The European Union’s ambition to create a separate defense structure from NATO and its own rapid response force will operate in competition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Secretary-General has warned Jens Stoltenberg a few days before handing over the helm to the former prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte.
“I don’t understand and I find it a bit strange”said Stoltenberg, “the same countries that do not meet the needs of the Alliance in terms of manpower to build a parallel structure”.
Friendly fire between allies
Another senior NATO official put the matter less elegantly: “If Europe is attacked, the world needs to know immediately who will lead the response. Competitive structures create uncertainty and all they do is help the enemy” he told the Financial Times on condition of anonymity.
However, what is undoubtedly growing now is the uncertainty of the partners about the next steps of the United States, the fear of additional unilateral actions and pressures that a new presidency of Donald Trump. Of course, Trump’s previous blackmails took place, the defense spending of the member countries increased and his successor Joe Biden there was no thought of retreating.
Five years after the finding of the French president Emmanuel Macron that NATO is “brain dead”, the North Atlantic Alliance appears as strong as ever. He also helped her in this Vladimir Putin which with the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed into the arms of the Alliance two countries that abandoned their traditional neutrality, Sweden and Finland. Today, of the 27 EU countries, 23 are members of NATO, which has a total of 32 members. Outside the Alliance are Austria, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta.
Arguing in 2019 about a brain-dead NATO, the French president had stated that there was not the slightest coordination between the US and its NATO allies in making strategic decisions, citing as an example Turkey’s unilateral action in an area of strategic interest, namely the Turkish invasion in Syria. At the same time, Macron stood by Greece in the face of Turkish provocations, while NATO remained a spectator. We should reassess exactly what NATO is in light of American commitments, the French president said. “In my opinion,” added, “Europe has the ability to defend itself.”
This vision of the EU’s strategic, defense autonomy is shared by others in Europe, even though much has changed in the world in the past five years. For a part of the European political and military elite, the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated, in the most dramatic way, Europe’s need for a defense structure of its own. Especially when it was preceded by Trump’s presidency in the USA (2017-2021), which was disastrous for the feeling of NATO solidarity.
The concern has returned as Trump is again on the doorstep of the White House, seeking a second term after the “Biden break” and asserting that he can end the war in Ukraine within a day with a personal negotiation with Putin. If this is done, European NATO allies will find themselves exposed to the Kremlin’s whims, while their governments, which have expended considerable economic and political capital to support Kiev, will be irreparably exposed for hitching themselves to Washington’s bandwagon.
On the other hand, a significant part of the Brussels establishment and individual countries insists that without the NATO umbrella, Europe would be at the mercy of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. After the UK leaves the EU, only France has a nuclear deterrent that would form the basis of a single European defense doctrine. The same circles cite a number of political and economic obstacles as well as logistical problems.
To form a European army, member states would have to agree on joint command and joint operational capabilities. This means that different armies will have to be unified, they will have to acquire uniform equipment to a large extent, have similar logistics and of course the “27” will have to agree on who will pay and how much. France and Germany (despite their individual differences) want a Europe with greater defense autonomy and appear willing to pay their fair share while claiming a leadership role. However, the reactions of the Eastern Europeans (Baltic countries, Poland, etc.) who consider the USA and not the Brussels bureaucrats to be the only effective guarantor of their territorial integrity must be overcome.
In the joint declaration of NATO-EU strategic cooperation of 10 January 2023, the need to strengthen transatlantic ties was underlined. “We recognize the value of a stronger and more capable European defense that contributes positively to global and transatlantic security, complementary and functional with NATO” noted in the joint communique, which in addition to the Russian threat listed “China’s rising assertiveness” as a challenge that will have to be met in an era of intensifying strategic competition. Since then, progress reports have noted increasing cooperation in everything from Ukraine reinforcement and exercises to hybrid threats and European defense industry programs.
The threat of using nuclear weapons
The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, is constantly generating new facts and arguments for all sides. The depletion of military reserves and the supply of equipment to Kiev (shells, guns, armored vehicles, etc.) give rise to new needs, new orders, new political calculations. The growing rhetoric about the possible use of nuclear weapons should not escape attention.
The warning Putin last week that it was considering changing Russia’s defense doctrine to include the existential threat of “an attack with conventional weapons by a country backed by a nuclear force” amounts to a threat of a nuclear strike by Moscow even if it has not received the same nuclear attack. Putin’s warning is to the US, France, Germany and any other country arming Ukraine with long-range missiles not to allow them to be used to strike deep inside Russian territory.
The pressure of developments in Ukraine is strengthening NATO ties, discouraging centrifugal tendencies, even if these appear as plans for parallel European defense structures.
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