Kellerhals / Baumgartner Challenges, risks and threats for security in Europe

11th Network Europe Conference Warsaw 19th - 22nd May 2019
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-03805-306-4
Verlag: buch & netz
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 201, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 1480 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 307 g

Reihe: EIZ Publishing

The publication comprises talks from the 11th Network Conference of Network Europe. Subject of the conference were the conditions for security in Europe in the 21st century and the cornerstones of an appropriate security architecture for Europe. The conference included presentations on central security issues such as cybercrime and migration as well as on institutional issues such as the concept of a European army and the role of neutral states in the changing security environment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kellerhals, Andreas

Baumgartner, Tobias

Leseproben

Table of Contents
Introduction A Historical Overview Legal Framework: The Bonds That Tie Co-operation: Capabilities, Command and Trust The B-Word Conclusions Introduction
The EU and NATO have 22 members in common, which makes a co-operation not only reasonable but to some extent also necessary. In this sense, the 2016 NATO summit welcomed an enhanced co-operation between NATO and the EU. The conclusions of this summit recognised „the importance of a stronger and more capable European defence, which will lead to a stronger NATO, help enhance the security of all Allies, and foster an equitable sharing of the burden, benefits and responsibilities of Alliance membership”.  The NATO also encouraged further mutual steps in this area to support a strengthened strategic partnership.[1] On 8 July 2016, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission, together with the Secretary General of NATO signed a Joint Declaration in Warsaw in order to reinvigorate the EU-NATO strategic partnership. Based upon this declaration a number of further actions and proposals were endorsed by the EU and NATO. On 10 July, 2018, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission, together with the Secretary General of NATO signed a second Joint Declaration in Brussels calling for swift and demonstrable progress in implementation. As the Delors Institute persuasively put it, complex threats call for smart division of labour, as “neither NATO nor the EU has the toolkit to address these increasingly complex threats alone”.[2] And indeed there is considerable ongoing practical co-operation between the EU and NATO: the EU has considerable soft power and economic tools to contribute to the aims of NATO, and NATO has the capabilities to support the EU as happened during the migration crisis as ships were deployed on the Aegean Sea to assist Greece and Turkey, as well as the European Union’s border agency FRONTEX. The EU also supported NATO’s manoeuvres in Afghanistan with its diplomatic and economic capabilities. Nonetheless, it would be hard to overlook the tensions between (and within) the NATO and the EU: earlier Iraq, later Libya and most recently Iran are probably the most obvious examples. Moreover, it is an ongoing issue since the 1960es that Europe has to develop its own defence capabilities, and cannot rely on the US. President Kennedy claimed in 1963 that the US cannot „continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while NATO states are not paying their fair share and are living off the fat of the land.” President de Gaulle also emphasized that Europe has to take its defence into its own hands.[3] Not only did Mr. Trump tweet furiously a very similar message after his election victory, but European leaders have also questioned America’s commitment during the few last years. This worry was voiced most obviously by Mrs. Merkel in the European Parliament in November 2018. There is even some detachment of the US from the defence of Europe, and there is also an observable wish for Europe to assume responsibility for her own defence, as the 70 years of NATO alliance created a kind of path towards dependency in co-operation. The following essay will firstly take a historical look at the defence co-operation, set out the legal framework of the co-operation, and consider the political context of it. A Historical Overview[4]
Today’s hotchpotch relationship between NATO and the EU goes back to the founding years, and it is hard to understand without taking the historic events into account. Just as the economic integration among the founding Member States of the ECSC and EEC were forged by historic pathways, amongst long-term interests and the at that time obvious threats from the Soviet Union, the military alliance was born under the very same conditions. As the Soviet threat became imminent, Harry S. Truman, the then President of the US expressed his concerns regarding Greece and Turkey in a speech to Congress on 12 March 1947 and said that “it must be policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure”. This doctrine, which required and offered economic and military assistance, framed the US policy during The Cold War. A first European military alliance after World War II begins with the Treaty of Dunkirk between France and the UK, which later encompassed the Benelux States and so formed the WEU. This Treaty was established on the principle of mutual defence similarly to NATO, but its members were solely Western European countries. As the first proxy war between the capitalist West and the communist East broke out in Korea, the French Prime Minister René Pléven made an unofficial proposal for a European Defence Community (hereinafter EDC) with the participation of the six ECSC Member States. The EDC Treaty had a supranational character, established common institutions, common armed forces and a common budget, something which is nowadays still trying to be achieved. All six governments of the ECSC signed the EDC Treaty in May 1952. The German, Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg parliaments had also ratified it by summer 1954, and, as it is well-known, the French Parliament declined its consent. After this debacle, an alternative was sought for addressing the German contribution to the defence of Western Europe, thus Germany and Italy had been inclined into a revised Brussels Treaty establishing the Western European Union (hereinafter WEU), and Germany was also admitted into NATO. A duplication of the military alliance, a WEU in addition to NATO has been criticized as a waste of resources, a critique which is also brought up nowadays regarding the European Common Defence Policy which is that it would result in an unnecessary duplication of existing NATO capabilities. Nonetheless, the WEU was a reaction to the failure of the EDC. As political integration had been cooled down, and European integration was focused on the Common Market, defence integration was not a central topic anymore. Besides Ireland, which has been neutral in international relations since the 1930s,[5] all EEC Member States were members of NATO as well, and hence the unsolved question of military alliance did not make too much trouble: defence and military questions were dominated by the conflict with the Soviet Union, and the common enemy overshadowed the existing tensions within the alliance. This modus vivendi was ended by the collapse of the communist regime, which required some new objectives of the European integration as well. The reference to the WEU was repealed by the Treaty of Nice signalling the wish of the EU to assume direct responsibility for its own defence and operational capabilities. Besides establishing European citizenship and launching the new European currency, defence integration was also supposed to be reinvigorated by the Maastricht Treaty. The Maastricht Treaty was concluded with the aim „to implement a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to promote peace, security and progress in Europe and in the world”. The last 26 years did not suffice to live up to this promise and expectation, and the EU still lacks military capabilities. Security questions were defined very narrowly however, and they included merely the so-called Petersberg Tasks: “humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making.”[6] Furthermore a possibility for co-operation in the field of armaments was mentioned,[7] which does not mean the same thing as common capabilities.[8] The EU was also obliged to respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realised in NATO, and the CFSP had to “be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within the NATO framework”.[9] Moreover, the common defence should “not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States” which was intended to take into account the neutrality of Ireland, and later that of Austria, Finland, and Sweden. Moreover, it could have also been constructed in favour of the special status of the United Kingdom and France as nuclear powers and as permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Treaty of Amsterdam somewhat broadened the powers of the EU, and enabled it to conclude international agreements with one or more states or an international organisation, which also might have included NATO. The Lisbon Treaty, which in essence kept the former pillar structure regarding the Common Foreign and Security Policy,[10] widened the scope of possible enhanced co-operation to cover the whole CFSP field, including defence,[11] and added a new inbuilt closer cooperation: the ‘permanent structured co-operation’ in the field of defence,[12] and in doing so significantly modified the provisions of the TEU on European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).[13] Legal Framework: The Bonds That Tie
It goes without saying that every EU measure must be grounded upon a legal base set out in the Treaty.[14] A legally...