The EU's defence drive lacks a plan and a political mandate

Giles Merritt warns against repeating the mistakes that sank the EU’s earlier common defence efforts, including lack of popular support

Europe’s answer to the world’s geopolitical turmoil is massive rearmament and a new era of intra-EU military cooperation. This is the reassuring message from Brussels and the national capitals. But at risk of sounding overly sceptical, we Europeans have been here before and it didn’t work out.

It is almost 30 years since the last collaborative defence initiative fizzled out so disastrously that Europe’s military clout is today weaker than ever. The Anglo-French Saint-Malo agreement of 1998 promised to equip the EU with ‘hard power’ to match its softer influence, but was a mirage.

The new century’s defence drive aimed at EU-wide weapons procurement through the European Defence Agency, but this proved largely toothless. It also initiated multi-national ‘battlegroups’ – more a paper army than a deployable force.

Has there been sufficient change of late to inspire confidence that Europe’s divisions and rivalries will be overcome? Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have between them driven home to Europe that its security can only be collective, but there’s still no credible defence blueprint.

Europe’s governments are budgeting to spend hundreds of billions yearly on defence, yet haven’t spelled out what is being defended, against whom, how and with what weapons and resources. At a strategic level, there’s an urgent need for a European security doctrine setting out goals and red lines (discussed in my most recent Frankly Speaking article) matched by a defence capabilities plan.

Europe’s ‘coalition of the willing’ may at some point have to put peacekeeping ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, but its weaknesses are daunting. The UK and France wrangle over their soldiers’ rules of engagement – should these deter Russian assaults or respond to them? As to capability shortcomings, the Europeans would have to rely on the US for intelligence, for many weapons systems and logistical support.

The question marks over a ‘trip wire’ force in Ukraine point to the key elements of a defence and rearmament plan that Europeans have yet to agree upon. The extent to which drones and AI must displace conventional weapons, the complex process of disengaging from US controls and equitable sharing of joint weapons projects are areas where many European governments are still at odds.

More positively, it should be said that Europe’s defence commitments are not as weak and underfunded as critics maintain. NATO’s European members spend proportionately as much on security as the United States and have compensated for their reliance on US force projection through massive purchases of American weaponry.

In a recent report to the Pentagon, the leading US security think tank RAND added up all the costs within NATO and found the Europeans bearing a comparable burden to the US. It said the proportion of GDP spent on defence that’s so widely cited distorts the picture because it doesn’t take big indirect expenses into account.

When peacekeeping missions and costly economic sanctions are added to direct defence spending, the balance sheet for collective worldwide security in partnership with the US looks very different. The Europeans account for 38% of it; Asian, Arab and Latin American allies for 23% , and America’s share at 39%. “Not a flashing red sign that we’re being taken to the cleaners”, commented the RAND researchers.

Europe’s weakness is the fragmentation of its armed forces and the protection national governments give to their own defence industries. EU governments, along with the UK, need to commit to far closer collaboration. Their defence spending pledges risk being meaningless if they persist with national procurements that duplicate weapons systems.

The European Commission has suggested that the EU’s plan for joint defence funding should be flanked by a new Brussels-based procurement supremo. This brought howls of protest from national capitals and the national champions in their defence industries. Europe’s weapons exporters enjoy a major share of the global armaments market and resist any measures to dilute these.

It is nevertheless plain that Europe cannot bumble along by trying to fit together different national arrangements into a coherent whole. It needs to centralise its rearmament with a revolutionary plan that would detail countries’ roles and responsibilities.

Another worrying aspect of Europe’s defence awakening is the absence of political debate at both EU and national levels. It seems governments are taking for granted that popular sympathy for Ukraine translates into broadly-based support for defence spending that will probably squeeze social benefits and financial stability.

Populist parties across Europe are, meanwhile, edging closer to power, and could yet torpedo the common defence effort. As well as spelling out their rearmament plans, EU governments need to promote public discussion that would shape a mandate for action.

The views expressed in this Frankly Speaking op-ed reflect those of the author and not of Friends of Europe.