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Britian works with european defense { October 14 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
News analysis: Britain's subtle shift on EU defense
John Vinocur/IHT
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
LONDON A potential trans-Atlantic breach has opened in the aftermath of the Iraq war that seems to leave Britain wavering between its exclusive, pro-American commitment to NATO and involvement in a European Union defense initiative pushed by France and Germany.
So far the British and Americans have wadded their differences in gentlemanly exchanges.
But the circumstances have been described by defense and security analysts as a defining moment in U.S. - European relations, a change in basic geopolitical orientations as significant as those brought about by the 1956 Suez debacle, or a fracture in the basic undertakings given by Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W. Bush.
All that may be excessive.
Still, it is now certain that Blair in late September shifted Britain's position from "no" to "yes" on whether the country would take part in a developing a spearhead defense group within the European Union. That group would allow a handful of countries (notably including France, Germany and Britain) to carry on, unencumbered by the rest of the membership, with what the EU calls "structured cooperation," be it procurement, strategy or the engagement of troops.
British officials hold that there is nothing ominous about this for the trans-Atlantic relationship since Britain regards NATO as having clear primacy except where it is specifically transferred - a recent African operation run out of French national headquarters is an example - to wholly European auspices.
And the officials say they will not accept a French-German initiative to create an operational planning headquarters for the EU separate from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a so-called red-line item for the Americans. Privately, the British assert that they reject the idea of those in France and Germany who would seek to manipulate the vanguard group to assert a European defense identity both decoupled from the United States and NATO and signaling an institutionalized separation between the trans-Atlantic allies.
All the same, said an American official, regarding the situation far from London, the British had caved in on a key issue.
From its previous resistance to structured cooperation as superfluous and divisive, he said, the Blair government had turned the concept into a fact.
This in turn created, according to the official, the possibility of a defense group with a life of its own, an agenda difficult to control, and the political subtext, since Britain intended the group to magnify its role as pacemaker in European defense, of the Blair government having to come up with initiatives to give the vanguard life and prominence.
"In the Iraq aftermath," the official said, "things are happening." Was a momentous change at hand? That would depend on developments, he went on, "but I don't see it as a tectonic shift."
Perhaps because there is no interest in the White House in a public argument with its great friend Tony Blair, and perhaps because the British move coincided with the French and Germans acknowledging they would abandon for now their plan to set up a separate EU operational planning facility in Tervuren in the Brussels suburbs - an idea profoundly troubling to the Americans - there have been no loud exchanges about the British policy shift.
But that hardly modulated the view of those who describe the developments in epochal terms.
"In the long run, all this will be seen as having been the thin end of the wedge. It's the beginning of a separation," said Julian Lindley-French, director for European security at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. "Blair is absolutely not averse now to tweaking the tail of the American tiger."
This, for Lindley-French, fit into the context of a British effort to assert a leadership role in the area of European defense. Britain knew it could not foresee entry into the euro at any clear time in the future, but considering Blair's commitment to involvement in the EU, and the leadership disarray created by France's arrogant handling of its European partners during the Iraq war, the British saw a chance to seize the role as the EU's primary defense and security player.
"In this sense," he said, "the discussion has nothing much to do with defense. It's politics. And it's a major element in the struggle for leadership in Europe."
For Bernard Jenkin, the shadow secretary of state for defense of the Conservative Party, the government's action breaches "the fundamental undertaking Blair gave to Bush" on Europe's relation to America.
"If the government were really asserting NATO's primacy," he said, "it would be asserting the primacy of the 'Berlin Plus' accord we've agreed to which provides for 'separable but not separate' EU forces."
By Jenkin's standard, "the awful thing about structured cooperation is that you can't control the agenda and you lose your implicit threat of a veto within the EU. Blair is throwing away his real ace. The gravitational pull toward Europe will be immensely strengthened."
An informed French view hardly contradicted the emphasis on the significance of the turn.
François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, reached back to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a comparison for what he regards as the current movement for change in both London and Paris. Back then, after the failed French-British intervention in Egypt, both countries placed their security and defense policies in hardened molds: the British attaching themselves to any and all variations in the American line, and the French adopting a security policy alternately independent or scornful of the desires of their European neighbors.
"Those orientations have now run out of potential for realistic decision-making in both countries," Heisbourg said.
Following Iraq, he said, the British now wonder whether it will be wise to reflexively turn to Washington ahead of Europe in marking out their defense orientation. "The British are clearly giving themselves the opportunity to look and debate. All is up for grabs."
This attitude was accelerated, Heisbourg believed, by what he describes - without a trace of acknowledgment from the French government - as post-Iraq France's realization that neither Europe nor European defense "will be created in its own image."
The British, Heisbourg thought, had recognized what he contends is this major shift in the French mind-set.
"For all these years," said Heisbourg, "when we didn't like what the Europeans thought on defense, we'd go off on our own. We didn't go to Europe first on Iraq. We went to the United Nations first. Obviously, that didn't work. What you can say about the Europe to come is that it will be heavily un-French and that is the context in which we will work."
Regardless of whether Britain shares this view of French intentions - instead, officials here say the French-German decision to drop plans for an EU headquarters in Tervuren in no way signals the willingness of Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schröder to give up plans for an operational planning unit separate from NATO facilities - the Blair government is clearly entering new territory.
In the coming months, it will be pushed into making its position publicly explicit. Because the EU's current Inter-Governmental Conference, meant to come up with a final version of an EU constitution, will involve debate on how defense decisions are made and on rules for vanguard groups, Britain will run the risk of confrontation with either the United States or Germany and France.
To ensure that the vanguard defense group does not get out of its hands, the British are saying that all of its decisions will have to be unanimous ones.
And to make certain that the group has a more Atlanticist tone than that of the four countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Germany) which originally offered themselves up last April for the Tervuren initiative, the Blair government wants to see countries like Spain, Poland and the Netherlands join as participants.
Operational planning, in the British view, would be accomplished within the NATO framework, or in the case of a specific European military undertaking, through the national headquarters of one of the vanguard group's members.
All this, including what is described here as the French and Germans' continued attachment to a visibly separate EU operational planning operation, makes for excruciatingly difficult choices for the Blair government in the relatively near term.
Politically, accepting what the United States would consider unacceptable in relation to NATO - such as wording in the constitution that makes the EU a rival to the alliance in its responsibility for Europe's territorial defense - would be very dangerous, casting Blair, for a significant part of his electorate and many partner countries, as a turncoat.
With this in mind, the British say clearly that making Europe work is very much their wish, but not at any price. An impasse in relation to France and Germany's notions of European defense, they say, is a real possibility.
But a neutered outcome at this stage would also be painful. Having eventually to back off from their new move in Europe's direction would be a humiliating defeat for Blair and his European leadership ambitions.
In Iraq's wake, Britain has chosen a comfortless path.
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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