Instrument
The geostrategic situation in
Europe shifted during 1997. The old imperialist alliance, based on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), faces challenges to its methods of organisation.
But it intends to remain the dominant element in the current redistribution of the politicomilitary cards in Europe and beyond.
Jean-Louis Michel
Asserting the centrality of NATO implies the acceptance of unchallenged
American domination over both the aims and the application of the new strategic orientation. It is precisely here that can be found the roots of an open crisis between the United States and its main European allies. The European powers are absorbed by the construction of the European
Union. This is, certainly, mainly about economic and monetary matters, under the auspices of the Maastricht Treaty, but integration also has a politico-military dimension. The new Eldorado?
NATO now presents itself as a "framework for stability, peace and prosperity". According to the Alliance's most loyal champions, like Czech President Vaclav Havel, this symbol of the cold war will become the vehicle for co-operation between peoples.
Founded in April 1949 to combat the "Soviet threat", NATO has always combined a military function, tying its members into common action if one of its members comes under attack, and an economic, political and ideological function, by establishing various "ground rules' for member states. In particular, accepting the permanent right of the United States to oversee European affairs. For this reason, NATO has, for a long time, represented an ideal model of regional organisation for
With the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, things have changed. NATO's new military function is oriented to the third world -- and the Arab Mediterranean states in particular.
The politico-ideological function of the Alliance is also changing. A new cooperation agreement between Russia and NATO was ratified in Paris on 27 May. There was a NATO summit in Madrid in July, and a Franco-German memorandum in Nuremberg in December 1996. Several large scale military manoeuvres have
Pax Americana taken place. Even the Western European Union is re-asserting itself.
This changing politico-ideological function of the Alliance is what dominated the July 1997 summit of heads of state and government of the sixteen NATO member
The previously announced reform of the structures and methods of organisation had to be postponed once again because of the lack of consensus between Clinton and the Europeans, especially France and Germany. But the big matter at Madrid was the expansion of NATO to incorporate new members from eastern Europe.
The Alliance agreed to bring in only three countries, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This disappointed France (which supported Rumania) and Germany (which wanted to include Slovenia too).
Clinton and the American Senate dread the probably astronomical cost of this expansion.
Formally the candidates have to satisfy several criteria: an advanced, stable "democratisation", , the guarantee of civil control over the army, reasonably smooth relations with their neighbours, and above all, an ability to "contribute to collective security". It is poignant to note that there is no demand on new candidates to demonstrate majority support for their entry, say by a referendum. In the Czech Republic, at least, it is not sure that a
In practice the three new members have been chosen because, unlike most of Eastern Europe, they are thought capable of reinforcing austerity measures, so as to devote the required minimum of three percent of their GDP to defence. In reality, this is the most important citerion for joining NATO
This implies a major budget reorganisation. Poland currently spends 2.5 percent of its GDP on its armed forces, the Czech Republic 1.7% and Hungary 1.4%.
NATO is creating a new arms market into which the newly restructured American military industries are ready to expand. NATO expansion marks the beginning a new phase of remilitarisation of central and European Europe, under
American leadership. The people of these countries will pay the full price of this market militarisation. They will be condemned to perpetual austerity, in the name of an elusive "better, safer tomorrow."
No-one knows far this remilitarisation can go, and what resistance it will encounter. But it probably indicates more global initiatives and further extension of military pacts and high-tech rearmament in all parts of the world.
This process is driven by American economic circumstances. It remains to be seen if the Europeans, who face quite different economic conditions, will follow. The incoherence and incompetence with which European leaders have approached the mergers in the trans-Atlantic aeronautical industry have contirmed their ınabılity to collectively defend their obvious interests, to say nothing of those of the people. Europe and America
If the question of structural reforms misfired at Madrid, it was none the less revealing about the relationship of forces that still prevails in the Alliance.
Formally, the demand expressed by several European capitals for a sharing of the main positions of responsibility, traditionally held by the Americans, hit upon the problem of the southern command - in
Naples, Italy - and, in addition, on the differences among the Europeans - Greeks and Turks on one side, Spanish, Portuguese and Italians on the other, over the geographical siting of the sub-commands for this sector. The Europeans demanded the Naples command, arguing that if an
American officer kept command of the
American sixth fleet, which is not attached to NATO, there was no reason why other national squadrons in the Mediterranean attached to NATO could not be commanded by a European; for example by rotation between France, Italy and Spain.
Washington was opposed, less for reasons of military coherence or technique than for a matter of principle. Appointing a European head of the Naples command would mean the "Europeanisation' of what is now the Allince's most decisive stra-
NATO * tegic sector today, the Mediterranean. The Americans cannot agree to that without running the risk of eventually losing their dominance in the alliance.
Moreover, the existence of Euromarforce - a grouping of air and naval forces set up last year by France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and destined, in times of crisis, to be the armed wing of the West European Union (a largely inactive defence alliance of EU states) - demonstrates sufficiently the inclinations towards European independence. The large scale Isles d'Or - 1997 manoeuvres last May, under French command, clearly showed these new aspirations: particularly because they had been officially designed to test the complementary links between the NATO and WEU structures.
The European military organisation has forged a new concept of deployment of forces for cases where, following an
American refusal, it is impossible to use NATO structures. This means designing. in record time, a European General Staff for that theatre of operations. The intervention in Albania under Italian command would have been the first clear demonstration of this new spirit. The old, old story
To understand the stakes in this armwrestling between the United States and
Europe we have to return to the history of
European military construction, its state of advance and its perspectives.
The militarisation of the European
Union, usually but not always under the
NATO umbrella, is an old priority, though never a central concern of the European
Commission and the governments of the
15
* NATO member states. The Euromilitarisation project has had a variable geometry. It started with the occasional bipartite collaboration, and developed into the Franco-
German Permanent Defence Council and more recently the Euromarforce.
And the setbacks are just as old and varied. In 1954 a coalition of Gaullists and
Communists overturned the planed European Defence Community, at the moment of its ratification by the French Parliament, in a chauvinist national union against German rearmament.
For many years after 1954, it seemed improbable that European countries would repeat such initiatives. Instead, each followed its own immediate interests.
Germany re-armed, in a strategy of strict subordination to the United States, in the framework of NATO. Britain followed a similar path, but with a greater margin for independence, benefiting from its being victorious at the end of the war, despite its declining status as a world power. France exhibited a more marked demand for grandeur and independence, marked by the country's departure from the NATO military command in 1966 on the initiative of President General Charles de Gaulle.
The existence of nuclear arms presupposed a single key and, therefore, a sole authority able to take the decision to use the bomb. London and Paris were endowed, the others not. For two decades people in Institutes of Strategic Research and in the General Staffs tore themselves apart trying to find a solution to this intractable problem, how could a group of counties use the nuclear umbrella, without there being a first and a second, a consulted and a decider. As a general rule the most lucid observers considered that if this problem had a solution it was only conceivable with the coming of a European supranational body, endowed with all the attributes of sovereignty. The fall of the bureaucratic dictatorships in the east has obviously upset this certainty by consigning the nuclear arsenals, or more exactly the theories about their use, to the museums of the military academies. European militarisation within NATO
Two parallel processes have accelerated European military construction: growing closeness between France and Germany, the key countries in the European project, and the crisis of the armaments sector.
France and Germany have created an integrated, bilingual "Eurocorps" unit of 50,000 men, and the creation of a Permanent Defence Council bringing together the members of the General Staffs and experts of the two states. The two countries have striven to develop a common approach to the problems they encounter, after the "Desert Storm" war against Iraq, in which the imperial power of America reduced the French to the role of auxiliaries, and the Germans to the role of financial backers. France's interest in joint projects with Germany is also motivated 16 International Viewpoint #296 by the frustrations of its post-colonial ambitions in its "backyard, speaking countries of Africa. Paris and Bonn are thus dragging Europe towards a more integrated military policy.
The other accelerator of European military integration is one aspect of the crisis of globalisation. The armaments sector remains narrowly dependent on state intervention. From "Research and
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Development" to commercialisation under export licence control, nothing in the armaments industry escapes the state. The culture of enterprises in this industrial sector has very little in common with that of civil sectors employing similar technology. This makes the process of reconversion problematic. And, as recent UN studies have demonstrated, each dollar invested in military production generates less direct and indirect profits than if invested in the most similar form of civil
As a result, globalisation has hit military industries, in the US as well as western Europe, particularly hard. Restructuring is everywhere accompanied by a drastic reduction in production and employment. State military credits are no longer spared from the horrors of budgetary austerity. But this only reduces the captive market for armaments ever
And, once the sector has been 'purged of less profitable companies,, at least in North America, there is even the danger of a new round of selective arms growth, led by the Pentagon.
Europe is not really "a war behind" the
USA in its technological development, as the most zealous militarists claim. A frightening range of military research programmes are currently being financed by Europe's four biggest "cannon merchants," Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Not all these projects will be maintained, of course. But they are a real factor behind the integration of arms commissioning and production, and the constitution of an authentic "European military capital", capable of commissioning research, and providing guaranteed orders for European arms producers. The US recognises this dynamic, and is looking to control the process -- since it can't hold it back. This is what motivates US support for the enlargement of NATO, and the agreements reached at the Madrid summit. A Franco-German affair
Germany and France are the main initiators of European "visibility" on defence matters. By adopting, in autumn 1996 at Nuremberg, a common document on the problems of defence, Chancellor Kohl and President Chirac used objective factors to give themselves a direct political lever on the bilateral plane as well as that of the
Why should Washington be alarmed? The novelty does not reside so much in the terms of the Nuremberg agreement, but in the precise and coherent character of the document, which sets objectives and makes it possible to measure deeds against words. In contrast, the semi-blockage at the Amsterdam Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) of EU leaders shows the advance that the diabolical duo of European construction has over its European partners.
France and Germany have been intensifying their co-operation in matters
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of defence and foreign policy for some time now. But at Nuremberg, Kohl and Chirac left nothing aside, not even those concerns which only really interest one of the two. The resulting document is an explicit commitment between Bonn and Paris for the definition of a strictly common, almost integrated defence policy.
Paris has drawn the logical conclusions from the end of a myth, that of the independence of its nuclear arsenal. Reintegration in the unified military command of NATO that France had quit in 1966 sounds the death-knell for the old Gaullist dream. The Socialists, who formally denounce the establishment's Atlanticist drift, forget that they themselves initiated the process, during the first seven years of François Mitterand's presidency. They adopted the equally illusory and ruinous perspective of independent European defence based on the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France.
Conservative President Jacques Chirac is more of a realist, and on the nuclear issue allies himself with the German position. The Nuremberg document stresses that the "supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is assured by the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, in particular those of the United States". The "independent" French and British arsenals only "contribute to the global security of the Allies" as complementary forces. This form of words underlines the current limits of European ambitions, staying well within NATO. This can only please Washington. Germany's new role
As for Germany, the engagement of troops abroad, unthinkable a few years ago, is now openly planned. The Nuremberg document notably states that "The defined common policy has as its aim preserving and reinforcing the stability of the Mediterranean basin... our two countries can be led to participate, under very varied forms, in missions of crisis management".
It is at this level that the principle danger of repeated military adventures resides. Adventures which are no longer restricted by the physical and financial limits of the French army. Unfortunately, left parties in Europe have generally remained silent on this new military potential.
Bonn is also hoping to obtain a seat on the United Nations Security Council. This is justified, in its opinion, by its new responsibilities as much as by the level of is the only method compatible with a reduction in the amount of financial resources required for defence, combined with a concentration of their efforts to compete with the United States in the few really profitable areas of research. Partnership with Russia.
Russia and her borders remain risks of the first order in relations between the main western powers. Not beause Russia's military power is worrying, or because of Moscow's opposition to the enlargement of NATO to include former Soviet Republics. But because Americans and Europeans are competing to control the situation in the former Soviet Union to their own advantage. The game, which consists of letting Moscow a role of dominant power in regional crises wherever that allows the US to reinforce its own leadership, has become a classic of American diplomacy. The Middle East provides the most developed example.
The European capitals, who have played the Russian card in the Balkans and elsewhere, want to be masters of eastern Europe just as much as the US does. It is against this backdrop that NATO, at the initiative of Chirac and Kohl, signed in Paris, in May 1997, with Russia, a partnership agreement. The same logic was behind inviting Russia to join the G7 club of the richest and most powerful nations.
The stunt of Yeltsin, announcing on this occasion the unilateral disarmament of his (obsolete) nuclear arsenal aimed at countries was recognised as a cheap trick by a leader who no longer knows what else to do to maintain his position. This partnership agreement envisages the creation of a permanent joint
NATO-Russia Council which will meet every month or at the request of one of the
According to Javier Solana, Secretary
General of NATO, its broad functions and terms of reference will allow it to adress
"the prevention and regulation of conflicts, the maintenance of peace, the prevention of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the exchange of information on defence policies and security forces, the conversion of defence industries, environmental questions related to defence and civil preparation in crisis
In other words, Russia has been integrated in a subordinate position, through
NATO. Though the forms have been respected, with mention of the possibility of a joint operation under the responsibility of the Security Council of the United Nations or of the Conference on Common Security allowed the testing of this type of partnership which, in future, has every chance of becoming permanent. America's right to oversee things is recognised in an Act of Co-operation affecting above all the European theatre and its Mediterranean Unstable equilibrium.
The future evolution of the strategic context and the balance of forces between the different NATO partners is not sure. The tendencies at work are contradictory. So far, the United States has maintained and even reinforced its leadership since the fall of the Berlin wall. Since the Gulf War, the world has seemed to be
But on the other hand, never before in history has the creation of a militarily united Europe seemed so near. The implementation of the final phase of economic and monetary union in 1998-2002 can only accelerate the process of military integration, in all its dimensions.. at the political level through the Franco-German initiative, and by strengthened practical co-operation, involving the quasi-integration of military forces in several new theatres of operation, especially in the Mediterranean.
The structural antagonism between Europe and North America has formed one of the weighty realities of the evolution of the international situation in the post-war period. NATO has been the preferred framework for this arm-wrestling between the two partners.
For the European left, the struggle for the dissolution of NATO, the old imperialist war machine, repainted in modern colours, will become increasingly important. A conflict will develop around the refusal of some political forces to allow the integration or reintegration of their country's armed forces into NATO's USdominated integrated command structures.
That is especially true for eastern Europe but also, in a different way, for France and
Spain. The democratic demand for consulting the people before signing new military pacts is relevant everywhere
So is the anti-austerity dimension.
Though, of course, this is more difficult to combine with the anti-militarist struggle, because it supposes an alliance of classes or social layers which are unequally responsive to the two themes.
Finally, we should expect, and encourage, resistance to a probable, selective relaunching of the armaments race on the initiative of Washington. This will be an interesting campaign, since, for the moment, the arms race no longer has any widely-accepted ideological alibi. * its UN contributions.
The Nuremberg document also envisages increased military-industrial co-operation, "in particular in the fields of methods
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION of command, intelligence, logistics, long
The Gulf War and the New World Order range transport and the training and development of men". All at the heart of the Atlantic Alliance of course, since both governments consider that the NATO framework is the least costly option. This in Europe. The intervention in Bosnia has
André Gunder Frank and Salah Jaber [72 pages A4]
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