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Speech by British Defence Minister George Robertson during the W.E.U. Assembly Autumn session ; Paris, Dec. 1. |
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour and a privilege for me to be invited here to Paris to address the forty-fourth session of the Assembly of Western European Union. As a committed parliamentarian for more than 20 years, I welcome the active participation of this Assembly in public debate about European security. Throughout its history, the Assembly has played a vital role in ensuring that national parliaments and the European public have been kept aware of questions affecting European security. I know that you have been debating the profound reports introduced by Mr Jan Dirk Blaauw and Mr Armand De Decker, and that that has dominated your affairs yesterday and today.
The role of WEU has been all the more important in recent years, as European security structures have evolved to face new challenges and opportunities. This Assembly and other similar bodies have debated key developments and asked pertinent and sometimes uncomfortable questions of governments and international organisations. You have contributed to ensuring that our security structures have grown and adapted to meet changing circumstances and so to remain relevant. Growth and adaptation are essential if we are to continue to meet our changing security needs, and today I should like to address the need for further change and modernisation of Europe's security architecture.
I am sure that you are all aware, as the President said, that the British Government has initiated some fresh thinking on European security and defence questions. Prime Minister Blair opened the debate on these issues at the informal European summit meeting in P_rtschach, Austria, at the end of October. I reinforced his message at the informal conference of the Defence Ministers of the member states of the European Union in Vienna in early November, as did the Foreign Secretary, my colleague Robin Cook, at the WEU ministerial meetings in Rome in the middle of last month.
The positive response has been gratifying, and it underlines the timeliness and importance of the present debate. The message is quite clear: we Europeans need to play and can play a fuller role in contributing to our own security. Easily said, especially to an organisation like this, but what does it mean in practice? Let me try today to explain some of our thinking and flesh out our views on the debate that we have launched - a debate in which I am certain that this Assembly will play a full part.
Our aim is quite simple - to enable the European Union to have a more united and influential voice, articulated with greater speed and coherence through the common foreign and security policy, and backed up when the need arises with prompt and effective military action. The EU must be given the ability both to decide and to act quickly and effectively, in order to achieve common goals.
Before very long, perhaps as early as spring next year, the Amsterdam Treaty will enter into force across the EU. The treaty provides important new instruments to strengthen the CFSP. It also clarifies the defence aspects of CFSP and the role of Western European Union in providing the EU with access to an operational capability. We believe that, if we are to exploit the provisions of the treaty in full and to ensure that Europe takes its proper place in the world, now is the time for some fresh thinking on the future direction of European defence.
Britain has launched a debate. It is a debate that we approach with a genuinely open mind, and we wish to encourage others to do the same. But we have recognised a number of key requirements that will guide our thinking.
Before I explain our views on where we should be going, let me first make it clear what we are not saying. We are not suggesting removing defence from the control of national governments and parliaments. No nation would accept the loss of this key element of sovereignty. Only national governments and parliaments have the political authority and responsibility to their citizens for taking decisions about the deployment and use of their armed forces and the circumstances in which they are placed in danger.
Similarly, it would not be right for the European Commission or the European Parliament to have a direct role in defence matters. Defence must remain intergovernmental and defence decisions must continue to be made by consensus. One of our guiding principles is inclusive security. That means that all European countries must be able to play a full role in any new arrangements. Specifically, the provisions of Turkey, Norway and Iceland - associate members of WEU - must be recognised. We must not lose sight of the valuable contribution that all European nations make to our collective security.
Most importantly, there can be no question of undermining NATO or attempting to duplicate the capabilities and structures that we have developed within it over the last 50 years. NATO will remain the cornerstone of European security and defence and the foundation of our collective defence as set out in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This was specifically recognised for the first time in a European Union context in the Amsterdam Treaty. The transatlantic relationship lies at the heart of European security and must be protected. North America's capabilities and commitment to Europe are crucial and we must preserve them. Any new arrangements for European activities must be based on full transparency, to maintain the intimate trust built up through 50 years of hard and highly successful working together.
Aside from these fundamental requirements, which I believe we share with our partners, how is our thinking shaping up? Our aim, I repeat, is to strengthen Europe's position in the world, to ensure that it can speak with authority and act with decisiveness. We should be ready to act when our interests are threatened; ready to intervene to help those in need and to stamp out violence and repression; and ready to take action to spread the values that we share. We should be able, much more than we already do, to act as a force for good in the world. The citizens of Europe expect and deserve nothing less. If that aim is to be a reality, European foreign policy needs to be coherent, responsive and credible. There is no simple way to achieve this. Partly it is a question of ensuring that we have sufficient common political will. Perhaps even more importantly, it requires the establishment of an effective defence capability to underpin that will. Partly also, we need to get right and effective the institutional arrangements that link the two factors.
Shared political will is clearly essential. We all recognise that, without it, we will not realise our potential in Europe. But shared political will is not something that we can simply invent overnight. Recent experience shows how difficult it is to agree policies respecting and accommodating the diverse interests of all our European partners, whose international postures range from strict neutrality to active intervention. Kosovo, although not solely a European problem, has shown that there is more that Europe could do to show unity of resolve. Furthermore, if we do reach agreement, we find it very difficult to respond rapidly to changing circumstances.
How can we expect to play a convincing role in crisis management without an ability to react? Crises will not wait for our thinking to catch up. If we are to take our place in the world, we will need to move beyond these difficulties. We will need to create a foreign policy that is both forward-looking and proactive, and that has the ability to respond to fast-moving situations. For a start, we will need to build on the instruments that we created at Amsterdam. The inclusion of the Petersberg tasks in the Amsterdam Treaty reflected the EU's political commitment to crisis management.
Our task now is to learn how to implement this commitment and to reflect it in the development and use of the tools that we require to do so. The appointment of a High Representative for the common foreign and security policy, and his or her deputy, will be an important step in the right direction. Providing that they are high-calibre individuals with real standing and authority, we will have significantly advanced our ability to decide and to react. Europe will have its own telephone number. We must also make full use of the policy planning and early warning unit, and of common strategies. Although these measures will help us to make more rapid decisions, on their own they will not be enough. Critically, we also need to enhance our ability to act.
If Europe is to have a stronger voice in the world, European armed forces will need to be capable of supporting that position. We need to put muscle behind Europe's foreign policy for those few hard cases when the normal instruments of foreign policy - trade, economic relations, political relations and diplomacy - are not enough. You will all be aware of Kofi Annan's statement on his return from Iraq: You can do a lot with diplomacy, but of course you can do a lot more with diplomacy backed up with firmness and force." This is rapidly becoming the most frequently quoted statement in my department but I use it once more without apology, because it is a perfect encapsulation of what we should be striving to achieve for Europe.
We must develop for Europe a capability that matches the aspirations that we rightly have for a strong voice in affairs that affect our security interests. We need to be confident that, should we have to call for action, we have the right means at our disposal to do so. Both for the needs of the Alliance and for those situations where our north American allies are not directly engaged, we must have the right means.
We need to recognise that for all of us that means tough choices. Together we must address questions of investment, prioritisation and the restructuring of our defence industry to which I shall return later. We should not allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that we are close to having the sort of capability that we really need if we are to play our proper part in the future.
Within NATO, the European allies with more than 60% of the population of the Alliance and almost two thirds of the allies' armed forces personnel provide only 40% of the total defence spending. More importantly, the European allies account for less than a third of total equipment spending and only about a sixth of research and development spending. Furthermore, the key military assets required for the type of demanding peace support operation that we may face, particularly air assets, are overwhelmingly American. Had NATO aircraft undertaken air strikes to enforce the UN Security Council resolutions on Kosovo, less than a third of the planes involved would have been European. We frequently neglect the vital logistical tail that would be required to sustain our armed forces over a long duration far from home.
We must all ask ourselves whether the collective European contribution to our shared security interests falls short of what it could be. I suggest that we could and should spend better and do better. I feel sure that we would all agree that, at the very least, we could spend more effectively and thereby do better in the world.
We need a defence capability that is fit for today's world. We must recognise that future crises may arise anywhere, at any time. We cannot predict their nature or scale; neither can we ignore them if we are serious about protecting and disseminating the values in which we believe. The lessons from recent crises, from the Gulf to Bosnia, are clear. Increasingly, we face situations that call not for numbers but for strength in key military capabilities where we are most weak. We need to develop armed forces that are deployable and sustainable, powerful and flexible, mobile, survivable and highly capable. Those so-called " abilities" were fundamental to the way in which we have set about reshaping Britain's defences in our strategic defence review. They reflect the approach that we have taken to modernise our own armed forces better to suit their tasks of today and tomorrow. We shall continue to encourage all our European partners to develop their military capabilities so that they are more responsive, just as we shall continue to look for ways of improving our own capabilities.
As well as making efforts individually, there is much that we as Europeans could do collectively. We could encourage the further development of combined military capabilities, particularly the operational effectiveness of the existing European multinational forces. Let us not engage in a false debate over whether those forces are primarily for NATO or for European operations. In both cases, they serve European interests, and we should take practical measures to enable them to do so better.
For example, we need to promote greater information sharing between the various multinational forces about their roles and operational standards. That would allow our armed forces to learn from each other and encourage best practice. We need to plan, train and exercise together to develop greater interoperability and provide a visible dimension to European security and defence. In short, we need to be sure that European armed forces are both more capable and more usable. Those ideas should benefit all European multinational forces. They should allow wider participation by all European nations, building on the inclusive security framework developed by WEU and NATO. By strengthening Europe's military contribution, we can provide effective underpinning for our foreign policy.
To provide the European contribution to defence that we all want, effective military capability and effective political will are clearly the key requirements. However, we must also ensure that we have an efficient link between the two. The institutional arrangements have been the object of much speculation and coverage but I stress that that must not be the object of the debate. The key is to be confident that, when Europeans call for action, we have at our disposal not only the right means to act but the right mechanisms to facilitate prompt action. Mechanisms already exist to turn the common political will of the European Union into military action. Member states have agreed that WEU should support the EU in framing the defence aspects of the common foreign and security policy, and that the EU can avail itself of WEU for operational purposes, particularly relating to the Petersberg tasks. At the Berlin ministerial meetings in 1996, NATO declared its readiness to provide assets and capabilities to WEU for European-led operations. However, one has only to put those mechanisms into words to realise how cumbersome they might be. We want to consider, with our partners and allies, whether it might be possible to streamline the procedures so that we can be certain that they match our aspirations. In other words, if we decide to press the button, can we be sure that quick and effective action will result?
That may have institutional implications, although it is not where we are starting from. You will be aware that several options have been floated in various areas. None of them is straightforward and all require careful thought. Some of our partners have argued for some time for the wholesale merger of WEU into the EU. The UK resisted that proposal at Amsterdam. Although we do not rule it out today, we recognise that it continues to present difficulties. Not all EU member states share the same strategic perspectives; nor may all future EU members.
Merging some elements of WEU with the EU, and associating other elements more closely with NATO, is another possibility. That might allow us to make the best use of the capabilities and competences of both organisations. We might also consider creating a more distinct European dimension within NATO, building on the valuable work that has already been undertaken in establishing the European security and defence identity. Breathing new life into WEU is yet another avenue. Certainly we should all recognise that WEU has played a valuable role in European security - for example, operationally in sanctions enforcement on the Danube and in the Adriatic, and in advising and training police forces in Albania; and politically through its engagement of WEU observers, associate members and associate partners. Nor should we forget that, although WEU has not undertaken large-scale crisis management operations, it has made a significant contribution to the development of crisis management mechanisms and procedures. In evaluating options for the future, we must not lose sight of those important contributions by WEU.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each of the institutional possibilities. We should not rule any of them out at this stage - they are not in any case mutually exclusive. I repeat that we will not get far if we allow institutional questions to cloud our thinking. We need to focus first on what we want to do, and come to the mechanics only when that is clear. Indulging in premature, lengthy and obscure debates about organisations will only weaken our credibility. We must not be fooled into thinking that hiding behind cost-free and comfortable institutional questions is the same as tackling the real issues before us. We must also be alive to the need to address specific positions of individual members of the Alliance.
We want to create a Europe with clout - a Europe that is both willing and able to get to grips with crises. Our governments need to be more prepared to cooperate in encouraging greater force readiness and cohesion. We also need to support efforts to strengthen and restructure the European defence industry.
Consolidation and rationalisation in the defence industry are essential if European industry is to remain efficient and competitive in the global market, especially when facing the twin pressures of large rationalised American companies and reduced defence spending. We need to remove wasteful duplication of research and development and to benefit from the economies of longer production runs that are founded on common requirements and exports. The detail of restructuring is a matter for the companies involved, and we should resist the urge to intervene and interfere when we have no genuine reason to do so. However, governments do have a role, not least as the principal customers of our defence industry. We cannot afford small-scale national defence industries, and we must receive better value for money. Better harmonisation of requirements by governments should also lead to improved interoperability through common equipment and common spares, as well as providing economies of scale.
None of this is to say that the United Kingdom advocates a "fortress Europe" approach. Protectionism must not replace the valuable relationship that we have with the north American defence industry. The development of two insular industries would be counterproductive for all or us. We must maintain transatlantic cooperation and the resulting exchange of technology and interoperability of benefits that it helps to bring about. We must develop a genuine two-way street.
These will be big steps forward. Developing Europe's capabilities will strengthen the Alliance, not undermine it, and will respond to aspirations on both sides of the Atlantic. We are keen to enhance the European's capability to act when our north American allies are not engaged. Equally, however, we should recognise the reality that in many circumstances Europe will turn naturally, and rightly, to the well-proven body of NATO to carry out military operations. So we should aim to create a new partnership with our north American allies. The European security and defence identity within the Alliance is one of the most important elements in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. We must build on and add substance to this foundation. Britain has always sought ways to strengthen the Alliance and Europe's contribution to it and will continue to do so. We will continue to support the development of the European Union's common foreign and security policy, as we did during our EU presidency.
We and our partners and allies need to think deeply about how Europe could be more active in managing threats to its security and in promoting our common interests. Europe needs to develop its ability to deliver its foreign policy goals. There is no reason why, at the end of the 20th century, a continent of our size and experience should lack the capacity for effective decision-making and action. If we are to develop this capacity, we will require real responsibility and shared political will, backed up by an effective military capability, within a framework that allows quick and decisive action. That is the challenge that faces all of us. I know that the WEU Assembly will wish to play a part. Indeed, it will play a part in the eventual decisions that have to be taken.
Thank you for your attention.
--ends--
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