No European country can any more afford to conduct military operations on its own. There is no alternative to a common defence policy. As well, isolation will lead to the end of our so old (and beloved) Nations. Opinions from a continental european.
Some days after France decided to deploy its troops in Mali, a quick look at the blogs and media dealing with defence and strategy let me deduce that, once again, Europe was sentenced to whatever you want for having been unable to react on time to counter the islamist threat coming from the Sahara.
Let us get deeper into the funniest critic I could read. I mean the lack of support by our main allies.
Indeed, that's a fact: neither the UK, nor Germany, even less Spain and Italy or Poland provided troops to reinforce the French ones. The only significant support they decided to offer, beyond the usual political backing, are transport aircraft, like C-17 by the UK and the USA, Transall by Germany and C-130 by Belgium, for instance. I was even told that this support was constrained by many caveats or even by the price!
Today, while speaking about our respective blogs, my daughter suggested me something foolish: draw a link between European Defence and Gangnam Style.
First assumption: Psy, the singer has never heard about European Defence. O.K, this is an easy statement. But it deserves being done, as a matter of principle.
Quite provoking, isn't it? Despite the title, I do not believe that any political leader or chief of defence will dare express such a statement. However ''the times they are a changin'! "and the German military leadership could constitute the next political challenge for European Defence.
Some days ago I read a post able to raise my curisosity and bring me back to this blog.
On a French Blog titled 'Lignes de Défense', the author wrote a short article dedicated to the fierce competition in the field of maritime security. A French company, named 'Triskel Security Services' (I would bet that they find their origin and are operated by former French Navy commandos), had lost some important contracts, being ousted by low cost competitors, for some based in Sri Lanka.
On "Kings of War", Rob Dover has published a short analysis of Syrian military capabilities, thus demonstrating that one should not compare the situation with Libya.
You can read below:
,Looking back at Libya whilst thinking of Syria.
Following this link, you will see a Libyan militia vandalizing a Commonwealth War Cemetery. Desecration of Commonwealth war graves in Libya
It may happen. In France, in Germany, anywhere in the world one can find heroes willing to show their courage while kicking down gravestones.
Some days ago we had dinner with German friends. Despite the delicious alsatian wine (Gewürztraminer for those who are interested in oenology), they expressed some sorrow and even felt ashamed: they regarded their country as a nation absolutely unable to defend human rights and slaughtered populations, even in Europe's backyard.
Some days ago, I expressed my wish to write on Johnny Cash. Firstly because I am a fan, secondly his songs, or the ones he decided to sing usually display in a very short time a very accurate picture of American society.
Today, I will comment 'The one on the right', published on Youtube by somebody named 'Bacobitsperson'.
For those who are not so to say 'fluent', here are the lyrics:
Such a turmoil surrounds the Euro crisis that day after day we less and less understand whether the latest summit will put an end to the debate, and our concerns!
However, we rarely hear news from the reasons for which our heads of state are so worried. In fact he main problem is that they find themselves in such a pressure that they propose us short term and immediate solutions for a structural downfall of southern Europe, namely Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and, in some extend, France.
The Euro original sin comes in fact from diverging economies confronted with a single currency. On the one side, countries with structural deficits, that they can finance only with a recurse to the public debt. Thanks the Euro, borrowing money is easy and helps the governments avoid to implement painful and politically dangerous reforms, e.g reducing public subsidies to large parts of the population or cease to support outdated industries. In parallel, they simply forgot to implement the necessary measures to develop innovative industry, which is the main money maker of Northern Europe countries.
During the same years, countries like Germany, Finland, Sweden, Austria succeeded in reforming their economic and social systems, while maintaining a high-tech industry, at the price of some unpopular decisions, like German Chancellor, G. Schroeder, did in the mid-2000 when he subsequently lost the parliamentary elections.
Currently the level of debt in South Europe has become so high, that nobody believes that they will be able to pay back: they simply do not own the industrial basis able to generate enough added value, and therefore income, to make the states prepare budgets, which could include both the internal political constraints and the external debt. By internal political constraint I mean: pursue with a large and generous social policy and reimburse the debts.
The current crisis is firstly a crisis of confidence against the policies of some European countries, not a against the Euro by itself.
My only concern, at least for the time being, is that short term solution never solve a long term issue. That means that southern countries will have to address now the changes they have refused for many years... This, will be really painful for the populations!
As a starter, I would like the readers to have a look at Johnny Cash biography, available on Wikipedia, or on his official Website.
From time to time, I will write posts on Geopolitics according to Johnny Cash. You don't believe it?
You will be surprised!
Euro crisis has been at the top of the agenda for several months. Simultaneously, European Defence vanished and completely failed some years ago. Therefore ESDP was totally absent from the scene when France and the UK decided to wage war against Libya.
Is it definitely passed away? I persist saying no, definitely no. Until today no crisis has been severe enough to force our countries to hand over symbols of their sovereignty, as they were still thinking they could play war by themselves. Although the countries taking part to the air campaign against Gaddafi claimed supporting democracy and freedom, I would be that optimistic on the effectiveness of this military operation:
Hi, everybody,
after a long long era of silence, F. is back on this blog. Reason for my absence were:
-a move, with all the consequences on my private life (no detail available),
-some reading an writing on Sun Tzu,
-many posts on another platform,
-some reading and writing on the financial crises,
-a new and demanding assignment.
Now, I am back, hopefully definitely,
I think the content will change:
-geopolitics and strategy,
-comments on some books related to my favorite topics,
-videos of educational songs,
and... anything which may educate us, ... and make me have an interested look on the planet I am living on.
I warmly thank all of you for visiting this site, although I would add one point: I would suggest you to join me on blogactiv.eu, where I have published many new posts. Cheers.
Good morning everybody. In order to make it more simple, I invite you to join me on the other platform I make use of. This is the link you can click on. link. The posts are exactly the same that you can read on this blog. The migration is only motivated by laziness: I do not want to administrate simultaneously to identical blogs. See you soon (hopefully).
There have been several press articles on the future format of German Armed Forces.In any case, manning will be trimmed again and make out of Bundeswehr the smallest one among the main countries. However one factor should be taken into account to moderate the mere figures.
In accordance with its fundamental law, the civilian part of Ministry of Defence is rather large and many tasks, which are traditionally devoted to the military in other European countries, belong to the civilian side of the ministry, in German the ‘Bundeswehr- und verteidigungsverwaltung’.
The figures made available in German media are the following ones:
-Army: 47.000 men,
-Air Force: 19.000 men,
-Navy: 9.000 men,
-Medical service: 11.000 men,
-Joint services: 26.000 men.
(source: Stern.de of 22. June 2010)
These figures do not mean that much, the most interesting will consist in the number of combat units that will remain, including their support and service support. As well, critical to observe will be the capability to commit effectively troops. For the time being, all the possible troops are declared to NATO. At least theoretically. However, when SACEUR needs reinforcements, or when the EU Council wants to launch an operation, reality is much more painful. Therefore, I would not criticize German figures until one can discriminate what they really mean.
For this reason, Mr v. Guttenberg words make sense when he declares to the Spiegel on 14th June: ‘It cannot be, with 252,000 soldiers, that we have already reached the limits of our abilities when only 8,000 soldiers are deployed at the same time’, which means that the Germans do not have their money worth.
So let us see how many soldiers the Bundeswehr will declare ready for deployment once the reform will start implementation. Thanks the support of the defence civilian services, it could work, but Germany will then have to fix what assets will be mutualised, with whom, and mainly with what conditions.
Recent publications have shown that some European countries are looking for new paths in order to more involve their armed forces in their budgetary saving policy. Really fascinating thing is that bold initiatives are on preparation, without any real conceptual work being performed beforehand, but under the pressure of the current budgetary crisis. More precisely this new orientation is not the result of a need expressed by the Armed Forces but a pure political will, intending to fully involve the military in the struggle for balanced budgets.
When looking after a promoter of optimisation in defence spending, one can look towards the European Defence Agency, which already and clearly demonstrated some years ago that the 200 billion Euros spent yearly for Defence do not generate the efficiency that it should, because of the numerous redundancies, while some other domains are left apart by our nations, despite vows for a better future.
Now the politics have seized the initiative and decided to search for mutualisation or at least of some of the military assets, in order to have the armed forces contribute to the budgetary balance of their respective nations and limit the costly redundancies.
After the statements of Mr von Guttenberg, the German Minister of Defence (already published on this blog), came a statement of Mr Morin, the French Minister of Defence, during a hearing at the Defence committee of the Assemblée Nationale, while shortly after the public relations of the ministry issued a press release dealing again with this issue.
On 7th July, Mr Morin declared: “My British counterpart and I have decided to launch a quite ambitious operation. The new British government wishes that we analyse very thoroughly what competences and assets that each country should keep as an asset to exert full sovereignty, those which can be mutualised and those for which interdependence can be envisaged.”
Some days later, the French Ministry of Defence released that both French and German Ministers agreed to think over the possible pooling and mutualisation of assets between both countries.
This sentence is really meaningful, as this is close to a cut and paste of Mr Guttenberg’s statement on German Defence review, who explains in his ‘Tagesbefehl’ (order of the day) to Bundeswehr he that he will look for savings through a better task repartition within the Alliance.
On point must be made clear: at the moment you mutualise or even pool some assets, you are bound to your partner, who will have to clearly state whether he supports you in the operation you are planning for or if you should simply leave it by lack of support. At the moment our nations will have recognized that they can no more afford to own the full scope of capacities and assets to operate in autonomy, the European Army will be. May be not on the format of the traditional forces we know with the same uniform and the same patches, but it will be, with those non-visible and strong links which have already led to the European Union as it is today.
As I already mentioned in my previous post, German Defence Forces, the Bundeswehr, has been created based on democratic principles, of which the conscription, the innere Führung and the home defence. The best way to secure the fundaments of this system was a strict control by the parliament, as mentioned in the constitution, the “Grundgesetz” and confirmed by the constitutional court in 1994.
During the Cold war, the Bundeswehr has built its reputation on the outstanding tactical level, exhaustive training and the quality of its equipment. By the way, the officers who created this new army were all former members of the Wehrmacht, therefore quite skilled. But that is not today’s issue.
Germany being at the border of Warsaw Pact and therefore on the front line against Soviet armoured divisions, this country needed to solve a complex equation, consisting in getting a large number of soldiers while avoiding any risk of creating an ideological army.
Logically Germany chose the model of a conscription army for which they developed the concept of citizen in uniform. From the mid 50s until the mid 90s, this model has shown particularly valuable, as the only perspective of German soldiers was to defend the fatherland and democracy against the Soviets. During the same 40 years, British and French Army had been committed in several operations, or even wars, like in Suez, the decolonization, the Falklands, Africa, Lebanon, Cyprus, etc. Those conflicts maintained in France and the UK an expeditionary know how, within the ministry of Defence and of course at the head of state level, while Germany was looking at the Iron Curtain.
In order to make sure that this powerful army could not be diverted from its role of bulwark of democracy, the fathers of Bundeswehr established several firewalls, one of them being the parliamentary control described in my previous post, the second one being the Innere Führung.
Currently the conscription is no more needed to defend the German borders. As well the conscripts cannot be committed in operations abroad if they do not volunteer for it. In the 91, just after the reunification 211.000 young men were called to duty. Now, out of an 80 million people nation, only 68.000 are called for duration of 6 months.
One can see very easily that the current organization of conscription involves every year a small minority of Germans and is not able to give them a meaning to their duty: their only role is to support the professional army that nobody wants to declare publically as the real working body of Bundeswehr.
In fact the real meaning of German official conscription army is no more a military one. Its only role is a political one: to show to the German people that their army remain the army of citizens in uniform of the 50s, when Germany was setting up a democratic system. This obsession of democracy is not to underestimate and that is why some of the projects for the new Bundeswehr still desperately include a conscription army with 20.000 conscripts. Just to keep the symbol alive.
Such a decision, if more feasible to the eyes and understanding of the German citizens, who are profoundly pacifists, would blur, internally as well as externally the image of Bundeswehr.
The citizens would have the impression that their beloved and traditional Bundeswehr is still alive, although it has really turned into a professional army,
The defence organization being still built around conscription, the different laws and regulations would not be adapted to fit with a more flexible and responsive army,
The partners of Germany would not accept jeopardize their responsiveness capacities by mutualising some assets with a country presenting shy and legally constrained defence forces because of conscription.
Consequently, the German equation to reform Bundeswehr is really complicated and quite not easy to solve.
As the German government has decided to review largely its defence organization, even stating that some more communality of capacities should be looked for with its European partners, let us have a look at what German Defence forces could look like in a near future. As a consequence of the planned reform, the future structure of Bundeswehr, its size and recruitment system, will lead to a careful review of some of its founding principles, which are, among others, the defence of home country, the citizen in uniform, and the code of conduct or ethic rules, the latest being a concept impossible to translate, named in German “innere Führung”.
As the results of the study order by the Minister of Defence, Mr von Guttenberg will be made available to the public in autumn we still have time ahead of us to scrutinize some points of this reform. The official documents are rather scarce. But the German press broadcasts interesting news, which give a good insight of the fierce debate between the different political parties.
To sum up, what I consider as the founding principles of the modern German Defence Forces are:
-Conscription,
-Home Defence,
-Innere Führung, or code of conduct. As this concept is almost impossible to translate with accuracy, I will keep it in German.
-Strong parliamentary control
Those principles have been established from the very beginning of Bundeswehr, in the 50s, in order to build up armed forces which guarantee that they could never be used against democracy and peace, as a reaction to the former Prussian militarism accused of being at the origin of the previous world wars. These they are completely intricate: German Defence forces would recur to conscription in order to focus on Home Defence and to make out of the soldiers “citizens in uniform”, support by educational programs based on Innere Führung.
As from the legal point of view, Bundeswehr has been built up from scratch, the whole legal body and all manuals are conceived in that direction, included the different paragraphs of the German Constitution. The paragraph 87a deals with the Defence forces; the civilian part of the ministry being dealt with in para 87b. I will outline one sentence, one at the top of para 87a: “the Federation sets up Armed forces for defence”.
Furthermore on 12th July 1994, the Constitutional Court authorized the Federal Government to commit troops abroad, but with a major restriction: the Bundestag should approve any commitment of troops abroad prior to the operation. The only exception being the emergency case, when life of German citizens is directly threatened. In such a situation, the Government is entitled first to act and subsequently inform the Parliament.
Both points are the expression of an intrinsic rejection of the expeditionary warfare, which is the privilege of nations having a strong executive power, like the USA, the UK or France. In the current articles on the future reform of Bundeswehr, politicians from all sides reject a professional army, arguing that this would create a force in the hands of the government, thus weakening the parliament and developing temptation to make use of for Bundeswehr for other purpose than defence of the country, or support to the alliances to which Germany is part. This approach is far from representing only a minority of the population, included in the Defence forces. A few years ago, Germany refused firmly to support France in the operation EUFOR in Chad and Central Africa. The main reason for that refusal to support an ally is linked to both German constitution and Constitutional Court decision.
Some pragmatic people would suggest changing the German constitution. I sincerely do not think this to be possible. Historically, Germany has been authorized to build up its forces at the prerequisite that they are maintained under strict democratic control. Control by the parliament is the way hence chosen. This model is so anchored in German political cultural that a support neither by the population nor by the military can be reached for the time being.
Then, the discrepancy between the German rigid constitutional framework and the expeditionary culture of its neighbours will make extremely difficult for this country to find major partners ready to mutualise capacities. The only countries ready to go forward with them would be countries for which the army is firstly used for national defence and not overseas adventures. France and the UK would not take the risk to bind their hands to please German savings plan. May be they would accept to share secondary assets, but in any case, would they renounce to those who create the conditions for contingency planning.
The German federal ministry of Defence has made available on its website several key documents, which can help for a better understanding of what the future Bundeswehr will look like in the next years.
Of course, this new development is not initiated by a open-minded approach linked to the previous German statements aiming at setting up in a far future a European army. By the way, one comment: Germany, well known all over the world for its capability to create consensus (at least inside its borders), has reached a consensus on this topic. All political parties aiming to seat sooner or later at the government’s table support the objective of a European army.
Indeed the main reason for which the Federal Republic of Germany is accelerating its will to create the embryo of a European Army is to be found in the documents available on the ministerial Website. Those documents are: Tagesbefehl des Bundesministers der Verteidigung (here) Leitlinien zur Ausplanung der neuen Bundeswehr (here)
As usual, for those who cannot read German yet, I will develop my post on the basis of both documents.
Well, the reasons which have lead the German government to this defence review are the following ones: -Adapt Bundewehr to the operations and the reduced budgets. Indeed we meet here the direct impact of Afghanistan and the financial crisis on the German Defence model. I mean that due the History, the Bundeswehr could not renounce in its organization to the “Landesverteidigung” (defence of national territory), as this is the cornerstone of the alliance between the Army and the Nation. However, the reality of Afghanistan forces Germany to review the principles of Bundeswehr as the expeditionary warfare will dominate the next years. -The financial crisis is driving the events and the decisions. At the time the Euro was introduced, Germany was extremely reluctant and finally joined at its conditions. The seat of the European Central Bank being in Frankfurt was the sign of its strong will to dominate the Euro-zone. However the governance model of the Euro failed with Greece. Focussed on social stability through economical development, Germany could not accept jeopardize its social pact. Strong and painful decisions are necessary, among which a drastic reduction of the defence budgets.
In this framework, Germany is preparing a complete review of its defence system, including the first steps towards a German Army. Most important points are: -In the future the only German national operations will be: evacuation of non-combatants, release of hostages and rescue German citizens. In fact, this is not new. I already met this concept in the early 2000s. -Quite new is that Germany is ready to renounce to some capacities. In the guidance to the committee in charge of studying the structure reform, the Bundeswehr will have to find cooperation cooperation in education, logistics and structures for daily business and commitments, without creating political constraints or mutual obstacles. As well it will evaluate what tasks could be performed in common, abandoned to the allies, or taken over on behalf of the allies. This is the core issue: one of Europe’s main countries seems ready to renounce to some elements of sovereignty as abandoning some capacities could mean a loss in autonomy of decision.
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.
