BASIC PAPERS

By Chris Lindborg

European leaders now recognize the need for a change after having witnessed a decade of the most violent conflict on the continent since World War II.  Their trans-Atlantic partners also sense that Europe needs some security supplements.  In particular, U.S. leaders have repeatedly criticized Europeans for failing to do enough during times of violent crises and for not having done their fair share militarily, especially during North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) missions.

Leaders from the European Union (EU) have been concocting various plans to stem violent political crises that may continue to occur in southeastern Europe and elsewhere.  The most anticipated of these is the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF).  The ERRF’s purpose will be to intervene in crises before they become full-scale wars, and to release NATO from participating in some military interventions.  The ERRF may become a useful prescription for controlling political violence, and despite rampant criticism, it would not threaten the existence of NATO.  Nevertheless, the ERRF may be a hard pill for European leaders to swallow and it will have its deleterious side effects.

History
European leaders considered creating an exclusively European integrated military force as far back as the late 1940s with the signing of the Brussels Treaty, which paved the way for the birth of the Western European Union (WEU) in 1954.[1]  The French and Germans led the creation of a small Eurocorps of 1,000 troops in 1992 as a symbol of post-Cold War friendship.[2]  The series of Balkan wars, however, provided the real impetus for developing the current ERRF.  Europeans did not anticipate the magnitude of atrocities committed during the 1990s, especially after everyone thought they had learned their lessons from World War II.  The United Nations (U.N.), needing to rely on the consensus of leaders from around the world, was engaged, but it could not take the kind of fast and forceful action needed to prevent the wars.  The United States, usually a trusty ally and an unprecedented military hegemon, was wary of intervening militarily in southeastern Europe, especially on the ground.  Memories of the Vietnam conflict still loomed too large.  Moreover, the same leaders in NATO and the United Nations were guilty of political foot-dragging and passing the blame for inaction on to other organizations, which virtually paralyzed Europe during the early stages of the crises.  Although the United States eventually intervened through NATO, it did not take the lead until thousands already had died in the Balkans.

In particular, European leaders concluded from the Balkans experience that they needed an in-house military capability they could deploy rapidly.  Europe already had multilateral organizations and the military knowledge to successfully create such a force.  NATO intervention in the Kosovo crisis, however, revealed that Europe paled in its military capability and coordination compared to the United States.

In May 1999, during a time of climatic events in Kosovo, the Amsterdam Treaty entered into force.[3]  The Treaty intensified European integration and incorporated the Petersberg Tasks of the older WEU into the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).  These tasks include humanitarian and rescue missions, peacekeeping activities, and the role of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking.[4]  At the landmark Helsinki Summit in December 1999, leaders discussed ways to implement the Petersberg Tasks.

Capabilities and Operations
Most significantly, Europeans in Helsinki produced a “Headline Goal,” stating that by 2003, the EU should be capable of deploying 60,000 troops to a site within 60 days and of maintaining a presence at that site for one year.[5]  EU Member States also agreed that they would need to develop new military structures to successfully implement the Petersberg Tasks.

The EU will use the ERRF both apart from, but also in conjunction with, other international organizations.  The ERRF could deploy at the request of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations.  The ERRF also could share expertise and resources with NATO, but it would not deploy in response to a request from the alliance.

Because of the overlap in membership among these organizations, and the multiple duties they have incurred, the EU will need to ensure that the ERRF will not render redundant other military arrangements.  The EU created the Capabilities Development Mechanism (CDM), which will specifically take on the task of avoiding duplication between the EU and NATO and enhance communication between the two organizations.[6]  The EU and NATO already have been cooperating in southern Serbia and in Macedonia.

In addition, the European Council recently endorsed intensifying interaction with the United Nations to ensure that EU training is compatible and enhances U.N. military and civilian crisis management.[7]  Because the ERRF might go beyond the European theater, it may need to rely on U.N. guidance and knowledge in the future.[8]

With an eye toward strengthening Europe’s own strategic capabilities, leaders at Helsinki also put forward military requirements.  EU Member States will need to work toward improving several areas:  the coordination of monitoring and early warning systems; the opening of existing joint national headquarters to officers from other Member States to promulgate the sharing of information; creating a European air transport command; increasing the number of national troops that would be readily deployable; and improving air and sea-lift capacity, much of which had been lacking on the European side during NATO’s Operation Allied Force in 1999.[9]

In accordance with the guidelines established at Helsinki, the Nice Summit in December 2000 solidified the creation of three new military structures that will have as part of their responsibilities the oversight of policies and strategies that will influence ERRF operations.  First, the Political and Security Committee (PSC) replaces the Council-level Political Committee and adds security to its list of duties.  The PSC provides “political control and strategic direction” to the EU’s military response to crises.  The PSC will meet during crisis, as well as non-crisis, periods.[10]

The second critical structure, the Military Committee, comprises military personnel at the levels of Chiefs of Defense who report back to the PSC on the military policy of the EU.  The Committee may initiate proposals and is responsible for maintaining an official military relationship with non-EU countries and organizations.  Formal consultations between the EU and NATO, however, will occur at the level of the PSC and the North Atlantic Council (NAC).  Meetings will occur between the EU and NATO twice a year at the highest level (once for each EU Presidency) and 6 times a year at the ambassadorial level.[11]  The first meeting took place between the Military Committee of NATO and the Military Committee of the EU on 12 June 2001.

The third structure is made up of the broader Military Staff.  It is their responsibility to monitor political developments, help to provide strategic planning and to liaise frequently with national and multinational military headquarters.  Most importantly, however, the Staff will provide the military expertise necessary to implement the CFSP and to ensure that the EU has sound military options upon which the ERRF could act.[12] 

When a military operation takes place, it will happen under an EU Joint Action, meaning that actions taken will remain under the political and strategic control of the EU, even when NATO or other organization’s assets are used.[13]  First, the Political and Security Committee asks the Military Committee to request an “Initiating Directive” from the Military Staff.  The Military Staff then drafts a document and gives it to the Military Committee.  After the Military Committee adds comments, the Committee returns it to the PSC.  The PSC must approve of this document, at this stage deemed the “Initial Planning Directive,” which gives the guidelines for military action.[14]  The host country also will need to accept the action.  This is a sticking point that could become controversial once EU leaders are faced with real crises.  Therefore, policy-makers involved with European crisis management will want to give more consideration to the political obstacles they might encounter when the time comes to make decisions regarding intervention.  The entire process could take a considerable amount of time.  European leaders in Brussels recently formalized plans for an EU Exercise Programme that will test whether these command structures will function effectively.  These exercises will begin in June 2002.[15]  In addition, the PSC already tested crisis management procedures in a workshop this past June.[16]

The cohesion of EU Member States in carrying out ERRF missions will be critical.  Ultimately, national governments decide whether to contribute their troops to a particular ERRF deployment.  Under the Amsterdam Treaty, Member States that opt out of an action need not fund it in the instance of military operations.  Consequently, strong political will and cooperation will be important for sharing resources and moving forward with such missions.

In November 2000, just before the Nice Summit, EU Member States pledged military contributions to the ERRF, which enabled the EU leaders to estimate that they could have access to 100,000 troops, 400 aircraft, and 100 ships for the ERRF by 2003.[17]  Usually, it is desirable to have three times the number of troops needed in the field to permit rotation and to sustain a year-long presence.  Therefore, the ERRF is still, on this account, 80,000 troops short.  Furthermore, states already are having difficulty with their informal equipment pledges.  The heavy-lift A400Ms will not come into service until at least 2007.[18]  This could make it difficult for the ERRF to live up to its 60-day deployment goal for quite some time.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson has encouraged European countries to increase their defense spending.[19]  EU Member States may be able to meet the military requirements of the peacekeeping section of the Petersberg Tasks, but it will be more tenuous for the EU to muster the military resources for peacemaking, which could include separating parties already engaged in combat.[20]  European leaders might find ways to streamline their current military structures so they can sufficiently contribute to the ERRF without substantially increasing defense spending.  This, however, remains to be seen.  The next major assessment of European contributions to military crisis management will take place in November 2001 at the Capabilities Improvement Conference.[21]

Political Obstacles
The ERRF faces political challenges that may be worse than, and which might exacerbate, its aforementioned capability problems.  France’s Chief of Defense Staff, General Jean-Pierre Kelche, scared NATO fans when he demanded that the ERRF have a military command and planning structure entirely independent of NATO.[22]  This is exactly what Conservative leaders in the United Kingdom and some leaders in the United States have feared about the ERRF.

In the United Kingdom, ERRF opponents worry that it might become a standing army and drain scarce resources away from the U.K. military for the sake of serving the whims of the rest of Europe.[23]  With a recent Labour victory in the United Kingdom, the ERRF should continue to receive support.  The Blair government is convinced that the ERRF should not and will not become an independent Euro-Army. 

The reviews are more mixed on the U.S. side, which in part is a result of its stake in NATO.  President George W. Bush has iterated his support for the ERRF proposal, so long as it does not duplicate or interfere with NATO capabilities and operations.[24]  This is a more positive view than expressed by his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who quipped that he was “a little worried” about the plans for the ERRF.  He also remarked that the ERRF runs “the risk of injecting an instability into an enormously important alliance.”[25]  Reflecting the Bush administration’s “good cop, bad cop” routine, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, “There's no reason to see this [the ERRF] as destabilizing NATO in any way . . . In fact, I think it is our common belief that it will strengthen NATO.”[26]

U.S. cooperation will be vital if the ERRF is to rely on NATO assets, especially since the United States carries top-of-the-line technology necessary for a rapid reaction force.  Most EU Member States, including the United Kingdom, have aimed to use the assets of existing organizations, especially from NATO, in an effort to avoid duplication and to cut down on costs.  On the other hand, France, and to a lesser extent, Germany, have advocated the creation of all necessary capabilities that would enable the EU to manage its military missions entirely independent of NATO.  Whereas sharing assets with NATO might help reduce costs, a completely self-contained security structure might give the ERRF more flexibility in its operations.  While these squabbles continue, the “Berlin-plus” arrangement is currently in the works to help decide which military resources NATO will make available to the EU.[27]

The Berlin-plus arrangement is in jeopardy, however, particularly because of Turkey’s wariness of potential ERRF missions.  The EU wants “guaranteed permanent access” (legally-binding automatic access without the approval of the North Atlantic Council (NAC)) to planning capabilities at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) when the EU wants to conduct operations.[28]  Turkey is a member of NATO, and would like to join the EU.  Turkey’s prospects for near-term membership are dim because of its poor human rights record.  Because Turkey is not a member of the EU, it would not, under current negotiations, have a vote on ERRF missions.[29]  Turkey wants the approval for EU-use to be done on a case-by-case basis because it fears the ERRF might become involved in conflicts pertaining to Turkey’s strategic interests, and worries that the EU might aid Greece (Turkey’s antagonist over Cyprus).  Onu Oymen, Turkey’s ambassador to NATO, has noted that “13 of the possible 16 scenarios for future crises” in which the ERRF might intervene would take place near Turkey.[30]

If Turkey fails to agree to a deal with the EU and NATO, then NATO will need to deny the EU access to valuable intelligence capabilities.[31]  If the EU fails to receive access to SHAPE, then it will need to create its own Command, Control, Communication, Computers, and Intelligence (C⁴I) structure, just as the French have desired.

Ultimately, EU leaders do not intend to use the ERRF to create a European standing army, and have formally announced this repeatedly at the EU summits in an effort to quell the concerns of NATO.  The ERRF will come from national forces that will be earmarked for the use of the ERRF.  A standing army will be far from possible with the current commitments of the EU Member States, especially when taking into account their ability to live up to those obligations.  The ERRF will not be a defensive alliance as is NATO.[32]  Essentially, the ERRF might intervene where NATO will be unable or unwilling to act.

Future Challenges
The real threat to NATO’s survival will come from other sources, such as opponents on the western side of the Atlantic trying to halt Europe’s efforts to improve its own security, or from a mismanaged expansion of the alliance.  That the ERRF would become a competing military structure to NATO is unlikely.  The ERRF, under its current plans, would be incapable of launching the type of mission NATO conducted during the Kosovo intervention of 1999.[33]

The critical question is whether the ERRF will be capable of accomplishing its goals and improving security, particularly in light of the challenges of coordinating with NATO, the future of EU expansion, and the limits of military action.  First, the ERRF and NATO will not necessarily compete for the same military missions.  Rather, their coexistence during the early years of the ERRF might lead to a shirking of responsibilities.  NATO leaders may become eager to let the ERRF take on more responsibility and assume that it is capable of taking military action where it might not have the capability to do so effectively.  EU leaders might feel that the ERRF may not be ready, nor have the military capability, to take certain actions.  Therefore, the EU leaders would expect NATO to take over.  True, the EU is working to develop more lines of communication between it and NATO, but if too much time will be spent bickering over who should do what, then critical opportunities might be lost on the ground.  The ERRF will need time to weed out communication and coordination problems, as well as time to accrue the military infrastructure that will be necessary for its missions.

Second, the EU expansion process may become problematic for the ERRF.[34]  Depending on how lenient the EU is in accepting countries with questionable governing practices, including human rights abuses, it may become increasingly difficult for EU governments to reach agreements on where to intervene.  While EU Member States are allowed to abstain from actions, if too many countries opt out of a particular ERRF action, the action may not receive enough resources to be viable.  Effective military action will necessitate the wide acceptance and participation of EU Member States.

More specifically, leaders from a new EU Member State might refrain from supporting an ERRF action if a situation is similar to their own political exigency.  For example, within the United Nations, China has repeatedly abstained from or voted against U.N. action where military intervention supposedly crossed the line of sovereignty in the name of defending human rights.  Therefore, the EU might suffer from the same paralysis once it enlarges.  As expansion talks proceed to include more countries, EU leaders will need to consider each country’s potential level of ERRF contribution and participation.

Third, there may become a tendency to rely on the type of military solution that the ERRF affords, rather than to choose more appropriate routes of action, such as using the civilian tools the EU is developing for managing crises.  For instance, EU leaders should keep in mind that governments may be more amenable to inviting the EU’s nascent police corps into their countries to control smaller outbreaks of violence, rather than having the specter of military brigades marching into their territories during times of tenuous political leadership.  This also could cut down on the negotiating time involved for inviting outside help, resulting in a shorter mission approval time than would be required for military intervention.  A large and well-organized international police corps could have intervened earlier in the recent crisis in Macedonia between Kosovar rebels and the Skopje government, possibly preventing the deaths that already have occurred there.[35]

Furthermore, the ERRF will take two months to fully deploy to its destination.  Crises can easily spiral into full-scale wars within that timeframe.  To their credit, EU leaders recently have pushed forward civilian crisis management and conflict prevention options.  The EU will be capable of deploying 1,000 police within a span of one month.  Smaller civilian teams that may be more rapidly deployed also are in the works.[36]  If police can arrive on the ground to control the violent aspects of conflict right away, then civilian conflict managers can move in to implement human rights and election monitoring, supply food and medical aid, and eventually permit the type of long-term development initiatives that would eliminate the need for the ERRF to intervene in the first place.  While the ERRF will be useful, some preventive medicine would be easier to swallow for those involved in developing European security and for those who might benefit from rapid intervention.  EU leaders should continue to develop these civilian tools and advocate their use in the very early stages of crises, making the ERRF an option of last resort.

At the very least, however, the ERRF is an expression of political will which acknowledges that tragedies such as those in the Balkans fall partly under the responsibility of other European nations.  Once the ERRF is up and fully running, its mere existence hopefully will help institutionalize the obligation to react to crises and to help prevent the abdication of political responsibility that leads to deadly delays in action.

The author would like to thank Martin Butcher, Catriona Gourlay, Theresa Hitchens, and Otfried Nassauer for their advice during the writing of this paper.  The author takes responsibility for any errors.
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Endnotes

[1] The Brussels Treaty on Economic, Social, and Cultural Collaboration and Collective Self-Defense was signed on 17 March 1948.  The Treaty provided the foundation for the creation of NATO and the WEU.  For more information, see “European Security and Defense: the WEU’s Role,” n.d.

[3] European Union, “Amsterdam: A New Treaty for Europe,” May 1999.  Background on the Treaty may be found at: http://europa.eu.int/abc/obj/amst/en/.  

[4] The Petersberg Tasks derive from the 1992 Petersberg Declaration for the WEU.  For more information, see “Western European Union Council of Ministers Petersberg Declaration,” Bonn, 19 June 1992.  

[5] Presidency Conclusions: Helsinki European Council, 10 and 11 December 1999.  

[6] Björn Von Sydow, speech delivered to the European Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, 12 June 2001.  

[7] General Affairs Council, “EU-U.N. Co-operation in Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management – Conclusions,” 11 June 2001.  

[8]  The EU Helsinki Presidency Report “recognizes the U.N. Security Council” as having “primary responsibility” for “maintaining peace and international security.”  The United Nations could request the service of the ERRF, but special U.N. Security Council approval would probably be necessary for the ERRF to deploy outside of the European theater (Sharon Riggle with the assistance of Jens Mosegaard, “EU Reinforces Links with the U.N.,” European Security Review, March 2001, p. 5).  

[9] Presidency Conclusions: Helsinki European Council.  

[10] Presidency Conclusions: Nice European Council Meeting, 7, 8, and 9 December 2000 and Sharon Riggle, “EU Officially Adopts Military Tasks: A Summary of the Nice Conclusions,” Centre for European Security and Disarmament Briefing Paper, 18 December 2000.  The Nice conclusions may be found at: http://europa.eu.int/council/off/conclu/dec2000/dec2000_en.htm.  

[11] Riggle, 18 December 2000.  

[12] Presidency Conclusions: Nice European Council Meeting and Riggle, 18 December 2001.  

[13] Ibid.  

[14] Ibid.  

[15] Common Security - Meeting of Defence Ministers of the EU Member States, the Candidate Countries, Islands and Norway: Roundtable, European Council in Brussels, 15 May 2001.  

[16] Catriona Gourlay, “EU’s Bark Still Louder Than Its Military Bite,” European Security Review, Number 6, June 2001, p. 3.  

[17] Thomas Sköld, “States Pledge Resources for Crisis Management,” European Security Review, Number 3, December 2000, pp. 2-3.  

[18] Simon Taylor, “Europe’s Defence Industry Frustrated at Government Reluctance to Boost Arms Spending,” European Security Review, Number 7, July 2001, p. 5.  

[19] NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, “European Defence: Challenges and Prospects,” speech delivered to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, 11 June 2001.  According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, defense spending by European NATO members declined by 5% from 1998 to 1999 in constant US dollar terms (International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies/Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 38).  

[20] Catriona Gourlay and Frederik Jensen, “The European Parliament’s ‘Maximalist’ Vision of CESDP,” European Security Review, December 2000, p. 4.   

[21] Gourlay, June 2001, p. 3.  

[22] Many within NATO are highly sensitive to the remarks of the French because of France’s 29-year hiatus from NATO’s military structures (which ended in 1995) and because France still is not part of NATO’s integrated command.