Defending European Defence

Max McGuinness on the case for making war on war.

I would have thought better of Vincent Browne than for him to raise the bogeyman in yesterday's Irish Times column of an "intensified 'defence' dimension" in the Lisbon Treaty, which he claims "opens the way to the EU's involvement in an undefined and limitless "war" against undefined terrorism".

Let us look for a moment at the record of European defence. Since 2003, 20 missions have been launched under the banner of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The majority of these have been entirely civilian in composition, including police missions to Congo and Afghanistan where police officers and legal experts from around the Union are engaged in trying to resurrect law and order in these shattered countries. The largest operation to date has been an ongoing peace-keeping mission in Bosnia while previous military expeditions included a disarmament mission (one of the words in the text of the Treaty which gives Browne the heeby jeebies) to Macedonia in 2003 -- a country which has since remained at peace after coming close to all-out war in the early years of this decade. The EU mission to Rafah on the Palestinian-Egyptian border has intermittently helped keep this crossing open during the ongoing Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip.

 None of these missions have in any way resembled wars of foreign aggression and there are no plans for EU to start invading anyone. It is deluded and paranoid to believe that the Lisbon Treaty will lead to a European super-army bombing its way through the Persian Gulf or Central Africa in search of a handful of terrorists.

European defence has been and will continue to be devoted towards the kind of humanitarian missions I have outlined above, the peace-keeping and reconstruction operations which make a vital contribution to global security and whose holistic approach contrasts markedly with the US military's emphasis on the use of overwhelming force to attain its objectives.

 The Treaty says as much. Article 28(a) states that: "The Union may use (civilian and military assets) on missions outside the Union for peace-keeping, conflict prevention and strengthening international security in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter."

 However, European defence is currently dogged by serious organisational problems. The vast majority of European defence spending is wasted on forces which have no obvious use or purpose, suitable only for fighting imaginary tank battles against the Soviets in Western Europe. Every time the EU tries to put together an operation, like the current peace-keeping mission to Chad commanded by an Irish general, it takes months of haggling to assemble the necessary equipment and men. Amazingly, the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is often reduced to ringing around defence ministers in person in order to secure a single transport plane or medic. There is a chronic shortage of support helicopters.

 The obvious solution to these problems is defence consolidation within the EU. If European armed forces cooperated, billions of euro would be saved every year. Instead of Britain and France both producing small arms and tanks, they should specialise, which would bring vastly improved cost efficiency. And this is what the  Treaty proposes in the form of an expanded role for the European Defence Agency which will coordinate defence expenditure and planning across Europe,  identifying which equipment is needed and which is not.

According to Browne, "we have been told repeatedly the European project was inspired by an ideal of peace in Europe. The Lisbon Treaty defiles that idea." This naïve pacifism could not be more wrong. As an old maxim has it: "to preserve the peace, prepare for war." European defence is and will, if the Treaty is passed, continue to be primarily about peace-keeping. But you cannot keep the peace with words and diplomacy alone. Sometimes, force is required to put bullies in their place. To paraphrase Shaw's Major Barbara, it's time to make war on war.

Ireland still retains a veto on European defence but I sincerely hope Brian Cowen and his successors will have the courage to ditch our nonsensical and hypocritical attachment to "neutrality" in years to come.