Speech by Dr. Ilana Bet-El, Senior policy advisor, GPC International

Speech by Dr. Ilana Bet-El, Senior policy advisor, GPC International

European Defence and Strategic Vision

Ilana Bet-El

I am here today as a policy advisor and a defence analyst - but also as someone who has watched the most basic origin of European defence in action: for two years, between 1995-97, as policy advisor to the UN, I had the privilege of working daily and closely with armies of most European nations. Whether as UN or NATO, they were deployed there, operating under a central command, doing a good job of work. The limits of their capabilities were sometimes national - e.g. the limits of size, training and hardware - but mostly international: the inability of decision makers to provide clear goals, or mostly even realistic demands.

These crucial shortcomings inhibited the deployed European forces from acting definitively, and ultimately coalescing into a more coherent whole. That is why just two years later, in 1999, they could be brought together again and reflect precisely the same paradigm: good will, excellent soldiers, but lack of vision and guidance - and hardware, of course.

Three years later, here we are in 2002, and unfortunately yet again not much has changed - other than the intensity of the debate, and some of the terminology. Indeed, in the political arena we now have ESDP, which is ESDI in NATO, and CFSP. On the industry side we have OCCAR, LOI and the Framework Agreement, and WEAG, to name the most prominent. But Europe still has no vision. And Europe still does not have adequate hardware. And Europe still expects its soldiers and sailors and airmen to make do, deploy, co-operate at the drop of a hat - and still remain up to standard. And Europe expects them to do all of this whilst the US is manifestly treating its own services and fighting capability so much better - and at the same time telling Europe just exactly how inadequate it is.

These are harsh realities, which pose a very basic question: how much longer can the situation be sustained? Not for too long, would probably be the most realistic answer. Not due to US pressure, which has long been there, but because of the two intertwined forces that hugely influence the debate on European defence: national budgets and the European defence industries.

It is a known fact that European national defence budgets are not growing - and in some cases actively shrinking. In time, possibly in a very short period of time, this will mean that since basic national platforms will need to be replaced at ever-increasing cost, national governments will begin to prioritize their capabilities: replacing only immediately necessary items and seeking elsewhere for supplementary capabilities. In other words, with a dwindling budget, national militaries will only be able to sustain a portion of their own capabilities and therefore actively need to have a collective pool to draw upon.

European defence industries, at the same time, will not be able to sustain themselves in the European market. They are currently underwriting a large part of European defence R&D, which is not commercially viable over time. Moreover, if national governments cannot afford to buy off them and a collective European capability with collective spending power is not introduced, they will have to seek funding and markets elsewhere. Indeed, the process has already begun: BAe is now the fifth largest defence industry in the US, benefiting from the US government buying capability - and its handsome funding for R&D. and that is actually the most crucial issue.

There can be no true European defence capability without hardware or platforms. But these have to be developed - for a specific force, and over a period of time. And they all start from R&D. At the end of January 2002, GPC convened a conference on European defence R&D, subtitled, quite meaningfully, "funding the future". The most important themes debated there included:

1. The inadequacy of Europe's current military and defence R&D capabilities
2. Governments' lack of political will to acquire the means necessary to close these capability gaps and then to organise themselves to use them effectively
3. The impact on the transatlantic relationship of Europe not playing a full part in its own defence and security

Each of these is an immense subject and each has been debated intensely over the past few years. However, taken together and viewed through the perspective of R&D, they reveal a disturbing underlying problem - and that is the lack of strategic vision.

To be clear, strategic should be understood as a period of time from four to forty years, and vision as a collective term for creating and evolving ideas, and projecting them ahead within a set of plans. The US decision to build the JSF is an excellent example of such a trend - since the first thoughts on the need for a new generation of fighter jets were set down about fifteen years ago, the actual model was decided last year, the first planes will be operable by the end of this decade, and the planes are then expected to last for at least thirty years. That is an immense but absolutely correct mode of strategic vision - and moreover, it is absolutely necessary to add that whilst we speak here, planners and strategists in the Pentagon are already debating and defining the shape and needs of the US military in the post JSF era i.e. in forty years time.

The insightful debate of the GPC conference made clear that European defence is not yet understood at such a high and conceptual level: it is still being negotiated amongst the nations as a matter of cataloguing military units and making up the shortfalls in their current inventories. This reality was amply illustrated in the last Capabilities Conference held in Brussels in November 2001, when nations were discussing possibilities - or impossibilities - for 2003. Moreover, even events such as the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo or the current international deployment into Afghanistan, which underline the inadequacies of this European attitude, appear to have little impact upon policy-makers. The focus remains firmly upon the narrow and current interest.

This situation has severe implications for the future of European defence - and for the future of the European defence industries. For as the political level becomes further submerged in immediate problems, it is further inhibiting the development of future capabilities. At the same time, it is also attempting to delegate much of this function of future development to industry - through R&D. But industry cannot shoulder this burden, especially not over an extended period of time - and especially not without adequate funding.

Defence industries largely depend on governments for their markets, but are answerable to their public shareholders. However, European governments, with their short term vision, only provide, at best, a return in the short term. For industry this means that without injections of European government funds for R&D as evidence of intent in the long term, it will look elsewhere for profit.

Let us put these words in context: war, or even peacekeeping, is now a technological event. It is no longer possible to simply deploy men in blue helmets, or NATO insignia, or possibly a European insignia if a European force is created. they all need to be equipped with advanced technological capabilities - be it in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Sierra Leone or Lebanon. And if they don't have these capabilities, as in the case of Lebanon, the force is pulverized both physically and morally.

Europe still has old style expeditionary forces, armed with old fashioned equipment. This must change. Technological capabilities have to be developed; and bought. And they have to be developed and bought for a specific force, they cannot just be invented in a vacuum: a successful defence project must always start from a clear defence doctrine, in which the proposed platform will have a purpose and a role.

But then it must be developed. the failure in European defence is not just the current inability to muster the political will to create and fund a coherent force - but also in the lack of investment in the future. And that is where the US has the true edge. In the early 1990s, when European governments cut defence budgets as part of the post Cold War peace dividend, they also cut R&D budgets. The US government, in comparison, reduced force volume but sustained investment in R&D. that is why, ten years later, they can lead a technological war in which European forces cannot effectively participate, barring a few exceptions.

This situation is compounded by another fact: approximately 80% of all public sector research in Europe - civilian and defence - is still organized at a national level. In other words, only a fraction of defence R&D is organized and funded collectively. Not only is this hugely wasteful, but it also, crucially, defies any attempt to create a single, coherent body or vision of European defence.

And so, we return to the issue of strategic vision: Europeans need their policy makers to develop such a vision. To decide on the force it will inevitably need, as a point of pragmatism; on the role of the force; and therefore on its realistic requirements. Once the vision is there, the rest will follow.

WEU Assembly Colloquy

Madrid, 5-6.3.2002