OPINION
Waging
war on the myth of an EU army
The
debate has been hijacked by Euroskeptics to stoke fears of EU
overreach into national sovereignty.
By SOPHIA BESCH
6/7/16, 5:34 AM CET
As the referendum
nears and Britain’s EU debate becomes less evidence-based every
day, Brexiteers are tapping into deep-rooted tropes of Euroskepticism
guaranteed to alarm the British public. Recent “revelations” in
the British media focused on plans to create an EU military
headquarters, and stoked fears of further overreach into one of the
most sensitive areas of national sovereignty — defense.
And yet Brexit
campaigners’ outrage is little more than a storm in a Euroskeptic’s
tea cup. There are no imminent plans to create an EU army. The
creation of EU headquarters would integrate national operational
headquarters and command-and-control centers, facilitate planning and
enhance coordination of civilian and military EU missions.
Many member
countries support the plan to make existing — and often
counter-intuitive — arrangements more efficient. But Britain has
always vetoed the project, and plans to use the “permanent
structured defense cooperation” (PESCO) mechanism to forego the
U.K. veto have gone nowhere. Member countries know that operational
headquarters without British participation would lack credibility.
A
Brussels-controlled army itself is a pipe dream. And yet, it is easy
for British Euroskeptics to raise the specter of the threat. In March
2015, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker advocated a
common European army as a way to increase the EU’s standing on the
world stage, not least in the eyes of Russia. Recent reports on a
forthcoming defense white paper from Germany and EU High
representative Federica Mogherini’s EU Global Strategy stoked
scaremongering too.
The reality is there
is not enough political will in Europe’s key member countries.
David Cameron is not alone in his staunch rejection of the idea.
Ireland guards its neutrality zealously and secured a protocol
stating explicitly that the Lisbon Treaty did not provide for the
creation of such a force. France would rather get the rest of Europe
to support French operations in Mali and the Sahel.
In Germany, it’s
considered “good form” to reaffirm the commitment to a European
army, but it remains a long-term aspiration — nobody in Berlin is
preparing for its implementation. Finally, Central and East European
states see U.S. capabilities as a vital hedge against an aggressive
Russia, and fear that a European army would remove the raison d’être
for U.S. forces in Europe. They have expressed their strong
preference for NATO, and discarded the idea of a European army.
In practice the lack
of a shared vision on how to use EU forces would be an enormous
problem in a crisis.
Europeans have
learned this the hard way, through the EU Battle Groups. Created in
2007, these consist of rotating troop contingents from member
countries, in theory ready to deploy at 10 days’ notice. The Battle
Groups are not controlled from Brussels, however, and rely on member
countries to provide boots on the ground. There is no common budget;
instead, an unattractive system of cost distribution places the brunt
of an operation’s financial burden on the deploying country.
Differing national military strategies and threat assessments have
deterred EU members from volunteering soldiers for these operations —
the Battle Groups have, in fact, never been used.
These problems would
not go away with a centralized EU force — and even its staunchest
supporters cannot conceive of a supranational defense authority that
could overrule decisions by national parliaments.
If expeditionary
operations are not an option, an EU army would presumably be designed
to take on territorial defense tasks. But this would signal a
qualitative shift in EU policy, far beyond its current mandate for
humanitarian and rescue tasks, crisis management, and peacekeeping.
Collective defense
of European territory is still NATO’s mandate. These days the
Alliance’s problem is not that Europeans might take too much in
their own hands, but rather that Americans may tire of European “free
riders.” Washington has repeatedly signaled that it wants Europeans
to take their own defense more seriously.
The EU can add real
value by integrating European defense markets or coordinating
multinational procurement projects. European leaders should not allow
debates over the creation of an unrealistic European pipe dream
distract them from decisions on how best to meet Europe’s defense
needs.
The upcoming EU
Global Strategy could lay the groundwork for another attempt to
revive the EU’s defense role, and it may well feature the creation
of permanent military headquarters. But it will remain a “strategic
reflection,” not a call for an EU army. EU leaders will no doubt
endorse it — but only after a unanimous vote. Ironically, if the
U.K. is serious about preventing a stronger EU defense role, it will
have to stay in the Union to veto its creation.
Sophia Besch is a
research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
Authors:
Sophia Besch
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