MAANPUOLUSTUSKURSSIYHDISTYS

EU's Role in the Transatlantic Relationship

 

What a priviledge it is to participate in this event commemorating a giant and thought leader in the field of international relations, Max Jakobson. What a priviledge it is to shre this panel with Ambassador Jim Goodby and with my longtime friend, Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden.

 

Transatlantic relations, like the EU itself, is about how big powers and small countries can benefit from each other, and respect each other. Max Jakobson was a big mind from a small country, and this reminds me of what another big mind from a small EU country, Paul Henri Spaak of Belgium, had to say about the countries of the EU: ”There are only two types of states in Europe: small states, and small states that have not yet realized that they are small.”

 

Our theme today is the transatlantic relationship, and, more specifically, the role the

EU should play in concert with our transatlantic partners.

 

Needless to say, there is a large number of risks and challenges confronting the transatlantic community at this very moment at the end of 2013. I am not going to read my long list of security challenges to you, but surely, this lists includes Syria, Egypt, and Iran as well as the current dispute in the South China Seas, to name just a few.

 

But what might be, historically speaking, the biggest current challenge for Europe? Here in Helsinki, like in Berlin, the current struggle over and in Ukraine is probably what preoccupies all of us more than any of the other challenges - it is so much closer to home! In my view, the biggest piece of unfinished business in Europe since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany and most of Europe is the creation of a comprehensive Euro-Atlantic Security Community, a security architecture which would finally offer an undisputed place in the European home for Ukraine and Belarus, but also for Russia itself.  For the last 20 years, we have been searching for the magic formula of how best to bring Russia into a stable architecture of European security. In the mid-nineties, I was part of the team that negotiated the first version of the NATO-Russia Council. We thought at that time that a two-track approach - NATO enlargement and NATO-Russia relations to be developed simultaneously - would work. Well, it worked for a while. What we are currently witnessing in the ”great game” over the future of Ukraine is a replay of the classic zero-sum game the Soviet Union - and the West - got so used to during the Cold War.

 

In a way, these recent developments indicate that we have taken steps backwards, rather than forward. 20 years ago, NATO enlargement was the problem; today, it appears that not only NATO, but also the EU and its regional relationships are deemed to threaten Russian security interests. How can trust, the essential fabric of diplomacy, be re-established in this situation?

 

Some of us learned a good lesson in the course of the Bosnian conflict in the nineties. I am proud to participate in this panel today with my good friend Carl Bildt, who represented the EU in those days, prior to the Dayton Agreement. What we learned was that a contact group including Russia was actually not a crazy idea. It worked. It led to an agreement supported even by Russia.

 

Why were we unable to create a similar process in the case of Syria? Two years went by with 100,000 casualties, and no agreement at all on how to end the slaughter. A year ago, I wrote in a German newspaper that the road to Damascus was going to go through Moscow, and I believe I was not entirely wrong.

 

The point I wish to make is, I hope, clear: the relationship with Russia needs to be fixed. And, of course, it takes two to tango. All we can do, and we should do, is to keep the door wide open. What started so promising twenty years ago cannot und should not be allowed to get stuck in a dead-end street.

 

The completion of a Euro-Atlantic Security Community, the transition from deterrence to mutual security, surely is the one historic task left over from the remnants of the Cold War Max Jakobson thought about so creatively.

 

I participated in a few ”Track II” exercises recently, including a Carnegie endowment project called the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI) and a second project, called Building Mutual Security. Both projects included Senator Sam Nunn from the US, and Igor Ivanov, from Moscow, as co-leaders. Unfortunately, when we presented these ideas, neither Washington nor Moscow were particularly interested in pursuing another East-West - reset.

 

But we will continue to pursue new opportunities to promote our proposals. Maybe the Syrian chemical weapons destruction process, or the interim agreement with Iran, will help to move things forward, in the direction of a win-win situation which we have not had in the East-West relationship in quite a while. In other words: we should not give up, absolutely not. Determination is the key word. Max Jakobson, I suppose, would not object to that. That is my first point.

 

My second point concerns what the EU might do to enhance the transatlantic relationship under these currently rather adverse conditions, what we might do to make the EU a more respected and respectable global player, in order to better defend and promote our interests, and to be a good transatlantic partner.

 

It has now been a decade since the EU approved the 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS) then prepared by Javier Solana. This document, in my view, has outlasted its usefulness. In the age of ”global political awakening”, as Zbig Brzezinski calls it, many of the approaches that worked well for the EU in the period following the Cold War are becoming less and less useful. For example, the 2008 report on ESS implemention speaks of the EU as an anchor of stability. But the Euro crisis has somewhat discredited the European system and replaced confidence with insecurity regarding the Euro-zone.

 

In 2003, it was popular to highlight the soft power of the EU. Today, soft power, according to an analysis provided by ECFR, looks more like a wasting asset in a world much less willing to base their policies on relations with the West. Of course, the EU should not give up its values. But we need to rethink how these values can best be promoted at a time when ideological and financial competition is liable to remain high in our Eastern and Southern neighborhood.

 

More importantly, there is a trend in Europe to de-emphasize armed forces and defense, what Bob Gates called ”the demilitarization of Europe”. The crisis has led to a growing trend of EU members cutting back their military spending. These cuts have contributed to a deplorable erosion of capabilities. EU governments cut their spending for defense research and development in half during the past ten years. Cuts have been decided nationally, mostly with no consultation with EU or NATO partners, and with no regard to the overall capability or lack of capability resulting from these national decisions.

 

Is Europe going to be a European Japan, without ability or will to use military power, except in self-defense, or even a kind of large Switzerland?

 

That might be an option only if the US was going to be around to help Europeans solve problems in our own neighborhood - remember the Balkans, and remember Libya. But unfortunately, it is quite clear that the US is no longer going to provide this umbrella to Europe. We are going to be more on our own, whether we like it or not. Japan or Switzerland is therefore not an option, especially when one thinks of increasing instability around the Mediterranean, and in the Middle East, as well as in our Southeastern neighborhood.

 

Europeans will be expected to take more responsibility for sorting out problems in our part of the world. We therefore need to focus on developing our own capabilities, in particular, strategic enablers, such as reconnaissance, smart munitions, etc. - all items that the US was forced to supply in the Libya campaign.

 

Moreover, European countries still act as if they were able to continue pursuing their national economic goals in Asia without taking a security stance towards the region. But selling BMWs and Volvos in China is not a sufficient Ersatz strategy: European jobs created by the export boom to the Far East go vanish quickly if a dispute such as the current Chinese-Japanese spat erupted into a serious regional conflict. Clearly, the potential for escalation is there, while the institutional regional framework for conflict prevention and conflict management is hardly existent. Europe cannot, therefore, leave Asian security to the US alone. Safeguarding security and stability in the Far East are essential German and EU interests. Europe should set out its own ideas and contributions to Asian security, and work both with the US and Asian partners to promote them.

 

Finally, EU member states, as a first step, should share national defense plans in the same way that Eurozone countries now share their budget plans. Such a European  exercise would highlight the extent of waste and duplication in European defense, the size of the capability gaps, the incoherence of national programs, and the opportunities for getting more from less by pooling and sharing resources in cooperative projects. A McKinsey study elaborated with the Munich Security Conference this year estimates possible savings of 13 billion euros per year if pooling and sharing opportunities were fully explored.  If we really want to move forward, the upcoming EU Council in December should require such a European ”defense semester”, and not just discuss it as an option.

 

It is true that pooling and sharing raises key issues of sovereignty, and that there are large political obstacles. However, let me quote Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Dutch defense minister, who asked at MSC 2013: ”Should we really fear the loss of sovereignty? Or should we rather define the concept of sovereignty in a far less traditional way?

 

In other words, what is sovereignty worth if an individual European state is no longer in any way capable of action on its own? This would be meaningless sovereignty, wouldn’t it?”

 

There is no reason that the EU Council could not decide to create a common policing of the EU airspace, for instance. We are already doing this, for example, for the Baltic countries. This alone could save hundreds of millions.

 

And why are we not seriously considering one EU fleet patrolling the Baltic Sea. It seems to me that we entertain mostly very small navies, often with more admirals than ships. We could create much more bang for the buck if we started to abandon, finally, in the 21st century, the ”Kleinstaaterei” in the military sphere, which reminds us more of the 18th or 19th century.

 

In order to get there, the EU needs strategic top-down direction. This is why I advocate the elaboration of a new and comprehensive EU security and defense strategy document, whether one calls it a White Paper or not. A major strategic rethink is urgently needed, in order to initiate a broader debate about the role Europe can and should aspire to play in our fast-changing world.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment has come to introduce the very idea of Europe into our defense establishments. The EU would, and all of us would, benefit greatly. We would be taken more seriously by our transatlantic partner, and maybe even by Moscow. That, in and of itself, is something worth pursuing.

 

Thank you for your attention.