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| May 14, 1999 |
| May 14, 1999 |
European Defense: Slumbering No More?
Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
Twice this decade, Europe tried to seize on a Balkan conflict to demonstrate its ability to conduct a purely European foreign and military policy, and twice it failed. In Bosnia in 1995, as in Kosovo in 1999, their efforts ended with the United States taking control of negotiations and leading its NATO allies into conflict. The U.S. initiative in Bosnia worked -- making Washington, not Brussels, the major player in Balkan politics. But the haphazard and so far unsuccessful conduct of the Yugoslav air campaign from Washington has prompted the Europeans to make another attempt at running their own security affairs.
At a meeting on May 11, defense and foreign ministers of the Western European Union (WEU), a largely dormant European defense alliance, essentially agreed to close the organization and turn over security affairs to the European Union (EU). The EU, an economic powerhouse which so far has shied away from foreign affairs and military issues, will appoint a High Representative for common security and foreign policy at its June 3-4 meeting in Cologne, Germany. This individual's role will be largely coordinative although the position may develop into the equivalent of a European-wide foreign affairs and defense secretary.
Coming on the heels of British government's change of heart and its endorsement of a European defense organization last December, this latest attempt to develop a common security policy has a momentum that previous initiatives lacked. But the same two issues that have kept Europe from developing foreign policy and military muscles to match its economic might -- lack of consensus on foreign policy issues and absence of the necessary interoperative military hardware -- must still be overcome.
The Yugoslav campaign has exposed the various policy differences towards the Balkans that exist among the European countries. While Britain's Tony Blair vows to continue NATO's "just war" to reverse "the evil of ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, Greece is reportedly supplying oil to Yugoslavia, ignoring NATO's calls for a voluntary oil embargo. Germany has sent fighter planes into combat for the first time since World War II, but Italy's president has repeatedly called for negotiations and a halt in the bombing. And although it is true that all the European NATO allies went along with the bombing, one wonders if that would have been the case without Washington's insistence?
The diversity of European national interests and policies could be an asset if used wisely. Using the Balkans as an example, London could assume a tough stance, when appropriate, and then turn to the Greeks when conciliation is warranted. (Of course, such tactics assume that the various countries would have reached a basic agreement on overall strategy.) But the reality is that in foreign affairs, European countries continue to value national interests more than European cohesion -- no one even knows what European foreign policy priorities are since individual countries spend little time trying to formulate common positions.
Furthermore, any joint European military organization would have to be able to project credible military power. The president-designate of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, has warned that it would be impractical to develop and implement a common foreign and security policy without an army to be the force behind the diplomacy.
The Balkans conflict highlights this military-diplomatic disparity. Nearly two-thirds of the planes in the Yugoslav air campaign are American. With the exception of a few salvos from the British submarine HMS Splendid, the hundreds of (U.S.-made) cruise missiles launched against Yugoslavia have all been fired from American planes or vessels. European leaders admit that for their nations to become military effective they must acquire more transportation aircraft, aircraft carriers, and other platforms to more swiftly move units to areas of conflict. An official with the European Delegation to Washington said that all of Europe combined has 2/3 of the military capability of the United States on paper but only about 10% of U.S. military power in reality.
But if money talks, the Europeans are curiously silent about instituting reforms and drawing closer together on security matters. European defense budgets have dropped to an average of 2.2% of the continent's combined gross domestic product (GDP) despite a pledge by all NATO members to keep their defense expenditures at 3% of GDP (see table). The two European allies with the highest spending in relation to the GDP -- Greece and Turkey -- are essentially arming to fight each other. More importantly, less than 16% of European defense spending goes towards buying new equipment (25% in the United States) while a hefty 60% of the average European military budget is spent maintaining existing troop levels (40% in the United States) (1998 figures).
Money to buy new equipment is only one hurdle for the Europeans. Another central issues is who will make it. Europeans generally avoid buying American, where possible, to protect jobs and companies at home. But the cost of new research and development has become so prohibitive that genuine national industries are quickly going the way of dinosaurs. U.S. companies responded to falling domestic defense orders by merging and cutting overhead costs. For Europeans merging means that national governments surrender control over treasured industries, something these governments have been reluctant to do -- as attested by the French government's resistance to selling its stake in Matra, a maker of planes and missile parts.
Even the current attempts at transnational cooperation on defense procurement is complicated. As a defense official at the British Embassy said, "the hassle factor is directly proportional to the square of the number of participants in the project." The Future Large Aircraft (FLA) project, a European attempt to plug a hole in its military airlift requirement, failed to get off the ground as the six member states squabbled over design, cost overruns, and other issues.
Ultimately, whether Europe has a common foreign and security policy may be decided by bankers and businessmen rather than generals. The European common market and currency are already eroding the sovereignty of EU nations. If the monetary union is to succeed, businesses, capital and labor will have to move much more freely across European borders. As this happens, the role of national governments will inevitably diminish while European institutions become stronger. Under these conditions, defense procurement and foreign and security policy would theoretically be easier to coordinate and manage.
But there remains the question of whether and how smoothly the populations of the individual countries of Europe will make -- or even allow -- this transition from a national to a European mindset.
NATO Defense Spending as A Percentage of the GDP (selected countries)
Belgium.................................................... 1.5%
Denmark.................................................. 1.6%
France ..................................................... 2.8%
Germany .................................................. 1.5%
Greece .................................................... 4.8%
Italy ........................................................ 2.0%
Spain ...................................................... 1.3%
Turkey .................................................... 4.4%
Hungary .................................................. 1.8%
Poland .................................................... 2.4%
European average ................................... 2.2%
United States .......................................... 3.3%
Sources: NATO, The Economist
The Belgrade Bombing Gaffe
Colonel Dan Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org
NATO's -- read the U.S. -- bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade has been declared by the President, the Secretary if State, and the Secretary of Defense as a tragic mistake caused by reliance on outdated maps. The Central Intelligence Agency, in trying to pinpoint a Yugoslav military supply headquarters on an updated 1992 map, picked the wrong building. No one in the U.S. military charged with reviewing target choices caught the error even though the Chinese embassy had moved to its present location some four years ago.
In the diplomatic and military fallout that followed this error, prominent members of Congress, particularly Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, immediately attributed this intelligence failure to a lack of funds for the intelligence and defense communities. Apparently, he feels that with more people the CIA and DoD's map makers could stay abreast of such things as embassy relocations in European capitals.
More money is the predictable and easy response whenever a foreign policy gaffe occurs. But as one who has served in a U.S. embassy, I do not see money as the problem. (Secretary of Defense William Cohen also disputed this connection in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 11.) The problem has more to do with the unhealthy competition among the State Department, CIA, and DIA that too often blurs reporting lines and channels back to Washington. This is further compounded by turf rivalries in Washington which can interfere with the melding of information from various sources and methods into a coherent whole.
What makes this gaffe puzzling is that the information that should have been sent and integrated into intelligence products and maps was not, by anyone's definition, "secret" nor were there any "sources and methods" to be safeguarded. The location of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was public knowledge; the compound had a sign on the front gate clearly identifying it. American diplomats and others had attended social functions at the embassy. Reportedly, tourist level maps even had this (and other) embassies marked. Yet the CIA maps still showed the Embassy in the old part of Belgrade. One unnamed CIA source has suggested that the Agency was purposely given false information by an agent on the ground. But one would expect that the cross checks that are a normal part of the intelligence process would have turned up a discrepancy mandating another look by another method or individual.
A somewhat analogous situation involving maps occurred when the U.S. was preparing to invade Granada in 1983. Planning was held so tightly that invasion day was almost upon the Pentagon before someone realized that the U.S. did not have sufficiently precise maps and could not get pictures from satellites in time to turn into usable maps. An urgent request for current maps came into an office in the British Ministry of Defence in which I worked at the time. Unfortunately, since the British did not consider the area a threat in the way President Reagan and his advisors did, the British had no updated maps either. Thus the world was treated to the spectacle of mid-level commanders using commercial road maps during the invasion.
Money is not the solution. The U.S. intelligence community already gets $28-29 billion annually, and Senator Shelby revealed this past week that the Senate had increased the intelligence budget during a secret vote on May 6. What needs to be done is to reallocate the money the community already receives to improve human intelligence collection and analysis of the information that is collected. In the post-Cold War era, without a major nemesis like the Soviet Union, the U.S. does not need to spend as much on high technology spy satellites whose chief function was to monitor major force movements and electronic emissions of all types.
Our major challenges today are from small groups with specific agendas such as terrorist activities against U.S. facilities and personnel or from smaller countries engulfed by internal conflict and humanitarian disasters. These situations call for trusted people on the ground to provide insight into the thinking and motivations of individuals and factions as well as analysts who understand the history, language, culture, traditions, and societal organizations of the areas they study.
Ironically, since August 1998, the U.S. has had six major failures in trying to launch satellites into orbit. Three of these failures involved military or intelligence payloads. Perhaps there is a message here about the sources and methods on which the U.S. needs to focus its efforts and its money.
Russia's America Problem
David Johnson, Senior Fellow, djohnson@cdi.org
President Boris Yeltsin's firing of Prime Minister Yegeny Primakov complicates even further prospects for both Russia and U.S.-Russian relations. Primakov, the most popular political figure in Russia, had restored some sense of public confidence in government and his abrupt ouster by the autocratic and perhaps senile Yeltsin pushes Russia back into another round of political divisiveness and turmoil. It will now be more difficult for Russia to play a peacemaking role in Yugoslavia. Russian attempts to secure additional loans from the IMF will likely grind to a halt. Popular Russian suspicions of Yeltsin's ties with the West will be increased. Arms control agreements, already in deep trouble, will languish on the back burner. The long-hoped for (by Russians) transition to the post-Yeltsin era may be further delayed.
Some blunt observations about Russian realities:
1. Most Russians, despite the difficulties and disappointments they have been through, remain committed to modernizing and improving their society and institutions on their own terms. This includes many of the "communists" and "nationalists" often viewed with either dismissiveness or fear in the West. So-called "anti-Western" views are mostly a logical reaction to the concretely damaging policies of the West. These policies and attitudes, one hopes, are correctable if the West really is interested in good relations with Russia. We have great control over whether Russians are "anti-Western." We should raise our expectations about Russia and stop obsessing on the remote but familiar nightmare of the return of communists or red-fascists.
2. The economic and social catastrophe that has befallen Russia in the past decade is man-made, not a product of historical inevitability. The search for a way out of the abyss, the learning of lessons, and the assignment of responsibility is a natural process that will be accelerating in the next few years. Western commentators and advisors, having played their role already, have little to constructively offer in this regard. Unfortunately, the lack of respect for Russian views has become almost second nature in the West so it will be very hard for us to adapt to the appropriate humble role.
3. President Yeltsin has in most respects been a disaster for Russia. The United States, particularly in the view of Russians, shares responsibility with Yeltsin for his failure. American money and American advise have played a very important role in keeping the increasingly unpopular Yeltsin in power. Yeltsin was anointed with the mantle of pro-Western reformer in 1991 and U.S. policy remained singularly focused on providing him with financial and political support for nearly all of the past eight years. All other political figures and forces with either ignored or attacked. Huge international loans, ostensible to promote reform and economic development, were provided to Yeltsin largely to solidify his power and protect him from rising popular opposition to his failed policies.
4. There is a huge irony in the fact that the most important U.S. worry about Russia, the loose nukes problem, is largely the consequence of the economic collapse (again not inevitable) that accompanied the Yeltsin-U.S. economic policies. These politically motivated policies of "shock therapy," never of course fully implemented in the real world, should never have been embarked upon in the first place. They were imported from abroad without due consideration of Russian circumstances. Primakov's attempt to create a moderate policy resembling Roosevelt's New Deal response to the Depression was an appropriate course correction for Russia. Primakov's was the first government that attempted to craft public policies with the input of the freely elected Parliament. Whatever derailing of the policy of democratic moderation takes place in the next few months, Russia will in all likelihood return to this path once it is freed of the burden of Boris Yeltsin.
5. The true interests of the United States lie in a frank recognition of its failures and mistakes vis-a-vis Russia and a rapid engagement with the vast majority of Russians who remain eager for a genuinely constructive role in Russia on the part of the United States. Realistically, however, it is unlikely that American policy makers will take this route. They will drift even further into contemptuous disregard of Russia, leavened by the continued demonizing of large segments of the Russian political spectrum. For Russia, this means that the merits of a policy of self-reliance will become increasingly clear. Fortunately, it is probable that Russians will cope better with their America problem than Americans will cope with their Russia problem. The weak and vulnerable are often more nimble on their feet than the powerful and head-strong.
For up-to-date information about developments in Russia you can subscribe to the CDI Russia Weekly e-mail newsletter by sending a request to djohnson@cdi.org
Litton Moves to Acquire Newport News, Avondale
Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
Last week Litton Industries announced plans to acquire Newport News Shipbuilding and Avondale Industries. Litton owns Ingalls Shipbuilding, which along with Bath Iron Works, makes the Navy's DDG-51 destroyer. Newport News builds nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, while Avondale builds amphibious assault ships and commercial vessels.
Litton's announcement came just weeks after General Dynamics, the owner of Bath, Electric Boat, and National Steel and Shipbuilding, dropped its plans to acquire Newport News and Avondale in the face of opposition to the merger by the Defense Department. Meanwhile, in February Newport News received permission to acquire Avondale.
The question on the minds of many in the defense industry is whether the government will permit the merger to go through? There are several reasons to believe that the answer is yes.
First, there is still considerable surplus capacity in the Navy shipbuilding industry, and the Pentagon knows it. Industry experts estimate that there is currently between 30% and 50% surplus capacity, which means that shipyards are carrying unnecessary overhead that drives up production costs. The Defense Department needs to eliminate this surplus capacity without creating the type of shipbuilding monolith that would have resulted from the proposed General Dynamics-Newport News merger.
There are a finite number of shipyard combinations in the industry, and of them the Litton proposal appears the most promising from the Navy's perspective. It would keep the two existing nuclear yards, Newport News and Electric Boat, separate, promoting competition on future contracts, one of the Navy's repeatedly stated goals. Similarly, it would keep Ingalls and Bath, the two builders of the DDG-51 and the next generation DD-21 destroyer, separate. And while it would permit the consolidation of the two major builders of amphibious ships, Avondale and Ingalls, these are not technologically sophisticated or particularly expensive vessel designs.
Second, while the Pentagon still believes that additional consolidation in the defense industry as a whole is warranted, the last two major proposed mergers, Newport News-General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin-Northrop Grumman, have been rejected by the government. Should the Litton proposal not be approved it would likely have such a chilling effect on the industry that it would become extremely improbable other companies would attempt further major acquisitions.
The wild card in all this is that Litton's bid is not necessarily a package deal. Litton in fact made separate offers to both Newport News and Avondale. At the time of Litton's announcement Avondale stated that "under our merger agreement with Newport News, we are not permitted to enter into a transaction with Litton unless we have determined, among other things, that the proposal is superior." Yet less than a week later Avondale officials announced that they would examine the Litton bid, which was for $504 million in cash. The previous Newport News bid had a cash value of $470 million. Newport News has not commented publicly on the Avondale announcement, nor has it stated its position on its own possible merger with Litton.
For more on mergers in the naval shipbuilding industry, see "General Dynamics Ends Bid to Acquire Newport News," Weekly Defense Monitor, Volume 3, Issue #16, April 22, 1999.
This week on America's Defense Monitor: "Test Anxiety -- Should
America Ratify the CTBT?"
The achievement of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons test explosions has long been a cornerstone of U.S. arms control efforts. Americans, by a wide margin, favor the ratification of the treaty, as do a majority in Congress. However, a powerful minority in Congress are stalling the ratification process. Do the new security challenges of the post-Soviet era change America's arms control equation or is the test ban still a good idea?
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