How Collective Is Our Defence?

: After September 11, NATO has almost exclusively focused on out-of-area crisis management missions. It does little in practice to foster a »collective defence culture« on the new enlarged Europe’s own territory. This gap could in principle be ﬁ lled by the EU, which already has a strategic concept to govern the use of European military and non-military assets for missions abroad. After the terrorist attacks in Madrid in March 2004, member states agreed to a »solidarity« clause to come to each others’ aid in cases of attacks and disasters, and there is a »mutual defence clause« in the new draft Constitution. Making a reality of an EU-based collective defence community is, however, complicated by differences between Europeans (as well as with the USA) about the use of military assets. Does Europe, in fact, still need »collective defence« at all in the new threat environment – if not in a practical, then perhaps in a normative sense?


How integrated was NATO?
Even in its classic Cold War form, however, the NATO Alliance did not embody the non-national, integrated approach to defence as fully as might have been expected.First and most obviously, its mutual guarantees extended only to the immediate trans-Atlantic area.Allies could and did choose not to help each other in major confl icts outside Europe, from the Korean and Viet Nam wars through to Britain's experience in the Falklands.Secondly, because the NATO strategic concept was essentially defensive and territorial, the way nations experienced the Allied military life depended largely on where their territories lay.The USA, UK, Canada and the Benelux countries had forces implanted in Germany, of which a signifi cant proportion -unlike France's stationed troops 2 -served * Amb.Alyson J.K. Bailes, Director, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 1 A role was also played by the Brussels Treaty of 1948 (succeeded by the Modifi ed Brussels Treaty of 1954) which allowed other European states to station forces in Germany and also contained limitations on German armaments.2 Because France was not a member of the NATO integrated military structure.France did however develop a joint brigade with Germany, now under command of the Eurocorps (see note 10 below).
within genuinely multinational commands.A high proportion of Germany's own forces were also integrated into the latter.
The bulk of US forces, however, stayed in the continental USA or in the USA's other (notably, Pacifi c) overseas commands 3 and their only potential European role was as wartime reinforcements, which -as we know -were never actually required.Other, more peripheral and/or smaller European Allies retained defence policies essentially focussed on the protection of their own lands4 , generally making use of universal conscription and sometimes with an explicit 'citizens' defence' philosophy.(In this light, the national defence 'culture' of a country like Norway seems in retrospect to have retained much in common with its non-Allied neighbours Sweden and Finland).Nothing, perhaps, better illustrates the diversity and fl exibility of NATO's 'multinationalism' than the fact that it could encompass two nations (Greece and Turkey) who had national force postures substantially directed against one another5 .
In functional terms, too, NATO made meagre progress − despite more than fi fty years' effort − in standardizing Allied countries' levels of defence spending, military structures, and operational doctrines, or in persuading them to use 'interoperable' equipment and communications.National defence traditions at political and popular level remained if anything even more diverse, ranging from the robust neo-imperialism of Britain and France to countries like Norway and Iceland who had themselves recently escaped 'colonial' status; from unabashed nuclear possessors to anti-nuclear campaigners; and through a wide range of regionally tinged variations in geo-political visions.After the end of the Cold War in 1989-90, NATO not so much missed the chance as did not even really try to control the stampede to cut defence spending, forces and equipment (the so-called 'peace dividend') 'Finalité' questions regarding the new policy were left aside: not just because they seemed less immediate, and not just because of the long-term European differences over NATO primacy versus 'autonomy', but also because no-one wanted to expose national divisions over sub-issues such as the geographical range for deployments, the type of mandate required or the maximum level of force to be used.The results of this prudence, however, were not destined to be equally conservative.Rather, by leaving a multitude of options open, the reticence of the Helsinki formulae allowed the pressures and demands of history to act directly on the ESDP's development and to drive the speed and direction of its growth.

The new demands on Europe
The years 2000-2005 were, in fact, to bring momentous change to the environment for European defence.NATO's and the EU's parallel 'Big Bang' enlargements brought the whole territory of continental Europe within the ambit of Western-style collective security and opened the prospect of even greater geo-strategic transformations with the following tranche, including the potential EU entry of Turkey.There was a dramatic switch of focus after 11 September 2001 to 'new threats' such as terrorism and thus to 'homeland security' as a preoccupation, both for US-Europe relations and for Europe's own policy-making.NATO rapidly changed its strategy to focus almost exclusively on out-of-area operations linked with these new threats, moving both physical and planning resources away from Europe's own territory and further reducing and changing the signifi cance of its traditional 'multinational' structures 15 .At the same time, the experience of the US-led military operations in Afghanistan and then in Iraq served to convince most observers of the limitations of military force − above all, perhaps, for any realistic effort to master the 'new threats' themselves -thereby throwing the emphasis back upon other capabilities, instruments, and approaches required for effective handling of the confl ict cycle (many of which the EU possessed or could aspire to develop).

Back to the future: the EU and 'real' collective defence
As a result of these external and internal paradigm shifts, the ESDP initiative has arguably -much sooner than anyone expected -brought the Europeans back face-to-face with some of the same questions about a 'real' European defence that were on the table in the 1950's.Just three of the issues -relevant to the present theme − that are now being opened up for debate (or are bound to emerge soon) will be highlighted here.
First, as regards collective territorial defence: the EU 's new draft Constitution now contains a statement of the member states' 'solidarity' commitment to defend each others' territory against external attack, but the effect of this is almost neutralized by clauses added to protect the national specifi cities of the non-allied members' policies, and the primacy of NATO for Allied states.In practice, there has been no shift of focus in the daily work of ESDP towards drawing up plans for Europe's own defence: and were this to happen, some very tricky issues indeed such as the relevance of nuclear deterrence and the role of French and British nuclear forces would surface at once.Where the real 'slippery slope' towards a true joint responsibility for European territory has been created is, rather, in the fi eld of anti-terrorism and other aspects of human, internal or 'homeland' security.It is clear that the EU is already the competent organ for preventive and corrective security measures in fi elds like epidemic control, pollution dangers and industrial or nuclear accidents, export controls for non-proliferation, energy policy, aviation and transport security, crime-fi ghting, border security and immigration control.Since September 2001 it has rapidly increased its corpus of joint laws, structures and policies for tackling the terrorist menace: and in March 2004, following the bombing incidents in Madrid, member states agreed to adopt at once another 'solidarity' clause that had originally been drafted for inclusion in the new Constitution20 .This obliges all members to come to each others' aid (when so requested) in the event of terrorist attacks and natural or man-made disasters, and to do so with all the necessary means at their disposal -not excluding military ones.If this clause is to mean anything in terms of concrete EU planning and behaviour, it must surely draw EU states down a path of joint threat assessment, network building and response planning where the further step to assume joint responsibilities in the (extremely unlikely) event of a military attack on the same territories could appear a very small one indeed.
Secondly, a further 'collectivization' of defence could be driven (or perhaps is already being driven) by an essentially military-technical logic of resource application.No European state can expect to raise its defence spending again and most states seem set on cutting it further.Total force manpower is also continuing to decline, not least as a consequence of structural changes -notably in the direction of less conscription and more 'professionalization' -that are themselves vital for liberating more 'deployable' resources.In this situation, the only way that added value in capability terms can be sought is by deepening the degree of European forces' integration: facing up to the challenging issues of doctrinal, structural and equipment 'harmonization', of specialization, and of mutual dependence in a way that few if any of NATO's European members were really made to face up to them before.The battle-groups and (at least, potentially) the European Defence Agency's role in the equipment area may be seen as the harbingers of this tendency.It is one that from the beginning must raise particularly sensitive issues for those states (non-Allied and 'fl ank') that have not possessed an operative and permanent 'multinational' level in their defence identities before.For the EU as a whole, it could at a slightly later stage revive issues about who will actually have the ownership and leadership of the resulting collectivized, harmonized force capabilities -so that the challenge of the 'European army' may turn out, in fact, not to have been buried for good.
Thirdly comes the question of strategic 'fi nalité' in a more political sense, i.e. determining where the 25 EU members' collective strategic interests actually lie, what the most important threats and constructive openings are for pursuing them, and what are the best instruments to use for the purpose.The ESS does provide broad answers to these questions but lacks specifi c directions for action (and allocation of resources), and makes proactive policy-making almost harder by the very range and complexity of the goals it defi nes.If the EU is to bear the greater de facto strategic responsibilities now being loaded upon it; is to develop more policy options of its own, rather than always being led by or reacting to the USA; and is to preserve its unity in face of the next set of divisive challenges that will doubtless come after Iraq, it will need a political equivalent to the process of military-technical standardization and integration mentioned above.The task is large at the inter-governmental level because of the genuine differences of outlook and priority between large and small, Northern and Southern, continental and maritime, 'old' and 'new' Europeans, which are further complicated when (as often) the EU must fi nd a base for joint endeavours with nonmember states.

NATO and the EU: passing the torch?
Meanwhile, as already hinted above, the NATO of the early 21 st century is effectively ceasing to plan and practise for a collective defence of Europe's own territory.The number of foreign forces stationed on German territory has dropped much faster than the overall decline in the stationing countries' manpower 21 ; and while there may be talk of the USA's establishing new military bases in Eastern or South-Eastern Europe, these should now be seen more as jumping-off points for a worldwide intervention strategy than as 'human shields' for protecting the Central Europeans' own borders.The ten new members who have joined NATO since 1999 do not, in fact, have any NATO stationed forces on their territory 22 and will not have any nuclear weapons stationed there in peacetime, so the day-to-day reality of defence as experienced and perceived by their own inhabitants remains overwhelmingly national in style.NATO's large-scale troop exercises on European territory still provide an important exception, but the number of individuals involved has fallen from a total of some 174,000 in cises in Norway and Poland). 23As for operations, NATO in the 1990's committed itself deeply to tasks of crisis management and post-confl ict stabilization in the Western Balkans, but (as also noted above) it has now handed over its peace operations both in FYROM and in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the EU.Apart from the remaining Kosovo operation, the functions directly performed by NATO as a collectivity in the European security space are now dominated by more political processes such as the NATO-Russia dialogue, the pre-accession process launched with certain Balkan states, the next stages of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership directed at Ukraine and other states of the former Soviet Union, and (on a modest scale) some contributions to the analysis and combating of 'new threats'. 24ile there is much debate on the Alliance's performance and credibility in its new global role, relatively little has been written and discussed about the implications of the subtraction of NATO's military effort from the European theatre25 .There are interesting issues here at several levels.In general security terms, one might ask whether too much of the coldwar-type underpinning for Europe's safety and independence has been removed too fast; whether the West's effectively increased reliance on nuclear deterrence is an appropriate and proportionate answer for whatever residual threat still exists; and whether the USA's strategic commitment − now overwhelmingly a political matter, rather than embodied in 'human shields' − is actually to be relied on in the light of recent policy and attitudinal changes26 .It could, of course, be argued that these questions are no longer acute given the great reduction in traditional threats to Europe compared with new global and trans-national risks, and that trying to cling to NATO's traditional posture or refusing to re-direct the resources it used to absorb would now be against Europe's own best-conceived security interests.Even if this is conceded, however, it does not answer the problem of what is to become of the inward-looking, political and civilizational purpose of NATO's collective defence culture.Unless we assume that the need (in the nicest way) to 'keep Germany down' -and the equivalent for Central Europe's states, so recently rescued from Communism -has disappeared for good, it may not be logical or safe to turn Europe into a territory where each state scrambles separately to summon up the will and resources to make a good showing in ad hoc operations anywhere else in the world.Such deployments cannot fully assume the role of NATO's previous multinational units since they do not allow NATO nations' militaries to work on each others' territories, within permanent force combinations, for permanent and formally agreed collective policies and aims. 27The new 'coalitions' are as varied and potentially evanescent as the new 'missions' that call them into being.Moreover, some would argue that the increasing 'professionalization' of national forces called for by the new expeditionary focus is weakening their socially representative character and the reciprocal links between armies and ordinary citizens that used to be seen -inter alia − as a guarantee of the forces' democratic culture.If, as some fear, the standards of forces' conduct might suffer as a result (à la Abu Ghraib), the fact that they are transgressing without even the 'excuse' of national self-defence risks doubly darkening the reputation of whatever institution commands them.
If we conclude that a defi cit now exists in the promotion and perpetuation of a 'collective defence culture' for the new enlarged Europe, could the EU fi ll the gap?There seems no purely conceptual reason why not.A strong motive for the creation of the European Communities was to make future war impossible between France and Germany.Since then, the EU's development in many non-military fi elds has had the effect of 'Europeanizing' or 'socializing' successive policy-making élites, to a point where the latter may be dangerously estranged from their less 'Europeanized' ordinary citizens.In the enlargement context, also, the 'invasive' and harmonizing effect of joining the EU (with its tens of thousands of pages of common legislation) on the territory of the new Central European member states has been infi nitely greater than that of NATO.In the security domain, aside from the anti-terrorism solidarity commitment and the integrative dimension of ESDP's military plans as already alluded to, a 'collectivizing' tendency may be seen in the recent formation of a joint EU Gendarmerie Force (i.e.armed police suitable for overseas deployment), and the still ongoing debate on a common border protection force for the Union.In short, and in parallel with the argument already made about 'solidarity' commitments, the EU's work in creating (consciously or unconsciously) collectively organized and collective-minded security communities in different dimensions has already gone so far that adopting policies explicitly directed to fostering a permanent multinational military community might seem a relatively small step.
Of course, nothing in Europe is ever quite that simple.Even if ESDP has moved a long way already down the slippery slope towards a 'real' defence community, the fi nal step cannot be taken by stealth.The EU could not provide a new 'culture' for its nations' forces unless it had explicitly taken on competence and drawn up plans regarding the whole range of them, not just those earmarked for potential crisis management tasks.This would be a moment for truth not just for the non-Allied members but for many NATO states, since it would amount to an admission either that the EU had moved into a space already vacated by NATO − 'eating part of the Alliance alive' − or that European interests now demanded a kind of joint NATO/EU occupation of this area of competence, despite the obvious risks of duplication and confusion (not to mention the likely political outrage from Washington societies, whether in the form of deadly terrorism or of equally deadly epidemics, violent storms, energy black-outs or the deaths of hundreds of citizens on holiday abroad.In some sense, in the globalized world and the frontier-free Europe, all citizens are now exposed to the kind of risks and − potentially − the personal responsibilities to show discipline and help the vulnerable that soldiers take on for the temporary term of their service.The greater specialization of the soldier's function does not, therefore, need to carry him/her further away from the ordinary citizen in normative and experiential terms: and the question of how to make the soldier a good citizen need be no less relevant for Europe today than it was in 1945.Of course, if this need and the EU's potential role in meeting it should be accepted, a whole new range of questions for research and for policy would arise.History itself prevents an EU 'collective defence' culture being built on the same basis as NATO's in the 1950's.Should we look to 'Europeanize' our soldiers today by bottom-up functional integration and common weaponry, or by a common mission to protect their common homelands against the new spectrum of threats, or by stringent common norms that will make Europe proud of them when operating abroad?The most likely answer would be a combination of all of these, plus some surprises that the next phase of history no doubt holds in store for us yet.

Autoritäre Demokratisierung in Usbekistan
Hendrik Fenz* Abstract: The fi rst globalisation decade began in 1992, when the country joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.Full of optimism, Uzbekistan started into independence trying to reform under the fl ag of democracy and rule of law.It has reformed, however, without giving up experienced mechanisms of authoritarian rule and corruption from past decades.With this system-immanent contradiction, the country is an obstacle to its own political development.Under the banner of the anti-terror struggle, Uzbek leaders already in 1998 started a disastrous campaign against Islamic believers, who were striving for independence from the state-controlled religion practice.Not only Islamic extremists fell victim to the campaign but mostly ordinary Muslims.Consequently, the country seems to manoeuvre into political imbalance, more and more leaving democratic standards.
-Land.Nicht deutlicher könnte sich die Globalisierung in Usbekistan zeigen, als auf den Straßen.An verrosteten und Jahrzehnte alten Sowjetmobilen geht es mit koreanischen Daewoos auf der Überholspur in die neue Zukunft.Zwei Modelle prägen das Bild: ein microkleiner 6-Sitzer, der nicht selten als Sammeltaxi unterwegs ist, und eine fl otte Limousine, die selbst bei 140 km/h den usbekischen Straßen zu trotzen vermag.Wer die 6.000 Euro für die kleine Version aufbringen kann, darf sich zu den Gewinnern des gesellschaftlichen Wandels zählen.An einem Lehrergehalt gemessen, das 2003 bei ca.30 Euro lag, dürften sich diesen Luxus allerdings nicht viele Familien leisten können.Ein Großteil der Bevölkerung lebt unterhalb der 1-Dollar-Armutsgrenze.Viele Indikatoren im aktuellen Human-Development-Report der UNO verweisen Usbekistan auf die unteren Plätze: Ob Kindersterblichkeit, Analphabetismus oder Bailes, How Collective Is Our Defence? | F O R U M S+F (23.Jg.) 2/2005 | 95 6.It thus failed to use a historic opening to re-model its total forces in a more modern and coordinated way, even if it did impose a fairly consistent 'model' on the Central European countries seeking to enter it from outside.7To express this in a more schematic fashion, we could say that some NATO members such as Britain, Germany or the Netherlands had a 3-level construct of defence identity and obligation during the Cold War: national (territorial) defence; collective NATO defence (in the European theatre); and global involvement (which took very different guises, eg for Britain and Germany).Neutral and non-aligned states could by definition only have a 2-level construct: national, and global (the latter normally in the form of peacekeeping).Some Allies like Norway, Portugal, Greece or Turkey were arguably also rather close to this latter model in terms of the everyday experience of their soldiers and publics, even if there was genuine political substance to the sense of collective NATO obligations in between.
82.European defence: from stalemate to relaunchThe one thing that no country could experience during this time was a 'European' level of organization and identity intermediate between the nation and NATO.After the attempt to build a European Defence Community using the EC-type 'Treaty method' broke down in 1954, Western European Union was established very much as a pis aller institution which never managed to generate its own integrative defence standards, multinational force structures, or even military operations 9 .NATO itself developed the notion of a European Security and Defence Identity which (from the Berlin Ministerial of 1996 onwards) could theoretically have led to operations by a subset of European Allies, but never did.Progress on European defence industrial coordination under NATO's Eurogroup and Independent European Programme Group, and their successor in the WEU framework, the Western European Armaments Group, was to prove equally disappointing.All this was not really surprising because -aside from the fi erce intra-European divisions over what European defence could or should mean − the Cold War agenda was so dominated by the 'real' defence threat from the Soviet bloc to Europe's own territory.There was no way that any purely European defence community could have dealt with this on its own; and so long as it could not, most Allies were likely to see it as a vision at -4 was also a time for reassessment and a new start in the EU generally because of enlargement and the exercise to draft a new Constitution 17 .Adding this internal dynamic to the outside pressures, it was not really surprising that a similar initiative should be taken by Foreign Ministers in the Spring of 2003 to commission the fi rst ever collective Security Strategy document for the EU.The resulting text -'A secure Europe in a better world' − was fi rst drafted by the CFSP High representative Javier Solana and fi nally adopted by the European in December 2003 after a process of academic review and inter-governmental negotiation 18 .It at last provided a political philosophy, if only of a generalized kind, to govern the use of European military and non-military capabilities in the ESDP framework.It also underlined the need to use all the EU's different resources (including its economic and commercial strengths, political infl uence and inspiration) for the pursuit of European strategic interests and goals world-wide.
On the political plane, meanwhile, the US/European political rifts over Iraq in 2002-4 cut deeper and appeared to bring more permanent political and institutional consequences than the intra-European rifts of early 200316.All this helped to throw the spotlight back on Europe's emergent strategic role and responsibilities, both for its own region and in global security: while at same time highlighting that Europe had developed certain security values and preferences distinct from the US.By late 2003 there was a clear sense among all EU members that the Union had to get its act together at the strategic level: whether to avoid US divide-and-rule, to work effi ciently with the US on shared goals and challenges, or to offer its own practical alternative to US policies where necessary.200315The key decisions on converting the NATO command structure from a geographical to a functional logic, on capabilities commitments, and a NATO Response Force were taken at the Prague Summit of Dec. 2002.16For more on these trends see the Introduction by AJK Bailes to SIPRI Yearbook 2004: Armament, Disarmament and International Security (OUP summer 2004).17Text of the draft Constitution at http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/constitution/ index_en.htm.Council One need only mention the questions of how to defi ne Russia's strategic signifi cance for Europe; whether ESDP missions should be confi ned to Europe's near area or could be particularly useful in more backward regions; and what level of force soldiers may use under a European fl ag, to see just how sensitive the issues are.Beyond this, however.lie another set of tough questions about the use and control of the EU's collective resources.In active interventions, what should be the balance and hierarchy between the EU's military and non-military instruments and how can these various tools be best coordinated when working in a single country or region (as, currently, in Bosnia-Herzegovina)?In broader strategic terms, could one envisage the EU's economic, monetary and trading strengths, as well as its infl uence as an aid donor, being harnessed to the service of a specifi c defensive or proactive security goal?The answers are particularly sensitive since the control of related policies and resources is currently divided within the EU's own governance structure, with the lion's share of all non-military resources (and fi nance) coming under the day-to-day control of the European Commission.
divisive alliances have barely outlived that decade; but the recently renascent concept of 'human security' 28 teaches that privileged regions like Europe should focus on helping poorer communities that lack security in every dimension -i.a. by cutting back on their static military investments to re-direct resources towards civilian reaction capacities and crisis prevention.Similar conclusions may be reached from a different angle by those who do not want the EU to become 'militarized' or the life of European populations to be any more 'securitized' than at present.29On this view, even if there is some 'dirty business' of collective defence still to be done, the EU should leave others to do it and should certainly not draw military forces and assets any further into its own internal security tasks.At stake are not only the EU's predominately civilian traditions and peaceful norms, but also its image and legitimacy as seen by the rest of the world.It is not the aim of this article to judge such positions but rather, to suggest that they deserve further debate and testing against the main line of argument developed above.It can hardly be denied that security realities will continue to invade European 28 See for example 'A Human Security Doctrine for Europe: Report of the Study Group on Europe's Security Capabilities', published on 15 Sep.2004 at http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/#Recent%20 contributio ns%20by%20 our% 20staff.29 This is a widely held view, for example, in Sweden, Denmark and Ireland.
).Other objections could be made from an alternative normative standpoint.Is this the right time in history to (re-)create a collective security culture centred upon the military function and limited to a given group of states − states, moreover, who are very far from being the world's most unfortunate or most vulnerable?The early 1990s' hopes of pan-European 'cooperative security' superseding