Beyond Friendship - The Future of Anglo-American Relations - Chapter Five: Britain and Europe by Robin Harris May 24, 2006 | |

In assessing the dangers to the Special Relationship, it is important to distinguish between the short term, the long term, the avoidable, and the inevitable. Short-term problems will always arise because of marginal clashes of national interest and occasional miscalculations by governments. Some long-term difficulties are inevitable also. America, as a great power, will always be ready in certain conditions to downplay its relations with any single ally in order to see that its global supremacy and security are maintained.

What those who want to make the Special Relationship a success should be keenest to ensure, however, is that there are no long-term, avoidable clashes of fundamental interest between Britain and America. Yet today, as for the past few years, precisely such a disjuncture has been contrived by the approach that Britain, with significant American encouragement, has taken toward its relations with the European Union.

American Illusions

As noted earlier in these pages, the United States has long pressed Britain to become more involved in mainland Europe. Washington’s attitude in recent years has become more equivocal, and skeptical voices have been raised questioning whether this policy any longer made sense. But no alternative approach has ever been seriously suggested, let alone pursued. So the foreign policy bureaucracies in the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union have, as bureaucracies do, carried on working within earlier guidelines and not taken too much notice of what ephemeral politicians think.

It is in the defence sphere, and thus in the Pentagon, that under both the Clinton and Bush Administrations the sharpest questions have been raised about present directions, and rightly so. The U.S. Defense Department and the American military have seen for themselves that the prospectus held out by the Euro-enthusiasts has proved completely false.

This prospectus had two basic elements. The first was that Europe, as a wealthy and populous emerging superpower, had the resources to pay a partnership role with the United States in global affairs. The second was that the Europeans could be encouraged to develop the collective will to take up the burden with Britain, as the most Atlanticist European power, playing a crucial part.

As every year goes by, it becomes clearer that Europe is not made for the role of a superpower of even the more modest sort. Europe is a civilization in decline, and it is characterized by dying nations. By 2050, half of Europe’s population will be over 50 years old. Support ratios (the ratios of 15–64-year-olds to 65-and-overs) are rapidly worsening. The estimated total fertility rate (the average number of children born per woman over the course of her lifetime) in 2005 in the European Union was 1.5, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.[1] In Germany, most of the new EU members, and—still worse—Italy and Spain, fertility rates have plunged disastrously. Britain and France are the exception, though in these as in other European countries, first- and second-generation immigration fertility brings security and other problems, which may more than compensate for the economic benefits.

Europe’s one-time boasts about how the bloc’s 450 million–strong population dwarfs that of the U.S. look increasingly hollow as America’s population soars. One credible projection has Europe’s population in 2050 at 360 million and falling and America’s at 550 million and rising.[2] This is a result of both natural increase and immigration—and U.S. immigration is from a Christian culture and thus far more easily assimilated than the predominantly Muslim immigration flooding into Europe. Population size and population growth are important because, other things being equal, countries with large, young populations are better at raising armies, and countries whose populations reproduce often have the self-belief that makes for assertive policies abroad.

European population decline is also linked to the EU’s other and even more immediate weakness: relative economic decline. The major European countries have proved incapable of serious economic reform. Governments which do initiate tentative reforms are thrown out of power; others—like Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union–Christian Social Union–Free Democratic Party alliance, which began by proposing tax cuts and now, in a Grand Coalition, proposes tax increases—abandon reform before it has even started.

Europe’s businesses are already held back by high taxes, heavy regulation, and restrictive labor laws. The ambitious EU Lisbon economic reform program, devised in that city in 2000, has run into the sand. Europe’s productivity growth has fallen over the past decade while America’s has risen. Europe’s GDP per head is now 25 percent lower than America’s, and the gap is widening. It has been estimated that in 20 years, on present trends, the average U.S. citizen will be twice as rich as the average French or German. (Britain is a partial exception and lies somewhere between the two poles).[3] Unemployment in France and Germany is about twice the level of America’s, and Europe’s answer is still to reduce the number of hours worked rather than to increase the level of output.

Each upward blip in growth levels, like Germany’s recently, is greeted as the first swallow of spring; but summer never comes, and under prevailing conditions and with present attitudes, it never will. For America to bank on Europe’s future as a major allied strategic force, as opposed to viewing it as a minor strategic nuisance, is a mistake. For the U.S. to weaken or even abandon the Special Relationship with the U.K. as part of that mistaken approach would be folly—and, given the rate of European integration, an irrevocable folly at that.

If the first assumption—that Europe has the ability be a partner to the U.S.—is flawed, the second—that it will want to—is equally so. The U.S. has persisted in the idea that Europe would be prepared to pay more toward its own defense if, as a quid pro quo, the Europeans were given a stronger voice in NATO. Why America ever believed this is unclear. It may result from a difference of political culture. Americans still honor the connection between power and responsibility. Europeans, by and large, do not; they simply want power—in this case, above all, the power to stand up to America.

So there was never the slightest likelihood of European governments’ asking European electorates to pay more in taxes for their defense. Nor have they done so.[4]

• Germany, for example, spends about 1 percent of its GDP on defense. Whether Chancellor Merkel changes that will be an interesting measure of any real change of German policy toward the Atlantic Alliance, but America should not bet on it.
  
  
• The newer NATO members have inherited from their communist past inefficient conscript armies.
  
  
• For their part, Greece and Turkey are more likely to fight each other than they are to fight anyone else; and Turkish opinion is now dangerously hostile to the U.S., so Turkey can hardly be regarded as a reliable ally at all (something which should perhaps have had an impact before now on American enthusiasm to bring the Turks into the EU).
  
  
• France, though a member of NATO and a serious military power, also defines its policies against America rather than otherwise.

The British have not made much of an effort in terms of spending either; but at least they are reliable—a reliability that was always a given fact but is only likely to be lessened, not increased, by further integration into Europe. That, indeed, is why Britain’s growing European orientation poses a threat to U.S. interests.

Britain, first under John Major and then, with much greater speed and gusto, under Tony Blair, has been shifting its focus of military cooperation away from the United States and toward the Continent. Outsiders may find that implausible. Did not, after all, Major’s government suffer from angry splits on Europe? Has not Tony Blair proclaimed he would stand with America in its time of trial and even joined in America’s wars, and has he not done so against strong opposition from “Old Europe”? Yes, yes, and yes; but the fact remains that the commitments given by British governments ever since Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street, made largely with the approval of U.S. Administrations ever since Ronald Reagan left the White House, have fundamentally altered U.K.–U.S.–European defense relations at the expense of the credibility of NATO and of the future strength of the Anglo–American alliance.

European Military Integration

The NATO Web site proudly boasts that there is a “strategic partnership” between NATO and the EU. There is no such thing, only an incipient strategic competition between America and Europe. The seeds of this were sown first within NATO through misguided emphasis on the so-called two pillars of implicitly equal solidity on each side of the Atlantic and next through elevation of the role of the Western European Union (WEU); but then, as was always predictable, the drive for European military autonomy broke through the framework of NATO altogether. The EU is, therefore, now a fledging, if feeble, military power with far from feeble ambitions.

Britain once stood out strongly against these developments. Then it started hesitantly to go along with them through the Maastricht Treaty (signed by Major in February 1992), which provided for a Common Foreign and Security Policy, “including the eventual framing of a common defence policy which might lead to a common defence.”

Finally, under Tony Blair, who was anxious to prove his European credentials when he started to recognize that he could never bring Britain to accept the euro in place of the pound sterling, the British sought to take the lead. This was always full of danger for Atlanticism for the simple reason that it involved joining in a partnership with France—the only other serious military power in Europe but also the most anti-Atlanticist European state. The deal was done by Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac in St. Malo in December 1998. The communiqué bluntly stated that the EU “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises.” The Clinton Administration was taken by surprise and voiced disquiet, but it was too late.

All the rest has flowed from the St. Malo agreement. The “rest,” as regards America, has focused on the detailed arrangements known as “Berlin plus,” which made NATO assets available to the EU (the Europeans having nothing very much of their own at that stage, particularly as regards intelligence, command and control systems, heavy lift, and smart weaponry).

The Europeans, for their part, went ahead with creating the institutions for a separate defense—in effect, if not name, a European army. They set up separate military structures, a Political and Security Committee, a Military Committee, and a Military Staff. They also set themselves the goal of creating a Rapid Reaction Force of some 60,000 armed personnel. Since then, peacekeeping forces under formal EU command have operated in Macedonia and Bosnia, though these have, in truth, been exercises in nomenclature, being NATO responsibilities devolved to the organization’s main European elements.

The ultimate proof that the thrust of military thinking in European capitals has nothing to do with supporting America’s various global responsibilities is the way in which disagreements with America provide the main impulse for further European defense integration. The most obvious example occurred under the shadow of the Iraq War in April 2003, when—snubbing not just the U.S., but also, and even more deliberately, Britain and Tony Blair—the leaders of France, Germany, Belgium, and that other formidable military power, Luxembourg, met to declare that they would set up a joint military command, a separate headquarters, a special rapid reaction force, a European armaments agency, and a European defense college.

In Europe, integration—or megastate-building as it is more realistically described—proceeds along well-planned lines, but it does so at different speeds and always opportunistically according to times and circumstances. From the first, Tony Blair has wanted Britain to be inside this project. Having been thwarted on the euro, he was soon enthusiastic about military integration, but his highest hopes were contained in the project for a European Constitution. This would have brought together all the different elements in a single framework; it would have created a new legal order; it would have set up what constitutions, including the Constitution of the United States of America, always exist to set up: a giant new state—in this case, one called the European Union.

In fact, this grand plan had to be abandoned because of popular resentment against centralization, inflexibility, and one-size-fits-all policies (with a fair bit of xenophobia and protectionism thrown in). But that decision owes nothing at all to any messages coming out of America. The attitude of the Bush Administration toward the project was indeed astonishing and suggests both remarkably little understanding of what is at stake in Europe and a very weak grasp of what developments there mean for the U.K.–U.S. Special Relationship.

Thus, immediately after his re-election, President Bush—pressed by his advisers to try to patch up strains with Europe as if these were the result of a few minor misunderstandings rather than a gaping disagreement about ends and means—spoke warmly of the plans for further integration, though stopping just short of endorsing the European Constitution. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went further. She told the London-based Financial Times:

As Europe unifies further and has a common foreign policy—I understand what is going to happen with the Constitution and that there will be unification, in effect, under a foreign minister—I think that also will be a very good development. We have to keep reminding everybody that there is not any conflict between a European identity and a transatlantic identity.[5]

The Constitution as a project is dead, but anti-EU sentiment has not been translated into any new sympathy for Atlanticism. In any case, various elements of the Constitution are being revived and are even coming into effect, though without the irritating unpredictability of democratic involvement.[6] Perhaps the single most important element for the Special Relationship, however—one which has continued altogether unchecked—is the progress of European defense procurement policy.[7]

Defense Procurement Issues

Defense procurement is, in fact, an ideal means of securing European integration, because changes of direction occur largely unnoticed; because once these changes have been made, they are difficult to unravel; and because lead times in weapons development are so long. But now is a particularly sensitive moment because of the technical revolution in warfare to which British and European forces are having to adapt. The cost and complexity are immense: the use of satellites, electronics, new land vehicles, unmanned aircraft, and weapons systems are involved. Coming up with the best solutions is hard enough, but ensuring that these result in systems compatible with one’s allies so that forces can fight alongside one another is no less important.

Moreover, beneath the pragmatic decision-making lies the reality that not just in industrial, but increasingly in political (and potentially in military) terms, Europe and America are in competition. In recent years, there have been clear signs that as a result of a combination of British government policy, the operation of European institutions, and, on occasion, a lack of imagination by America, Britain is moving away from partnership with the U.S. toward dependence on the EU. This has grave implications for the U.K.–U.S. Special Relationship, which—as Churchill recognized—must be a military partnership or it is nothing.

The British Ministry of Defence now prefers to purchase equipment supplied by companies based in France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. British troops will be carried to their destinations by European, not American, aircraft. When there, they will use European-constructed battle reconnaissance vehicles and unmanned air vehicles to gather intelligence about enemy movements. They will use European-made howitzers. They will receive logistical supplies transported in European trucks. The European Defence Agency, which began work in January 2005, is setting its own standards, which may well soon come to conflict with those of NATO.

The key to the whole future divergence, however, is the EU’s Galileo satellite positioning and communication system, which has been devised as a rival to the U.S. Navstar. The proposed European Rapid Reaction Force, of which Britain is due to provide a central element, is to use Galileo. Questions of technical incompatibility can, it is true, almost always be overcome, and it is important not to suggest that divergences of standards and systems will of themselves preclude collaboration by American and British forces. But in this case, the technical differences themselves reflect political differences and are, indeed, the fruit of them. They are thus doubly significant.

The Pentagon, which has the strongest interest in keeping Britain alongside, has done little so far to counteract the procurement pressures from Europe. The way in which decisions have been made—or appear to have been made—about the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), where Britain is the only Tier One foreign partner, is a case in point. Britain was relying on a variant of this aircraft, the F-35B, to defend its two supercarriers, but the F-35B is apparently to be cancelled. Suddenly, it looks as if a European alternative may be required instead.

The affair is a classic example of the harm that can be done by failing to reflect upon the wider implications of U.S. procurement policy. There are also what currently seem to be insuperable problems in gaining access to the software codes for the JSF. These are vital to allow Britain to maintain and alter the aircraft’s capabilities to suit its future needs.

Such clashes on what may at first sight seem technical and commercial matters can have serious strategic consequences. One Skybolt should have been enough. A new approach to collaboration in defense procurement, authorized at the highest level in both the U.S. and the U.K., will be necessary if such problems are not to recur. But this is only one of a number of changes required to keep the Special Relationship strong and effective in the years to come.

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Dr. Robin Harris served during the 1980s as an adviser at the United Kingdom Treasury and Home Office, as Director of the Conservative Party Research Department, and as a member of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Policy Unit. He continued to advise Lady Thatcher after she left office and has edited the definitive volume of her Collected Speeches. Dr. Harris is now an author and journalist. His Dubrovnik—A History was published by Saqi Books in 2003, and his biography of Talleyrand will be published by John Murray in the spring of 2007.