When Spain took over its presidency of the EU Council, some six months ago, one could see that its objectives were very limited, but, in a way, realistic. At that time, Spain goals were very limited, but in a way, realistic due to the fact that 6 months are a very short period of time, and that the lack of unity of views between the countries had closed the way to a larger ambition. More concretely, Spain objectives were to realize a qualitative jump in promoting more efficient and flexible EU battle groups, consolidating the association between the EU and the NATO and going forward in the civil-military cooperation.
What was reached?
The financial and budgetary crisis, and the rescue of Greece have diverted our officials from this chapter of European construction. Nothing at all is to be read except some declaration supporting the sanctions against Iran. This is really the minimum of what the European Union could do. Of course, it seems that the EU could go forward on the organization of the external action service of Mrs Ashton. However, the cancellation of both summits EU-USA and Mediterranean Union let assess that the European countries were not attractive enough to make president Obama visit again Europe and make the Mediterranean countries find a way to progress on peace.
Everybody can understand that the Spanish agenda for its presidency has been overwhelmingly influenced by the crisis and the vital need to restore confidence and belief in the economical and financial system. In such situations nobody will claim being neglected.
Therefore, let us see what will happen with the Belgian Presidency, effectively and if the absence of long time government will influence the results that could be reached.
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
2010-07-13
Africa: can the EU contribute to peace and security?
The football world cup has given to most Europeans a new idea of Africa. Of course, one or the other country cannot give a good idea of this gigantic and multi-faceted country. However, this world event has shown that Africa is not only the continent of poverty, starvation, civil wars and massive emigration.
The image of Africa I would remember from this World cup, when looking at the different teams, like South-Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast or Algeria, are the words dynamism, life, courage and will, a strong will to win and to express national pride devoid of any aggressiveness.
Even if there is, according to Pascal Boniface geopolitics of football, we did not speak that much on geopolitics during the last weeks. Therefore I would come back to the relations between Africa and Europe, from the perspective of European Defence, of course. As I would not pretend being experts on those issues, I will try to share some views, based on an article I recently read in ‘Defence Review’. This article deals with the relations between the EU and sub-Saharan Africa and is written by Bastien Nivet. If you want to read it (in French) it is to be found here.
One of the major difficulties I met while reading this article was to identify the effectiveness of European support to African security. Many issues are intricate and prevent any significant step forward.
-While the EU is cooperating with the African Union, the latter suffers of its deficient structure and lack of assets. Furthermore the African Union is in competition with some regional organizations, which strive to establish direct links with the EU.
-Some European countries are not that much interested in Security issues and are mainly present through support to development or via the European Union programs. For instance, Germany refused to participate to Eufor Chad at the level of its financial contribution to the EU budget.
-Other countries have historical links with Africa and have built up influence networks that work well, and may be much better than purely institutional and structured relations.
-Initially, the EU action program to development support was not related with security. It was only part of a broader program including as well Caribbean and Pacific countries. Anyone would understand that this might be difficult to find synergies between those three areas. Anyway this ACP program could not directly contribute to security, as, at that time, European External Policy did not play the role it has now.
For more than ten years, the EU has been working on the reinforcement of African peace support capabilities. As usual, there has been a mix of European and national initiatives, which do not give a good visibility of the European action to the eyes of the citizens we all are. Even if Europe support were more coherent, one can be far from thinking that results would have been better. One of the poor results originate from different but converging causes:
-even if African Union and regional organizations give an impression of unity, they poorly dissimulate behind this image a huge diversity of national interests, cultures, ways of doing, as well as a poor governance of those organizations. This weakness of the organizations does not only originate in the lack of assets. It comes firstly from this diversity, which is, at least for the time being, much stronger than the will of unity.
Therefore what could the EU do to achieve a real improvement of the security situation in Africa? May be one solution would be not to glorify too much the latest operations by showing every time only the bright side of those. If some of them have been finally successful, the question remains, for how long? A second question could be: what is really a EU operation? Many of them, are still carried to the altar of CFSP to make it happen by hiding the strong national participation of one or two nations, while the other ones just put one or two officers in order to see their flag among the other ones without dedicating any military asset. Regarding the results of an operation, use of armed forces is useless without a long term and efficient development support. However looking at the poor governance of some of those states, this development support should not exclusively cover the economical side of if. It should include the political and social sides as well.
But this is not that simple: such an integral support could be as well considered by the African countries as a neo-colonialism. Such a perception can encourage some countries to undermine EU efforts to develop Africa. This undermining could even come from European countries willing not be regarded as such.
Therefore, I would express serious doubts on EU capability to really support from a global perspective the improvement of security situation in Africa. Probably the most efficient way of doing could consist on supporting punctually one or the other country to stabilize a sub-region during a short period of time, just waiting for a stabilization of the area, but keeping in mind that European contingents could be back in the same area some weeks or months just after the end of the operation.
The image of Africa I would remember from this World cup, when looking at the different teams, like South-Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast or Algeria, are the words dynamism, life, courage and will, a strong will to win and to express national pride devoid of any aggressiveness.
Even if there is, according to Pascal Boniface geopolitics of football, we did not speak that much on geopolitics during the last weeks. Therefore I would come back to the relations between Africa and Europe, from the perspective of European Defence, of course. As I would not pretend being experts on those issues, I will try to share some views, based on an article I recently read in ‘Defence Review’. This article deals with the relations between the EU and sub-Saharan Africa and is written by Bastien Nivet. If you want to read it (in French) it is to be found here.
One of the major difficulties I met while reading this article was to identify the effectiveness of European support to African security. Many issues are intricate and prevent any significant step forward.
-While the EU is cooperating with the African Union, the latter suffers of its deficient structure and lack of assets. Furthermore the African Union is in competition with some regional organizations, which strive to establish direct links with the EU.
-Some European countries are not that much interested in Security issues and are mainly present through support to development or via the European Union programs. For instance, Germany refused to participate to Eufor Chad at the level of its financial contribution to the EU budget.
-Other countries have historical links with Africa and have built up influence networks that work well, and may be much better than purely institutional and structured relations.
-Initially, the EU action program to development support was not related with security. It was only part of a broader program including as well Caribbean and Pacific countries. Anyone would understand that this might be difficult to find synergies between those three areas. Anyway this ACP program could not directly contribute to security, as, at that time, European External Policy did not play the role it has now.
For more than ten years, the EU has been working on the reinforcement of African peace support capabilities. As usual, there has been a mix of European and national initiatives, which do not give a good visibility of the European action to the eyes of the citizens we all are. Even if Europe support were more coherent, one can be far from thinking that results would have been better. One of the poor results originate from different but converging causes:
-even if African Union and regional organizations give an impression of unity, they poorly dissimulate behind this image a huge diversity of national interests, cultures, ways of doing, as well as a poor governance of those organizations. This weakness of the organizations does not only originate in the lack of assets. It comes firstly from this diversity, which is, at least for the time being, much stronger than the will of unity.
Therefore what could the EU do to achieve a real improvement of the security situation in Africa? May be one solution would be not to glorify too much the latest operations by showing every time only the bright side of those. If some of them have been finally successful, the question remains, for how long? A second question could be: what is really a EU operation? Many of them, are still carried to the altar of CFSP to make it happen by hiding the strong national participation of one or two nations, while the other ones just put one or two officers in order to see their flag among the other ones without dedicating any military asset. Regarding the results of an operation, use of armed forces is useless without a long term and efficient development support. However looking at the poor governance of some of those states, this development support should not exclusively cover the economical side of if. It should include the political and social sides as well.
But this is not that simple: such an integral support could be as well considered by the African countries as a neo-colonialism. Such a perception can encourage some countries to undermine EU efforts to develop Africa. This undermining could even come from European countries willing not be regarded as such.
Therefore, I would express serious doubts on EU capability to really support from a global perspective the improvement of security situation in Africa. Probably the most efficient way of doing could consist on supporting punctually one or the other country to stabilize a sub-region during a short period of time, just waiting for a stabilization of the area, but keeping in mind that European contingents could be back in the same area some weeks or months just after the end of the operation.
2010-06-22
Funding of multinational operations: a need for a radical change.
Might it be the NATO or EU, the countries taking part to multinational operations always meet the same problem, based on the motto: “the costs lie where they fall”. To the attention of newcomers, it means that a country, which sends troops upon request of an international organization, will pay twice for his contribution.
Firstly, his national defence budget will be charged with the supplementary costs caused by the deployment of troops abroad. For some countries, it can reach several hundreds of millions of Euros per year.
Secondly, if mission fails or situation worsens, the government of this contributing nation will run into political danger, as the casualties or some collateral damages could make the public opinion to reject the current foreign policy and lead to the loss of the next elections.
Therefore some countries have deliberately chosen to travel in Business Class while on operations: they select carefully the region in which they will operate, they implement such caveats or give such tasks to their forces deployed there that any casualty is avoided as far as possible, and if possible, you offer troops for the most media-friendly jobs. However, I will not put shame on any specific country: there is a sort of unofficial task sharing as, depending on the national interests having lead to the decision to deploy, one or the other country will be once very active, or the other time will just have a symbolic presence, the latter case being used when there is a need to give a token of solidarity.
Because of Afghanistan, far away from most of European countries’ areas of interest, source of daily casualties, countries are always more reluctant to contribute. The painful force generation process for EUFOR in Chad is still the worst example of an operation decided at the political level, without the political will to see it up and running.
Sooner or later, EU countries will have to think over the issue of cost sharing. I can only support the idea that the country, which pays, decides as well. Current Athena program, designed to share the costs that cannot be nationally identified is far from being sufficient to encourage Nations to contribute, mainly in areas of great danger or great logistical issues.
Some members of the EU Parliament have already worked on the topic. However, only very few countries are ready to go forward on the topic:
-A development of Athena principles to the whole operation would definitely reinforce the role of the EU Parliament and therefore would be regarded as an intrusion within national sovereign issues.
-If Europe proposes you to take over all the costs, it becomes much more difficult to refuse to commit national units. Another pretext is to be found.
Nevertheless, the latest financial crisis has left most of European countries is such a situation that their defence forces could be forced to gather their efforts and resources (or at least some of them) in order to face budgetary cuts imposed by their governments.
This could make a good opportunity for European Defence to wake up.
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