European Strategy in the 21st Century

New Future for Old Power

Sven Biscop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429763991
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book argues that Europe, through the European Union (EU), should act as a great power in the 21st century.

The course of world politics is determined by the interaction between great powers. Those powers are the US, the established power; Russia, the declining power; China, the rising power; and the EU, the power that doesn't know whether it wants to be a power. If the EU does not just want to undergo the policies of the other powers it will have to become one itself, but it should differ in its strategy. In this book, Sven Biscop seeks to demonstrate that the EU has the means to pursue a distinctive great power strategy, a middle way between dreamy idealism and unprincipled pragmatism, and can play a crucial stabilizing role in this increasingly unstable world.

Written by a leading scholar, this book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU policy, strategic studies and international relations.

1

Values and geopolitics

Europe is who and where it is

Knowing how to do something is not the same as knowing what one is doing. The former is tactics; the latter is strategy. Unfortunately, perfect tactical implementation will not produce results if the strategy is wrong. The way the EU stumbled into the Ukraine crisis perfectly illustrates the difference between the two concepts.

Ukraine: how not to do things

Once the EU had decided on a far-reaching trade agreement with Ukraine, the big machinery of the European Commission got into gear to manage the complex technical negotiations. Everything was done perfectly according to the manual, for the officials of the Directorate-General for Trade are professionals who know their brief inside out. The question should probably have been asked whether Ukraine was ready, given the state of its political and economic development, to conclude such a deal, which requires adopting an enormous amount of existing EU rules and regulations. But once the Commission got started, not a single mistake was made. Except for the one catastrophic mistake to wage these negotiations as if they were taking place in a strategic and geopolitical void, as if it were a mere technical matter, that could easily be left to the technicians. In reality this was an eminently political issue.

Russia did not see the trade negotiations as a technical matter at all, but as a geopolitical challenge on the part of the EU. In Russian eyes, the EU, using its economic power, was engineering the encroachment of “the West” into yet another former Soviet republic, after successive waves of enlargement had already brought the EU and NATO very close to the Russian border. For Russian president Vladimir Putin therefore this could never be a win-win situation. His strategic view meant (and means) that he is engaged in a zero-sum game with the West: whatever the EU or NATO wins, Russia loses. For Putin’s objective is to create a sphere of influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union. A sphere of influence implies exclusivity: it means that in that region Putin wants Russia to be the only power. Whether it wanted to or not (and it was probably the latter, as the EU had simply not thought about the geopolitical context), Brussels had thus entered into a geopolitical competition with Moscow. For which, obviously, it did not have a strategy.

The next part of the story is well known. Russia began to exert enormous pressure on Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who in November 2013 gave in and suspended the negotiations with the EU. That directly led to an escalation of the domestic political turmoil. Ukraine was a very divided country: if the western half rather looked to Brussels, the eastern half was mostly oriented on Moscow. One should never have forced the country to choose between those two orientations. Imagine what would be the result if someone would oblige my own bilingual country, Belgium, to either have relations with France or with the Netherlands, but not with both – of course that would lead to a crisis. Crisis is what we got in Ukraine, symbolised by the massive demonstrations on Maidan Square in Kiev, which in February 2014 caused the fall of the president, after which the opposition came into power.

Thereupon Russia, seeing all its influence in Ukraine disappear in a bang, overreacted. That same month Russian regular troops began to occupy the Crimean peninsula; on 18 March 2014 it was formally annexed to Russia. Also in March, separatist rebels in the east of Ukraine, in the Donbass region around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, launched an armed uprising against the central government in Kiev, with Russian military support in the form of arms and equipment and irregular forces (the so-called “little green men”). The EU (and the US) reacted by imposing sanctions. That was followed by Russian military posturing on its borders with the EU and NATO, whereupon NATO prepositioned additional forces in the Baltic States and Poland.

The situation in Ukraine has been completely blocked ever since. Relations between the EU and Russia have been frozen (though Europeans continue to consume Russian energy). The EU faces a moral dilemma. On the one hand, it has encouraged the Ukrainian opposition. For many Europeans politicians, the temptation to mingle with demonstrators waving EU flags before the eyes of the world media proved irresistible. It was encouraging, of course, to see that at least somebody could still muster enthusiasm for the EU – one would want to see more of that inside the EU itself. But when, as a consequence of us prodding Ukraine to seek closer relations with the EU, it got into trouble with Russia, our willingness to help Ukraine was limited. Nobody is going to start a war with Russia over Ukraine. Rightly so, but that has left Ukraine very disappointed with the West, from which it had expected a lot more military assistance than it got.

I have been able to see that for myself several times when speaking at an annual seminar at the National Defence University in Kiev, at the invitation of the EU, for an audience of a few hundred Ukrainian military officers. In any case, by telling there what I’m writing down here, I have not made myself very popular with those officers, who were already eying me suspiciously from under their huge peaked caps from the start. It is better for everybody, however, to be honest and dispel any false expectations.

Meanwhile there clearly is a lot of Ukraine fatigue in Brussels already. We are stuck with Ukraine now. Because of the Russian aggression, the country is now facing westward, hence it is our duty to put it on the right track. But in a huge country that is lagging behind in so many ways, that duty is proving to be a huge political and economic challenge. Reforms are proceeding very slowly indeed. One of the main problems is illustrated by the posters that are to be seen around Kiev airport: “Ukraine says no to corruption”. Which means there must be a bit of a problem with corruption, or those posters would not be necessary.

The Russian strategy to create an exclusive sphere of influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union predates the Ukraine crisis. In 2008 already there was a war between Russia and Georgia, which was moving far too close to the West to Russia’s taste. That war led to two territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, breaking away from Georgia; only Russia recognises them as independent states. That gives an idea of what might be the future of the Donbass. Tensions with Russia were probably inevitable therefore, except if the EU had reduced relations with all of its eastern neighbours to a minimum, to the benefit of Russia. That was never going to happen, if only because many of those countries are themselves seeking close relations with the EU. But if it hadn’t been for the EU’s precipitation towards Ukraine and its well-nigh unconscious, a-strategic use of its economic power, we might not have found ourselves in such a severe crisis with Russia. The comparison with those sleepwalking into World War One is not that far-fetched (Clark, 2012).

Strategic thinking is important – that must be the first conclusion from the Ukraine crisis. What other lessons can the EU learn from it? And what do those lessons mean for the EU’s self-perception?

Blind for “the dark side of the force”

The first lesson is that it is dangerous to close one’s eyes for the negative aspects of international politics – “the dark side of the force”. That is what the EU has been doing in recent years, as if geopolitics didn’t matter anymore and power politics no longer existed, and all the world’s problems were going to be solved by cooperation between the great powers. The Russian–Georgian war was a first warning, but it was not enough to awake Europe from its slumber. The then-Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was not very popular in Brussels, and many felt that he had brought the war upon himself by his provocative policies. Although several East European Member States pleaded for a strong reaction against Russia, the EU very quickly returned to business as usual.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced all EU Member States to open their eyes, however. And lo and behold: geopolitics still matters, and the great powers are still playing power politics. Since then several wars have started in the Middle East and the Gulf (in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen), which directly and indirectly involve the great powers and the regional powers. Each power supports its own allies in those wars, who are fighting each other (so-called “proxy wars”), but the powers have also intervened directly. The mounting tensions between China and its neighbours over the sovereignty over the islands and waters of the South and East China Seas are another example of a classic geopolitical issue that Europe cannot ignore.

That we did ignore geopolitics for so long is understandable, because relations among the EU Member States are of a completely different nature. The EU is in many ways a world in itself, the first “postmodern region”, where states have abandoned geopolitical competition. The EU Member States constitute a “security community”: having pooled their sovereignty, they can no longer imagine that they would settle their disputes by any other than peaceful means. How many armoured divisions you can mobilise does not in any way determine a president’s or prime minister’s influence in the European Council. Fortunately, or my own country, Belgium, would have very little say indeed, since we no longer have any tanks at all.

Alas, Europe is rather unique in its “postmodern” identity. Robert Cooper, a former British diplomat and afterward one of the leading officials of EU foreign policy, already wrote as much in 2003 (Cooper, 2003). That was the year in which the EU published the European Security Strategy, its first strategic concept (Solana, 2003). Drafted under the leadership of Dr Javier Solana, the first High Representative (the EU equivalent of a foreign minister), Cooper was one of the key co-authors of this document. The world beyond the EU however, Cooper said in his own book, is still very much living in the “modern” age, in which states compete with all means at their disposal in order to defend their interests in the geopolitical struggle. Part of the world is even stuck in “pre-modernity”: “failed states” where the state has collapsed, or where there has never even been a well-functioning central authority. Here we find chaos and anarchy, and the law of the jungle. To remain blind for this, consciously or unconsciously, is to take a big risk, for then the drivers of international politics cannot be understood. Thus one will forever face unpleasant surprises, and cannot even assess the impact of one’s own policies, as happened to the EU in Ukraine. Effective strategy then becomes all but impossible.

Yet all too often geopolitics is seen as an obsolete concept, a burnt notion from the last century, used only to justify shameless and aggressive power politics. One almost feels morally superior by ignoring geopolitics. But that is to the detriment of strategy. In reality, geopolitics is founded on an entirely objective and neutral fact: a state’s geography. That inevitably influences the state’s interests, so one had better taken it into account. Values don’t come into it: Europe is where it is and one cannot change that. Similarly, the British can leave the EU, but not Europe, and therefore have to continue to take the geopolitics of Europe into account. This is not the return of geopolitics, as it is often said these days. Geopolitics has always mattered – Europeans just chose not to see it.

Because of its geopolitical position Europe must care far more than the US about the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Mali, which may directly threaten Europe’s trade routes and energy supply. Moreover, many EU citizens have joined the Islamic State (IS) and other groups and militias in Syria and Iraq as foreign fighters (Coolsaet, 2015). Europe is at the same time the closest safe destination for many refugees trying to escape from violence and a main target for the many extremists that these wars generate. In addition, Europe must pay attention to the free worldwide access to the seas, air space, space, and cyber space (the global commons), which is vital to its prosperity.

Europe’s strategic dependence

Analysing one’s geopolitical position is an essential step in making strategy, for it determines to a great extent which threats and challenges are a priority and which are not. Skipping that step does not make one better than anyone else, from a moral point of view, but it does undermine the effectiveness of one’s strategy. Which strategy one chooses can of course be judged from a moral standpoint. Some great powers attempt to improve their geopolitical position by dominating or even annexing neighbouring territories or waters. Such power politics are directly at odds with the values of the EU. Unfortunately Putin is not the only one who uses his military power to create buffer zones on his borders and to establish an exclusive sphere of influence. That is why the EU must urgently reintroduce geopolitical analysis – not to imitate actors such as Putin, but to understand them.

When the Cold War ended, we did seem to have arrived in an age in which such competition between the great powers had ended as well. The US was the only remaining superpower, Russia was absorbed by domestic change, and China was by far not yet the great power that it is today. Europe can be forgiven for assuming that cooperation had become the new paradigm of international politics. This period turned out to be nothing but a sunny interlude however, the exception in world history that proves the rule. In today’s multipolar world the great powers still cooperate, for example, on climate change or on trade. But at the same time competition has greatly increased. Cooperation and competition coexist. The other great powers opt for the former or the latter according to their interests; values rarely play a part.

Another reason why Europe has forgotten how to think strategically is that during the long period of the Cold War, from the creation of NATO in 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it largely left strategy to the US. After a while, both sides of the Atlantic saw the advantages of such an arrangement. Americans wanted faithful yet pliable allies that met their NATO commitments for defence expenditure without demanding too much of a say in decision-making. Europeans, as long as they spent enough, were assured of an American security guarantee, including the nuclear umbrella, against the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact.

That did not mean that Europeans had no ideas of their own or that there were never any disputes with the US. The Harmel Report of 1967 is one of the best examples of Europeans making their mark in alliance decision-making. Under the leadership of the then Belgian foreign minister Pierre Harmel, military deterrence of the USSR was linked to détente in relations with the East, while the right of initiative of the smaller allies was confirmed. The year before president Charles de Gaulle had withdrawn France from NATO’s integrated military command structure, one of the greatest disruptions in the history of the Alliance. France remained a member of NATO, but not until 2009, under president Nicolas Sarkozy, did it join the military structures again.

By and large, however, several decades of military dependence on the US led to a dependent mind-set in Europe. In many European states, strategy was limited to translating NATO strategy into national defence planning, without too much original thinking being required. Over time, many came to see American leadership as the natural way of things. No proper initiative seemed necessary, for the US cavalry would come and solve every crisis anyway. Two decades after the end of the Cold War that dependent, if not servile, mind-set still exists in many capitals. To this day many European decision-makers will look for an American decision, and regard Europe’s role as a supporting rather than a truly autonomous part. If that is one’s attitude, one does not feel the need to have a strategy.

A simple geopolitical analysis demonstrates that with the end of the Cold War, this attitude has become meaningless. With the demise of the Soviet Union the centrality of Europe in US grand strategy came to an end as well. The US still shares many interests with the EU, but it also has its own geopolitical concerns that are quite different from ours. For us in Europe our security is, of course, a vital interest, but for the US the security of Europe is essential – not vital. There is no automaticity therefore: in a multipolar world the US will not always take the initiative and come and solve our security problems for us.

The weakness of Europe’s strong story

A second important lesson that the EU must draw from the Ukraine crisis is that its worldview is under pressure. EU foreign policy has always started from a rather idealist view of the world. That view produced the very optimistic 2003 European Security Strategy (Biscop, 2005). The first time that the EU attempted to formulate a comprehensive strategy for all dimensions of international politics (economic, political, and security) it did not arrive at a strategy against somebody else, but at a strategy in favour of a very positive agenda. Hence the strategy’s subtitle: “A secure Europe in a better world”. The objective, of course, was to keep Europe safe; the best way to do that was to make the world a better place. Wasn’t that nice?

These two sentences from the European Security Strategy perfectly capture its philosophy: “The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states. Spreading good governance, supporting social and political reform, dealing with corruption and abuse of power, establishing the rule of law and protecting human rights are the best means of strengthening the international order”. This is a very motivating agenda that can appeal to people outside the EU as well. Moreover, it is simply true that most of the security problems that Europe is confronted with today find their origin in states that are neither democratic nor very well governed. Authoritarian states that serve only the interests of the ruling regime and do not provide for the security, freedom, and prosperity of the great majority of their citizens are inherently unstable. It may take a long time, but the moment always comes when people no longer accept that situation. When that time arrives, the regime may implode, rapidly and relatively peacefully, like the Soviet Union in 1991 or Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia in 2011. Or it may explode, with a lot of violence, like in Libya and Syria. The revolution in Tunisia, which fortunately cost very few lives, heralded the beginning of the Arab Spring. But the hope for peaceful change in the region that it generated was blown away by the storm of violence that erupted in Libya and Syria. The Arab Spring turned out to be more like a Belgian spring: stormy and unpredictable.

But how does one create well-governed democratic states where there aren’t any? Since 2003 we have found that, actually, we don’t know. Democracy cannot be imposed. Afghanistan and Iraq can hardly be called well governed, in spite of the presence of huge Western forces for years on end. I, for one, am not considering mov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Values and geopolitics: Europe is who and where it is
• 2. Strategy: What can Europe do, what does Europe want?
• 3. Europe and the (other) great powers
• 4. Europe and its neighbours
• 5. Europe, military power, and NATO
• 6. European defence and maybe even a European army
• 7. Brexit, strategy, and the EU: Britain takes leave
• 8. Conclusion: Which Europe are we doing this for?
• Index