BASIC RESEARCH REPORT

A Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO

4. Document on NATO's Defense Capabilities Initiative

How will NATO's force structure be readjusted? How can the technological gap between the US and its Allies be narrowed, or at least not widened?

For roughly ten years, NATO has engaged in a perennial debate over burden sharing and the need for European members to acquire high tech military equipment. The new formulations affecting the most recent debate are the revolution in military affairs and information warfare. US Defense Secretary Cohen described the phenomenon in November 1998 as he launched his Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI).

[B]ecause we are modernizing and restructuring at different rates and with differing national visions, we are not as effective as we need to be as an Alliance. To move forward, we must build upon the emerging consensus evident at [the September 1998 NATO Defense Ministerial in] Vilamoura [Portugal] by creating a 'common operational vision' and including that vision as part of the revised [NATO] Strategic Concept. We must craft our common operational vision to include four core capabilities: Mobility; Effective engagement; Survivability, and; Sustainability. We must be mobile enough to rapidly project joint forces and joint assistance. We must engage effectively by delivering the right assets when and where they are needed. We must enhance our survivability by improving our ability to protect our forces from terrorism and from chemical, biological, and electronic attacks. And we must increase our sustainability by ensuring our ability to deliver supplies that can meet any requirement. Achieving these core capabilities will, in turn, require three 'enablers:' Responsive information collection, processing and dissemination; Interoperability, and; Joint Alliance exploitation of technological innovations.⁵⁵

The US is concerned that European allies will be unable to participate in joint operations such as the Gulf War because of a technology gap. Secretary Cohen has therefore launched the DCI as a means of ensuring continued, joint power projection capacity into the 21st century. The identified technology gap is real, but demanding that the Europeans spend more money on high technology military systems does not make sense in terms of current European security needs.

The DCI is designed to address the burden sharing argument, but ignores fundamental European choices in defense and security spending. "Europe's understanding of and contribution to international and regional security transcends the simple criterion of defense expenditure. When one adds Europe's relative contributions to multinational military activities as well as its foreign aid - both of which greatly exceed those of the US - the overall picture looks much more favorable to Europe."⁵⁶ European NATO members, particularly the smaller ones, have chosen to focus their defense spending on peace support and expeditionary warfare, "not full-spectrum dominance in high-intensity warfare."⁵⁷ This reflects, rightly, what many European states feel are the dominant requirements for the 21st century: bolstered non-military capabilities.

Recommendations
In absolute terms there is little or no need for the Defense Capabilities Initiative. NATO states have overwhelming technical military superiority over any potential enemy. NATO already outspends any potential enemy enormously (see table below). NATO's capacity to wage high intensity warfare is unrivalled. The new capabilities needed are the equipment, training and doctrine to manage low end peace support operations or verifier missions. Where high tech weaponry is concerned, rather than preparing a new round of military technological build up, NATO nations should be examining arms control and disarmament measures which can reduce the vast arsenals existing in Europe, and simultaneously, reduce any potential risk or threat to the Alliance.

From the European point of view this concentration would make even more sense. It answers the needs of European security and, if the EU is ever to operate autonomously of the US, then European states can only gain by refusing to tie themselves to US military technology programs and associated power projection doctrines.

Graph of Defense Spending in 1998 (PDF format)

A Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO continued

 
Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5
Section 6 | Section 7 | Section 8 | Endnotes | Appendices

.
Back to European Security home page