With
respected security expert about European defense, Libya and future of NATO in
the light of declination of American support.
In your recent study, Surviving Austerity - The Case for a New
Approach to EU Military Collaboration, you argue that European
countries should be looking to mitigate the effects of financial pressures by
pooling military resources with like-minded nations, creating "islands of
co-operation". Could you give us a brief analysis what would it mean in
the real world environment?
European countries have too few soldiers with the right skills and
equipment. While there are many reasons for this – for example, the Europeans
spend less per soldier than the Americans do – chiefly, the Europeans
underperform because with 27 different governments managing, equipping and
commanding 27 militaries they never enjoy economies of scale when buying and
maintaining equipment or training soldiers. My study proposes that European
armed forces start doing so together, and that they pool their bases, schools,
maintenance facilities etc. They should
not do so at the basis of all 27 EU countries, but among small groups of
governments that know and trust each other. In fact, some, such as the Belgians
and the Dutch, are already doing so.
You also mentioned,
that, there is still a lot of hardware in
our (European) arsenals that frankly
we have inherited and we don't really know what to do with. Nowadays many
critics say that current European arsenal cannot be effectively compatible with
the US Military technology in joint operations, such as NATO interaction in
Libya. Is it really that crucial?
NATO’s biggest challenge is not whether the Europeans and the Americans have
compatible forces and technology. The greatest problem is that the Europeans have
fewer and fewer forces to send to common operations. The Americans have steadily
increased their defense budget over the past decade; the Europeans have, on
average, decreased it each year. Overtime, a gulf has grown that the Americans
find, for good reasons, politically unacceptable. The Europeans are unlikely to
start spending more money on their militaries anytime soon – not when the
economic crisis here is even more severe than in the US. But what the Europeans
can and must do if they want to keep the Americans engaged in NATO is to spend
their money more wisely. That means getting rid of some unneeded Cold War
equipment, and collaborating on procurement, maintenance, training etc.
In his speech
to the NATO ministers of defense, retiring US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
pointed out that the USA covers free fourths of the NATO budget and is nor able
nor willing to continue in such trend. Does such statement support your
argument that Europe should start taking care of its security? Could you expand
your arguments what should European countries do?
For the time being, the United States remains the indispensable ally,
committed to defend Europe if necessary.
But their attitudes are changing: the Americans no longer want to lead
‘wars of choice’ on Europe’s periphery; those fought in the name of human
rights (such as the one in Libya). This is partly because US interests have
moved elsewhere, to Asia and the Middle East, but also because American
politicians and defence officials have come to feel that European countries are
not taking the security of their own continent seriously enough. The allies
have big economies and capable militaries, and in the future the Pentagon will
expect them to be able to assure security of Europe’s periphery with little US
help.
Since we talked about some aspects of European
security, could you comment on current situation in Ukraine? Does it pose a
threat to European security any aspect, especially in energetic strategies of
the EU?
Russia and Ukraine are tussling over control of Ukraine’s gas pipelines
so yes, another gas war is possible and would be bad for the EU. But this is a
problem partly of our own making: some of the governments in Europe’s east have
failed to invest in alternatives sources of energy to Russian gas. I am
frustrated with Ukraine for a different reason: this should be a prosperous
place and an important trading partner to the Central Europeans. Ukraine is a
large country with a well-educated workforce and mineral and agricultural
wealth. If it were better managed, it would be a lot richer – and all of
Central Europe would benefit. Eastern parts of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia –
some of the poorest parts of Central Europe – should in principle be booming
and growing from trade with Ukraine. But they are not, mostly because Ukraine
has been governed by crooks for most of its independence.
Thank you for your time.
Jakub Janda
--
Tomas
Valasek is director of foreign policy & defence at the Centre for European
Reform, London. He has written extensively on transatlantic relations, common
European foreign and security policy and on defence industry issues. He is also
a senior advisor to the Brussels office of the World Security Institute.
Previously,
he served as Policy Director and head of the Security and Defence Policy
Division at the Slovak Ministry of Defence.
