For decades, the countries of Western Europe depended on US protection for their security. Today, the European Union (EU) has become a net exporter of security. The question that now confronts European governments and institutions is how much more security they should be producing and projecting, and with what means. Much of the debate over European and transatlantic capabilities has focused on institutional labels, defence expenditures, costly procurement projects and comparisons between European military potential and US military power. However, the real question is how much more individual European governments can and wish to do in the security field, and which new formulas can produce greater output. The debate about capabilities is really a debate about the extent of Europe's ambition for an active, responsible role in international security, and whether Europe's societies deem acceptable the risks and sacrifices that this would entail.
The outcome of this debate will be shaped by wider changes in the old paradigms of security. The boundaries between military and civilian security and between external and internal security have become more fluid, and economic and social inter-dependence, both within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world, has increased. As the US focuses increasingly on homeland defence, counter-terrorism and crisis regions beyond Europe, Europe itself must be prepared to take more responsibility for its own security. That governments and publics on both sides of the Atlantic have different perceptions of the shape of the threat and the meaning of multinational cooperation only adds to this complexity.
The EU's approach to security has been based on the conviction that military means are just one element of an effective, sustainable security policy, and usually not the most important one. While this may in part reflect perceptions distorted by the specific experience of the East-West confrontation in Europe, it also corresponds with the belief that not every problem has a military solution. This leads to a broader understanding of capabilities: the ability to ‘manage’ crises, or better still prevent them. Europe's advantage is seen as lying in precisely this cocktail of security-related measures and activities.
The EU's priorities and modes of operation will never be the same as those in the US, in NATO or in US-dominated war-fighting coalitions. It is not sufficient to compare European and US defence spending or military assets. European capabilities must be judged over the whole spectrum of security-projection measures, and in relation to accepted political goals. Hoping for significantly increased defence budgets would be unrealistic in the current political climate in most European countries. The corset of macro-economic performance imposed by European Monetary Union (EMU), together with high unemployment, ageing populations and growing health care costs, leaves little room for defence-related growth. Besides, structural changes are often slow and politically painful, and rarely produce rapid savings. For added capabilities, coordination and cooperation need to increase in all areas relevant to security, including diplomacy, the military, the police, civil emergency protection, post-conflict reconstruction, international trade and economic measures. The issue is how to get more out, with limited resources.
This paper answers this question by looking at both the military and the civilian components of conflict prevention and crisis management. It argues that the main opportunities for increasing European capabilities lie in expanding national and functional coordination within Europe; enhancing the EU's strategic decision-making; developing the spectrum of European non-military and military capabilities; and establishing rational and pragmatic cooperation mechanisms between the EU and NATO, and between the EU and the US. The paper has four objectives:
The first chapter describes and assesses initiatives to strengthen European capabilities up to and including NATO's Prague Summit in November 2002.1 The second chapter discusses likely short-term developments, including a detailed scrutiny of the EU's crisis-management tools. The next chapter analyses US reactions to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and transatlantic burden-sharing after 11 September, and looks at options for a new strategic partnership between the EU and the US. Chapter four deals with the long-term operational and strategic limitations that Europe faces, and the final chapter enumerates five areas where European capabilities could be significantly increased.
In its use of key terms, this paper assumes that crisis-management capabilities are more than just an assembly or catalogue of assets, be they mechanised infantry battalions, mine-sweepers, strike aircraft, civilian rescue helicopters or police officers. First, there are both military and civilian crisis-management capabilities. Second, in addition to field capabilities, national and institutional planning and politico-military coordination and decision-making capabilities must be taken into account. Third, just because a state or organisation has an asset, this does not mean that it has a capability: a capability exists only when the asset is relevant to the task at hand.2 An asset must have the relevant level of training, equipment, deployability, sustainability and effectiveness for it to be a capability in a particular operation or function. This also means that the term ‘capability’ is relative; there is no exact or comparative qualitative dimension.
Defining crisis management and conflict prevention – and thus the ESDP's sphere of application – is particularly difficult since individual EU member states have their own definitions and ambitions. Indeed, even within national governments different ministries have different agendas and definitions. The pragmatic solution, adopted in this paper, has been to not define these terms at all, thus granting a degree of constructive ambiguity. Instead, this paper distinguishes between three broad categories: ‘military crisis management’, ‘civilian crisis management’ and ‘conflict prevention’.3
Of course, all of these categories are of secondary importance next to vital interests, including collective and common security commitments and the territorial defence.4 However, even within the EU and NATO, one member state's crisis management can easily be another's safeguarding of vital interests. Consequently, commitments to crisis management and conflict prevention, and the underlying perceptions of risk, morale, values and acceptable costs, have considerable implications for core aspects of defence and alliance strength in the pursuit of international peace and security.