Defending European Defense

Defending European Defense
By Tomas Valasek is director of F.{P. and defense at the Center of European Reform.

Ten years ago in St.Malo, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac launched the European security and defense policy, or ESDP. They had the right idea: The European Union needs a defense arm if it is to play a global role, and with the demand for peace-[keepers rising. ESDP could give a needed boost to the efforts of NATO and the United Nations. Or at least that was the theory. In reality ESDP did not work very well for much of its first decade because until recently EU countries could not agree on its very purpose.
For many years after its St. Malo beginnings, the initiative was beset by a conflict between two driving visions. Mr Chirac saw ESDP primarily as a way to lessen U.S. influence in Euroe, so did, to varying degrees, the governments of the day in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg For his part Mr Blair-and like-minded leaders in The Hague and Central Europe-wanted more European defenses for a completely different reason.: They worried that the US was not interested enough in the security of Europe. They wanted ESDP to fill the void in defense capabilities that America's post – Cold War military disengagement from Europe was creating.
Each impulse drove EU defense policy in a slightly different direction. Those who feared that the US would become less engaged in Europe, as Mr Blair did, wanted the EU to focus on increasing Europe's military strenght while keeping a strong link to the US through NATO. Those who shared Mr.Chirac's desire to see less US involvement in European security sought instead to challenge NATO by building an alternative European military bureaucracy, or by launching "flag planting"EU missions in Africa and elsewhere.
The first 10 years of ESDP have been largely a success for the Chirac grou[p: a triumph of insititution-building over military cababilities. The EU has created numerous military agencies – the EU military staff, the European Defense Agency, the European Security and Defense College – and launched some two dozen missions under the EU flag. But most of those missions were small, some involving only a handful of people. And only a minority of the misssions involved militery forces; most focused on policing or restoring the rule of law. Meanwhile Europe's defense budgets have continued to shrink. Only a handful of European governments, including Britain, France and Greece. Spend more than 2% of GDP on their militaries. And that was before the financial crisis, which will almost certainly depress defense spending still further.
Critics in Britain and elsewhere will be tempted to dismiss ESDP as an empty exercise, but that would be wrong. The civilian missions have been important, too, since most conflict resolution today requires not just military forces but a blend of civilian and armed forces. The military missions may have been few but some were quite complex-such as the one in Chad, where 3.400 troops from 19 European nations distribute humanitarian aid and protect refugees fleeing from fighting in Sudan. Perhaps most important, the EU has become a more strategic actor thanks to ESDP. It thinks about the outside world a lot more than it used to before St Malo. When trouble breaks out on or around the Continent, most Europeans now want the EU to act. That is vastly different from the early 1990s, when Europe prevaricated while people in Bosnia died.
Building more military capabilities will be the challenge for the next decade. Fortunately, EU member states are now in broad agreement on this point. The ideological differences that plagued ESDP in its first 10 years are being erased, for two reasons.
First, the politicians most associated with pushin ESDP as an alternative to NATO- Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder – have been replaced by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, who are far mor pragmatic about cooperating with the US Barack Obama's victory in the American presidential election will further accelerate trans-Atlantic rapprochement.
The urge among European governments to build up more EU defense institutions to marginalize NATO- and, by extension, the US – is weakening.
Second, the EU is vecoming a victim of its own success. The more military missions Europe runs, the more exposed its military weaknesses become. The Chad mission, while impressive in its size and ambition, suffered embarrassing delays when EU military planners could not find enough transport helicopters. Russia ended up lending a few.
So EU member states are converging around a new focus on capabilities. France, too, is playing down the need for more institutions, such as an EU operational haedquarters. Instead, President Sarkozy has used his EU presidency to launch plans to upgrade Europe's military helicopters and to pool Europe's transport aircraft. He also plans to reintegrate France into NATO's military commands, further healing relations between the EU and the alliance.
Little improvement on the capability front will happen in the short term. Defense budgets will probably dro[p further as the economic crisis bites. But the financial crunch will force governments to think about how effectively they use their defense money.
At the moment, much defense spending in Europe goes to national bureaucracies and military staffs, as well as national industrial champions. To get more equipment for the money they do have to spend, European governments need to be less protectionist and buy the best available equipment for the lowest price, no matter where it was made. That is the direction in which Brussels is nudging the member states. The European Commission has proposed a basket of new laws that would make it more difficult for governments to discriminate against other defense suppliers from within the EU.
Ten years on ESDP is still the right idea. It has suffered from European disagreements on the role of the US and NATO, so it has not generated the capabilities its supporters hoped it would. But most EU governments agree that the next 10 years of ESDP must be about strenghening Europe's military muscle. Now they need to make the political difficult choices, such as pooling parts on national militaries or abandoning preferential treatment of national champions, that can bring about more efficiency. Barring unlikely increases in defense budgets, efficiencly is the only way to strengthen ESDP

Μήπως επειδή συμμετέχουμε στην ίδρυση αυτού του σώματος [που δεν γνωρίζουμε ακόμη αν θα αντικαταστήσει κάποια στιγμή το εδώ ευρισκόμενο Σύμφωνο} μας δημιουργούν όλα αυτά τα προβλήματα ώστε αδύναμοι οικονομικά πλέον να μην μπορούμε να συμμετέχουμε και έτσι είμαστε ερμαία των διαφόρων προς βορρά μας ορέξεων???? Κάνω σκέψεις γιατί τα όσα συνέβησαν δεν μπορώ να τα εμπεδώσω στην αγανάκτηση των νέων και του κόσμου γενικώς. Οι νέοι μας και μάλιστα οι καλλυμένοι δεν πιστεύω ότι έχουν μυαλό να σκεφτούν τους όσους προβληματισμούς λένε κάποιοι «σοφοί» ότι τους οδήγησαν στα όσα ζήσαμε αυτές τις ημέρες.

Καταρχήν θα πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίσουμε ότι το ΝΑΤΟ (δημιούργημα του Ψυχρού Πολέμου) δεν είναι στρατιωτικός οργανισμός αλλά πολιτικός για να ελέγχει τα μέλη του (τους Συμμάχους του ΠΠ ΙΙ).
Προϋπόθεση δημιουργίας από την ΕΕ αυτοτελούς εξωτερικής πολιτικής είναι η δημιουργία Ευρωπαϊκής Άμυνας.
Οι ΗΠΑ ουδόλως επιθυμούν η ΕΕ να αποκτήσει δική της εξωτερική πολιτική και κατ’ επέκτασιν να ανδρωθεί. Γι’ αυτό ώθησε την ΕΕ να ανοιχθεί προς ανατολάς και να περιλάβει τα φτωχαδάκια της πρώην Σοβιετίας. Γι’ αυτό κόπτεται να βάλει και την Τουρκία στην ΕΕ, για να αλλοιώσει τελείως τον χαρακτήρα της ΕΕ και τα 70 εκ. της Τουρκίας να καθίσουν οικονομικά την ΕΕ και να βλέπει η ΕΕ την ολοκλήρωση της με το κιάλι.
Αυτά εν συντομία.
ΣΓΣ