Many analysts and media commentators have criticised the decision. They point to the F35B’s reduced performance and the fact that without catapults and arrester wires, the new British carriers will not be able to launch proper maritime surveillance aircraft. However, given the resources and time frame available, I think the choice was sound; indeed, the present government should have never detracted from the previous government’s decision. With a combat radius of just under 300 kilometres less than the F35C and a payload of just over 1,000 kilograms lighter, he F35B is indeed an inferior combat jet, although the differences are not that dramatic, particularly when thinking about the kind of foes the aircraft are likely to meet.

At over 830 kilometres, the F35B still has a long combat radius – better than the old Harrier ‘jump-jet’ – and if launched from a British aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, Black Sea or South Atlantic, could penetrate deep into North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus or Argentina (or almost anywhere else London decides to attack).

However, while the F35B has a reduced range and a smaller payload, it has a number of advantages:

1. It can utilise temporary land bases in a way that its larger cousin the F35C cannot, which may be important in the future should the British want to penetrate deep into Central Africa or Central Asia. A British carrier could – theoretically – act as a mothership and forwardly deploy the F35Bs to an operating station deep inland, from which they could mount punitive strikes against an enemy;
2. Should supercarriers be rendered vulnerable by the next generation of high speed anti-ship cruise or ballistic missiles, the government could acquire a group of smaller vessels to spread the precious and expensive aircraft out more carefully, making it harder for an enemy to hit them in one go – only the F35B could take off from such small vessels;
3. The F35B could operate from a new generation of British helicopter carriers, when the government decides to replace HMS Ocean. This would allow the tailoring of smaller air packages for operations like Operation Palliser during 2000 in Sierra Leone, where a supercarrier would be too large a vessel, and which may – in any case – be needed elsewhere;
4. The F35B will become available sooner than the F35C. The Royal Navy could have an operational aircraft carrier by 2018 rather than 2020 or even the mid-2020s, should the F35C suffer more technical setbacks;
5. Most critically of all, the purchase of the F35B will allow the Royal Navy to acquire two supercarriers, rather than one. While the government has still to decide – in the 2015 Strategic Defence Review – to actually bring the second carrier into service, the costs would be greatly reduced, to as little as £60 million a year. It is vitally important that the United Kingdom has access to at least one aircraft carrier at any one time: acquiring the F35B will allow the nation to do that.

So what has motivated this decision? Expense has, to some extent: the cost of retro-actively installing electromagnetic catapults and arrester wires into the design of the not-yet-built HMS Prince of Wales was rumoured to exceed £1 billion, almost a third of the vessel’s total cost. This seems very excessive; the cost for retro-fitting HMS Queen Elizabeth, already at an advanced stage of build, would have been even more prohibitive, even if the government had decided not to mothball the ship on completion.

What many analysts have overlooked is the Libya intervention last year. With the loony withdrawal of HMS Ark Royal a couple of months previously (and, it must be said, the previous government’s failure to acquire the supercarriers it decided to build in 1998, more quickly), the Royal Navy had no way of projecting airpower into Libya, above and beyond the firing-off of a few cruise missiles or use of Apache attack helicopters from HMS Ocean, which cannot function without the suppression of enemy air defences due to their vulnerability. The British were left reliant on France and Italy: the former for the Charles de Gaulle and the latter for air stations, from which to forwardly deploy Tornados and Eurofighter Typhoons. Britain could not press the Tripoli regime down in the way that it might have done had it had an aircraft carrier located off the coast, ready to launch round-the-clock air raids.

So, aside the cost, the government may have decided to acquire the F35B for two further reasons: firstly, because it will allow the Royal Navy to regain aircraft carriers more quickly than had they been provisioned with the F35C; and secondly, the F35B – which does not need either vessels to be converted – means that both aircraft carriers could be brought into the fleet, leaving the United Kingdom with a constant ability to propel a large combined maritime and air expeditionary force around the world at a time of its choosing. Whatever the case, the decision makes a mockery of the 2010 Strategic Defence Review, which should be reconsidered as quickly as possible.

Brussels’ officials are pessimistic about the upcoming talks, disillusioned with Tehran’s past games. Previous negotiations have followed a dead-end pattern of swopping uranium enrichment ultimatums, resulting in zero progress. Suspicious of its past over-ups, the Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment. Tehran says it has already reached a twenty percent enrichment threshold, which complies with international rules on civil nuclear power, but is the key to mastering the know-how for weapons-grade uranium.

If Iran acquired a nuclear weapons capability the consequences could be very grave. It would not only question the efficacy of the Nuclear-Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, it might also encourage other major powers in an already-turbulent region, such as Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to start weapons-grade nuclear programmes of their own. Worse, an actual Iranian nuclear weapon would probably lead to war. Israeli officials talk openly about pre-emptively bombing suspect plants in Iran, similar to strikes they carried out in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, since Tehran has previously said that it wanted to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, has said that loose talk of bombing Iran should be constrained. Using military force against Iran would be extremely risky. Most experts agree that airstrikes would only delay Iran’s programme and shore up domestic support for the regime. Israeli bombings could unleash a backlash against the West from Tehran-sponsored Hezbollah, Shiites in Iraq or sympathisers in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region. And military action in and around the straits of Hormuz would surely drive up the price of oil, choking off the fragile recovery in the global economy.

The diplomatic stalemate on how much uranium Iran can enrich (if any) will be very difficult to overcome. Last September Iranian President Ahmadinejad offered to halt production of uranium enrichment at twenty percent in return for reactor fuel to make medical isotopes. This was rejected outright by France and Israel. Their harsh reaction doesn’t come as a surprise, since the combination of a nuclear capability with a radical ideology is the heart of the problem.

If diplomacy is to resolve the Iranian impasse a new formula is needed. Instead of repeating the enrichment merry-go-round, the European Union’s negotiators should take a leaf out of Ronald Reagan’s proverb book. During negotiations with the Soviet Union on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, signed in 1987, President Reagan repeatedly told Moscow ‘trust but verify’. Similarly, Brussels’ negotiators should propose to Iran that both sides ‘freeze but recognise’.

This formula would require Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment at its current level, but recognise Israel’s existence – at least in an implicit way similar to Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Algeria. In return, the European Union would freeze its upcoming sanctions on Iranian oil (and Israelis would stop talking of military action) but recognise Iran’s right to enrich uranium up to the current level of twenty percent. ‘Freeze but recognise’ will not appeal to all negotiators, not least because Iran would keep its uranium enrichment capacity. And it could not work unless Iran accompanied freezing enrichment with the implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which includes random spot-checks by United Nations-mandated inspectors.

But this formula would give Iran the recognition it craves from the West, and could be a starting point for easing sanctions in return for constructive nuclear cooperation and a radical change in Tehran’s behaviour towards Israel. An Iranian recognition of the reality of Israel would help remove Tel Aviv’s rationale for military strikes (and encourage other recalcitrant governments in the region to re-consider their Israel policies). Such a breakthrough might even signal the start of a new more responsible relationship between the West and Iran, eventually discussing subjects of common interest such as energy and Afghanistan.

The time for such a change is ripe: recent parliamentary elections strengthened the hand of Ayatollah Khamenei and conservatives in Tehran at the expense of Ahmadinejad’s radicals. The pragmatism of business people is strongest amongst the conservative faction, and whilst not democratic-minded, they want better relations with the West for economic reasons. Western sanctions on Iranian oil supplies will start to bite from July, and over time may suffocate Iran’s economy – a prospect many conservatives find more frightening than military action.

There should be no illusions about how difficult negotiations with Iran will be in the coming months, and success is by no means certain. If a new formula can help avoid another war in the Middle East, save the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, and avoid a huge shock for the fragile global economy, then it is worth trying.

Daniel Keohane is Head of Strategic Affairs at FRIDE and Walter Posch is a Senior Associate at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik.

Last month, I referred to a British-French geostrategic axis spanning the southern maritime fringe of Western Eurasia and running from the Gulf of Guinea in the west, through the Mediterranean basin, to Somalia and the Arabian Sea in the east. Hegemony over this axis is critical to the security of Europe’s main trade and communication routes to the markets of South and East Asia or the energy and mineral potential of the Middle East, Gulf of Guinea and the South-western African coast. It is also the key to a balance of power favorable to European and Western interests in North Africa, West Africa, the Levant and the broader Middle East. The United States, European countries, the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union are, to different degrees, also involved in upholding stability in this Guinea-to-Somalia maritime stretch. Beyond the European Neighbourhood Policy and other political initiatives targeting the Mediterranean, the European Union has three ongoing Common Security and Defence Policy missions in the Horn of Africa and is currently planning a civilian mission in the Sahel – a largely ungoverned area that stretching from Mauritania in the west to Northern Chad in the East and gives strategic depth to North and West Africa, thereby acting as sort of backyard to Europe’s maritime environment. The Atlantic Alliance, for its part, remains both politically and operationally active in the Mediterranean and has also been engaged in the fight against piracy off Somalia.

So far, most of the threats to the stability of this geographic axis of priority appear to be non-structured and emanating from non-state actors. Piracy is an issue both in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, and terrorist groups and other criminal networks operate in West Africa (with Boko Haram having recently strengthened its position in southern Niger and Northern Nigeria), the horn of Africa Somalia (Al-Shabaab) and the Sahara-Sahel belt (Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb). There have been reports, often speculative, about interaction among the different terrorist and criminal networks (Boko Aram and Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Shabaab and Somali pirates, Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb and Sahelian drug-trafficking networks). And there is too interaction among state and non-state actors. Mali is believed to have tolerated the presence of Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb in its territory for some time and there exist important suspicions of Algerian connivance vis-à-vis terrorism in the Sahel. Colonel Gaddafi himself was well-known for his connections to terrorist and other criminal networks in the Sahel region, but also in the Horn of Africa. In regions where government is weak, non-state phenomena are part of the landscape and their interaction with patterns of state power politics is business as usual.

Without prejudicing the importance or immediacy of these factors, we might find that China, despite its efforts to put a business and ‘low politics’ spin on its global endeavours, could actually pose a more serious and strategic threat to European hegemony over the Guinea-to-Somalia maritime stretch. By now, Beijing’s increasing global reach and maritime projection are no secret to anyone. We have, over the last few years, heard much about China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and its improving position in the Indian Ocean. Less discussed – and perhaps more importantly for Europeans – is China’s improving position along Europe’s maritime axis of geographic priority.

China has in the last few years substantially increased its presence and improved its physical access to the Mediterranean. Beijing has seen the Euro-crisis as an opportunity to acquire strategic assets at attractive prices. Aside having singled out Greek, Portuguese and other downgraded government debt, Chinese companies have won bids to run the two main container terminals at Piraeus port outside Athens, expand the port of Naples or build a giant air terminal north of Rome for cargo arriving from China. The Chinese have also put their eyes in the building and running of the new terminal of Zaghreb airport, in the expansion of the Port of Ploce and a concession to manage the Port of Rijeka (in southern and Northern Croatia respectively). To this China’s long-standing political ties to Algeria must be added, along with its support of the Syrian regime in the Levant and its rapidly increasing presence in Libya over the last few years – halted by the 2011 War.

As it connects its Mediterranean and Indian Ocean access infrastructures, one should expect China to continue to improve its access to the Red Sea. For that, it can lean on existing ties and further its relationship with the relevant countries. China’s energy, arms dealings and political support of Sudan, a country sitting on the Red Sea’s ‘western’ basin, are well known. Beijing is also deepening its strategic ties with Saudi Arabia, a country that, beyond its role in the Gulf and broader Middle East, occupies much of the Red Sea’s ‘eastern’ basin. Saudi Arabia supplies some twenty percent of China’s oil consumption. Interestingly, Beijing and Riyadh signed a nuclear co-operation agreement in early 2012. Further north, Beijing has in the last decade worked on its relationship with Egypt, a critical country connecting the Red and Mediterranean seas. China should be expected to continue to work on this relationship under the new Egyptian regime. Besides having cultivated bilateral relationships, the Chinese have over the last few years sent seven small flotillas to the Red Sea basin, in a most useful logistical exercise that has served too to increase their area awareness.

Beyond the Indian Ocean to Red Sea to Mediterranean continuum, China has been quite active in the western half of Europe’s geographic axis of priority. Pulled by its mineral resources and potential, its presence in the Sahel is increasingly felt. Last year the Chinese gained a concession to exploit their first overseas uranium mine in Niger, a country where the French had until recently enjoyed a monopoly. China is the first exporter of iron ore from Mauritania, where Mimmetals is engaged in a number of projects, and is quite active in oil exploration in Chad – despite recent rows over pricing, which led to the closing of a joint Chinese-Chadian oil refinery. Also lured by its energy wealth, Beijing is increasingly active in the Gulf of Guinea. Over the last few years, it has expanded its ties with a number of West African countries, especially Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. Further south, Beijing enjoys strong ties with Angola (which supplies over fifteen percent of its oil) and signed in 2010 a comprehensive strategic partnership with South Africa.

All in all, its physical ownership of ports, airports, mining facilities and growing economic and political leverage amount to an important Chinese access infrastructure along Europe’s maritime axis of geographic priority. At this stage, whether China intends to just play by the (West’s) rules or use its improving access infrastructure to defy European hegemony over the Guinea-to-Somalia axis is really beside the point. Strategic thinking must go beyond intentions and focus on capabilities. New capabilities provide the breeding ground for new possibilities in the realm of intentions. Ultimately, all these specific access points and projects must be put in the broader context that gives them strategic meaning: China’s status as the world’s number one exporting nation; its possession of the second (soon to be first) largest merchant fleet in the world, after South Korea; its significant headway in the development of expeditionary naval capabilities; the United States’ geostrategic re-orientation towards the Indo-Pacific region; and the impending de-capitalisation of European navies.

The Group on Grand Strategy publishes the fifth in its series of Strategic Snapshots, entitled: ‘Syria: a responsibility to protect? The “just case” versus the “valid case”’. This snapshot assesses the current debates on the applicability and implementation of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect, where there is frequently a dividing line between those arguing that there is a ‘moral duty’ to intervene and protect and those warning about the ‘feasibility’ of an intervention. It argues that when deliberating and deciding on an external intervention, criteria of justness – protecting civilians from death and serious harm inflicted by their own government – and validity – feasibility in terms of internal conditions, external conditions, regional consequences and balance of interests – must be taken into account in equal shares, not least with regard to the current situation in Syria. It ends by calling on the European Union to provide greater political leadership and military power to ensure it can uphold an orderly and well-governed neighbourhood.

• Please click here to download the Strategic Snapshot

Joachim A. Koops is Director of the Global Governance Institute and Assistant Professor of Political Science, Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels.

On Monday, the Spanish think tank, the Alternatives Foundation, published – on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Defence – a report I authored last year on the strategic implications of the Atlantic Alliance’s New Strategic Concept for the European Union. The report introduces the role played by both the Atlantic Alliance and European integration since the end of the Second World War. It then conducts a genealogy of the key themes that animate the Atlantic Alliance’s New Strategic Concept, before asking whether the geopolitical changes underway in Asia might operate as a kind of ‘spanner in the works’. Finally, the report proposes a number of policy recommendations as to how the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union – especially the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy – might be better integrated, leading to a geopolitical division of labour between the United States and European Union in the twenty-first century, which will better contribute to keeping the West integrated and strong.

• Please click here to download the report

An indispensable (though not in itself sufficient) condition for any Atlantic Alliance capability project to work is that the United States contributes, with money, personnel, and equipment. Then the European allies can be convinced to put in their share.

For the United States, the point of the current Smart Defence initiative however is exactly the opposite: to convince the Europeans to solve the European capability problem, without American support. Why would Washington pay for, say, European air-to-air refuelling capacity of which it has an abundance already when its defence budget is undergoing a major cut? (even so ‘abundance’ remains an apt term to describe the United States’ budget when compared with the rest of the world). The aim is for Europeans to pay for a European capacity, not simply to ‘do more stuff together’, but to acquire their own enablers, thus allowing the United States’ capacity to be diverted elsewhere – that would be true burden-sharing. Therefore the prerequisite for the United States to safely shift their strategic focus from Europe’s neighbourhood to the Asia-Pacific region and redeploy their means accordingly, is European strategic autonomy, at least regionally.

Rather than an American threat, this strategic shift is a desire, which is partly dependent on Europe’s ability to defend itself. If Europe were seriously threatened, the United States would have no choice but to intervene because of its own vital interests. In that sense, America remains a European power. European capitals, all too well aware of this, ignore at their peril however that the United States might decide to make the point by withholding its military support for a crisis management operation of importance to Europeans without threatening vital interests – like Libya. Meanwhile, however, absent American money, European enthusiasm for Smart Defence began to ebb once concrete projects, and therefore budgets, had to be defined.

On the face of it, the United States is now more supportive than ever of European military co-operation. But old ways die hard and certain American attitudes continue in reality to undermine it.

Unlike the Cold War era, European allies no longer have the scale to generate significant new national capabilities, certainly not in the field of strategic enablers, hence the need for collective initiatives. Logically, a new collective level will have to be introduced into the Atlantic Alliance’s Defence Planning Process: instead of dealing only with individual allies, it will have to take into account collective targets and contributions by the European allies. The need for both European strategic autonomy and a collective European defence planning level: is not the evident conclusion that this level already exists – we call it the Common Security and Defence Policy?

Yet for the moment the United States appears reticent to put two and two together, for fear of losing the initiative and leadership over the process. The European autonomy which their new strategy requires cannot be achieved however without a platform for European co-ordination, for which the Atlantic Alliance is not now configured. How else can Europeans decide on capability priorities, which are a function of their interests and foreign policy priorities – which if and when they define them collectively they do so through the European Union?

In short, the natural American desire to steer everything through a twenty-eight strong Atlantic Alliance – because it allows Washington to steer the decisions of the Europeans – now stands in the way of the United States’ strategy.

That this comes as United States’ President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia is in full swing – and barely a month after the Pentagon’s 2012 Strategic Guidelines broadcasted a ‘rebalancing’ away from Europe – adds much strategic flare to the whole British-French enterprise. The recently announced withdrawal of two United States Army combat brigades from Europe, the reluctance to take the political lead on Libya and emphasis on caution vis-à-vis Syria and Iran all turn around the same message: that, as the Indo-Pacific area demands greater attention, Washington must by all means avoid getting bogged down in the western half of Eurasia (namely European peninsula and the broader Middle East). With the United States having one foot outside the door and the European neighbourhood up in flames, the British and French see an opening. The strengthening British-French alliance may represent the only serious alternative to fill the void left by America’s waning presence in and around Europe, with Libya acting as a sort of Suez crisis in reverse. Having said this, the United States will – to the extent that it can – strive to maintain its influence in the broader European neighbourhood.

As much as it is aware of the need to cut its losses, a continued American presence in Europe and the broader Middle East is critical to defending its basic security and economic interests in both zones. For that, the United States can lean on a well-established network of bilateral strategic partnerships: in Eastern and South-eastern Europe, Washington enjoys strong relations with Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. In the Northern Mediterranean it enjoys deep bonds with Italy and Spain, the latter hosting Rota, America’s most important naval station in Europe. In the southern rim, Morocco (which sees Washington as a counterbalance to France) and Egypt (a critical country that straddles the Levant, Northern Africa and the Red Sea) are key United States allies.  It the Levant, Washington is Israel’s key sponsor and remains Turkey’s most important ally.  Further afield, the Americans are strongly anchored in the Gulf and remain Saudi Arabia’s most important partner (a country that straddles the Arabian peninsula).

Far from disengaging from those networks, the United States has in recent years taken serious of steps aimed at cementing its ties to geostrategically critical countries in the broader European neighbourhood. Last year the White House vowed to set up a permanent air base in Poland, an announcement that followed its decision to identify Romania and Bulgaria as key links in the Atlantic Alliance’s missile defence umbrella. In late 2011, the United States signed a bilateral agreement with Spain to upgrade its facility in Rota, which will host four Arleigh Burke class destroyers and act as the focal point of the Atlantic Alliance’s missile umbrella in the west. In the Southern Mediterranean and Red Sea, Washington continues to be the key western link to Egypt, with which it enjoys a deep military-to-military relationship, and Saudi Arabia. Crucially, despite recent frictions over Ankara’s attitude towards Israel, the United States is currently reappraising its relationship with Turkey. Ankara can act as a check on Russia’s push in the Caucasus and Black Sea but also as a counter-balance to Iran in the broader Middle East, particularly important in the context of Washington’s withdrawal from Iraq and the current revolts in Syria. In other words, the Americans are not quite leaving the southern European neighbourhood. They are just shifting their strategic posture, moving away from a hands-on, direct engagement approach to a more indirect, traditional offshore balancing role – articulated around the phrase ‘leading from behind’.

The strengthening British-French alliance must not therefore be seen so much as a new order but as a repackaging of an old one. Both France and the United Kingdom have, since the end of the Second World War, been the key elements of the western, maritime-based order in Europe. London was the Atlantic Alliance’s European anchor and Paris the pivotal player in the European Union – the two institutional frameworks around which the post-war European order gravitated. This order was woven together by a strong military and diplomatic commitment to Western Europe on the part of the United States. In this regard, the neo-West will still rest on the same tenets (maritime power), principles (free trade and constitutional government in the broader European neighbourhood) and footholds: Britain and France as the key pivotal powers and the United States as the strategic enforcer in the rear. But the neo-West will present notable differences: Washington will retreat into a more indirect approach; Britain and France will gain in terms of direct influence; and bilateralism and coalitions of the willing shall likely play a more important role in European politics – with the European Union and Atlantic Alliance retreating into a more supporting role.

Map of the British-French strategic axis

As the spearheads of the European component of the neo-West, Britain and France (occasionally supported by the United States) will strive to ensure the stability of the southern maritime fringe of western Eurasia. As the map above shows, this runs from the Gulf of Guinea in the east, through the Mediterranean basin, to Somalia and Arabian Sea in the east. This will require a strong British-French military presence in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; a ring of friendly countries in North Africa; a favourable balance of power in the Levant and a strong presence in the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Sea. The geographic proximity of these regions makes them critical to Europe’s security and economic prosperity. Not only do they provide a source of terrorism, disorderly migration and criminal activities, for they are also vital to Europe’s energy supply and offer considerable economic potential for Europeans (in terms of labour and new markets). Not least, this Guinea-to-Somalia strategic axis is critical to the security of the European Union’s maritime communication lines. Although further away from Europe and its communication routes and not a maritime scenario as such, the Sahara-Sahel belt is also central to the stability of western Eurasia’s maritime fringe. Running from Mauritania and Senegal on Africa’s Atlantic seaboard to Sudan and the Red Sea, through Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Chad, the Sahel is Europe’s geopolitical southern border. Apart from providing a source of raw materials and energy resources, it gives strategic depth to three regions critical to European security: North Africa, West Africa and the broader Red Sea trough.

The British-French led intervention in Libya – which leant on critical political and military back up from the United States – is a good example of the neo-West taking shape. By reinforcing the British-French presence in North Africa, the liberation of Libya has contributed to the geopolitical encirclement of Egypt by adding to western partnerships and bases in Israel, Jordan and Djibouti. Crucially, a western-friendly Libya may also advance the European Union’s military and political activity (naval, military training, civilian crisis management and development aid) in Somalia, Uganda, Chad, Congo and the Central African Republic; entrench the Atlantic Alliance’s naval presence in the area; and bolster America’s engagement in Central and Eastern Africa. This will serve to tighten the British-French grip on the Horn of Africa region, assailed by instability and the spectrum of penetration by external powers (notably China).

And if the United States’s centrality in the balance of power in the Levant; its ties to Egypt’s military leadership; and its influence over Saudi Arabia (which occupies the northern rim of the Red Sea) are added to this matrix, the neo-West clearly holds a favourable strategic position in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, crucial to the European maritime communication lines from the Middle East and Asia. This geopolitical foothold could be further entrenched if the British and French manage to expand their bilateral alliance to the level of the European Union, thereby constituting an even larger amalgamation of power – although that depends entirely on the willingness of their European partners to provide more resources and the political will necessary to take on a more serious role. For the time being, though, the three key remaining questions for London-Paris and Washington are: the evolution of Yemen, of Egypt and of the balance of power in the Levant. It is in this latter regard that the evolution of Syria – characterised by mounting tensions – Iraq (particularly in the context of America’s impending withdrawal) and Iran are crucial and will move to the top of the neo-West’s list of priorities over the coming months.

According to many analysts, Permanent Structured Co-operation (PESCO) – the most important novelty of the Treaty of Lisbon in the field of military affairs – has not yet been created, because the European Union’s Member States have been unable to agree on the details. Self-evidently, PESCO has therefore failed to develop through the framework of the European Union. But it has begun to emerge elsewhere, albeit in a bilateral form: it is called the British-French security treaties.

The original idea for PESCO was a ‘military Eurozone’, to be constituted by a core group of European states possessing the most advanced armed forces and spending proportionately the most on defence. During the early 2000s, even United Kingdom and France supported this policy. They hoped that this initiative could bring more capabilities to the table by establishing higher standards for participation in the mechanism, which could have pressed other Member States to develop their armed forces more intensively. However, it seems that London and Paris have become less interested in the creation of deeper military co-operation through the European Union’s framework over the past five years, and have done it instead bilaterally.

Over the years, PESCOS’s exclusiveness has eroded and many disagreements have emerged concerning its implementation. Many argued that the original interpretation of a ‘military Eurozone’ would be divisive and would lead to different speeds of modernisation in Europe in the field of military policy. Nevertheless, other issues – like the role of European Defence Agency, the criteria of participation in the mechanism, and whether PESCO should be one overarching framework or several ‘issue PESCOs’ – were also discussed in many expert and high level meetings during 2010, but these negotiations could not foster a consensus regarding the implementation of PESCO.

In the meantime, London and Paris signed the British-French security treaties in November 2010 and began to implement many of the military capability development issues contained in PESCO’s Protocol in the Treaty of Lisbon on a bilateral basis, such as the creation of multinational forces; harmonisation of their military needs by pooling and specialising capabilities; by co-operation on training and logistics; enhancing their forces’ interoperability and deployability, and so on. London and Paris also agreed on the development of a new Combined Joint Expeditionary Force and the sharing of aircraft carriers. They also intend to co-operate on training and support of A400M military transport aircraft; joint development of technologies regarding submarine systems; aligning plans in maritime mine counter-measures to enhance interoperability; military satellite communications and the possible French use of British spare capacities in the field of air-to-air refuelling. Furthermore, they agreed to work together on a new equipment programme of unmanned air systems, as well as a more efficient defence industry. All of these agreements fit fully to the concept of PESCO as envisaged by the Treaty of Lisbon except one major issue: the British-French co-operation does not use the European Union framework, including the European Defence Agency.

It goes without saying that British-French military co-operation is not the same as the wider co-operation foreseen in the Treaty of Lisbon – not least because it establishes the ‘military Eurozone’ outside the European Union. This disturbs many. For example, Remo Pertica, the chairman of the Italian Defence Manufacturers’ Association, recently said that ‘everyone is worried that the Anglo-French deal will lead to a two-tier Europe.’ In view of the fact that Britain and France account for roughly half of all European spending on military procurement and around three-quarters of all spending on military research and development, they clearly exist in a league of their own.

Because of their military power, Britain and France can easily determine the future of military capability development in the European continent. Unfortunately, this also means that the two countries will remain uninterested in the creation of a mechanism in the European Union like PESCO, because they are now in a position where they can easily preserve their autonomy and other actors will be forced to accommodate their requirements. Namely, a two-speed Europe is going to be institutionalised on the field of military affairs, where the British-French ‘Euro-core’ will take the lead, and others will join only if London and Paris want it.

However, this is not necessarily problematic, and could even be beneficial. Unconstrained by a gaggle of competing interests, London and Paris may be able to decide what needs to be done militarily more freely. In addition, they could also make speedier decisions about which future partners should be consulted (perhaps based on what those partners can bring to the table), including when and under which conditions such partners should join them. They have already shown that they are willing to do this. For instance, in early January 2012, the French Defence Minister, Gérard Longuet, said – regarding co-operation on unmanned aircraft – that ‘we’ll probably have an Anglo-French project which cannot avoid opening to other European partners.’

Accordingly, a ‘military Eurozone’ has been created by Britain and France, bypassing the European structures. If British-French military co-operation is successful, it would certainly become a positive example to other Europeans, which could boost other ‘islands of co-operation’ (such as between the Baltic-Nordic states and the countries of Central Europe), while accelerating European military collaboration elsewhere. Thus, in the long-term, the ‘British-French PESCO’ has the potential to become the catalyst of – and even the framework for – a wider and deeper level of European military co-operation.

Bence Németh works at the Defence Planning Department of the Hungarian Ministry of Defence. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Hungarian Ministry of Defence.

This week’s Atlantic Alliance defence ministerial started with a bang. On his way to Brussels, the United States’ Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, remarked off-the-cuff that the Atlantic Alliance would end its combat role in Afghanistan in 2013. This would represent a major turnaround of the alliance’s policy: the Lisbon Summit in 2010 had committed the Alliance to continuing combat operations until 2014. A week earlier, President Sarkozy had already announced a French pullback in 2013. This decision was taken after several French trainers died in an attack by a rogue Afghan soldier. Simultaneously, several media sources referred to a leaked Atlantic Alliance report providing a particularly gloomy picture of the state of the Afghan insurgency.

To many it seems that the Atlantic Alliance is going through a manic-depressive period. Less than a year after the alliance wrapped-up a reasonably effective air campaign aimed at dislodging the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, doom and gloom has descended once more over the political headquarters in Evere. The bleak prospects the Afghan campaign faces no doubt explain much of the atmospherics. Yet there may be more going on than what the recent daily headlines suggest. After all, the Afghanistan mission was always bound to result in something less than the precarious stability the alliance’s operations brought to the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, the announced end-date of 2014 left the alliance in an inherently vulnerable position. It would not seem that far-fetched to suggest that the suddenly announced withdrawal – and the creation of considerable ambiguity about what comes after – can also be read as an attempt to wrest the strategic initiative back and re-focus the alliance’s efforts elsewhere.

In many ways, the explicit end-date of 2014 was undesirable from an operational perspective. Above all, it provided the insurgency with the prospect they can realistically outlast Western forces and overthrow the Afghan government afterwards. The alliance’s planners therefore kept on insisting that transition to Afghan leadership would have to be ‘conditions-based’. Even at the strategic level, it is not clear how an end-date would help maintain public support if large amounts of blood and treasure continued being spilt for a purpose that had de facto been abandoned already.

The surprise decision to shake-up the transition timetable helps to pave the way to a much lighter but conceivably much longer footprint. By openly reconsidering agreed timetables, it effectively re-injects a factor of uncertainty in the planning of insurgents. In the run-up to the Chicago Summit, the debate on the nature of the Atlantic Alliance’s long-term partnership with the Afghans is set to intensify. The French Minister of Defence, for example, hinted at several questions being posed about the desirable size, funding and force structure of the Afghan National Army.

There is a growing awareness that the investment in Afghanistan needs to be sustainable for the long term and may therefore need to recalibration. At the same time, rumours about potential political accommodation of the insurgency continue to swirl. Accelerating the transition from a counterinsurgency posture to whatever may come after is therefore unlikely to significantly weaken the alliance’s operational prospects. The most important strategic effect, however, is the signal that the allies are keen on shifting their efforts elsewhere. In the case of the United States, the inclination to turn attention eastwards is well documented. Indeed, the strategic guidance to the Department of Defence released just a month ago emphasised the shift toward the Indo-Pacific zone.

Recent doctrinal development, such as the approval of the Joint Operational Access Concept, reinforce this signal. Combating Al Qaeda has not dropped of the United States’ radar screen, but the demise of Osama bin Laden has served to justify lowering its relative level of priority. Nearly three years after the White House tried coming to terms with the desirability of a counterinsurgency approach toward the Afghan conflict, the rationale for relying on intelligence-driven counterterrorism tactics seems to have been vindicated.

The European allies, in turn, are busy working their way through the lessons from the Libya campaign. Operation Unified Protector has once more underlined the extent to which the European dependency on American support has become deeply problematic. While France and the United Kingdom may have taken the lead in political terms, their inability to do so operationally has served as loud wake-up call. Thirteen years after the St. Malo summit, it turned out that there was no alternative to the Atlantic Alliance’s command chain for conducting a combined air operation. The heavy reliance on critical American enablers (e.g. intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition, air-air refuelling, and so on) and resupplies, furthermore, did not make for a pretty sight. At a time when military cuts are forcing European armed forces to make difficult choices, the message that European militaries have to invest in the future rather than conduct expensive operations has hit its target with high precision.

For the time being, the pressure on European armed forces is driven by budgetary constraints that have little to do with geopolitical circumstances. Yet if the Americans really follow-up on their declared intent to concentrate their resources elsewhere, it implies that, the Europeans may find themselves in a position where they need to take more responsibility for their own neighbourhood. This would prompt thinking about defence reform along different lines, i.e. not aimed at saving money but about designing an effective instrument for coping with tomorrow’s security environment. This debate can develop in many directions, but it has to start somewhere. Accelerating the Afghan campaign plan may just have provided such a starting point.

[Sometimes] I wish that European foreign policy officials would be a bit blunter about what the EU can do to leaders and countries it does not like.

There is a general impression that the EU would not hurt a fly. Instead, it might launch a strategic partnership with the fly, hold annual meetings with the little creature, and possibly fund a Brussels-based think-tank to produce a report entitled “Achieving a Sustainable EU-Fly Relationship by 2025”.

Too right! The European Union – and, shamefully, those writing about it – often create an impenetrable mishmash of jargon to try and hide Europeans’ military weaknesses and strategic inadequacies. We are often told that the European Union wields ‘soft power’, ‘normative power’, ‘civilian power’, or any plethora of similar types of (probably non-existant) ‘nice’ power. We are told that Brussels does not need military power because the world is now ‘post-modern’; or we are informed – often high-handedly – that the world is now more ‘complex’, meaning that we need different policies in order to deal with it. This is of course a quaint fantasy, which belongs to the immediate post-Cold War era when everyone thought the world was about to become more multilateral and harmonious. It does not belong to the big power multipolar age of the twenty-first century.

Anyway, Gowan locks on to a phrase used by one of the High Representative’s spokespersons, who declared last year that it was European policy to undertake the ‘economic asphyxia’ of the then pitiful regime of Laurent Gbagbo in Ivory Coast. Pointing out that the policy of ‘asphyxia’ was successful, Gowan says:

[A]nyone out there who is planning to mess with the EU should remember that they may suffer genuinely heavy penalties as a result. And European spokespersons should try using phrases like “economic asphyxia” a little more often.

I could not agree more – at least in principle. The trouble is that outside a few small regimes in Africa, few governments or actors would take any notice, for the simple reason that they do not respect – let alone fear – the European Union. Brussels is simply not credible as it lacks the ability to do serious damage to opponents. It can sometimes hurt them temporarily, with economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure, for example, but it cannot wreak serious and lasting devastation on them.

Because ultimately, all societies – let alone a partially-anarchic international system, in which the European Union is unfortunately located – are governed by brute force. Behind every constitution (written or unwritten), there are police constables with their batons. And behind every police service there are soldiers with their guns. Society may depend to an equal degree on the ability to generate consent – indeed, a society needs to motivate people with a powerful idea to survive and flourish – but it also depends on the ability of the leadership to deter would-be usurpers and aggressors with force. This is the logic of deterrence.

Indeed, the naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, once said: ‘Force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.’ In other words, military intervention is the policy of the weak; it is an admission of failure. Deterrence is the policy of the strong; it is the result of success, even if it cannot be readily seen. Take the 1982 Falklands War, for example: a few months before the Argentine invasion, London withdrew important maritime assets from the South Atlantic, which was interpreted by Buenos Aires as Britain being no longer serious about holding onto the islands. Had London sent a couple of the Royal Navy’s gunboats south in March 1982 on hearing the rumours of the coming Argentine aggression – as it had done during a previous scare in 1977 – hundreds of people may still have been alive today, and a bloody conflict might have been averted (contrarily, the brutal junta in Argentina may have lasted far longer than it otherwise did).

So to extrapolate: Brussels does not just need the ability to harangue flies; it must also be willing to swat them. And this means – even more importantly – that it must demonstrate its ability to swat them. That it to say, the European Union needs to show that it is able to deploy armed force, and in sufficient quantities, to deter foreign actors from doing things it does not want want them to do. To sum up: Brussels needs a big fly swat; it needs the ability to use the fly swat; and it needs to show (this is the key part) that it is prepared to use the fly swat. It can then negotiate with – or rather, dictate to – obstinate foreign regimes from a position of strength, which will mean they are more likely to listen to it, thereby reducing their ability to resist European pressure.

Image credit: Ceinturion.