Expeditionary Wars: what Legitimacy? The unstated reasons for war.

As a follow-on of my previous post dedicated to the legitimacy of expeditionary wars (here), today I will tackle the left top part of the graph, where cynicism is at the top of the considerations.

For an easier reading, here is a reduced copy of the afore mentioned graph:

Eurocorps and other multinational Headquarters are not planned to deploy in Mali

On a pretty regular basis I can read on the requests leading to this humble blog (I claim the word 'humble', when I compare the content of this blog to the ones listed in the blogroll), that some people had typed 'Eurocorps' and 'Mali' as keywords. My conclusion is that some pedagogy on European Defence is still needed. Therefore this article will be useless for those who are skilled in defence matters and is intended to the newcomers.

Well, let us start from the very beginning: there are three types of multinational operational headquarters. As the French operation in Mali is of land-centric type, i.e involving mainly land forces, let us focus on land headquarters.

NATO: the decreasing importance of the military alliance.

The future NATO concept has raised a lot of interest within the military community. Among those who wrote on the topic, I could find some comments on the reinforcement of the security in Europe thanks the enlargement of the Alliance or its prominent role in world’s stability and security.

This has been true until Warsaw Pact collapsed and afterwards during the instability which succeeded to the fall of Berlin Wall. Since then, as everybody knows, no European country is really threatened at its borders, except in the 90’s in the Balkan area. Of course, many of the European countries still feel threatened by Russia and are eager to feel the US umbrella over their territory.

But this is no more a reality, or at least, with the conventional assets. Most of the US troops hence spread over Germany have now redeployed to the USA, the most symbolic one being may be the 1st infantry division, now based in Fort Riley (Kansas). The US military presence has logically been decreasing for years in order to adapt to the new status of Europe, which does not have any more an immediate and major threat at its border, for the very first time of its history.

Therefore, beyond the political correctness, by which some people insist on the better security in Europe with the enlargement of NATO, one should really look at the added value of the new NATO members. Due to their aging tanks, communication systems, airplanes, ships inherited from the former times, their contribution cannot be regarded as a military one, excepted some infantry or special forces for Afghanistan. Those countries, closer to the Caucasus and Middle East than German Bases offer interesting platforms to US Air Force and other units that are tasked to operate in this area, including missile defence.

The weak military relevance is illustrated by the percentage of those armies in the overall figures of forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of course, at the level of those countries, their commitment represents a huge effort, and furthermore, a cultural revolution: in a 10-year time span, they have redirected their troops for a conventional warfare in Europe towards counterinsurgency. The blood shed in those countries implies that they largely deserve US support to their defence. However, the international situation is such that, with the exception of some episodic Russian provocations, they do not risk that much. In any case their situation is not to be compared with Georgia.

In such a situation where the threat is no more at our borders, the military is looking at other directions. One of them could be represented by the rogue states or the failed states. Including this threat in the NATO concept could be interesting: the military has a role, far beyond the borders and furthermore, those countries are not capable of presenting an effective threat against whole NATO. In the worst case, they could initiate one or some localized terrorists attacks. Of course, such attacks would be a tragedy for the victims. Nevertheless, this would not be a vital threat against this very country.

This enemy, formed by this category of rogue or failed states not being a vital issue, I would bet that NATO members would dare to draw all the consequences of the concept. If they would, then they should build up expeditionary forces, in order to be able to address the issue. They are not ready for it, as their only concern is still security at their borders. Why? Because their population do not feel that much involved by overseas adventures. Let’s us look at the firm and definitive German refusal to participate to Eufor in Chad. The Polish participation was more to look at as a visible sign of support to European Defence than a sudden interest for the stability of the former French colony. A further and may be the major issue is the cost of the transformation of their defence forces. They cannot afford it in less than 20 years.

In such an environment, the military relevance of NATO should go on decreasing, and more than a integrated military structure, it should transform towards a coordination body, providing expertise and support to defence forces willing to adapt to the new challenges. One or the other Headquarters would remain to provide this coordination, standardization, and expertise. One or two HQ would remain to command one or the other operation, the rest being disbanded, like the US forces are already doing in Europe.

Identify what elements of the structure (civilian and military) could be reduced would be of course much more difficult: military efficiency being of secondary interest compared with the supposed visibility given by a flag post or the location of a HQ. I prefer to leave this to our politicians.

Finally duplication is in the NATO

Frequently European Defence opponents like casting a stone to European bureaucracy and inefficiency, taking NATO as a model. Sure, it is a little bit late, nevertheless, I enjoyed reading in EUobserver.com, the article written by Valentina Pop and titled “Nato to make cutbacks amid budget crisis”.

Finally, everybody admits that the duplications are in the NATO and that drastic cuts in its operating costs will give to NATO some ability for competition and challenges. I am really longing to see how our Nations will succeed in reaching an agreement.

Firstly, nobody wants to loose key posts in the command structure.
Secondly, nobody is really willing to let a headquarters be disbanded, unless it is in another country.
Thirdly, the real waste of money lays in the duplications between the countries which want, each of them, keep in their hands most of the tools while they will operate, anyway, with the same allies, whatever the situation is. Sooner or later this will have to be addressed, as it could effectively facilitate significant savings.
And what about France? Will France accept to disband SACT, in Norfolk, while this country got a short time ago the commander’s post in the wedding basket for its come back to the structure?
The conclusion sentence of this article is not so amusing: quoting the ministers of Defence the journalist reports them to have declared: “We will continue to demonstrate the alliance's capability to provide a visible assurance of Nato's commitment to collective defence. We are determined that our national decisions on defence programmes and budgets will take into account what we need as an alliance”. It does not seem to me that they will really act to reform rapidly their own defence systems towards a more integrated and therefore cheaper defence organisation. It rather sounds in the style “business as usual”.

I hope I make a mistake, but I do not expect a really significant change, unless our governments have a strong will to sacrifice the HQ they host on their soil, or the key posts that they own. Let us be confident.

France back to the NATO structure: the cultural shock.

When French President Sarkozy decided to have France back within the NATO structure, many, at least in France, spoke about the French renouncement to its cherished independence and declared that France had sold its sold to the USA. The purpose of this post will not be to look again to this recent past, but to write down some comments on a very interesting article, titled “France in the NATO. The French Military Culture and the Strategic Identity in Question” and written by Anne-Henry de Russé.

Sorry, but it is written in French language. Nevertheless, I hope that this post will give you a good insight of this paper.

In the very first pages, the author already states that, being apart from the military structure more than 40 years long, the French military has developed a peculiar culture, characterized by a form of independent way of thinking and operating, which could be put at stake.

From his point of view, combined operations make converge the different national culture, much more the membership in an alliance. To support his statement, Mr de Russé refers to the expeditionary culture of France versus the Clausewitz influence in the US culture. French officer, he seems to strongly favour the French military culture, in which autonomy and polyvalence of the soldier are cultivated at the highest level.

The author stresses as well the danger of a strong NATO culture, which could encourage a decrease in the defence budgets.

A little bit further he thinks that the presence of a French general at the head of Supreme Allied Command Transformation would help for broadcasting the French concepts. Vice versa, the French people would acquire in NATO a planning culture as a complement to their conduct of operations natural inclination.

P. 28, Mr de Russé promotes what he defines as the French indirect approach against the direct approach, main feature of NATO culture. At one moment, as well, he wonders whether the orientation to a stronger interoperability will have an influence on French defence industry.

Really, this article is worth being read quietly, because he leads us to check again our impressions on NATO, and it conveys a good idea on the thoughts of a French officer who could be summoned up to an assignment in the NATO command structure, even it does not really fit with NATO countries way of doing business, in which nations are doing as if they always were compliant with NATO standardization agreements, while doing, anyway their own business.

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.

NATO and the UK: the impossible agreement on European Defence.

While reading in detail the report of the group of experts on a new strategic concept for NATO, lead by Mrs Albright, I felt as if I was dreaming. Indeed, page 25, the experts dared writing: “The new strategic concept should recognise that the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon is designed, among other purposes, to strengthen Europe’s military capabilities and command structures”.

My extreme surprise was provoked by the comparison between this statement and the government program endorsed by the Britsh Conservatives and their LibDem allies. I just remind you that this agreement does not contain one word on European Defence. Clearly, it means that both parties could not reach an agreement on this point, and by such it will remain pending as long as the situation remains as such.

Frankly, it will not change. The coalition will be complicated enough for every day business, they will not need additional conflicts, all the more that those conflicts are conceptual ones and are not the result of some campaign stances or programs. To have more details on this point, everybody can refer to the conservative manifesto, which states: “we believe that NATO, whilst in need of reform, should remain the cornerstone of our defence. Matters of enormous national sensitivity, such as defence procurement, are better dealt through inter­governmental bilateral and multi­lateral negotiations, rather than through supranational institutions.

We will therefore examine resources currently spent on bureaucratic and wasteful EU defence initiatives and spend the money on our servicemen and women. As part of that we will re­evaluate our position with the European Defence Agency as part of the Strategic Defence Review.” (I already made use of it in a previous post).

However, in order to have a more accurate approach of the current British policy as for the EU, or Common Security and Defence Policy refers, I would rather read the speech, very interesting by the way, that Mr Liam Fox, the new British Secretary for Defence made on 11th February 2010. He then said: “With the Lisbon Treaty we have what is now called "Common Security and Defence Policy" - an arcane change in the nomenclature, you might think, but in the detail lay the foundations of EU integrationists leaning away from NATO”.

Obviously, Mrs Albright, who hence pleaded against duplication must be looked at as an ‘integrationist’.

Therefore I cannot see any significant and real progress regarding European Defence, within the few next years:

-Conceptually the UK conservative Secretary for Defence, Mr Liam Fox, is against. As former member of the conservative shadow cabinet, his position opinion is for sure the valid one within the whole party.

-The LibDems, the other party of the coalition, is not strong enough to amend such a view.

-Being one of the two European nuclear powers and the European country spending the most on Defence, it is almost impossible to build a credible defence in Europe without or, worse, against the UK.

For these reasons, the nice statement of the group of experts will for sure remain a wish for a couple of years if not more.

Otherwise, we should resign ourselves to build up a European Defence without the UK, making use of the Reinforced Structured Cooperation, as foreseen by Lisbon Treaty. But, who would be able to do so?

NATO concept: Further discussion on ecological correctness

Two persons expressed their concerns on my statement criticizing the fact that Mrs Albright expert group mentioned the climate change as a geopolitical issue. I do appreciate those comments as they encourage me to think it over, may be a little bit more.

Indeed, like any citizen, I take into account ecology in my daily life. We buy only the fruits of the season; we sort out glass, paper, boxes, garbage, newspapers, bier cans, batteries, etc. Personally I would be happy if the defence forces could support as well fair trade, sustainable development. However, I only mean that in any geopolitical paper one can read, there is always one sentence on the climate change. In French we say ‘tarte à la crème’. This expression originates from the old movies where, for any gag, you had sooner or later inevitably, a custard pie to be thrown at someone’s face.

Therefore, my comment is, from a purely military and tactical point of view: if there is a vital threat, it is to be addressed. If you address it, you dedicate assets. And once you have the appropriate assets, you solve the issue. This report mentions this issue. And so what? The authors of the report don’t really care about the way to solve it. Simply because nobody is really willing to address the issue and dedicate the necessary assets. As there is no real consensus on the level of the threat, everybody is waiting for it to be solved by itself, or simply to disappear from world’s opinion concerns.

I was born in Brittany, where already in the 60’s, environmental crisis was a reality: remember the Torrey Canyon, the Amoco Cadiz, the Olympic Bravery, the Boehlen, the Gino, the Tanio, the Erika (read here). Hence, nobody was taking care of Brittany. Now the situation is much better, it has been “only” phosphates for 30 years.

Again, thank you for your comments that I fully support. Ecology is paramount. However, anybody who considers it as a parameter to take into account in a geopolitical study, should as well assess how it could be addressed properly and specifically. Or if it is only one parameter among others, we should take it as minor one of secondary importance. We should not forget that Groenland gets it name from Greenland, that less than some 10,000 years ago Finland was covered with glaciers, and finally French revolution was probably ignited by several years of bad crops.

Therefore, I persist in thinking that, in this report, the mention of climate change was only a rhetorical vehicle to give to NATO expert group some political correctness.

NATO: the impossible reform of the military capabilities

Thanks O. Kempf and his blog, I could get some insight in Mrs Albright’s report on NATO 2020. Well, the group of experts is really impressive, as they encourage the NATO to do all what it could not achieve in the past 20 years.

Depending on the time available I will try to demonstrate that the reform of the NATO that the group of experts is promoting will surely fail, or at least become reality not earlier than in 2040. When writing ‘reality’, I mean an effective ‘reality’, not the reality of the political statements. That is a different organization, with less headquarters, stronger defence forces within the European countries. In a way, a defence organization which gives our nations the tools to implement their policy.

Although the conclusions of the expert start like the homework of a college student (“the world has changed significantly since 1999”; for sure, it will be of great help to Mr Rasmussen), page after page it becomes more interesting.

For the time being, let us focus on the military capabilities. In a subsequent post, I will look at the political organization.

The main quote I will use is that one: “The primary limiting factor hindering military transformation has been the lack of European defence spending and investment.
Contributing to the problem is the fact that, in the past twenty years, European defence spending has been consumed disproportionally by personnel and operational costs. As a result, European national forces generally do not have nearly enough transformed forces.” (P. 38)

Indeed, I fully disagree with that belief that Europe does not spend enough on defence. In contrary, I support the statement that the money was and is not properly spent. Let us have a look at the defence expenditure of European Union countries (including the UK). Every year, the EU state members spend 200 billion Euros for their defence (Source: EDA). For what result? Out of 1.800.000 soldiers, a maximum of 80.000 is deployed. What the hell the other soldiers are doing all year long? Simply they guard borders that no enemy will cross within the next 20 years, because those very countries will not and will never accept to put down their armies, still largely inherited from Cold War time, and build up lean and expeditionary forces.

A good example is Poland: a few years ago, in 2002, they bought, with a strong US support, F-16. Against whom? Russia? Impossible, the same year, the NATO-Russia Council was set up. Since then, the Polish F-16 have not been deployed yet.

As well, I don not support at all the promotion of Research and Development that is expressed throughout the report: currently, only the USA would take profit out of it through programs like the Joint Strike Fighter, for which only a very few countries, mainly the UK can really get access to the most sensitive data.

Thirdly, regarding current needs in Afghanistan, the NATO asks regularly for more boots on the ground. Well, you do not need high-tech, Robocop style soldiers for those missions. You rather need well-trained troop, ready for patrolling in villages. The issue is that such soldiers do not match with the US technologic approach of military operations.

Therefore, the proposition for a greater effort in R & D or for more versatile and lean defence organizations is not the expression of an operational need. This is the expression of a US desire to see the European build a system, which fits to their own objective, including their industrial development, like in the F-16, the JSF and now the ballistic missile defence.

Poland in European Defence

The tragedy that occurred while the Polish Presidential flight was near to land haseen the death of the President as well as the main Polish military leaders and family members of those who had been assassinated in Katyn.

As for European Defence refers, in the recent years Poland has irritated France, while buying the F-16, supporting the USA in Iraq, then Germany about the issue of the borders and Russia when reinforcing its links with the NATO and the USA.

Again very active in the field of Defence, Poland has decided to seat at the rank it deserves in Europe. Being one of the largest European nations, Poland doesn't want to stay at the outskirts of the EU, including in the field of Defence. In order to fully play the role that Poland has assessed to be the one it ought to play, this country is investing in Eurocorps, final aim being to become a full member (or framework nation) with the same rights and duties than France, Spain, Germany, Belgium or Luxembourg.  Click (here) for the Eurocorps source and (here) for the press.

This large movement of integration of European armies should not been neglected: being obviously a top-down approach, imposed by the political power, this movement will not be seen positively by our respective defence forces which struggle strongly against the cuts in their budgets. However, it will come up sooner or later, as our nations are fighting to save the single Euro. Defence is a perfect gold mine. 

I will try to write a post on EU defence expenditure in the near future.

Welcome on board

Welcome everybody and frankly, nobody, at least for the time being.
My purpose is to write short items on European Defence. By the way, you should not think that I am an European Defence freak.
Really not. I love Nato and Oberammergau.
However I am living everyday on the European continent (my poor english language is the absolute proof), and Europe is our common past, our common future.
We should not forget that British kings were once kings of France (or at least tried to be) and that Sir W. Churchill proposed in 1940 to merge both nations in one.
I sincerely hope that one day I will have the opportunity to create some interesting exchanges on this topic.

EFE