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Contemporary Security Policy

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All or nothing? The EU Global Strategy and defencepolicy after the Brexit

Sven Biscop

To cite this article: Sven Biscop (2016) All or nothing? The EU Global Strategy anddefence policy after the Brexit, Contemporary Security Policy, 37:3, 431-445, DOI:10.1080/13523260.2016.1238120

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2016.1238120

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All or nothing? The EU Global Strategy and defencepolicy after the BrexitSven Biscop

Egmont—Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels, Belgium

ABSTRACTThe public expects European governments and the European Union (EU) to dealwith the security challenges in and around Europe. So does the US, whosestrategic focus has pivoted to the Pacific. Washington, DC has made it clearthat it will not, and cannot, solve all of Europe’s problems. The call for‘strategic autonomy’ in the new EU Global Strategy of June 2016 does notcome a moment too soon. But should the aim be EU strategic autonomy,without the UK, or can the aspiration still be European strategic autonomy,with the UK? Can nothing be achieved unless all are fully involved? Or areintermediate solutions possible? How EU Member States and the UK answerthese questions will determine which degree of strategic autonomy the EUcan achieve. With which degree of British involvement. And whether the UKitself will be left with any measure of strategic autonomy.

KEYWORDS European Union; Strategy; Defence; Brexit; NATO

The Member States of the European Union (EU) must continue to deepentheir military cooperation. For without cooperation, their defence effortsare just not cost-effective enough. Because of fragmentation and duplication,defence expenditure—even as in some countries it is rising—does not yieldenough employable capability. Meanwhile key capability shortfalls remainunaddressed. The public does expect European governments and the EU todeal with the security challenges in and around Europe however. So doesthe US, whose strategic focus has pivoted to China and the Pacific, and there-fore will not, and cannot, solve all of Europe’s problems.1 The call for ‘strategicautonomy’ in the new EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy(EUGS) of June 2016 does not come a moment too soon.2

The Brexit, the UK’s choice to leave the EU, will not change these facts. Norwill it necessarily create any obstacle to overcome the lack of cooperationwithin the EU, for the UK never showed much inclination to pool and

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Sven Biscop s.biscop@egmontinstitute.be Egmont—Royal Institute for InternationalRelations, Rue des Petits Carmes 15, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY, 2016VOL. 37, NO. 3, 431–445http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2016.1238120

share its capabilities with other countries. Quite the contrary, London will nolonger be in a position to block the remaining Member States from using EUinstitutions and Treaty provisions to the full. It is now up to the other capitalsto accelerate cooperation, and prove that they were not conveniently hidingbehind the British objections but are serious about European defence.

In multinational capability development, the Brexit might thus even makethings easier. When it comes to deploying those capabilities for operations, itwill likely not affect the existing situation very much. The British contributionto operations under the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)has been limited, and the UK could still take part in CSDP operations if itwanted to, as several non-Member States do today. More importantly, theremaining EU Member States are not that keen to deploy troops under theCSDP either.3 In recent years operations have increasingly been mountedby ad hoc coalitions outside the formal framework of both the EU andNATO, without all Member States or Allies participating (even when acoalition uses the NATO command structure).4 The Brexit will probablyincrease this tendency, even though chances are that the UK will be so preoc-cupied with the fall-out of the Brexit that its international presence will suffer.

Brexit does however greatly complicate the strategic decision-making thatframes both capability development and operations. The EUGS states that inorder to achieve the desired strategic autonomy, ‘a sectoral strategy, to beagreed by the Council, should further specify the civil-military level of ambi-tion, tasks, requirements and capability priorities stemming from this Strat-egy’. The operational dimension of strategic autonomy comes down to theability to act without the US.5 From that follows the industrial dimension:having a defence industry that can produce everything that this requires,notably the strategic enablers. But should the aim now be EU strategic auton-omy, without the UK, or can the aspiration still be European strategic auton-omy, with the UK? If the latter, how to involve Britain?

Furthermore, the reasons why and the context in which actual operationstake place, are often determined by collective EU foreign policy choices, andthat foreign policy will in turn be framed by the new EUGS. This is the caseeven when troops are deployed by NATO or an ad hoc coalition. Just think ofNATO’s actions in response to Russian military posturing after the Ukrainecrisis—in which Europe and the US got involved as a consequence of EUdecisions. Thus the question also imposes itself: Should the UK not seek tobe associated with the implementation of the EUGS overall? And whicharrangements could be imagined?

Can nothing be achieved unless all are fully involved? Or are intermediatesolutions possible? How EU Member States and the UK answer these ques-tions will determine which degree of strategic autonomy the EU canachieve, with which degree of British involvement—and whether the UKitself will be left with any measure of strategic autonomy.

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Strategy first: what are the military tasks?

The first question to answer is what exactly operational strategic autonomymeans: which military tasks, in which parts of the world, do Europeansneed to be able to undertake on their own, without the US? The EUGSdefines four major tasks for Europe’s armed forces:

First, to help protect what one could call ‘the European way of life’ at home.While there is no need to duplicate NATO’s traditional collective defencearrangements against the threat of military invasion, the EU has an increas-ingly important role to play in addressing what the EUGS calls ‘challengeswith both an internal and external dimension, such as terrorism, hybridthreats, cyber and energy security, organised crime and external border man-agement’. In a democracy, the armed forces are not in the lead when dealingwith such threats (and neither, therefore, is NATO), but they support theother security services and they are the last resort in times of crisis. Suchinternal deployments are first and foremost a national responsibility (asseen in Belgium and France after they were hit by terrorist attacks), andindeed in legal terms CSDP operations can only take place outside the EU.

But I posit that European cooperation must nonetheless be permanentlystepped up betweenmilitary and civilian intelligence services, between nationaland EU crisis centres, police and judicial authorities and paramilitary forcessuch as gendarmerie and coast guard, and between all of these and thearmed forces (notably when the latter operate on Europe’s borders). Onething is certain: a strategy that would not have emphasized Europe’s own secur-ity would have been utterly lacking in credibility at a time when Europeanpublic opinion is shaken by a wave of terrorist attacks and by the refugee crisis.

Second, to contribute to ‘the resilience of states and societies to the eaststretching into Central Asia, and south down to Central Africa’, as theEUGS puts it, but also, in fact, to maintain security in the neighbourhoodby forceful means when necessary.6 For while the overall emphasis is on build-ing ‘inclusive, prosperous and secure societies’ and, in the military sphere, oncapacity-building, the EUGS also states that the EU ‘will take responsibilityforemost in Europe and its surrounding regions’. In other words, the neigh-bourhood is where Europeans must be prepared to undertake military crisismanagement, because it is directly linked to their own security, as the fall-out of the Syrian war has sadly demonstrated. In the neighbourhoodEuropeans must therefore always be able to act, even alone, so it is thefocus of the aspiration to strategic autonomy.

That is a very ambitious aspiration, first of all because the EUGS defines ageographically much broader neighbourhood than the European Neighbour-hood Policy of 2004. Even just capacity-building (i.e. designing, training andequipping effective armed forces, and accompanying themonpatrols and oper-ations) by nature demands a very long-term involvement. But if the EU’s help is

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requested, it should not be stingy and engage at a significant enough level tomake a difference, in sufficient numbers and with enough budget.

Furthermore, when actual war is ongoing, pending a political solution theEUGS commits the EU to ‘protect human lives, notably civilians’ and to‘support and help consolidate local ceasefires’. That entails much more thancapacity-building. It means deploying troops with serious firepower on theground, backed up by air support and ready reserves, who will not necessarilyseek out and destroy an opponent but who will fight when the civilians forwhom they are responsible are threatened. Without that determination, theEU will not have created a safe zone but a trap. For many Member States,land operations with such a high potential of combat go far beyond anythingthat they have recently undertaken, certainly in an autonomous Europeanframework.

Third, to help maintain ‘sustainable access to the global commons’. TheEUGS announces multilateral diplomatic initiatives in key areas but also envi-sages a stepped up military contribution, especially as a ‘global maritimesecurity provider’, and with a specific focus on Asia. Here the EUGS seeks‘to make greater practical contributions’ to security, including by helping tobuild maritime capacities and supporting ‘an ASEAN-led regional securityarchitecture’. The EU could engage in exchange of expertise, combined train-ing and education (notably via the European Security and Defence College),combined exercises and manoeuvres, and actual combined patrolling andoperations, with Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) forexample, and with strategic partners such as India, Japan, South Korea andChina itself.

Such activities would not only create local capacity but have an importantconfidence and security-building effect as well. This engagement would thusalso contribute to another objective of the EUGS: promoting cooperativeregional orders in sensitive areas. In this context, the proposal by FrenchDefence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, at the 2016 Shangri-La Dialogue inSingapore, to coordinate a maritime presence in Asia through the EU takeson additional importance after the Brexit. Increasing the visibility of thedifferent European countries’ maritime presence by putting them under thesame flag can compensate for Europe’s loss of face, is the best way ofmaking the most of available means, and enhances a distinct European pres-ence that can promote specific European interests.

Fourth, ‘to assist further and complement UN peacekeeping’. As the EUGSproclaims the maintenance of a rules-based global order, with the UN at thecore, to be a vital interest of the EU, Europeans must act when the UN decidesthe rules have been broken. Whether Europeans deploy as blue helmets, underdirect UN command, or not is of secondary importance. The key thing is thatwhen requested by the UN, Europeans must demonstrate more solidarity

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more quickly, including in areas outside Europe’s broad neighbourhood (suchas the CSDP operation in the Central African Republic in 2014–2015).

These four tasks represent a clear increase in the burden placed onEurope’s armed forces, for expeditionary operations as well as for supportto ‘homeland security’.

On to a white paper and a new headline goal

Assuring these tasks requires ‘full-spectrum land, air, space and maritimecapabilities, including strategic enablers’, as the EUGS states. What theEUGS does not do, is to quantify these four military tasks and the desired con-currency: how many operations, of which size, should Europeans be able toundertake simultaneously, without relying on non-European assets (as stra-tegic autonomy demands)?

At the national level, that is what a defence white paper would do. At theEU level, this is the role of the ‘sectoral strategy’ on defence, which the EUGSenvisages. The High Representative subsequently re-baptized this a StrategicImplementation Plan on Security and Defence; to all intents and purposes,this would be an EU white paper.

An ambitious headline goal

To give an example of desired concurrency, the EU could aim by 2030 to besimultaneously capable of:

. Long-term capacity-building efforts in several countries of the broaderneighbourhood.

. Long-term military cooperation activities with the EU’s strategic partnersand with regional architectures such as ASEAN, including a naval presence.

. Two long-term brigade-size stabilization operations (either preventively orpost-conflict) in the broader neighbourhood.

. Two long-term battalion-size contributions to UN stabilization operations(either preventively or post-conflict) beyond the neighbourhood.

. Three long-term naval operations (before, during or after a conflict) in thebroader neighbourhood.

. One battlegroup-size evacuation operation of EU citizens, worldwide.

. One high intensity joint crisis management operation in the broader neigh-bourhood, of up to several brigades and/or squadrons.

In light of the crises in Europe’s neighbourhood and the global geopoliticaltensions today, this level of ambition is none too high. It is but the reflection ofthe rhythm of operations of the last decade, in which European armed forces,under various flags, have been part of interventions in Afghanistan, the

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Central African Republic, the Indian Ocean, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, theMediterranean and Syria.

And yet it is clear that this level of ambition cannot be achieved with thecapability requirements as they are currently defined, that is the HeadlineGoal adopted by the European Council in 1999: the ability to deploy andsustain up to 60,000 troops (that is, up to a corps) for at least one year.Europe can deploy 60,000 troops—at times in the previous decade up to80,000 troops from EU Member States were deployed—but not autono-mously. It can do so only if the US provides the strategic enablers: intelligence,long-range transport, command and control, etcetera. And de facto Europealso counts on the US as the strategic reserve in case any deployment runsinto serious trouble, for once 60,000 European troops are deployed, Europewill find itself scraping the bottom of the barrel to send out any more.

As it not only increases the tasks for the military but expects them toundertake these tasks autonomously as well, the EUGS obviously implies anew, more ambitious Headline Goal. Definitely in terms of strategic enablers,as explicitly mentioned in the EUGS (which emphasizes ‘Intelligence, Surveil-lance and Reconnaissance, including Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems, sat-ellite communications, and autonomous access to space and permanent earthobservation’): Europeans should be able to support the above level of concur-rency with their own enablers. And in terms of numbers as well: real auton-omy implies the ability to deploy the equivalent of the current Headline Goalover and above all ongoing operations listed above, so as to ensure the avail-ability of a strategic reserve in case one of them goes awry or an additionalcrisis demands Europe’s attention.

Revising the Headline Goal should not be a taboo. The 60,000 only everwas an artificial number, based on the capability requirements of the pastoperations, in former Yugoslavia. Revising it upwards, of course. But fromthe discourse the opposite trend it evident. In recent years, many participantsin the European defence debate habitually talk as if the summit of Europeanambition is to have two battalion-size Battlegroups on stand-by, with theHeadline Goal well-nigh forgotten. In several corners, the initial reaction tothe Brexit is to simply subtract the British contribution and to downsize theHeadline Goal. Some have proposed a brigade-size force as the focus ofEurope’s ambition for strategic autonomy.7

The question must of course be asked: if the aim is EU strategic autonomy,without the UK, is it realistic then to even maintain the current Headline Goalafter the Brexit, let alone increasing it?

For sure, the UK represents no less than 25 per cent of the total defenceexpenditure of $265 billion of the EU-28, and ten per cent of the total of1.5 million troops.8 Moreover, the very experienced British forces representa major part of the European forces employable for expeditionary operations.This issue of quality also appears from the fact that the EU-28 today spend

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$175,000 per soldier and the EU-27 only $146,000. If the British contributionis withdrawn from the EU’s Force Catalogue, it will create gaps that cannot beeasily filled by the existing capabilities of the remaining Member States.9

On the other hand, the current Headline Goal was set in 1999, for a Unionof 15 Member States, with 1.6 million troops (including a large share of con-scripts) and spending $160 billion on defence (and just $96,000 per soldier). Arevised Headline Goal will be a target for a Union of 27, still with 1.35 milliontroops (now mostly volunteers) and a total defence expenditure of $200billion.10 For the EU-27 therefore, at the very least, the current HeadlineGoal should remain eminently feasible. But with such overall numbers eventhe ‘double Headline Goal’ that the above concurrency requires (the abilityto deploy 50–60,000 troops supported by European enablers only, whilemaintaining a deployable strategic reserve of as many again) ought to be feas-ible, over time, on the condition that among the EU-27 defence integration ispushed much further (as we will see below).

Maintaining and, over time, even increasing the Headline Goal is the realistoption therefore: in view of what is necessary, looking at the world aroundEurope, but also in view of what is possible, looking at Europe’s military poten-tial. Realism not only means not setting unachievable objectives—it also meansnot setting the bar too low and under-exploit the potential that is there.

UK involvement

It is true that until now the engine of Europe’s expeditionary role was theFranco–British axis. In a Union of 27 that will have to be a Franco–German axis, with France becoming a bit more German and Germany a bitmore French.11 France, the only remaining EU Member State with a perma-nent seat in the Security Council, a global military-strategic perspective, closeto full-spectrum forces, and the experience of a permanently high operationalrhythm, will have to reinvest in the EU. Germany will have to pursue a veryactive and ideally more comprehensive foreign policy, playing a leading rolenot only in the eastern but also in the southern neighbourhood, and increas-ingly support its diplomacy with a military expeditionary role. The deploy-ment of 650 German troops to Mali in 2016, under UN command, to atheatre of operations that is far from risk-free, is an example of the rolethat Germany can play.

At the same time, even after the Brexit the stability of Europe’s broadneighbourhood will remain as vital to the UK as to the EU. Hence, whenEuropeans launch operations in the broader neighbourhood (under EU,NATO, UN or ad hoc command, for as we shall see below an EU HeadlineGoal does not always mean EU operations), Britain is more likely to be apart of them than not, even though post-Brexit it is less likely to take theinitiative itself. What for reasons of domestic politics the UK will most

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probably not be able to do, is to formally associate itself with the HeadlineGoal process. Nor will it likely be able, for the same reasons and at least forsome time to come, to join multinational capability projects under the EU-label or deeper integration into permanent multinational units (which aswe shall also see below is the only way the EU-27 can achieve a new HeadlineGoal).

Formally therefore, the new Headline Goal can only aspire to EU strategicautonomy. An assumption of the availability of British forces for actual oper-ations is more than justified however, so that in practice the EU white papercan at least define the possibility of European strategic autonomy as part of thecontext in which it operates. Important is that it spells out the military impli-cations of the tasks set by the EUGS and provides a clear and quantified state-ment of military ambition—a new Headline Goal. Immediately after theadoption of the white paper, the European Defence Agency (EDA) canalready update the Capability Development Plan, which was foresee in 2017anyway, and generate a first set of capability priorities in order to link nationaland multinational efforts to the objective of strategic autonomy. These priori-ties can then be taken into account in NATO’s defence planning as well.

Complementarity and flexibility in implementation: EU–NATO

EU–NATO coordination will be of the essence. Simultaneously with the expe-ditionary tasks outlined in the EUGS, Europeans must ensure collectivedefence and deterrence under NATO’s Article 5. In the wake of theUkraine crisis, the Alliance is pushing its members to fulfil their capabilitycommitments with renewed vigour. For sure, Europeans must step up theirrole, for today the credibility of Article 5 relies almost entirely on the factthat the US is a member of NATO, which is hardly a healthy situation.

Hence NATO initiatives such the brigade-size Very High Readiness JointTask Force (VJTF), which will deploy, in a rotating multinational compo-sition, inside NATO’s eastern Allies. The capabilities from which the deploy-able VJTF rotations are generated can also generate forces for non-Article 5expeditionary operations (under whichever command). When on stand-byfor NATO however, a VJTF rotation will in principle not be available forother tasks (though in a real crisis an Ally can always recall its troops).Clearly, meeting the demands of both collective defence and a (when necess-ary autonomous) European expeditionary role is a challenge, but both areequally vital to the security of Europe.

Defence planning

It is striking, actually, how little talk there is today in NATO about expedition-ary, ‘non-Article 5’ operations. The focus is strongly on Article 5 and the east

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and even in NATO headquarters in Brussels one hears voices that the EUshould take the lead in addressing Europe’s southern neighbourhood. Fur-thermore, as the Americans have repeatedly made clear, when Europeanstake the initiative to deal with security problems in the south, the US willsupport them—but Washington, DC will no longer automatically take theinitiative for them.

The EU white paper is essential therefore, for only an EU white paper cananswer the question that NATO does not even pose: what exactly shouldEuropeans be capable of alone when necessary? The NATO Defence PlanningProcess (NDPP) starts from what the Alliance as a whole, including the non-EU Allies, should be capable of, and translates that into capability targets forevery individual Ally. There is no attempt to ensure that the sum of the capa-bilities held by the Allies that are also EUMember States alone (or by all Euro-pean Allies alone, without the US, Canada and Turkey) constitutes a coherentwhole, capable of operations without having recourse to assets of the others.

In the area of strategic enablers especially, the US contributes more than itsshare, so the spread of capabilities resulting from the NDPP cannot guaranteeEuropean or EU strategic autonomy. Only if the next iteration of the NDPPtakes into account the capability requirements of European strategic auton-omy as defined in the EU white paper can a capability mix be created thatallows Europeans to do all: to contribute to Article 5, to undertake non-Article 5 operations with the US and the other non-EU Allies, and tolaunch autonomous expeditionary operations. In the words of the EUGS:‘European security and defence efforts should enable the EU to act autono-mously while also contributing to and undertaking actions in cooperationwith NATO’.

Command and control

It does not follow from this however that the military tasks set in the EUGSand detailed in the EU white paper must necessarily always be undertakenunder EU command.

Obviously, Europeans can have but one ‘grand strategy’—they cannot haveone strategy when they meet in the EU and another when they gather inNATO. That single European ‘grand strategy’ is the EUGS, which addressesall dimensions of external action, from aid and trade to diplomacy and themilitary. To implement that single strategy in the military sphere, Europeanshave several instruments at hand however: NATO, the CSDP, the UN and adhoc coalitions.

When it comes to the security of European territory itself, NATO assumesresponsibility for deterring and defending against classic military threats. TheEU, as seen above, is playing an increasing role in addressing so-called ‘hybrid’threats to ‘homeland security’ that fall short of war, as is NATO, and both

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organizations are therefore closely coordinating.12 When it comes to expedi-tionary operations, Europeans can choose the command and control arrange-ments that are best suited to the crisis at hand.

Strategic autonomy means acting without US assets, not without NATOassets—for the NATO command structure is in large part staffed by Europeanpersonnel. The condition is that the availability of a NATO headquarters canbe guaranteed whenever Europeans need one. But the point is that even whenEuropeans act alone, without the US (and other non-EU Allies), they canlaunch a NATO operation, or they can opt for a CSDP operation or for anad hoc coalition, in both cases using either a national headquarters or aNATO headquarters, or they can deploy under UN command. In all ofthese scenarios it will indeed increasingly have to be Europeans actingalone in their neighbourhood.

Not in all of these cases will the EU be formally involved from the start.Europeans can also take the initiative to launch an intervention in NATO,or in an ad hoc group outside either the EU or NATO, as for Mali andLibya. In most if not all cases though, Europeans will de facto act in thebroader context of EU foreign policy and the EUGS, which shapes Europe’srelations with for example Mali and Libya, and Syria and Iraq, and Russiaand Ukraine. Even in NATO, it is the collective EU view on the future ofrelations with the latter two countries that shapes the actions that the Euro-pean Allies are willing to take. And following the Brexit it is not unlikelythat the European Allies will increasingly speak with one voice in NATO,since of all EU Member States the UK was always most opposed to this. Fur-thermore, it is the EU that has the instruments and the budgets to make poss-ible the long-term comprehensive involvement in the political and economicsphere without which any military intervention in a country is meaningless.

Britain’s future role

For the UK, the question is whether after the Brexit it wants to maintain thepossibility of participating in CSDP operations, for those cases where thatappears the most suitable operational framework. If the answer is yes,London could conclude an agreement with the EU to that end. The UK hasalready indicated however that it finds the existing agreements for thirdcountry participation in CSDP operations far from satisfactory. But themore London is willing to offer, the greater the likelihood of an enhancedagreement. The UK could agree, for example, that its operational headquar-ters in Northwood, currently commanding the Atalanta naval operation,remains available for future operations as well.

The UK would be well-advised, however, to also seek close association withEU foreign policy and the overall implementation of the EUGS. For if Britaintakes part in operations but not in the foreign policy that determines why

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operations are undertaken in the first place, its role will be like that ofAustralia and New Zealand in NATO: a very reliable troop contributor—with little or no voice in strategy. As part of the Brexit negotiations, a novelarrangement can be imagined that gives Britain a seat, though not a vote,in the Foreign Affairs Council for a specific range of topics.

Building European capabilities

Once the new Headline Goal is established, capability development should beaccelerated. The EUGS has surprisingly much to say about how to go aboutthis. The overall principle is crystal-clear: ‘Member States will need to movetowards defence cooperation as the norm.’ In practice, cooperation willhave to be deepened at two levels simultaneously: that of the EU, and thatof clusters of Member States.

Strategic enablers and the EU level

At the EU level, the focus should be on strategic enablers, which demand theparticipation of a large number of Member States to make any project econ-omically viable, in view of the large cost of development. The EUGS rightlyputs a strong emphasis on enablers, because in this area the EU as such canprovide strong incentives: ‘Union funds to support defence research and tech-nologies and multinational cooperation, and full use of the European DefenceAgency’s potential.’ Both of these are vital.

First, under the next framework programme for research (2021–2027), theEuropean Commission will, for the first time, provide significant funding (ofat least €500 million) for defence research. The procedures for this initiativewill shortly be tested by a preparatory action. When the procedures are fina-lized, it is key that they explicitly refer to the EU white paper and the resultingcapability priorities as the formal guidance for the use of these new fundsunder the framework programme, so that they will directly contribute tothe goal of strategic autonomy. Industry must serve the Member States andtheir armed forces, not the other way around.

Second, the EDA will lose the British budgetary contribution, but at thesame time the UK will no longer be able to block a budget increase. On theone hand, the Commission can use its budget for defence research to co-finance research projects, for up to 50 per cent for example, thus stimulatingthe capitals to step up their own defence research spending. The EDA, whichthe EUGS sees as ‘the interface between Member States and the Commission’,can be the manager of all defence research projects. Member States shouldalso increase the EDA’s own budget, finally providing it with the means toact of its own accord and launch feasibility studies and pilot projects; untilnow, British objections had rendered this impossible.

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All of these instruments together make the EU the best available frame-work for multinational capability projects. Only through the EU, furthermore,can European countries ensure the defence industrial dimension of strategicautonomy: having a European defence industry that can develop andproduce all equipment that the new Headline Goal requires. Just for capabilityprojects geared to collective defence and involving the non-European Allies,such as missile defence, is NATO the better framework. The UK has neverbeen an eager participant in European projects, but if the development andproduction of European enablers takes off, it may find it to be in itsdefence industrial interest to participate in specific projects. It could thereforeconclude an agreement with the EDA, like Norway, allowing it to take part inprojects on a case-by-case basis. For the EU, the advantage would be thatBritish participation in a project would make it easier to reach the criticalmass to make it economically feasible. First, however, the future of Britain’saccess to the single market must be settled.

Integrated forces and the cluster level

At the level of clusters, Member States can implement the ‘gradual synchro-nisation and mutual adaptation of national defence planning cycles and capa-bility development practices’ that the EUGS calls for.

To this day, the national focus remains predominant in defence planning.States draw up their national defence white paper or equivalent first, in splen-did isolation and without much regard for guidelines from either the EU orNATO. Only when that is finalized do those who want to explore possibilitiesfor cooperation with others, but by then many opportunities have alreadybeen precluded by the national choices that were made. The problem isthat, with a few exceptions, this is how Europe has ended up with a plethoraof small national forces, which do not cover the full spectrum of capabilities,which struggle to offer all support functions (logistics, maintenance, training,etc.) for the few capabilities that they do maintain, and from which only smalldeployments can be generated.

The aim therefore should be to turn this around. States could stop doingnational force planning separately and then decide on which aspects theywant to cooperate with others. Instead, states could plan together, as if forone force, and then decide which contribution every individual state willmake to that single force (including by participating in EU-level projects toacquire the strategic enablers on which the force would have to rely).

Concretely, European states could build permanent multinational for-mations with dedicated multinational headquarters, such as army corps andair wings. To these each participant would contribute national manoeuvrebattalions or fighter aircraft, but all the support functions could be ensuredby a combination of pooling (permanent multinational units) and

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specialization (a division of labour among participating countries).13 As nolonger every country has to contribute to every support function, nationalspending will be less fragmented, substantial synergies and economies ofscale will be created, funds released for investment, and capabilities enhanced.As manoeuvre units within the multinational formation are national, one par-ticipant can flexibly deploy an infantry battalion, for example, without theothers having to follow suit. At the same time, the corps or wing should beseen as the framework of choice to generate all larger scale European deploy-ments, so that countries do defence planning, capability development andoperations in the same multinational framework. Today, the many existingmultinational formations seldom or never deploy as such, which is one ofthe reasons why the degree of integration within each remains limited.

There are different routes to pursue this deeper integration in clusters. Themost obvious one perhaps, for that was exactly its purpose, would be to acti-vate Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the hitherto unused mech-anism introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. Another way would be to create newclusters outside the Treaty and/or build on existing ones, such as the Euro-corps (which has evolved in the opposite direction: from a corps with unitsassigned to it, it became a headquarters only). It might be easier to avoidthe debate about criteria and to find consensus in several clusters outsidethe Treaty, instead of on a single PESCO addressing all capability areas. Yeta third way would be to build on NATO’s Framework Nations Concept:one or more larger countries offer the framework, such as a force or a head-quarters, in which a number of smaller countries plug in with specific contri-butions, in order to achieve together the capability targets set by the NDPP.14

Conclusion

If one were to start from scratch, one would never create the European secur-ity architecture that exists today, in which grand strategy, defence planning,capability development and operations take place in different constellationsand in different organizations, often at the same time. The Brexit will certainlynot make it any easier to make this architecture work, as one of the mostimportant military actors voluntarily withdraws from a key part of the archi-tecture, increasing the asymmetry in EU and NATOmembership. Be that as itmay, in the current strategic environment of instability in the neighbourhoodand with the US increasingly focusing on Asia, the remaining EU MemberStates have no choice but to pursue the strategic autonomy that the EUGShas rightly put on top of the agenda.

This can work for all: European strategic autonomy, with the UK included,is still possible. If, that is, Britain can find its usual pragmatism again, and iswilling to associate with EU institutions and to join structured multinationalcooperation whenever that is the best way of getting things done. For surely

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those who voted for Brexit did not vote for the undermining of Europe’ssecurity. If ideology and emotions are allowed to continue to trump pragma-tism however, the UK will discover that in some areas neither the US norNATO is likely to take the lead, and nothing much can be achievedwithout European cooperation. Where will that leave Britain? In a worse pos-ition, alas, than the remaining EU Member States, for the absence of Britishengagement would be a serious obstacle to, but not the end, of Europeandefence. If truly European defence really is what the others want. Thisauthor will assume that all the assertions from different quarters about theneed for more cooperation are to be taken very seriously.

Notes

1. Barry Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2014).

2. European Union, ‘Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe: AGlobal Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy’ (June2016), https://europa.eu/globalstrategy/sites/globalstrategy/files/eugs_review_web.pdf (accessed 15 September 2016).

3. As a military officer put it to the author: ‘The current CSDP deployment of lessthan 3000 is hardly a comprehensive endorsement from Member States of themilitary role of the EU.’

4. Sarah Kreps, ‘When Does the Mission Determine the Coalition? The Logic ofMultilateral Intervention and the Case of Afghanistan’, Security Studies, Vol.17, No. 3 (2008) and Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interven-tions After the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and PatriciaA. Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions Of InterstateViolence (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); StephenM. Saideman, ‘The Ambivalent Coalition: Doing the Least One Can DoAgainst the Islamic State’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 37, No. 2(2016), pp. 289–305.

5. Sven Biscop, Peace without Money, War without Americans. Can EuropeanStrategy Cope? (Abingdon: Asghate, 2015).

6. On the EU Global Strategy and the neighbourhood, see Michael E. Smith,‘Implementing the Global Strategy Where It Matters Most: The EU’s Credi-bility Deficit and the European Neighbourhood’, Contemporary SecurityPolicy, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2016), this issue.

7. Margriet Drent and Dick Zandee, ‘After the EUGS: Mainstreaming the “New”CSDP’, Issue Alert No. 34 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, 2016).

8. All figures calculated from the relevant edition of The Military Balance (IISS).9. It is not impossible that if the economic consequences of the Brexit are too

negative, it will have an impact on British defence expenditure, and plannedcapabilities will have to be downsized. This could potentially greatly reducethe British contribution to European expeditionary operations even if satisfac-tory arrangements are found for close coordination between the EU, NATOand all of their European members.

10. Denmark has an opt-out for the CSDP, but for the EU-26 the figures still are1.33 million and €196 billion.

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11. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, ‘Deutsche Vorsicht und Französische Entschlossenheit’,Der Spiegel Online, 22 August 2016.

12. Hybrid tactics are, and always have been, part and parcel of warfare too, andhence included in both collective defence and expeditionary operations.

13. Belgian-Dutch naval cooperation is an example, at a smaller scale, of how thisworks in practice: both countries contribute frigates and minehunters sailingunder their own flag with their own crew, but there is only one binational head-quarters and one operational school (pooling), while the Netherlands is incharge of training, logistics and maintenance for the frigates and Belgium forthe minehunters (specialization).

14. Diego A. Ruiz Palmer, ‘The Framework Nations Concept and NATO: Game-Changer for a New Strategic Era or Missed Opportunity?’, Research PaperNo. 132 (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016).

Acknowledgements

The author most warmly thanks Brigadier-General (Ret.) Jo Coelmont for his input,as well as all the colleagues in the EU and NATO institutions who took the time todiscuss this project with him and provided their views on a draft of this article. Amore policy-oriented version was previously published as ‘All or Nothing? Europeanand British Strategic Autonomy after the Brexit’, Egmont Paper No. 87 (Brussels:Egmont Institute, September 2016).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop is the Director of the Europe in the World Programme at theEgmont—Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, and Professor atGhent University. He also teaches at the College of Europe in Bruges and at LUISSin Rome. As a member of the Executive Academic Board of the EU’s European Secur-ity and Defence College (ESDC), he regularly lectures in its courses, as well as invarious European staff colleges, and at the People’s University in Beijing, where heis a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for European Studies. In 2015, on theoccasion of its tenth anniversary, Sven Biscop was made an Honorary Fellow of theESDC.

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