Atlantic Council

Managing Editor

A: Smart defence 

The ongoing military operations in Libya have underscored the need for transatlantic security cooperation while highlighting the weaknesses that future military cuts will only exasperate.

NATO’s Operation Unified Protector has been an undoubted success. Decades of investment in NATO as a hub for institutional and operational planning have proved invaluable, as allies and partners were able to put together an ad hoc coalition of the willing under the Alliance umbrella and overcome the many problems. At the same time, the fact that the world’s premier military alliance had so many difficulties taking on Muammar Gaddafi’s ragtag force vindicated critics, like former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who had long argued that Europe was under-investing in military capability. 

At its Lisbon Summit last November, NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept which pledged to ‘defend Allied nations, to deploy robust military forces where and when required for our security, and to help promote common security with our partners around the globe.’ But an alliance is only as strong as its member states and most have not followed up those powerful words with deeds; instead, many of Europe’s key players have made draconian cuts to their already paltry military budgets.

Meanwhile, the EU’s military arm, the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), remains what it has been throughout its history, regardless of name: a fantasy. To be sure, there have been a few minor peacekeeping efforts over the years. But the EU still lacks a coordinated defence outside NATO. The current crisis, which the Atlantic Council’s Julian Lindley-French has dubbed the “Great European Defence Depression,” may make changing that a priority.

Americans have been hectoring their European allies to contribute more to the common defence for decades. These pleas will be no more successful during the current austerity than they were in flush times of the past, Libya wake-up call or no. The next best thing to a more robust European commitment to defence then is for European militaries to maximise the bang achieved for their diminished buck.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been urging the allies to engage in what he calls ‘Smart Defence,’ which he defines as “ensuring greater security, for less money, by working together with more flexibility.” He adds, “Pooling and sharing are vital if we want to develop our military know-how and capabilities and NATO is best placed to identify and connect nations that have similar needs but not enough money to build a capability on their own.”

The model for this is the plan announced last November whereby the United Kingdom and France would share troops, aircraft carriers, and nuclear testing facilities in order to maximise their collective military capability. Recognising that diminished spending meant making hard choices, the two countries decided that cooperation allowed for a maximisation of capabilities, whereas going it alone meant redundancy and gaps.

In such an environment, it makes little sense to waste already limited resources in funding two headquarters to coordinate essentially the same set of European militaries. And, certainly, a choice between NATO, which has proven itself over more than six decades, and CSDP, which has had more name changes than deployments, is not really a choice at all.

Still, CSDP may well be a useful partner for NATO in coordinating smart defence. Ultimately, these are domestic political decisions and very bitter pills to swallow from a national pride standpoint. The EU, already coordinating the painful process of coordinating economic responses to the crisis, may also well be the appropriate vehicle for helping to manage defence austerity.