The Commission focuses on the Russian threat and ignores Turkish aggression
Despite the drumbeats and rhetorical crowns about the here-and-now necessity of developing a European defense because of the Russian bogeyman on the one hand and the fear of Donald Trump on the other, the Commission’s proposal for the European Strategy for the Defense Industry is inferior to the circumstances . And it is so not only because the measures presented appear insufficient but also because Brussels shows indifference regarding the changes and the balance of power elsewhere in the European periphery and the challenges faced by EU member states such as Greece.
Apart from the critical resolutions on a number of foreign policy issues and the various controversies over rights in Turkey, the EU as a bloc repeatedly ignores and leaves out of calculations Turkey’s aggressive neo-Ottoman policy. From the open wound of the Cypriot and the continental shelf and EEZ issues in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean to the Turkish development in the Maghreb or the strengthening of the Turkish active policy in the Caucasus through Azerbaijan, the EU follows the policy of appeasement (tolerance and support) of Tayyip Erdogan imposed by the US. Moreover, the policy of the Greek government is moving in the same pattern of appeasement and tolerance, despite the fact that the Turkish side is consistently promoting its own agenda in all major issues.
Only two reasons
Both Commissioner Thierry Breton and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, as well as those who spoke at the presentation of the Commission’s proposal, singled out as the main reasons for this decision, firstly, the war in Ukraine and, secondly, the possibility that Trump to be elected president of the USA again, with all that this entails for NATO and Euro-Atlantic relations. There was no mention of the most important changes taking place in Europe’s backyard, in the area of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. The monothematic nature (heavy bi-thematic nature, if the references to Trump are also included) of the common policy for defense and by extension security and diplomacy becomes more distinct if it is taken into account that the framework of the threats that necessitate the development of such a policy was not included at all Erdoğan’s revisionism, nor of course the joint Iran-Russia-Turkey policy in the also adjacent Caucasus region.
Commissioner Breton’s announcements during the week were limited to the fact that the Commission will provide 1.5 billion euros until… 2027 for the European Defense Investment Program because “we need to produce weapon systems more, faster and collectively as Europeans”. .
In the days leading up to the announcements, ambitious plans had been leaked to the media that envisioned joint borrowing of up to 100 billion euros through bonds. This was mentioned by Breton himself as a necessity, but which is met with objections from member countries, among which Germany and the Netherlands predominate. Officials believe that the proposal, although small in terms of the financial part, lays the legal foundations for a more coherent common policy on the matter in the future. They singled out as important the predictions that by 2030 a common market program would run for at least 40% of defense equipment, that 35% of defense production would be traded within the EU and that 50% of defense procurement by member states would be of European origin – and increase to 60% by 2035.
The question
Combined, the above reasonably raises the question as to whether the EU can achieve the goal supposedly set by the European Strategy for the Defense Industry and the plan for the development of a common European defense as long as the initiative of the movements in a number of issues is held by the Washington. Characteristic of how out of touch Brussels is with developments in the region is that ahead of the visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Turkey’s intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin to the US for meetings with their counterparts as part of the seventh meeting of Turkey’s Strategic Dialogue Mechanism – USA, the Turkish side emphatically presented the agenda of the talks without any reaction from either Greece or the EU. So, according to the Turkish media, dealing with the Gulenists and the PKK, the purchase of military equipment were put on the table of the talks (regardless of the outcome) of F-16 aircraft, defense industry cooperation, the lifting of US sanctions on the Russian S-400 missile system, the increase in the volume of bilateral trade, the situation in the Gaza Strip and the issue of energy cooperation between the two sides.
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