Last week, economists stated that China overtook Japan to become the world’s third largest economy (after the United States and European Union). By 2050, China is projected to have overtaken both to become the world’s largest economy; by 2100, China may be larger than both combined. On some accounts, it is already the leading industrial power, consuming the lion’s share of iron ore and manufacturing more steel than any other country – and by a large margin. The nine-day long traffic jam on the motorway between Beijing and Jining reported on Tuesday only symbolises the vast scale of China’s economic and industrial enterprise. Many of the vehicles involved were lorries carrying coal to power up the large factories in China’s rapidly growing coastal cities.

What does this all mean? At the very least, it seems that seven centuries of European (or Western) hegemony might be very near its end. China (and India) may be about to retake their positions as the nodal points of the global economy, a position they held for much of human history. This is still not pre-ordained: China may experience many social, environmental and political dislocations, which could derail its progress, either permanently or temporarily. This led me to wonder a bit more about the foundations of European power. How did such a small and seemingly irrelevant region of the world become so powerful? Why are the world’s leading languages today English, French and Spanish and not Chinese and Hindi? Why do modern Chinese and Indian cities resemble those of Europe and America and not the other way round?

The old argument is that Europeans raped both countries of their resources, setting them back by two centuries. Yet this ill-conceived and exceedingly tired argument – even if true – still begs the question of how they were able to do so in the first place, given that China and India seemed, initially, to be stronger and more advanced than Europeans? There are, as I see it, ten key foundations of European power, which have enabled this relatively small continent to rise up over the past six centuries and transform the world:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The key thing, of course, is that none of these components were by themselves sufficient. It was only as the foundations of power came together in synthesis that Europeans achieved an edge over other continents. The only question remaining, then, is what will happen to Europeans if they give up the means that provided them with this ‘edge’ – and if the rest of the world catches up?

• For anyone interested in these questions, I recommend the documentary series entitled The Day the World Took Off, which was made to commemorate the Millennium by a group of academics based at the University of Cambridge. Click here to download each programme.

• Images: World Map: RokerHRO; Fields: Mattias Süßen; Horses: Mikel Ortega; Bread: Chmee2; Star Fort: Gebruiker: Bourtange.

In recent weeks, various commentators, academics and analysts have been busily arguing for various things to be included in Britain’s upcoming strategic defence and security review. Some of these interventions have been interesting, focussed and well-reasoned. Both Chatham House and the Royal United Services Institute have been running a series of lectures and articles putting forward various options for the new coalition government to consider.

Other interventions have been decidedly less helpful. On Friday, Sir Max Hastings, author of several works on military history, called for the scrapping of both Britain’s aircraft carrier construction programme and its sea-based nuclear weapons system. Two new 65,000 tonne ‘pocket supercarriers’ are due to be brought into service in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Over three times the size of Britain’s current aircraft carriers, these vessels will be by far the most formidable warships ever put to sea by a European navy; their only competitors will be the American Nimitz supercarriers. Confirmed to be named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, Britain’s two new behemoths will enable London to project overwhelming power into any region within range of their onboard air squadron, which will bring approximately seventy percent of the world’s population within reach. They will also improve Britain’s ability to engage in ‘coercive diplomacy’ (what was once known as ‘gunboat diplomacy’) and provide an integrated platform for overseas crisis and disaster response, if required.

But according to Sir Max, aircraft carriers and sea-based nuclear deterrents are unnecessary; Britain is unlikely to face any conventional – that is, State-based – enemy; and the armed forces should be radically re-calibrated to fight only Islamist terrorists and other non-State actors.

This view, not without its merits, has gained increasing traction in recent years, especially since the globalisation hysteria of the 1990s. The argument goes: war and conflict between the great powers is effectively over. Interdependence and democratisation have greatly increased the likely economic and political cost of war, which is further compounded by the fact that there is currently no country strong enough to directly challenge the military reach and wherewithal of North America and Western Europe (or, more precisely, the Americans, British and French). Anyone foolish enough to do so will be struck down fast. The evidence? Britain decisively crushed Argentina’s junta in 1982. Iraq’s Ba’athists were thoroughly quashed in 1991 and 2003 by two different Anglo-American led coalitions. Serbia was undone in 1999 when Slobodan Milosevic initiated genocidal policies in Kosovo. And the Ivory Coast lost its entire airforce in a few hours in November 2004 when its president challenged France.

Further, larger countries, such as China and Russia, while sometimes a nuisance, are still a long way from reaching parity, particularly with the United States. Insofar as they have harmed Europeans or Americans, they have done so using underhand methods, such as industrial espionage, cyber attacks and poisonings, which are better dealt with using effective intelligence agencies than expensive weapons programmes. Meanwhile, the threat from Islamist terrorism is still very real, and this too is increasingly more of an internal threat than an external challenge.

Yet there are several reasons to suggest that Britain still needs its behemoths:

1. The argument that interdependence and democratisation have reduced the likelihood of great power conflict looks very different if we enlarge the context. The world has been getting more interconnected over the past five-hundred years, yet each century has been bloodier than the last. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assert that the peace between the great powers since 1945 has less to do with interdependence and democratisation, and more to do with the rise of American, British and French power – both spatial and temporal – on a planetary scale. More abstractly: order is not natural; it has to be imposed by a central authority and carefully backed up with an iron fist. The key question, then, is what will happen if European and American power wanes relative to countries like China, India and Brazil, as is currently projected? Given that aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons are a long term investment that cannot be rustled up overnight, and given that other countries are busily building them, surely it makes sense for a country like the United Kingdom, entirely dependent on the sea for its imports and exports, to have them?
2. Sir Max states that it is ‘incredible’ that Britain would use its nuclear weapons to threaten (or deter) countries like Russia and China. Is it? What the world will look like in 2040 or 2050 is impossible to know. In 1900, when the British and French empires seemed almost eternal, few would have foreseen their collapse in less than fifty years. Equally, few people foresaw the demise of Soviet Russia in 1980, and fewer still the full consequences of 11th September 2001, even a year after the event itself. In short: the future is full of surprises and we should be careful not to replace careful calculation with hope. For it is surely the case that countries with international duties to uphold and obligations to discharge must retain the tools of power? Nuclear weapons are proven to deter and aircraft carriers are unlikely to be replaced by anything better – even a new generation of advanced unmanned combat aircraft will need versatile maritime platforms off which to operate.
3. Economically, contrary to the claims of people like Sir Max, a country as wealthy as the United Kingdom can afford to build large aircraft carriers. First, there is little to be gained by cancelling the current vessels and building something smaller, except a whopping fine for breaking the contract with the coalition of shipbuilders constructing the vessels. After all, aircraft carriers become cheaper to operate the larger they get relative to the desired military and political impact they can be deployed to achieve. Second, the cost of these vessels, or the nuclear deterrent, is minimal, insofar as this should be the overriding factor. The cost of the two carriers, including their air squadrons, is around £15 billion (€17.8 billion), and they are projected to last for thirty or more years. Likewise, the nuclear deterrent is planned to cost approximately £20 billion (€23.8 billion) and will last for a similar period of time. Is £1.2 billion (€1.4 billion) per year so expensive for a country with an annual national income of £1.7 trillion (€2 trillion)? That is less than 0.05% per year of Britain’s gross domestic product! This debate therefore has little to do with cost, and everything to do with political priorities.

To scrap Britain’s behemoths – the aircraft carriers or its nuclear weapons system – would reduce both the country’s national power and its options during any potential future crises. As an island, the United Kingdom can be nothing other than a seapower: pruning it of its two greatest military assets would be tantamount to selling future generations down the river. What is more, these behemoths could form the centrepiece of a greatly enhanced Common Security and Defence Policy, which means that their cancellation could have far wider ramifications.

• Image: Royal Navy

Is the European Union – or even its Member States – still a key ally for the United States? Is the Atlantic Alliance in decline? To be sure the alleged crisis over the planned European Union-United States Summit in Madrid in the Spring of 2010, in which President Obama declined to participate, was largely exaggerated. Yet there undoubtedly is a growing feeling of marginalisation in Europe – marginalisation in international affairs, as experienced in Copenhagen, and of marginalisation in transatlantic relations, as illustrated by the fall-out over the Madrid Summit. Whether this perception is founded is not really the point: Europeans sense a growing gap with their American ally, and Washington should be aware of it.

The recent publication by the White House, in May 2010, of the National Security Strategy (NSS) is likely to emphasise that perception. Indeed, the document only mentions the European Union twice. In comparison, the European Union was mentioned eleven times in the 1998 NSS of Bill Clinton, three times in the 2002 NSS and five times in the 2006 NSS of George W. Bush. And do not even look for the word ‘transatlantic’, for you will not find it.

The context in which the European Union is mentioned is evolving as well. In 1998, the European Union was referred to essentially as a major economic pole and as a security-political actor with limited potential in its neighborhood. George W. Bush depicted the European Union as a full global security and political actor active in counterterrorism, nuclear counter proliferation, and post-conflict reconstruction. It is true that in the meantime, the European Union had further integrated and had created the European Security and Defence Policy, triggering large (and perhaps exaggerated) expectations of European Union global power.

In contrast, President Obama shows more moderation in his assessment of the European Union. The 2010 NSS does say that ‘Building on European aspirations for greater integration, we are committed to partnering with a stronger European Union to advance our shared goals, especially in […] responding to pressing issues of mutual concern.’ But the European Union is mentioned as just one actor among many now exerting power and influence.

The declining centrality of the European Union (and Europe) in American strategic thought can be explained by the rise of emerging powers on the global stage, notably Russia, India and China, which increasingly attract Washington’s attention, and by a more realist reassessment of the European Union’s limited power potential, in spite of the expectations generated by the Treaty of Lisbon. To some extent, it is a luxury problem: if Europe is not high on Washington’s list of priorities, it is because the Old Continent no longer presents any major problems for American security. The real problem is that the European Union is not really seen as a significant partner in addressing the problems that do exist in other parts of the world.

In a changing global environment, with a new global order in the making and new global challenges, the strategic attention of Washington is increasingly diverted away from the Atlantic Alliance. Yet precisely in these challenging times collective action is required to deal with global threats, under the impulse of global leaders. And who else can be up to the task than the United States and the European Union? Surely, nobody expects Russia, India or China to share the Western project to the same extent. In such an environment, therefore, the transatlantic relationship should be renewed, not marginalised.

In order to shape a new global order based on universally shared norms, rules and values, we need a renewed transatlantic leadership for a new grand bargain in which the emergence of new powers demanding power and recognition, and the emergence of new challenges requiring global responses, can be reconciled through an effective multilateral approach. As the European Union’s own Security Strategy says: ‘Acting together, the European Union and the United States can be a formidable force for good in the world.’ A joint effort will be required if they are to retain global influence in this new world order.

The United States should therefore not forget about its ‘old’ allies. European are not simply on call for when the United States needs them, but ought to be treated as an equal partner that can bring creative strategies and a comprehensive toolbox to address global problems. Obviously, Europeans should do what it takes to be an equal partner: make full use of its new institutions under the Treaty of Lisbon, set clear strategic priorities, and proactively pursue them. Then next time Barrack Obama meets Herman Van Rompuy they should have a true strategic conversation.

• A slightly amended version of this article was first published by the New Atlanticist.

The European Union was supposed to abolish internal geopolitics through the establishment of pan-European institutions predicated on ‘civilian power’. However, this has delivered Europeans into a nasty trap: we still rely on the United States to provide the ultimate guarantee for our security, through its nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and air squadrons. Yet as America’s geostrategic focus shifts further away from Europe in response to events since 2001, what will Europeans do? In short, the continent’s main powers have been positioning themselves to fill the vacuum left by the United States. Unless the United Kingdom – of all powers – steps in to moderate this process in the interests of security, the European Union will be undermined, leading to general geopolitical disorder across our continent.

In some ways, this is a radical argument. For both America’s global decline and its complete departure from the European continent are not yet inevitable. But the fulcrum of world power does seem to be shifting from the Atlantic basin to the Indo-Pacific rim at an accelerating pace, and Washington’s geostrategic focus has continued to move in response. Europeans have not yet realised just how much this is going to affect the security of their own continental homeland and their worldview – least of all the British.

Four inter-related developments are starting to undermine the existing European security order:

1.) Russia is moving back into Europe. As American power is moved away from Europe and towards the Middle East and Central Asia today, and the Indo-Pacific rim tomorrow, a vacuum in Eastern and Central Europe has emerged. Moscow has been quick to re-establish its position in an area of historical geopolitical significance to its own well-being. It has used its position as an energy supplier and its military power to undo the Western backed post-Cold War reforms in countries like Georgia and Ukraine since the early 2000s. Russia is also attempting to ‘divide and rule’ Europeans through the pursuit of new partnerships with countries like Germany, France and Italy.

2.) Germany has sought to create for itself through diplomacy what it has failed to do again and again militarily: a pan-European penumbra where it forms the political, economic and cultural heart. With the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, Germany is finally surrounded by friendly, wealthy and increasingly dependent states, to which it can export its manufactured goods. Key to Berlin’s design is the co-opting of its vast eastern neighbour – Russia – into the German continental enterprise. Germany has sought to appease Russia by agreeing to block, albeit tacitly, the expansion of the European Union, and particularly the Atlantic Alliance, into regions where Russia once ruled, while simultaneously building up closer and closer economic and commercial relations.

3.) France – eager to keep up with Germany and freer of the constraints imposed in the past by American power – has sought to deepen its own relations with Russia. Paris has proclaimed 2010 the ‘Year of Russia’ in France and has sought deeper economic relationships with Russian energy corporations in a bid to keep up with its German counterparts. Equally, and critically, France has agreed to sell Russia advanced helicopter carriers (the Mistral class), which will greatly enhance Russian power in the maritime regions of the European Neighbourhood. This will inevitably undermine European influence in this zone, as well as those domestic forces fighting for democracy.

4.) The United Kingdom, once Europe’s leading power, has grown geostrategically lazy and complacent. This is born out of two misunderstandings: firstly, that a permanent European geopolitical settlement has been established; and secondly, that Britain’s most important relationship will always be with the United States. British leaders have placed all their eggs in a single basket, but this basket is close to breaking point. Indeed, their attachment to the Atlantic Alliance has led to the very things they have sought for so long to prevent: a nearly-helpless and de-militarised Europe that can add little of value to overseas NATO operations in places like Afghanistan.

In response to these developments, only one power has the means to keep the European train on the rails: the United Kingdom. Britain’s island geography means that it is Europe’s natural offshore balancer, the final arbiter of European affairs. In the aftermath of World War II, London had two objectives in order to maintain this role: keep Germany down and keep Russia out. This required an unbreakable alliance with the United States and France so that a formidable amalgamation of American, British and French power could be fused together to empower other democratically-minded states to uphold a favourable balance of power in the heart of Europe.

However, with the decline of American power, Britain will have to overcome its Atlanticist ‘default setting’. London must become more aggressive again: it must find a new means to maintain a balance of power within Europe that is favourable to Britain’s geopolitical position and national interests. There is only one way to do this: refashion the European Union under a common military policy and a reformed political architecture. The new British government must re-establish Britain’s power in mainland Europe: London needs to provide the vision and political will necessary to keep Europe orderly and united.

A reformed, British-led, European Union, with its own foreign and military policies, would bring Germany firmly back into the Atlantic system and coax France away from Russia. And in the face of new, large and unpredictable powers, it would empower the European Union to help maintain the wider liberal maritime trade system on which Europeans and Americans both depend for their prosperity and well-being.

• This commentary is a shortened version of our article, entitled ‘The return of European geopolitics: All roads lead through London’, which was published in the July edition of RUSI Journal. The above shortened version was published yesterday by Global Europe.

• Credit to Paul K for use of the comical map of European geopolitics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From a European perspective, the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December was not only disappointing – it was really a wake-up call. Or at least it should be. While all the United Nations were gathered around the table, an agreement was secretly negotiated between the United States, China, Brazil, India and South Africa. While the European Union was for once showing some signs of leadership, it was not even invited to negotiate the final agreement.

What happened? The answer is simple: Copenhagen was a preview of the new world order. The more Europeans were speaking, the less they were listened to. And for good reason. The language spoken in Copenhagen was one of realpolitik and geopolitics – to be pronounced with an American, Chinese or Indian accent.

The fundamental interest of the Copenhagen circus was precisely what it revealed from the new emerging world order: rising importance of new global actors such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC); balanced by the corresponding decline of the West, according to the laws of power relativity; and marked by a growing interdependence between global actors at the economic and political levels as well as at the security level, even existential level when it comes to climate change.

Yet despite the well-documented threat posed by climate change, heads of state could not reach an agreement in Copenhagen. To explain this apparent anomaly, one needs to examine the world as a doctor would examine a patient. Is it serious doctor?

The world is suffering from what could be called the ‘Copenhagen Syndrome’, characterised by six distinct symptoms:

First symptom: While problems and challenges have globalised, responses (economic, social and political) often remain too national, or even nationalised, i.e. exploited by states.

Second symptom: The world is dominated by the United States and China. The final agreement in Copenhagen was written by the United States and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), but even within this select club it seems that the game was really played between Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao.

If China and America (some say Chimerica) dominate the world, they certainly do not rule it together. In fact, a formal alliance between the American superpower and China is unlikely, due to profound tensions between the two as illustrated again recently with Google, Taiwan or the Dalaï-Lama. However, it is also clear that few problems can be solved today without the assent of those two giants that form a G2 de facto, without wanting or desiring it.

Third symptom: Emerging powers are increasingly looking to have their say on the international stage and – or because – they are increasingly able to. At the last day in Copenhagen, projectors and microphones were turned towards the representatives of BASIC countries, not towards those of the European Union.

Fourth symptom: Our urgency is not always their urgency. The world after Copenhagen does not revolve around European or even Western priorities anymore. The setting of the international agenda is the result of power games between different poles of the multipolar order. Europeans still need to learn the rules of the game.

Fifth symptom: The developing world is fragmented. Copenhagen highlighted as rarely before the tensions that rip developing countries apart, when for instance the representative of Tuvalu fiercely opposed those of China and India, or when South Africa dissociated itself from the common African position in the last day.

It is more and more difficult to classify emerging powers given that they seem to fall somewhere between the developed world and the third world. And they find this position increasingly uncomfortable. It is ever more complicated for them to pretend being leaders of the developing world whereas they are every day less members of that developing world and that consequently their interests diverge more and more.

Sixth symptom: The European Union is marginalised on the international stage. The climate file was a rare case where Brussels could offer some elements of global leadership and could reach a common position, despite some detrimental interferences resulting from gesticulations of Member State leaders in search of media and political recognition. And yet, in Copenhagen, the European voice was hardly heard.

So if these are the symptoms, what is the diagnosis? In short, the Copenhagen conference illustrated some of the principal characteristics of the emerging global order. The structuring elements of the international system, i.e. multipolarity and interdependence, are not entirely new but are rather the result of a longer process.

The reshaping of the global order started essentially with the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, this new emerging order had been in incubation for years. Today, it has reached maturity: this is the Copenhagen Syndrome. And Europeans better get used to it – and redefine their policies accordingly, in recognition of the European interest.

• Credit to Elgaar on Wikipedia for the main image.

In his recent speech at the College of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, likened the European Union to a convoy of twenty-seven ships, each flying both the Member State and the European flag. If the image is apt, some Member States’ ship seems to be a submarine though, for it is not always evident that all Member States are part of the European convoy. Even a submarine is useful however, provided that it does not go off on its own initiative, but acts in co-ordination with the rest of the fleet, co-ordination to be provided by the Admiral – or President.

That, as Mr. Van Rompuy rightly emphasised, requires a common strategic vision. He simultaneously stressed the role of the European Council in generating this strategy. Again, he probably is right that in the intergovernmental arena which the Common Foreign and Security Policy still is only the Heads of State and Government can create the political drive that is required to force the Foreign and Defence Ministers of the twenty-seven into – joint – action. It was the European Council that adopted the first European Security Strategy (ESS) in 2003; it should now be the European Council that, with the input of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, completes the ESS by defining more concrete objectives in the priority areas that are key to Europeans’ position in the world. The resulting “sub-strategies” will be the mandate for the Foreign Affairs Council, chaired by the High Representative.

Mr. Van Rompuy himself already mentioned one key area: to review and strengthen our relationship with key partners – the United States, Canada, Japan and the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). As the President stated, the European Union needs more than conviction to win them over to its proposals; it needs to reflect what it can do together with them. The European Union has so-called strategic partnerships with all of these, but they are often void of content and lacking in coordination. It is never quite clear who on the European Union side is driving these partnerships. A European Council strategy to guide a really strategic use of the partnerships would therefore be more than welcome.

The European Union could identify shared interests with each strategic partner, in order to establish in a number of priority policy areas (climate, energy, non-proliferation…) effective practical cooperation with those partners that share European objectives in that specific domain. Overlapping clusters will emerge, with the European Union co-operating with certain strategic partners on one issue, and with partly the same, partly others on another issue. Gradually, these forms of co-operation can be strengthened, institutionalised and linked up to the permanent multilateral institutions, notably the United Nations. Such a pragmatic approach of coalition-building and co-operation, on very specific issues to start with, can expand into broader areas, including with regard to values. If e.g. it is unlikely that we will see China at the forefront of democracy promotion, it has an economic interest in promoting the rule of law, if only to ensure that the mining concessions that it acquires are not simultaneously offered to someone else. Through cooperation on shared objectives, the European Union can gradually and consensually convince the other global actors of the validity of our policies and values.

Other areas as well demand a more strategic view from the European Council. What is the desired end-state of the Neighbourhood Policy? Can only democracy create a consensual value-based community and thus safeguard our interests, or will democratisation create such upheaval that our interests would be damaged? Only when our interests and red lines are clear can a true strategic partnership with Russia be pursued. What is the future of enlargement? A successful instrument so far, further enlargement is determining for relations with Russia and for the geopolitical position of the European Union – and cannot proceed therefore without strategic debate.

Further, before making room for the BRICs, the European Union must sharpen its view about the desired multilateral architecture, reconciling reform with increased effectiveness of European representation. Last but not least, European strategic thinking about conflict resolution and crisis management remains weak. A Common Security and Defence Policy sub-strategy should define Europe’s ambition as a security actor. Regardless of whether in a specific case Europeans deploy under the flag of the Common Security and Defence Policy, the Atlantic Alliance or the United Nations: which types of operations must European forces be capable of, which priority regions and scenarios require intervention, and which is the scale of the effort to be devoted to these priorities?

Once the European Council defines strategic guidelines on all of these issues, coordinated fleet action will be possible.

• A version of this article was originally published in Global Europe on 4th March 2010.

One Vienna-based Spanish diplomat likes to describe European Union’s security and defence policy in action as a ‘jazz band, not a classical orchestra: musicians with different abilities and instruments participating in a permanent jam session, with a basic tune and a general idea of the kind of music they want to produce [. . .] a band which finds it hard to agree on a specific arrangement, but which can eventually sound harmonious – though not necessarily completely homogeneous.’ The band is well known among music connoisseurs, while the general public either ignores it or is bemused by the strange sound. Other – more successful – bands, on the other hand, praise some of their individual qualities, as well as the fact that they do play (some kind of) music, despite all the problems, whilst grinning at its lack of success. That is a fairly good description of the European Union’s overall performance as an actor on the global stage during the rather unstable decade we are about to leave behind: some tactical achievements, the valuable experience of learning on the job as a European Union twenty-seven, but with a pervading sense of a lack of direction.

The Treaty of Lisbon should put an end to the European cacophony or to put it another way: make the very richness of European pluralism in foreign policy an effective added-value element for the European Union as an actor – and not a permanent hindrance. The new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, should conduct the idiosyncratic music group. A chorus of the best diplomats throughout Europe should support her in the demanding task to produce some music: the European External Action Service. But the post-Lisbon reality is different: the Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council as well as the Member States haggle over personnel and finances, trying to get hold of that future backbone of European foreign policy. The only ray of hope is the role of the European Parliament. It has used the current power vacuum in Brussels and seized its way into the realm of foreign and security policy, not formally and through legal novelties, but by adeptly using its budget powers as well as the expertise of the parliamentarians. In fact, this revamped Parliament carries with it the potential to energise the strategic culture among Europeans, and, not less, building a strong democratic legitimacy to the European Union’s developing security policy.

Accordingly, the European Union is (again) dealing with inner-European issues – the self-centred approach, we all complained about over the last years. The problem is only, that the world moves on, even if the European Union is not yet ready to face that. Transatlantic relations serve as a vivid example: Barack Obama skipped the European-American summit to be held by the Spanish presidency in Madrid in May 2010. It became known that the president regarded this meeting with twenty-seven heads of states and governments (plus the representatives of the European Union) as boring and non-productive. From a certain point of view, this could be taken as a snub. However, it may be just seen as a wake-up call. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reaffirmed the message just a few days ago , and emphasising the great expectations the United States pins on the new so-called Common Security and Defence Policy. She offered the European Union direct partnership with the United States in security-related issues – something that until now has been the exclusive realm of the Atlantic Alliance. Probably even this call will trail off unheard and unanswered, because the European Union still does not know exactly, who could be speaking for the Union: the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso? The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy? Or the High Representative? Apart from that, there is also no guidance at the European level, in terms of overall priorities and means to achieve them, apart from the brilliantly formulated but rather fuzzy European Security Strategy from 2003 (plus the Implementation Report of 2008).

This is not enough for a European Union, which is widely regarded as a global actor. Nor it is up to the responsibilities Europe as a whole has towards the international system; as the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, put it in Munich, both the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance are seen by the international community as providers of security. How can the European Union contribute through its civilian and military capabilities to maintain peace and security in an increasingly unstable environment – and thus make Europeans safer?

Yet there still is a huge strategic vacuum in the Common Security and Defence Policy: there is no ‘Grand Strategy’ and there is not even any operationalisation of the Security Strategy. Nonetheless the European Union has already conducted more than twenty missions worldwide. We therefore lack an ambitious but realistic policy orientation for the European Union as a global actor; we have not yet undertaken a Strategic Defence Review or – to use the continental term – a White Paper on Security and Defence. Such a White Paper should lay down our ambitions as a relevant power in security policy as well as a road map on how to achieve these ambitions:

1. A European White Paper should first contain clearer messages on why and how to intervene abroad – a sort of common European lines on interventions, combining tactics with strategy – as well as on the possible and necessary balance of civil and military means.
2. The White Paper should clarify the Post-Lisbon institutions and their interactions, to enhance coherence of the different policies of external action (from enlargement, to the neighbourhood policy, to security and defence policy); it should also pave the way for global visibility of the new High Representative, as the face and telephone number of global Europe.
3. There should be strategic guidelines for European partnerships with main global powers, like the United States, Russia, China, India, as well as NATO, and so on. These partnerships need to serve European norms and interests.
4. The White Paper should clearly spell out the necessary means a global Europe will need. Until now, there are many different frameworks and headline goals, without explaining the purpose of the capability building process.
5. The European defence and technology industrial base is a precondition for an efficient use of means especially in the military field. Therefore the White Paper needs to lay down the consequences of a Common Security and Defence Policy for the national defence industries.

Catherine Ashton, the new ‘conductor’ of European foreign and security policy, has quite a hard task. The European Union’s difficult worldwide challenges, the constant disunity of the Member States, as well as the huge footsteps of Javier Solana she is following, are demanding beyond description. By initiating a European process towards a Security and Defence White Paper, she could provide a consistent policy orientation and thus build on the rather successful achievements on the nearly eleven years of European Security and Defence Policy. This policy orientation could be used as a ‘sheet of music’ for her Jazz band. She will probably never transform it into a chamber orchestra, but maybe they would produce eventually one or two smash hits per year. And this will be in the interest of Europe as a whole, although some governments are slow to grasp the realities of the modern world, and try to get with their own music into the chart list.

Other than as a naval station during the first half of the twentieth century, the Falkland Islands were largely unknown before the War of 1982. Wet and windswept, and without any native population, the Islands were discovered by Europeans in the sixteenth century. They were then claimed and ruled by France, Spain, Argentina and the United Kingdom. But that is all history; what matters now is that they have been British since 1833, bar for a few sad weeks in 1982 when the Argentine junta decided to invade them.

London sent a naval squadron to eject the occupying force, which resulted in a swift and decisive British victory. Since then, the Islands’ prosperity has increased substantially – standards of living are now akin to those in Southern England. Whereas before their mainstay was sheep farming, the Falklands have today become a large centre for pastoral farming, fishing and tourism. Port Stanley, the Islands’ capital, has doubled in size since 1982 to include almost every modern urban facility bar a university, and receives tens of thousands of tourists each year from passing cruise liners. London has also bolstered the Islands’ defences considerably: they now sustain a vast military station, including an aerodrome (RAF Mount Pleasant) and a naval facility (Mare Harbour). Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons and Royal Navy gunboats are on constant patrol to protect the Islands’ sovereignty.

Buenos Aires has made sporadic claims on the Islands, normally coterminous with periods of economic or political difficulty in Argentina. London has normally just rebuffed or ignored the Argentine behaviour. Recently, however, a British oil company was granted permission to begin surveying a basin to the north of the Islands, to much Argentine bluster. Twelve years ago, in 1998, Shell also conducted a number of geological surveys in the area to see whether there was oil under the seabed. The findings were inconclusive, however, but oil was thought to exist. With the price of oil at an all-time-low in 1998, it was not deemed commercially viable to begin further attempts at extraction.

Yet British eyes are looking south again, especially now that oil costs over €50 per barrel; that reserves in the North Sea are declining; and that advances in undersea mining have occurred. It has been estimated, albeit roughly, that there could be as much as sixty billion barrels of oil under and around the Falkland Islands, meaning they could become the second largest known oil field on the planet. Substantial gas fields could exist too. Argentina, currently under the unpopular President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is obviously anxious to claim the prize, and has been stepping up pressure on the British to surrender their sovereignty over the Falklands once and for all.

The Argentines have rallied the South American nations to their side, including Chile and Brazil. Even Venezuela’s crazy Hugo Chavez tried to get in on the act. Never missing an opportunity to spout some anti-imperialist claptrap, he denounced the British in one of his amusing and long-winded television broadcasts. But such capers aside, the Argentines have sought to undermine Washington’s support for Britain by threatening to work with other South American countries to form a new regional organisation that deliberately excludes the United States and Canada. This would not suit American interests and Washington has tried to keep its distance, describing the issue as a bilateral problem between Buenos Aires and London exclusively. Perhaps in an attempt to douse Argentine anger, Hillary Clinton, the American foreign secretary, even implied that British sovereignty was not necessarily absolute – a move the British did not appreciate.

A MAP SHOWING THE GEOSTRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Here comes the crunch: how and why does this all matter to the European Union? Well, apart from the fact that the Falkland Islands are populated by British – and therefore European – citizens, whose right to self-determination must be resolutely upheld, British sovereignty is important for three reasons:

1. Any energy reserves or other natural resources found in the South Atlantic could almost certainly be shipped back to the European Union, reducing our collective dependence on unruly or unstable foreign suppliers (e.g. Russia and the Middle East). Given that North Sea reserves, which were around fifty billion barrels, have powered-up much of the European economy for nearly four decades, the possible sixty billion barrels under the Falklands could keep Europeans going for just as long – and this fact becomes even more important should conflicts break out over key minerals in the future.
2. The Falklands are geostrategically significant due to their particular location. Just five hundred kilometres from the Strait of Magellan and Drake’s Passage, they give their owner total command over the lower part of the South Atlantic (see map, above). Other than the Panama Canal, these two ‘strategic chokepoints’ are the only direct links between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
3. And crucially, given that parts of the Antarctic continent could eventually be uncovered or made more habitable with the onset and acceleration of climate change – revealing potentially enormous mineral wealth – British possession of the Falkland Islands makes any future European territorial claim over parts of the southern hemisphere more likely and legitimate. Equally, the Islands are actually quite large (roughly half the size of Belgium), so could support the infrastructure necessary to support a connexion with any potential European resource extraction facilities in the Antarctic.

So those who dismiss the Falkland Islands as an anachronism are mistaken. The Islands’ geopolitical significance to our economy – the European Union’s economy – could only just be about to begin. No European Union Member State should do anything to harm the British claim; and Argentina should be told politely but firmly by Europeans to mind its own business.

In a recent paper published with the European Union Institute for Security Studies, I looked into the relationship between politics and the evolution of the European Union’s military planning and conduct capability. The questions surrounding the Union’s capability for the planning and conduct of European military operations have been some of the most controversial issues throughout the development of European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

In the context of this debate the Union’s most influential Member States have projected their views over the heart and soul of CSDP, namely how autonomous the European Union should be in relation to NATO (a debate which has pitched ‘Europeanists’ against ‘Atlanticists’) or what is the desired balance between ‘civilian power Europe’ and ‘defence Europe’ (what has pitched ‘introverts’ against ‘extroverts’). The so-called Atlanticist versus Europeanist cleavage and the Extrovert versus introvert one often intermesh with each other. In the words of a former representative to the European Union Military Committee:

Some countries favour the concept of civilian ESDP, including the proliferation of civilian missions and the notion of “Civ/Mil” planning, to cripple through the back door the Union’s military instrument.

In spite of France’s perseverance, the ‘awkward alignment’ between the United Kingdom and Germany (two countries who are found on the opposite ends of the so-called ‘extrovert versus introvert continuum’) is particularly responsible for the lack of a permanent operational planning capability in Brussels. Although using different means (opposition by the former, ambiguity and inaction by the latter) and driven by different motives (‘Atlanticism’ in the case of the former, ‘civilian power Europe’ in the case of the latter), the behaviour of these two countries has been key in confounding the creation of the permanent military strategic level of command that Paris has pursued so eagerly.

Both London and Berlin champion the notion of Civ/Mil integration at the military strategic level (the so-called Civ-Mil Operational Headquarters (OHQ)). Whereas London perceives the idea of a Civ/Mil OHQ as a means of drowning the Union’s strategic potential in ‘civilian waters’, Berlin supports the notion of Civ/Mil integration at the military-strategic level out of strategic cultural conviction.

The lack of a permanent capability for the operational planning and conduct of CSDP military operations poses three important problems:

1. It hampers flexibility in the Union’s planning process, as politico-strategic deliberations over potential CSDP missions lack the crucial operational expertise necessary to address crucial political questions, such as how many troops are needed and for how long or how much the mission will cost.
2. The lack of an operational planning capability denies the Union the capacity to develop (advance) contingency planning products, that are so crucial in situations where rapid reaction is required.
3. The lack of a permanent command and control infrastructure has a negative impact upon the quality and security of the European Union’s military communication and information systems and hampers the kind of overall situational awareness offered by a central command, so vital for a Union that aims to think more strategically (as argued in the 2008 report on the implementation of the European Security Strategy).

An official from the Council of the European Union’s General Secretariat put the argument succinctly:

When you plan something from Brussels at the strategic level, there are three fundamental things that Member States would really like to know: how many troops, how much money and how long? We are in no position to answer any of those three questions satisfactorily. In order to do that you need an OHQ that is theatre-acquainted. Since we don’t have it, we try and plan things from a strategic level, but it is very unprofessional and unreliable. Everybody will tell you that politico-strategic planning cannot be done without an OHQ. It is a matter of politics; as simple as that.