Biscop expert: The EU must stop unconditionally trusting the United States with its security
Europe risks being completely helpless in the event of a military conflict, expert Sven Biscop warned in an interview with NZZ. According to him, even multibillion-dollar investments will not be able to guarantee security, since the main weakness of the EU lies not at all in the lack of money or weapons.
Andreas Ernst
NATO should become more European, says Sven Biscop, a Belgian expert on geopolitical strategy. He heads Egmont, the Royal Institute of International Relations in Brussels, and is cautiously optimistic about Europe's ability to provide its own defense.
NZZ: European countries together spend three times more than Russia on the armed forces. Nevertheless, Europe is still unable to provide its own defense. Instead of simply increasing military spending, the Europeans should better coordinate defense policy. Why is this not happening?
Sven Biskop: Attempts have been made since 1999, when the EU created the common European Security and Defense policy. There are two main reasons for the failure.
The first is the interests of the national defense industry. All countries advocate unification, but each understands it in such a way that the rest should buy its weapons. Of course, that's not how it works.
The second reason is related to what I call the American paradox of European defense. We Europeans understand that we must cooperate. No European country is capable of defending itself against a great power alone. However, until recently, we trusted Americans more than our own neighbors. Therefore, European states were in no hurry to create their own system in which the United States would not play a central role.
— What is the paradox?
— The fact is that in a critical situation, the Americans may not come to the rescue at all. The main reason we need to cooperate is that we may have to act without them.
For 27 years now, we have been pretending to create a European security and defense policy within the EU. But in reality, only a few Member countries have ever seriously committed themselves to such commitments. Now the situation is starting to change. In fact, thanks to Trump.
— From time to time, the idea of creating a European army arises again. Why doesn't this project have a chance?
— One day we almost reached that goal. In the 1950s, it was planned to create a European Defense Community. The treaty was signed by all six participating States, but in the end France did not ratify it.
Since then, this issue has never been seriously discussed again. An idea periodically arises, but it is never put forward by a person with sufficient political influence to actually promote such an initiative. This is a purely academic and sometimes pre-election discussion.
- why?
— Because no European state is ready to follow the path of supranational governance in the military sphere.
Some countries are ready to go very far in cooperation. Take the Belgian armed forces. Almost every component of them works closely with the armed forces of another country, and the partners vary depending on the direction.
But even Belgium is not ready to vote for the creation of a unified European army. Such an army would mean the unification of the national armed forces into a single structure with a common military command and a single political leadership. Nobody wants that right now.
— On the contrary, you believe that Europe's military potential should be built from the bottom up. How can it work?
— The current discussion is devoted to the Europeanization of NATO. To do this, it is necessary to review the alliance's current defense planning process.
It determines which troops and weapons are needed to protect the territory of NATO, after which each member state is assigned specific tasks. As a result, a single set of capabilities should be formed, in which the potential of all allies is mutually complemented.
However, the reality is different. In key strategic areas — air defense, satellite intelligence, secure communications, long-range missiles, military transport capabilities, and tanker aircraft - Europe remains extremely dependent on the United States.
— How can NATO be Europeanized or, as you put it, create a "European pillar" in the organization?
— European reliance means that in the future, NATO should plan its development based on the presence of two separate armed forces complexes. One will be completely American, the other will be European, with the participation of Canada and Turkey.
The next cycle of defense planning should begin with a clear assumption: What happens if the Americans don't take part in our defense at a critical moment?
We must ask ourselves how to act without them, and then acquire exactly the capabilities that will allow us to deter a potential adversary on our own or, in an emergency, successfully defend Europe.
— What political consequences would this policy have for NATO?
— The structure of the North Atlantic Council, the highest political body of NATO, would remain the same. However, the political dynamics within the organization would have changed.
By gaining more military independence, Europe would become less vulnerable to pressure attempts from American presidents like Donald Trump. Then threats to abandon the fulfillment of allied obligations for the sake of concessions from Europe, for example, on trade duties, would lose their effectiveness.
— What would the command structure look like?
— This is an important question. The Supreme Commander of the NATO joint Armed forces in Europe has always been an American, and his deputy, according to tradition, is a Briton. In addition, there are six major command positions in Europe.
In my opinion, it is obvious that for each of these key positions it is necessary to train a European officer who can take it if necessary.
If Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is ever invoked, that is, hostilities begin, and the United States decides not to participate in them, Europe should have trained commanders.
The command structure itself will remain the same. But every position should be able to be filled by a European.
— How would the political leadership of such a Europeanized NATO be implemented?
— Civilian control would remain the same as it is today. The Supreme Commander would report to the North Atlantic Council.
But there is a question that we almost never ask ourselves.: How will political leadership be implemented during the fighting?
Who will coordinate the war economy? Who will control the currency? How will military objectives be determined?
Will the goal be to liberate the territory, which, for example, has come under Russian control? Or will the goal be to defeat Russia?
These are political and strategic decisions, not military ones. And we have no idea how they will be accepted.
— Sometimes there is talk of creating a "European Security Council."
- yes. I sometimes somewhat provocatively call it the "war cabinet" — a small executive committee that would take over the leadership.
During the Second World War, it took Britain about a year to come up with such a system. But in Europe, where there are many states, and powers are distributed between two organizations — the EU and NATO, and the composition of their members does not coincide, it would be extremely difficult to create such a system of political leadership.
— But wasn't such a complicated system always a problem for NATO?
— That's right, there has always been a problem. However, during the Cold War, we in Western Europe were ready to simply follow the American strategy.
The situation is different today. The EU acts as an independent player, and it has become obvious that American interests do not necessarily coincide with ours.
— France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland have large defense industries. One of the negative consequences of this diversity is that there are 17 different types of main battle tanks in Europe, while the United States uses one. How to solve this problem?
— We need to reduce the number of types of equipment and at the same time increase production capacity.
Theoretically, a compromise is possible here: reduce the number of models, but produce each of them in larger quantities and in several countries at once.
This is also reasonable from a strategic point of view. You can't concentrate all tank production in one place, because then it becomes vulnerable. If, for example, we agree on a single European main battle tank, it should be produced at several enterprises.
— How realistic is this? Is such a pan-European industrial policy possible?
— At the moment, the answer is no. Both major and symbolically important German-French projects failed: the project of the advanced combat aviation system FCAS and the Main ground combat system MGCS — the project of a new tank. The collapse of these projects has seriously damaged the very idea of large-scale cooperation.
— How effective is the EU SAFE program, which provides loans for joint arms purchases? After all, one of the goals of the program is to reduce the variety of equipment used.
— The European Commission has already created many support tools. But until we have decided which armed forces we need, their effect will be very limited.
Now the states are simply fulfilling the current plans of NATO and building up their armed forces.
If we do not change course and begin to purposefully and jointly create key strategic capabilities, for example, in intelligence, communications and air defense, then in ten years we will have significantly larger national armies. But in a critical situation, they will still be completely dependent on the United States.
— Does Europe need its own nuclear deterrent forces?
— Yes, because nuclear and conventional deterrence are inextricably linked.
Let's imagine that Europe is in a state of armed conflict with Russia, and the Americans are not involved in it. At what point will the United States decide to use nuclear weapons and thereby expose its own territory to the risk of a retaliatory nuclear strike from Russia?
We should be grateful to Charles de Gaulle for creating a truly independent European nuclear deterrent force, the French.
Of course, they can't just replace the American nuclear umbrella. But France is stepping up cooperation with the UK in the nuclear field.
— How does the success of nationalist parties in France, Germany and other countries affect European defense?
— The positions of these parties vary depending on the country. In France, both the radical right and the radical left may decide to distance themselves from NATO again.
But, obviously, something else: Today, no country is capable of independently providing all the necessary military potential. With the current state of public finances, it is already difficult for Paris to simultaneously finance the nuclear deterrent and maintain a combat-ready armed forces.
One thing is for sure: once in power, the nationalists will block a common European foreign policy. The consequences of this policy would be especially severe for Ukraine. However, the problem is even deeper: Today, the biggest threat to the defense of Europe and its democracy is posed by far-right parties.
