous military force supported by the necessary political and military apparatus. The plan envisions three types of missions for this force: humanitarian and rescue, peacekeeping, and crisis management, including peacemaking. The sinews of the plan, as laid out in the Helsinki communiqué, are:

Creating by 2003 a rapid reaction force of 50,000 - 60,000 troops (15 brigades) capable of fully deploying within 60 days and sustainable for a year;

Establishing a standing Political and Security Committee to provide political control and strategic direction, a Military Committee composed of the EU chiefs of defense to give military advice, and a Military Staff to provide military expertise; and

Developing a non-military crisis management mechanism to coordinate the civilian resources at the disposal of the member states.

In the months since the December Helsinki summit, the EU has begun implementing parts of the plan by creating interim political and military bodies. A British brigadier has been chosen to lead a committee of military experts which will become the backbone of the future EU Military Staff. The EU also laid down basic guidelines for the future non-military crisis management force. It will consist of police, customs officers, judges, and other non-military personnel who will preserve or reestablish civic structures in a crisis area.

Potential Benefits to the United States

The most obvious benefit to the United States of the proposed EU defense organization is a decrease in the financial burdens that the U.S. now carries for operations in Europe. The United States currently supplies nearly 20% of all peacekeepers in Bosnia and around 15% of the troops in Kosovo. The five year-old Bosnia peacekeeping operation cost the United States an average of $1.8 billion a year between 1995 and 1999. This year, the Pentagon asked for and Congress appropriated another $2 billion for the U.S. contingent in Kosovo. Since both Kosovo and Bosnia are NATO-led operations, the United States, as the leading member of the Alliance, is expected to contribute forces commensurate with its capabilities – an expectation which many in Congress see as an excuse for Europe to do less. Should the EU assume overall responsibility for future peacekeeping in Europe, the United States would not automatically be expected to participate.

The United States also has carried the largest burden in NATO of combat operations in Europe. During the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, 731 of the 1,058 aircraft involved were American. The cost of the air war to the United States was $5.5 billion. If future combat operations of this nature (“secondary contingencies short of general war”) were carried out under the European Union banner, U.S. forces would not be put at risk and the United States would be spared the direct expense of participating. But it is an open question whether the planned EU force will be willing to carry out more than straightforward peacekeeping operations on the continent. The vaguely formulated “peacemaking” task assigned to the force may or may not include operations at the level of combat intensity of the air war against Yugoslavia.

Even should the U.S. have to participate in future operations in Europe, an effective, responsive EU force would permit the U.S. to reduce its contribution to joint endeavors. But again, the as yet unanswered question is whether EU members will take the required major reforms of their respective militaries to enable Europe’s force contributions to balance a reduced U.S. commitment.

Needed EU Improvements

A 1999 audit by the Western European Union (all of whose members are in NATO) found that their militaries need more transportation aircraft, stronger logistical units, improved satellite surveillance, and more coordination to make nationally-based military systems compatible with each other and interoperable with U.S. forces. The gaps were clearly visible in Kosovo, where U.S. and allied pilots were forced to communicate on non-secure frequencies – thus jeopardizing their safety and the effectiveness of missions – because U.S. coded communications systems were incompatible with those of some NATO allies. Similarly, the lack of military lift aircraft in Europe slowed the deployment of peacekeeping units. A lone British submarine was the only European vessel around Kosovo capable of launching guided cruise missiles.

In short, since military interventions in regional crises perceived as threats to European stability (such as Bosnia and Kosovo) are now a priority for NATO and the EU, the Europeans need to accelerate the process of readjusting how they spend their defense money.

As did the U.S. during the Cold War, Western European countries built large standing armies with heavy armored equipment designed to stop an anticipated Soviet invasion through Central Europe. But this structure is particularly ill suited for post-Cold War conflicts on the continent. Considering today’s probable threats, EU nations have too many soldiers but not enough means of transportation and other tools needed to counter these threats. EU countries spend most of their defense dollars paying and feeding their forces. In 1999, personnel expenses consumed about 61% of defense budgets in EU countries, compared to 39% in the United States. And although most EU countries have cut their forces (the Bundeswehr went from 545,000 to 333,000 between 1990 and 1998), personnel totals are still too large relative to overall defense budgets.

Predictably, large force sizes leave little money for modernization. While the U.S. military spent roughly 24% of its defense budget on new equipment in 1999, the average for EU countries was only 14%. The gap in research and development (R&D) funding is even greater: the United States spent $36.5 billion on R&D while such spending by all European members of NATO combined totaled only $8.9 billion. Clearly, in the absence of large increases in military spending (highly unlikely), CESDP will succeed only if EU members implement significant restructuring.

False Concerns

Some U.S. critics warn that the EU initiative may spell the end of U.S.–European security cooperation and possibly even NATO. The Helsinki communiqué addressed these concerns by stating explicitly that NATO remains the foundation of the collective defense of all its members. NATO’s preeminence was further reaffirmed by the British Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, who said that Britain would not defend non-NATO members of the EU. NATO offers guarantees to the European states that the EU does not plan or even aspire to provide. Indeed, the EU is not likely, at least in the near and medium-term, to acquire the capabilities needed to guarantee its members’ security in the same way NATO’s charter does. CESDP only aims to create a lightly armed rapid reaction force for crises such as Bosnia and Kosovo.

Other experts suggest that European investment in CESDP will create a force incompatible with NATO, one that may compete for scarce defense dollars in EU countries. This could further reduce Europe’s contribution to NATO and needlessly duplicate the alliance’s efforts.

The reality of defense planning, however, makes creation of duplicate forces unlikely. No ally maintains separate national, NATO, and EU forces. The same troops and equipment that would fight under NATO auspices would be used for EU operations. NATO itself owns no forces beyond a handful of early warning aircraft. In operations it relies completely on contributions from member states. What makes joint operations possible is common defense planning and a complex set of standardization agreements that, for example, guarantee at least theoretically that aircraft from different nations will recognize each other as friend rather than foe and be able to securely communicate with each other. The same standards are applied throughout national forces of the NATO allies, although not always thoroughly, as Kosovo demonstrated.

EU countries also stated in the Helsinki communiqué that in creating their rapid reaction force they intend to use the same planning procedures already offered by NATO and NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. If so, the resulting forces will be no more or less compatible than those the European Union members already contribute to NATO. Moreover, since the military capabilities added by Europe would also be available for NATO use, the alliance as such stands to become militarily stronger with CESDP’s implementation.

Real Problems

While EU members made a commitment in Helsinki to field a fully autonomous rapid reaction force by 2003 – a very ambitious goal by any standards – the process of assembling these units has yet to begin. A Force Generation Conference at which EU members hope to agree on the composition of the rapid reaction force is not scheduled until the end of 2000. Whether the EU can meet its 2003 deadline is increasingly questionable because defense planning in Europe (as well as in the United States) tends to move at a glacial speed. It takes two years in NATO’s military planning process to simply identify military threats and agree on the mix of forces needed to meet those threats. Moreover, many EU countries have long-term commitments to defense procurement programs which may not be particularly suited for the envisioned rapid reaction force. For example, Britain plans to spend $25 billion between 2002 and 2014 buying the EF-2000 “Eurofighter” aircraft even though the WEU audit called for more transport rather than fighter aircraft.

There is little possibility that European defense budgets will be raised to accommodate competing needs. All major west European countries – France, Germany, Italy, and the UK – project flat military spending for the next several years. Members of the European Monetary Union, which includes most European NATO allies, are required to keep government deficits under 3% of their Gross Domestic Product. Without substantial economic growth, this target can only be met by keeping strict ceilings on all spending programs, including defense. Germany, in the throes of an economic downturn, is actually cutting $1 billion from its $23 billion Fiscal Year 2000 defense budget. Most EU governments hope to finance domestic reforms with savings derived from trimming their armed forces, but as the U.S. experience demonstrates, downsizing does not guarantee immediate savings. The Pentagon started closing bases in 1988 but not until 1998 – ten years later – did the savings exceed the costs of dismantling the bases and cleaning up the environmental damage.

Failure of the Common European Security and Defense Policy could create a rift between the United States and Europe. Leaders in Congress and the Defense Department have for years called on Europe to strengthen its military capabilities and lessen the burden on the United States of operations in Europe. CESDP is the most promising of the many European defense initiatives to date. Its failure would not only dash the hopes of a more equitable division of responsibilities in NATO, but it could also foster isolationist tendencies already present in Congress.

Suspicions in Congress and among some defense experts are further aggravated by mixed signals from Europe about the true goals of the CESDP initiative. Many suspect that some EU countries, most notably France, support CESDP because they intend to use it to undermine U.S.-European security links and NATO. Conversely, U.S.-EU relations have come under strain because of plans in the United States to deploy a national missile defense system. Many Europeans worry that such a system could weaken the U.S. commitment to defend Europe.

The European Union and NATO need to establish formal relations and agree on terms of cooperation on the European continent if they are to assuage these suspicions. Among the questions that must be resolved are the critical ones of who decides whether a particular crisis is an EU or NATO responsibility; and, should an EU intervention lead to an attack against one or more NATO countries acting under an EU mandate, are non-EU NATO countries obliged to defend the attacked NATO ally?

The NATO-EU arrangement will test the commitment by the United State and Europe to CESDP. It would mark the end of U.S. control over European security affairs through NATO – a prospect sure to be opposed by many in Congress and the Administration. For Europe, once the EU is tasked with concrete military responsibilities, CESDP would move from theory into the world of real budgets and real forces. Whether the EU can muster the resources – and the will to spend the resources on its new initiative – remains to be seen.

(See CDI’s EUROPEAN DEFENSE web page for links to related documents and more information on European defense organizations, budgets, and forces.)

Call Outs

“At the heart of the European Union’s plan is...an autonomous military force.”

“Europeans need to accelerate...readjusting how they spend their defense money.”

“CESDP...creates a lightly armed rapid reaction force for crises.”

“Who decides whether a particular crisis is an EU or NATO responsibility?”

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