Dr Hans-Peter Bartels, Berlin On the way to a Europe of Defence Striving for practical international cooperation

We need to strive for practical international cooperation between armed forces On the way to a Europe of Defence

by Dr Hans-Peter Bartels, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, Berlin

Organising armed forces in line with how they are to be deployed, preferably from the very outset, makes perfect sense. Out-ofarea crisis resolution? Always multinationally! National and collective defence? Always multinationally! Only basic operations, training and daily military routine should still be organised on a strictly national basis – as if this constituted the very core of national sovereignty. So has the time now come to merge the many individual military parts in Europe into one complete set in the form of a European military? I do not think so.

having meanwhile faced a change of majorities, objected to these plans in 1954. Therefore, in 1955, the Bundeswehr was established. Europe is able to achieve a consensus and to pool previously national sovereign rights at a higher level. The introduction of the euro is one example. And so is the Schengen area without passport controls at internal borders. But like the euro project which was initiated in the 1970s and only became real money in 2002, developing towards a common European military is likely to be a project that will take generations. It started quite unimposingly sometime during the second decade of the 21 st century. It has scarcely been noticed. Timing is important Timing is important. And currently, European negotiations as to creating a European military are likely to trigger adverse reaction, disharmony and they are likely to reinforce the battle lines. The UK has already made clear that it will not participate in this process, the East could block it, France itself, despite all the rhetoric, is not yet ready for it, and a European military built around Germany alone would not be sufficient. It is not that such an agreement is generally impossible. Indeed, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg had already negotiated a treaty concerning the European Defence Community (EDC) in 1952 that provided for establishing the ”European Defence Forces” that were to report directly to the NATO Commander-in-Chief. Bundestag and Bundesrat had already ratified the EDC Treaty in order to supply the Western Alliance with German soldiers without having to establish a German military again. But the French National Assembly, Photo: Thomas Trutschel/ photothek.net/Deutscher Bundestag “ Purely national capabilities must gradually become multinational islands of cooperation.”

Dr Hans-Peter Bartels is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the German Armed Forces since 2015. Born in 1961, he studied political science at the University of Kiel, where he earned his MA and received his PhD in 1988. He was an editor at the newspaper Kieler Rundschau and a civil servant in the office of the Prime Minister of Schleswig Holstein. Dr Bartels has been a member (SPD) of the German Bundestag since the 1998 federal elections, serving essentially at the Committee of Defence. Elected Military Commissioner in 2015, he gave up his mandate as a MP.

Practical cooperation has to prevail The way to a Europe of Defence is by no means lacking a founding treaty, but actual practice. I think a good formula that may be applied to such a practice would be ”islands of cooperation”. Purely national capabilities must gradually become multinational islands of cooperation. Not everyone has to work with everyone else, not everything needs to be connected to everything else in a planned way already. What matters is that it does work – better in a modest and efficient way rather than on a large scale but dysfunctionally. After all, the main task of the military is still to carry out real missions.

If things go well, then such islands of cooperation will become larger, more of them will appear, some will even grow together. And gradually they may form mainland. This metaphor could stand for what is actually happening in Europe at the moment. We have been experiencing, as it were, the normative power of actual practice. A Europe of Defence is currently progressing on three axes of Europeanisation.

The way is paved for European Armed Forces The three axes are, first, the Framework Nation Concept (FNC), which aims at a better cooperation between NATO and Europe, second, the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), where it is the EU and Europe cooperating, and third –without a specific name – individual nations that are cooperating bilaterally and multilaterally, e.g. Dutch combat brigades being in- tegrated into German Army divisions or a new German-French air transport squadron being set up – and the trend is a rapid upward one. If more and more mainland will be formed through these axes in the future, at some point the time will come to administer it more effectively on the basis of a European set of rules rather than on the island rationale. Then, a European military could be established officially with 20 or 30 national armed forces being dissolved and integrated into each other at the same time. Incidentally, ”integration” is a term from the 1952 EDC Treaty. Perhaps we shall achieve this integration project prior to China overtaking the Americans in militarily terms. Then, eventually, the US would be happy to have an ally that does make a substantial contribution to the West’s ability to assert itself.

The stony path to European sovereignty

The new European Commission is clearly requesting greater responsibility of the European Union for European security and strategic autonomy. One reason for this is certainly the new attitude of the United States on European security. The discussion regarding a European army has broadly started inside the administration and outside by specialists. The dream of European soldiers in the same uniform and a unique command is going to be replaced with discussions on how to real

ise European defence. The reflections on possible concepts coming from outside are mostly not yet coherent, but there is evidently a tendency of European administrations to assume their common defence as a pillar of the collective defence in NATO. This co-existence with NATO corresponds to TEU 42(2). Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has clearly been built on the principles of no separation from the North Atlantic Treaty and no unnecessary duplications or taking advantage of the Berlin Plus option, falling back on NATO command for higher intensity military operations. Until now, the trademark of CSDP was civil-military cooperation.

An interesting contribution to this discussion is a 12-point paper by the French Senate under the title “European Defence: The Challenge of Strategic Autonomy”, published in July 2019: > web https://bit.ly/2PNQQra

The 12 proposals in this paper are as follows:

1. Reinforce the commitments of each country and a collective drafting of a White book on European Defence; 2. Raise the profile of defence issues within EU institutions; 3. Create facilities such as a European defence summer school as a forum for reflection; 4. Create a Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe at NATO; 5. Render the European capacity planning process cyclical and consistent with the established process in NATO; 6. Relaunch the CSDP by concentrating on the EU’s global approach, combining a military component with diplomatic economic and development assistance components and extending the resources for the Military Planning and Conduct capabilities (MPCC); 7. Use the European Defence Fund (EDF) for projects of excellence contributing to European strategic autonomy; 8. Reaffirm the binding nature of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the commitment of nations, which must be favourable to the development of the European Defence Technological Industry Base (EDTIB); 9. Clarify the functioning of TEU 2(7) by assigning an informational and coordinating role to a specific EU body, e.g. the High Representative (HR/VP); 10. Propose as a top priority the establishment of a Defence & Security Treaty with the United Kingdom (UK); 11. Make the major Franco-German industrial projects key elements as a starting point to allow other European partners to join; 12. Prefer and encourage flexible mechanisms, both inside and outside the EU, such as spontaneous cooperation or pooling, similar to those established with regard to Military Air Transport (EAT).

This paper has been broadly discussed in Member States (including the UK) and EU institutions as well as at NATO Headquarters as a valuable contribution to the discussion on a Europe of Defence.