BASIC NOTES

25 January 2003

Rapid Reaction Forces: More Questions Than Answers

By Owen Pengelly

NATO’s Prague Conference endorsed significant changes to the Atlantic Alliance.  While the emotive issue of enlargement tended to dominate pre- and post-conference debate, the actual extension of invitations to seven states to begin accession negotiations proved to be somewhat anticlimactic.  This is hardly surprising, given that summitry of any kind is usually governed by the prior discussion of important issues in ministerial fora during an extended run-up period.  In comparison with the settled enlargement debate, however, the conference’s endorsement of a new NATO Response Force (NRF) appeared in the final communiqué with a speed and general unpredictability most uncharacteristic of the often stolidly consensual organization.  This BASIC Note aims to outline the origins, composition and perceived mission of the NRF in the light of the existence of what some commentators have called its twin: the European Union’s own Rapid Reaction Force.

Rumsfeld’s NATO Baby

Although analysts have been flying European NATO reaction force kites for some years, the 2002 version was first seriously mooted in September 2002 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[i]  Plainspoken as ever, Rumsfeld explained the rationale thus: “if NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile, which can deploy in days or weeks instead of months or years, then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century.”[ii] 

Envisaged at two brigades, the 20,000-man force will be available at very short notice to deploy globally with necessary air and naval support.  Soldiers will be equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry including anti-weapons of mass destruction (WMD) hardware and can expect to be delivered into high-intensity combat situations within between a week and a month after deployment is authorized.  Fully operational status is envisaged for 2006.  Details of the force’s proposed structure are still scarce, but it is reasonable to expect that the force will be able to cater to - indeed, showcase - the ‘niche’ specializations of some of the newer NATO members.  Romania, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic, for example, are geographically rugged nations that have developed highly regarded mountain troops with the kind of skill sets and training that the U.S. 82^nd Airborne is currently acquiring ‘on the job’ in Afghanistan.[iii]  Equally, the newly invited Baltic nations are known to be especially proficient at EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and are eager to prove their mettle in peacekeeping operations via the pooled-resource Baltic Battalion, or BALTBAT.  The poster-child of such constructive specialization is the Czech Republic, which, according to the American Forces Press Service, maintains “a world-class chemical, biological and nuclear defense capability.  Czech leaders sunk money into developing this, and any NATO force deploying would need this type of capability.”[iv] To be at all effective, however, these niche contributions will need to be bolstered by an infrastructure of real, war-fighting forces from the pre-existing European NATO members.

The NRF’s mission is a gray area for the newly instituted force.  Indeed, beyond glib sounding references to “crack European troops joining the U.S. in countering terrorism and war threats around the world,”[v] analysts and the press have not yet pinned-down the NRF’s mission portfolio.  The equivalent debate for the EU force was less fluid, as the EU obligingly tied its own force to the Petersberg Tasks.  This is partly a simple function of the current NRF’s conceptual newness and partly a deliberate U.S. reluctance to give potentially recalcitrant or skeptical Europeans a concrete set of operational principles to reject.

However enthusiastically endorsed by its creators, the newly minted NATO Response Force is still very much a work in progress.  One way of looking at the force’s potential evolution and remit is to seek parallels in the development of the other Brussels-based military unit: the EU Rapid Reaction Force.

The Blair-Chirac Problem Child

The European Union’s Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) has been under development longer than the recently arrived NATO body.  Given initial momentum by the inception of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the Maastricht Treaty, however, the actual decision to form the ERRF was not taken until 1999.  The Helsinki decision of that year was made possible by the United Kingdom’s European defense policy volte-face under Tony Blair, encapsulated in the Blair-Chirac joint declaration at St-Malo in 1998.[vi]  The ERRF is a larger force than the NRF, intended to number some 60,000 men: roughly one corps.  This force is to be deployable within 60 days and sustainable for at least a year’s worth of operations.  The ERRF has suffered a tortuous birth process that has only recently begun to be eased by the influence of its recently formed support structures.[vii] 

These crucial institutions report to ‘Mr. CFSP:’ Javier Solana, ex-Secretary General of NATO, who more than anyone else acts as a lightning rod for the ERRF; a role as visible as that of Donald Rumsfeld for the NRF.  EU members have committed troop numbers commensurate with the size of their military establishment to the force: for example, the British contribution – likely to be exceeded only by that of Germany – will comprise up to 12,500 troops, a 'sizeable chunk’ of the Royal Navy and around 70 combat aircraft.[viii] 

NATO’s policy of niche specialization can also add something to the ERRF, even though the force’s Western European participants can still just about muster a representative subset of the ‘full spectrum’ hardware needed to field a credible force. Through the EU-tinted lens of ERRF requirements niche abilities are lent a more ‘national’ significance – as opposed to the ‘functional’ emphasis on specialized contributions to the NATO force. Nevertheless, the growing realization in Europe that the continent’s militaries need to be cleverer in their contributions to the ERRF is summed-up by analyst Julian Lindley-French in a recent address to the Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU):

…We do not need another heavy corps or a tactical lift aircraft 
           dressed  up as a strategic asset.  The war on terror has reinforced 
           the need for effective ‘muddy boots’ capabilities such as special 
           forces, specialized forces and peacekeepers backed up by real 
           and relevant support assets. We need to go anywhere, anytime 
           and quickly.[ix]

Ambitiously declared ‘operational’ at the Laeken Summit in December 2002, the ERRF’s mission is tied closely to the Helsinki Headline Goals agreed at the 1999 European Council that formally launched the force.  According to one American analyst, the Helsinki target tends to ground the ERRF project at “the lower-tech, lower intensity end of the conflict spectrum.”[x]  This lower-tech approach is due to the ERRF’s focus on the Petersberg Tasks: a series of peacekeeping, humanitarian and crisis management goals agreed upon by the EU as obligations for the Union in situations where NATO decides not to involve itself.[xi]  Practical examples of the kind of job the ERRF is intended for could be the extraction of EU citizens from conflicts like those in West Africa in recent years, or the separation of warring factions in situations like that of the Balkans in the 1990s.

THESE KIDS HAVE ISSUES

A large number of questions arise when the development and deployment of a NATO Response Force is considered in parallel with the EU’s force.  Three of the most contentious issues are addressed below.  

Budgets

Money, as always, is a primary concern.  Europeans will have to find funds for NRF-related improvements from within already-squeezed defense budgets, where they will have to jostle with the ERRF for finite resources, no matter how little the new force is planned to cost.[xii] The recent and wholly predictable decision by the cash-strapped German government to further cut military acquisitions only serves to highlight the gravity of the budgetary problems faced by the faltering ERRF and the implications for on-the-ground forces.  Germany will cut its order for the totemic A400M heavy lift aircraft from 73 to 50 units, acquire 80 new Tiger helicopters instead of 212 and make a host of other infrastructure cuts while maintaining roughly the same manpower levels.[xiii]

Constructive and Destructive Duplication

Serious consideration will have to be given to the practical ways in which the NATO and EU forces will interact. Without strong coordination, the potential for duplication inherent in the two similar but differently motivated programs could result in the squandering of already scarce European political and financial capital. The extra logistical burden of the NRF lends weight to the EU-focused ‘Constructive Duplication’ proposal advanced by U.S. analyst Kori Schake in early 2002.[xiv] While some EU duplication of U.S. NATO assets is well overdue  - the A400M, for example – any additional ERRF duplication will nevertheless have to be undertaken with the goal of reassuring the Pentagon that the effectiveness of the NATO force will not suffer from the process of weaning the EU from total reliance on critical U.S. hardware.

While the EU states have agreed national contributions to the ERRF under the Helsinki headline goal framework, it remains to be seen to what extent the advent of the NRF will result in the duplication of responsibilities among assigned units. ‘Dual-hatting’ forces with ERRF and NRF responsibilities could prove divisive in the event that deployment scenarios for both forces coincide. Equally, the allocation of unfortunately scarce ‘crack European troops’ to the NRF could result in European pressure to augment such high-profile units at the expense of overdue logistical and command improvements.

Pre-Emptive & Out-of-Area Missions

The NATO Reaction Force has already attracted attention as a potential tool for the U.S. Administration’s declared new strategy of pre-emption.  Reinforcing this debate is the issue of ‘out of area’ deployment: NATO has historically restricted itself to the territory of its members, with the controversial and recent action in the Balkans the lone exception.  However, existential debates on out-of- area issues are largely redundant. American plans for a globally mobile Reaction Force have shattered the Cold War NATO mold that bombing Milosevic merely cracked.  By endorsing the Rumsfeld NRF concept at Prague, NATO leaders have given themselves virtually no room for maneuver in seeking to limit the geographic scope of the new force: NATO’s Strategic Concept has been by-passed by U.S. force majeure and the willingness on the part of those leaders to grasp the proffered opportunity to give their alliance relevance in the twenty-first century.

The emerging U.S. doctrine of pre-emption raises serious questions for both forces.  No other issue has been quite as internationally divisive in the aftermath of the publication of the current U.S. National Security Strategy, and in the current political climate it is not easy to envisage the German, French or indeed virtually any European military other than that of the United Kingdom allowing forces assigned to NATO to become involved in the kind of pre-emptive action the U.S. is proposing.  Such fundamentally divergent outlooks among NATO allies are the 800lb gorilla in the corner of the NRF’s situation room.  The clash between instinctive European multilateralism and the language of U.S. unilateral confidence throw the NRF’s internal cohesion into question.

CONCLUSION

Solutions to the above issues need to be worked out in the very short term, given that the ERRF is theoretically operational and that the NRF is being talked-up bullishly as the U.S. polls NATO members for potential support in Iraq.  The recent compromise on EU access to NATO assets struck at Copenhagen[xv] is at face value an encouraging development for the ERRF, but should be examined for any resulting effect on the growth of the EU force’s vital institutional base.  As the ERRF is stumbling over issues of sovereignty in the wider debate on the future of the EU, and as the NRF project has yet to address the operational implications of a deepening Atlantic divide, the prospects for both reaction forces seem bleak.  The potential for each force to undermine the other without strong coordination should not be ignored. Without a substantive political debate on the role and composition of the recently-arrived NATO force, each may find itself declared operational but paralyzed in the planning stage. If this were to be the case, the kind of interventions each force is supposed to perform would be left to ad-hoc, predominantly U.S.-led coalitions of the willing. Such a situation would not bode well for the fundamental cohesion of both the Atlantic Alliance and the EU’s defense project.

Owen Pengelly was a European Security intern with BASIC and he is a graduate student at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

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