The world’s richest continent cannot hide from history, even while protected by the leading superpower, the United States.
“The polite pretense that the EU is only a benign, inward-looking ... construct seeking the integration and well-being of its members should have been put to rest with the events in Ukraine,” GIS expert Bernard Siman wrote. “It ignores the simple truth that once created, a geographically coherent bloc with 500 million inhabitants, located at a geopolitical crossroads, must have a profound impact on others.”
In today’s less stable geopolitics, marked by the rise of China and Russia’s attempt to “claw its way back to the rank of a major Eurasian power,” the long-term risk of war is rising, GIS founder Prince Michael of Liechtenstein noted. In this context, Prince Michael wrote, “Europe has developed an identity problem: It haplessly bounces back and forth between ... its traditional vector toward the North Atlantic and the United States in the West and toward Eurasia in the East.”
Looking for Uncle Sam
Europe’s dependency on the American security umbrella has become problematic as the United States reorients its global priorities. This process began long before the Trump administration or President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, as the waning of the Cold War (1947–1991) meant the reduction of U.S. forces in Europe.Even so, as GIS expert Luke Coffey pointed out earlier, “what has not changed is Europe’s geopolitical significance.”
“From the Arctic to the Maghreb, from the Caucasus to the Levant, the continent borders on some of the most important conflict areas in the world,” Coffey wrote. Russia’s move into Ukraine prompted the United States to reverse course and redeploy light forces to the Baltic states with its NATO allies.
But Trump started a debate about the cost-effectiveness of the U.S. commitment to European defense, especially if NATO allies do not pull their weight. He also pulled out of the landmark project to create a transatlantic free trade agreement (TTIP), provoking German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s uncharacteristically harsh remarks that “the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over,” and “we Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”
In fact, there is considerable evidence the Trump administration will not depart from traditional policies toward Europe, even if its approach is more abrasive. As GIS expert James Jay Carafano pointed out, the United States remains committed to NATO and is not out to deconstruct the EU, even though it is taking more of a bilateral approach and “using much more combative economic policies.”
Soft Power Limits
While Europe is seeking to become a world leader through the exercise of soft power, its “defense policy and its striking absence of military power is failing to frighten anyone,” noted GIS expert Charles Millon. While the defense spending of EU countries is about 40 percent of the U.S. level, it achieves only 10 percent of the operational capacity. This condemns Europe “to bow to U.S. policy, which does not necessarily line up with its interests.”This EU approach ran into its hard limits in Ukraine in 2014, according to Millon:
Chaos or Flexibility?
The obvious reason the 28-member EU cannot behave like a conventional great power is its complex, multinational structure. As a result, “neither its individual member states nor the bloc as a whole possess the capacity and authority to react effectively to global threats,” as Nerlich wrote in a December 2016 analysis of the emerging European Global Strategy (EGS). Even its largest states lack resources to act as a great power, while the union has been deliberately deprived of wide authority on defense and foreign affairs.The alternative, according to Nerlich, is cooperation of larger European powers and regions in groups below the union level. The most spectacular examples are the euro area and the European Defense Union, to which could be added “formal” diplomacy, regional coalitions, and bilateral “enhanced cooperation” on military matters.
While the proliferation of special-purpose groups is often seen as a threat to EU cohesion, Nerlich argued it could strengthen the bloc while empowering its member states—many of whom fear the centralized power of union institutions and the popular backlash it provokes. “Flexibility is a powerful tool in building competitiveness, and it could well become Europe’s essential organizing principle” in its response to global rivals, Nerlich wrote.
Europe’s initial goal would be to “pacify its close neighbors,” especially in Africa and the Middle East. This requires not technology or even military capabilities in the first place, “but rather the political will to intervene in the wider world. ... The means to achieve this will follow.”
Gen. Stanislaw Koziej further explored the European security doctrine, noting that the European Global Strategy approved in 2016 stressed “principled pragmatism” that attempted to “steer clear of isolationism and primitive interventionism alike.” Koziej tends to be an optimist, writing that the EU had “made a long, slow journey toward becoming a real player in security strategy.”
Military Capability
In November 2013, Nerlich laid out Europe’s defense options: “more of the same,“ ”regional capacity for intervention,“ ”oceanic outreach,“ and ”global strategic power.” He argued that in the long run, the third or even fourth options were called for. But four months before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Nerlich wondered whether this sort of pivot was even possible.It also ramped up military spending, mostly on home security and badly neglected conventional forces. But even this limited push to improve existing capabilities did “not overcome the fundamental problem, which is that Europe’s armed forces are designed to operate in an American framework that relies on U.S. headquarters, long-range strike capabilities and logistical support,” GIS expert Professor Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen noted.
Four years after the 2014 NATO summit in Wales, seen as the turning point in strengthening Europe’s defenses, only five European members of the alliance—Estonia, Poland, Greece, France and the UK—met the defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product, as GIS expert Stefan Hedlund noted. Germany—the butt of President Trump’s complaints about free riders— spends just over 1 percent.
Trading Power
Economically, the EU is a colossus with its 2017 GDP of $17.1 trillion, second only to the United States. Its internal market of 500 million consumers is, for many, the world’s most attractive, giving the bloc tremendous business leverage. This has become a go-to option for European policymakers.Global Infrastructure
The EU’s cohesion funds and ability to tap the European Investment Bank (EIB) and other multilateral lenders give it an enormous ability to upgrade infrastructure. This has spurred economic growth in the bloc’s new eastern members, and could potentially allow the EU to “project force” through development initiatives in Eastern Europe and North Africa.Astonishingly, Europe’s role in these developments—so important economically, politically, and strategically for the entire world—has been virtually nothing. At stake are Europe’s links to what will soon be the largest markets on the planet. Yet Europe is as passive today as China was in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Europe occupied most of Asia.
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