Stepping Up

Strategic Vision vol. 10, no. 49 (May, 2021)

European powers seek a greater role and presence in Indo-Pacific security

César de Prado

Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force members welcome the British frigate HMS Montrose to Tokyo, Japan.

photo: Royalnavy.mod.uk

Major European countries and multilateral institutions are enhancing their global strategic perspectives to deal with the security issues that Europe faces, primarily through the continent’s main security provider, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To remain relevant after the Cold War, NATO has made compromises over strong differences between its members, transforming itself into a flexible security management organization that balances deterrence in Europe and the North Atlantic with out-of-area expeditionary missions and operations.

French frigate FS Vendémiaire conducts a passing exercise with USS John C. Stennis in the Indo-Pacific Region.

photo: Tomas Compian

In a December 2019 summit, NATO delegates decided to engage experts to examine ways in which the alliance could address the strategic opportunities and challenges presented by the growing global influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A group of independent experts tasked with elaborating a strategic framework in 2020 argued that NATO should devote much more time, political resources, and ac- tion to the security challenges posed by China, not least because Beijing is already militarily active in the Euro-Atlantic area by controlling critical infrastructure, dispatching ships and planes, and engaging in sophisticated propaganda campaigns there. The group’s proposals included enhancing NATO’s internal capabilities as well as partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, especially reaching out to India. New compromises are expected to be made in the NATO summit scheduled for June 2021, including the anticipated inclusion in the NATO 2030 strategic doctrine of a role for the alliance in the Indo-Pacific.

Integrated review

In March 2021, the United Kingdom released its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. In it, London describes its objective to turn the country into a new type of important power, able to confront all kinds of challenges by enhancing its internal and external capabilities. The United Kingdom plans to enhance domestic resilience and strategic military forces, especially its nuclear deterrent arsenal. A global Britain would continue to prioritize Euro-Atlantic relations (particularly those with the United States and NATO) while enhancing its links with advanced Anglo-Saxon countries worldwide. Understandably, the European Union is not highlighted. However, it also plans to strengthen vital links with Europe, particularly France, but also Germany.

Tokyo Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces (GSDF), British Army, and US Military personnel take part in exercise Vambrace Warrior.

photo: British Embassy

“By 2030, we will be deeply engaged in the IndoPacific as the European partner with the broadest, most integrated presence in support of mutuallybeneficial trade, shared security and values,” the Integrated Review promises. This goal should not be a surprise, as the United Kingdom has already forged many security links with Europe that it does not intend to break, but rather hopes to strengthen.

The Integrated Review incorporated many suggestions that emerged from an international highlevel Indo-Pacific Commission, which argued in a November 2020 report that, “to fully globalise Britain, the Indo-Pacific region, stretching from the eastern Indian Ocean to the western Pacific and Oceania, must become a priority in the United Kingdom’s overall foreign and security policies.” The Integrated Review stated that the United Kingdom “will pursue deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific in support of shared prosperity and regional stability, with stronger diplomatic and trading ties.”

The plan is to keep economically engaging the PRC and the Indo-Pacific, but also to “invest in enhanced China-facing capabilities,” and to “deploy forces overseas more often and for longer periods of time.” It will enhance bilateral alliances and partnerships with a range of countries in the Indo-Pacific region that are close to NATO. It is expected that the United Kingdom will try to link more with India, in particular.

Since the end of the Cold War, France has gradually evolved from its long-held position of Gaullist independence into a reluctant Atlanticist. Although it had sometimes hoped to render NATO obsolete, France rejoined NATO’s integrated command structure more than a decade ago. French President Emmanuel Macron is now lobbying—albeit with limited prospects of success—to make the European Union a pillar of NATO. Paris also promotes military intervention initiatives with willing European countries, including the United Kingdom. In 2018-2019, France produced detailed strategies on security in the IndoPacific, the first time ever for a European country.

Paris naturally sees security challenges confronting Overseas France, but it also highlights Taiwan and the surrounding seas, the conflict on the Korean peninsula, and border issues in or near the Himalayas. While priming bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to address conflicts, France is increasingly projecting power in the Indian and Pacific oceans. In particular, it has enhanced its maritime deployments alongside the United Kingdom’s, and it is starting to cooperate more with other EU countries. Its broad array of defense partners in the Indo-Pacific is very similar to those of NATO and the United Kingdom, without forgetting its strong links to former colonies and, importantly, to India.

The style of German defense policy has changed from one that was reactive and norm-based in the 1990s, to one that has been assertive, interest-based, and executive-led since the 2010s. Washington and other allies have exerted pressure on Berlin to shoulder more responsibility for its defense, and the German armed forces have hence been deployed more frequently on missions worldwide, even in coalitions of the willing.

Grand strategy

Germany’s emerging grand strategy involves keeping the European Union and the United Nations up, the United States in, and authoritarian powers out (while socializing them into liberal norms). The 2016 German white paper on security policy mentioned the competition springing from China’s economic rise and its high volume of military spending, but China was not seen as a security threat, nor the IndoPacific as a priority military theater; it just noted that “regional territorial disputes in connection with power projections are a source of concern in particular for the countries of Southeast and East Asia.” In September 2020, however, during its presidency of the Council of the European Union, Germany presented a new strategic document, referred to as “policy guidelines,” in which Berlin started considering the Indo-Pacific as a priority area for strengthening peace, security, and stability.

European sailors on March 17, 2021, mark the end of the 36th rotation of Operation Atalanta.

photo: Eunavfor

The novel guidelines take a broad geographic view and aim at peace and security from North Korea to Pakistan, as well as in the Indian and Pacific oceans. They even explicitly mentioned several new goals and plans to deepen action and diversify external links. Berlin’s goals are to maintain freedom and security, open sea routes, and open markets and free trade. On the one hand, Germany aims to strengthen its traditionally strong civil role. It will continue supporting ASEAN-centric multilateralism in accordance with the United Nations, and implementing measures for civil crisis prevention, conflict management, and peacebuilding. On the other hand, Germany will actively work with the European Union and NATO, and their respective strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific, namely Japan, Australia, and India.

The European Union currently has a global strategy, enacted in 2016, that is not designed for great-power confrontation. The European body is constrained from adopting a grander strategy comparable to those of the United Kingdom, France and NATO because its common foreign, security and defense policies are bound by the Treaty of Lisbon, which imposes considerable limits on EU military capabilities and power projection. In March 2021, after a delay of a year, the European Union launched a large-scale public conference on its future inner workings and global outlook. France wished it to be the basis of a treaty upgrade that would, among other things, give the European Union some strategic autonomy within the NATO framework. That will not happen within the remit of the conference, ending in mid-2022, as not all EU countries are willing, though it may induce treaty changes in the medium term. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is already lobbying for enhanced EU prerogatives on several issues, from health to foreign policy. Meanwhile, the European Union keeps advancing strategic documents that indicate its growing range of concerns, and that highlight its need for tools to support both cooperation and power projection in this part of the world.

Strategic compass

The European Union is aiming at setting up a global “Strategic Compass” in 2020-2022. During this biennium, the body will prioritize all kinds of security threats and seek ways of enhancing its internal and external capabilities to be better prepared for crisis-management operations. In April 2021, the 27 EU member states gave the European Commission and the European External Action Service until September to produce an EU strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, in the context of intense geopolitical competition. The Council’s long list of requests deals extensively with the EU’s cherished values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, but the European Union also has to enhance traditional dialogues, security and defense missions and operations, and especially help develop a European naval presence.

Europe’s key “E3” countries (consisting of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), as well as various multilateral organizations such as NATO, all still have somewhat different strategic visions and plans for the Indo-Pacific. These are structurally converging, however, as the rise of China becomes an issue of general concern. The great power competition currently being played out pits a rising China against an incumbent United States, and European actors increasingly face the risk of being dragged into a diplomatic, economic, ideological, or even military confrontation. Mutual sanctions between China and the West in March 2021 are a stark reminder of this dynamic. The concept of the Indo-Pacific, which has been greeted with some antagonism from China, has formally been taken up by the E3 (as well as the Netherlands), the European Union, and likely very soon by NATO. While it is difficult to develop domestic capabilities in times of budget constraints, all European security actors are enhancing their links with each other and with similar like-minded partners in the Indo-Pacific.

While the differences that mark the positions of European countries will never fully go away, these differences are becoming more a matter of grade than of nature. The United Kingdom is relatively more concerned with enhancing NATO’s military power, but it is also very eager to profit from diplomatic and economic links with the European Union. France has long partnered in defense with the United Kingdom, but it also spurs the European Union to enhance both its military capacities and its value-based diplomacy. Germany prefers to use multilateral diplomatic mechanisms for cooperation, but this is not an impediment to military projection. In fact, Berlin is sending a frigate through the South China Sea this summer. Of course, the future of European action in the new structural bipolarity will doubtless remain bumpy. The internal differences will lead to difficult bargaining sessions prior to taking action, but action will be taken. External factors marked by asymmetric effects, like crises that erupt close to Europe, will prompt new rounds of disagreements and efforts to overcome them, which will divert some attention away from the Indo-Pacific.

After a very long time, Europe is indeed coming back. Taiwan, China, and other Indo-Pacific countries should pay careful attention to the wide-ranging, subtle, interlinked efforts of European actors to play a role in this part of the world. A disregard or a misunderstanding of Europe’s possible projections can easily lead to unproductive reactions. For instance, some may find it easy to dismiss Europe based on its limited and piecemeal power projection in the past. But the trend is clearly changing, and some new patterns should naturally be expected. The overall impact of Europe’s foray into the Indo-Pacific remains impossible to predict, however. It all depends not only on Europe’s plans and actions, but on the fluid interplay of many proud and nervous actors, as well as factors that now enjoy a tenuous balance, but face many sources of tension. One must be careful when thinking through new dynamics and assigning probabilities to novel scenarios. Some may dream of a rosy scenario in which a level-headed European presence strides into the region and solves all of its myriad troubles: Others may fear that Europe’s entry will only upset the regional apple cart. European planners must therefore take the time to understand the many risks and opportunities that the Indo-pacific region presents.

A Eurocorps soldier stands in formation at an event held to mark 30 years of direct elections to the European Parliament.

photo: European Parliament/Pietro Naj-Oleari

Dr. César de Prado is a MOFA Fellow at the European Union Centre in Taiwan, National Taiwan University. He can be reached for comment at cesar.deprado@eui.eu