European Security in Transition

Franz Kernic, Gunther Hauser

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317139294
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Since the end of World War II, security and defence have played a major role in European politics. With the European Union's increasing role on the global stage and with today's war on terrorism, security and defence issues have dramatically gained weight and importance in international politics. This compelling volume provides an interdisciplinary look at the development and current status of the European security system as well as selected key issues on today's security agenda. As such, it provides an excellent resource for those wishing to make sense of the complexities of defence and security issues in the European Union at a time of global change.

Chapter 1

European Security in Transition: The European Security Architecture since the End of the Second World War – An Overview

Franz Kernic

Over the sixty years since the end of the Second World War, Europe’s security landscape and architecture has changed dramatically. The Cold War split much of the world into two camps siding with either the United States or the Soviet Union. As a result, ideological, economic, and military rivalry dominated security considerations from 1945 until 1989. Each of the superpowers had its own sphere of influence; two strong military alliances, opposed to one another, shaped the political landscape of Europe.

As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell, formerly communist Central and Eastern European countries gained independence and launched their transformation toward democracy and market economy; a new post-Cold War era was proclaimed. During this time, the Warsaw Treaty Organization dissolved and many opponents of the past suddenly became allies and partners to the Western powers. Undoubtedly, this radical transformation of the international system and global order also had a tremendous impact on the European security and defense agenda.

At first, the post-Cold War era was perceived by many as a chance to spread “democratic peace” around the globe and to establish a new global system of international security. Some even phrased it the “new world order,” put into place and guaranteed by the only remaining superpower, the United States of America, though in close cooperation with the international community. However, much of this optimism quickly disappeared, when the US as well as other regional powers and smaller states saw themselves increasingly confronted with a number of newly emerging security threats. Within the blink of an eye, post-Cold War security became an issue of major political and societal concern. The so-called “certainties” of the past changed into “uncertainties”; indeed, in the post-Cold War era, uncertainty itself came to be seen as a new threat. In addition, other security concerns emerged, ranging from regional instabilities and conflicts (even in parts of Europe) to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism. In particular, the outbreak of various major international crises and wars, e.g. in the Gulf and the Balkans, forced the European countries to rethink their traditional approaches to security and defense.

The tremendous changes in the political landscape of the post-Cold War world, particularly in Europe, not only caused a new debate on security and defense issues, but also resulted in the radical transformation processes of established European military alliances and security organizations as well as national armed forces. Suddenly, there was a new impetus for re-looking at the existing European security architecture, i.e. for creating alternative structures for European and/or North Atlantic security. There was no doubt, for instance, that with the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, NATO had to be given a new role and function. At the same time, some of the old plans, concepts, and ideas regarding a stronger European pillar in the field of security and defense experienced a revival. All of a sudden, all of Europe seemed to be ready to take further decisive steps toward European integration; governments across the EU not only began to deliberately embrace security and defense issues but also began work to open up the EU framework for new member states from the former Eastern bloc. Thus, a European security and defense agenda gained new momentum.

Today, consolidation seems to be on its way, although the whole transformation process must still be regarded as “work-in-progress”. However, a general orientation has been regained and important decisions have been taken, thus giving the traditional security and defense organizations of Europe, particularly NATO, a new “face”, i.e. new tasks and a new organizational design. At the same time new organizational frameworks, such as, for example, the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), have been established. But not only organizational structures have been transformed, the way of thinking about security, in general, and European security, in particular, has radically changed as well. In comparison with the Cold-War era, security is today defined in a much broader context, mostly as “comprehensive security” that combines efforts in all fields of political and societal life to guarantee the health and survival of a given society and state. Security is no longer narrowly defined as “military security,” with a predominant, almost exclusive focus on the armed forces and on armed conflict between nation-states. Even the question of “actorness” in International Relations theory, as related to security, has led to a tremendous shift away from a narrow state-centric view to a more open “capabilities”-approach, which also gives space for analysing the impact of certain actions of individuals, small groups, or networks on European security.

This chapter aims at reviewing the development of the European security system and architecture since the end of the Second World War and scrutinizing the political landscape that has shaped the security and defense agenda in Europe from the Cold-War period until today. It focuses on institution-building processes with respect to European security and defense as well as the various reconfiguration processes, which have not only transformed established institutions and organizations over the years, but also led to the creation of new ones. The chapter will start by looking at the security and defense institution-building process of the early Cold War years. Then, the European debate on “alternative models” for European security will be reviewed, ranging from the Soviet efforts to establish a European collective system to the idea of creating a new forum for multilateral security dialogue, i.e. the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Finally, the post-Cold War era with its radical transformation of the whole European political and social landscape needs to be examined in detail, particularly with respect to its implications for the European security and defense system.

Building New Security Institutions in Europe

The traumatic experience of two world wars has shaped Europe’s security and defense agenda since 1945, resulting in the very strong desire of the European people to avoid future wars and conflicts among European nations. The Second World War left Europe divided, however, and exposed to the threat of another military confrontation between the recently emerged “European” powers of that time, the Soviet Union and the United States. Europe even felt threatened with becoming the battlefield of such a military conflict, which even carried the potential of becoming a nuclear war. This nuclear dimension of the East-West confrontation increased the significance of security and defense issues. On the one hand, it accounted for a new arms race and military competition between the two blocs starting already in the first years after the Second World War, but, on the other hand, it also made conflict prevention and the search for peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution, particularly with respect to Europe, an important political goal – even necessity – for both sides.

These post-war security concerns also accounted for an increasing number of political efforts to strengthen peace and security in Europe. At the same time, the new political landscape encouraged all remaining post-war powers to engage in closer security and defense cooperation in order to guarantee peace and stability in the region. In 1948, European defense cooperation began to develop within the Brussels Treaty Organization.1 On 17 March 1948, the Brussels Treaty was signed by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The five signatories agreed upon an “unconditional mutual defense commitment” making provisions for mutual assistance in the event of an armed attack. Thus, the Brussels Treaty was in fact the first European defense organization set up in the aftermath of the Second Word War, establishing a European security and defense cooperation, which was known as the “Western Union”. The Treaty was, of course, also a response to the increasing expansion of the Soviet Union’s political influence over Central and Eastern Europe and to the United States’ reluctance at this time to become too heavily involved in European defense arrangements.

Negotiations between the five defense partners and the United States and Canada followed. Their main goal was to build a new European security and defense architecture upon the solid ground of a strong transatlantic pillar. Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal joined in and on 4 April 1949, the twelve parties signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington.2 The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) must be seen as a milestone in post-War European history. NATO was to become Western Europe’s most powerful and influential security and defense organization of the Cold War period. Its political and military structures have remained powerful and vital even after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, it still forms one of the key pillars – if not the main pillar – of European security, even though its functions, roles, and members have changed dramatically over the years.

The parties to the North Atlantic Treaty not only reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of peaceful conflict resolution and the promotion of peace and stability in the North Atlantic area, they also expressed their determination to unite their efforts for collective defense and, in Article 5, agreed:

that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently […] that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. (Treaty 1949)

Greece and Turkey joined the organization a few years later. After West Germany’s accession to NATO took place in 1955 (via the ratification of the so-called “Paris Agreements”),3 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization found itself facing a new, powerful, and important opponent: the Warsaw Pact or Warsaw Treaty Organization, officially named the “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance”.4 The creation of this organization in May 1955 was, of course, prompted by the integration of West Germany to NATO and, according to the Soviet point of view, was nothing more than a response to the “re-militarization” of Germany in order to meet the new threats and challenges from the NATO alliance. All of the newly established communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, with the exception of Yugoslavia, signed the Treaty, which was prepared by the Soviet Union and designed as a mutual defense pact for their respective territories in case of an armed attack against one of the member states (the Soviet Union, Albania,5 Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and, finally, East Germany, which joined in 1956).

Though confrontation between these two military alliances quickly became the predominant pattern of the European Cold War security and defense structures, other forms of military and defense cooperation among European states continued to develop. For instance, discussion about a specific European pillar in the overall transatlantic security system was kept alive and from time to time even played an interesting role, particularly as a potential driving force for the European integration process among Western states. To give one example, the debate on the future European security architecture had – five years before the creation of the Warsaw Treaty – already led to a very ambitious proposal for creating a “European army”. This plan was presented by the French Prime Minister, René Pleven, in October 1950. It was related to the question about West Germany’s future involvement in Europe’s security and defense system. An important step in this direction was then in fact taken when Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands signed a treaty establishing the European Defense Community (EDC). This treaty was signed on 27 May 1952 in Paris. It included the idea of integrating the parties’ national armed forces into a European structure under the guidance of a single European authority. Two years later, however, the project came to a sudden end when the French Parliament rejected the proposal to set up the EDC.

At the same time, the five Western Union governments decided to invite Germany and Italy to accede to the Brussels Treaty of 17 March 1948. The Paris Agreements of October 1954, which modified and completed the original Brussels Treaty, led to the establishment of the “Western European Union” (WEU). This multi-body organization, including a parliamentarian assembly, was built upon a binding commitment of mutual defense in the case of an armed attack in Europe. Article V of this modified treaty clearly states:

If any of the High Contracting Parties should be the object of an armed attack in Europe, the other High Contracting Parties will, in accordance with the provisions of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, afford the Party so attacked all the military and other aid and assistance in their power.

From the very beginning, the establishment of the Western European Union was linked to NATO. The treaty clearly called for close cooperation with NATO and stated that the WEU Council and its agency would “rely on the appropriate military authorities of NATO for information and advice on military matters” (Article IV of the Modified Brussels Treaty). In this context, it must be noted that this same Article IV already recognized the “undesirability of duplicating the military staffs of NATO” – an issue that has never lost its relevance and that even became increasingly important in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, this development clearly showed that the overall transatlantic security structure of the Cold War era was in fact also accompanied by a number of regional efforts to strengthen security and defense cooperation among a certain number of European states, thus leading to specific parallel structures and institutional linkages in the security and defense domain.

The Idea of a European Collective Security System and Other European Defense Cooperation Plans

In the early 1950s, the question of creating a collective European security system caused a broad political and public debate. It was related particularly to the danger of Europe being torn into two parts, of creating a “divided Europe” that, in the worse case, could even turn into the battlefield of a major military confrontation between the two heavily armed military alliances. The emerging bloc confrontation, which later became the predominant pattern of international and European security during the Cold War, started to cause new security concerns on both sides. Closer defense cooperation among “friends” and the establishment of new alliances seemed to be one path toward increasing security and guaranteeing stability and peace in Europe. Later, the concept of deterrence aimed at underpinning this specific security concept based on hard power according to the old idea of “Si vis pacem, para bellum”. However, another path or alternative security concept seemed to be closer cooperation – politically and economically as well as militarily – between the counterparts themselves, regardless of whether such a structure would rather be based on a “common security” or a “collective security” concept.

The increasing gap between Eastern and Western Europe, which became more and more visible as a result of the German question; the German Democratic Republic was formally established in 1949, making the idea of re-establishing a unified country seem much less likely by the early 1950s. This development not only raised new security concerns, but also prepared the ground for a new search for and debate on alternative security concepts for Europe. Undoubtedly, the emerging political and military cooperation and integration in Western Europe and the newly emerging security and defense systems in the West increasingly worried the Soviet Union. The public debate about ways of integrating the Republic of Germany into the newly established Western alliances and organizations, particularly NATO, quickly turned into a breeding ground for new ideas and concepts concerning the future European security and defense architecture.

One of the most interesting concepts of this time was the Soviet proposal for establishing an all-European “collective security system”. This system was to be designed in a way that would have allowed all European states to participate without regard to their political, social, or economic systems. It was based on assumptions similar to those of the collective security concept of the United Nations Charter but followed a specific regional approach. A draft for a treaty on collective security in Europe was submitted by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov to the Berlin Conference on 10 February 1954 but was rejected by the Western powers. This draft listed a number of basic provisions, including a collective defense clause, according to which an armed attack in Europe against any one or more of the parties to the treaty by any state or group of states was to be considered an attack against all the parties. In such a case, each one of the parties, in exercising the right of individual or collective self defense, would have had the duty to assist the attacked state or states by all means at its disposal, including the use of armed force.

Through presenting this proposal, the Soviet Union tried to change the direction of the emerging European security agenda of the 1950s. At that point, it had become obvious that the Western countries wanted to head toward closer political, economic, and security cooperation, which also embraced defense and military issues and based on a mutual defense clause. The transatlantic umbrella, of course, posed an increasing threat to the Soviet Union with respect to its role and influence on the European continent. That is why, for example, the first version of the Soviet proposal clearly aimed at the exclusion of the United States from the all-European collective security treaty, although...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Authors
• Introduction
• 1 European Security in Transition: The European Security Architecture since the End of the Second World War – An Overview
• 2 EU, NATO, OSCE: Interaction, Cooperation, and Confrontation
• 3 The ESDP: The European Security Pillar
• 4 The New EU – A “Military Pact”? Solidarity – Neutrality – “Irish Clause”
• 5 Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) in Transition
• 6 From Reflections to Power: Implementing the European Security Strategy
• 7 US Defense Transformation and its Implications for Europe
• 8 Plug to Operate: Command and Coordination of Armed Forces in Europe in Times of Transformation
• 9 Regional Approaches to Comprehensive Security in Europe
• 10 The South Caucasus at the Crossroads: Ethno-territorial Conflicts, Russian Interests, and the Access to Energy Resources
• 11 Turkey’s Role in Post-Cold War European Security Policy
• 12 European Union and the Greater Middle East: Economic Relations, Political Issues and Future Challenges
• Conclusions
• Index