WORLD VIEW: Given the imminent prospect of war against Iraq, there is an urgent need to reflect on developments in military policy and practice on the part of the United States, NATO and the European Union. Paul Gillespie (World View, November 23rd) offers such a reflection, and concludes by urging "a more coherent EU foreign and defence policy . . . driven by alternative assumptions, interests and values" to those of the US, write Frida Berrigan and Andy Storey.
That might indeed be a positive development, but we query whether the EU foreign and defence policy now emerging is likely to offer a meaningful alternative to the militarism of the US.
Apart from its expansion to include seven more states, the most significant recent NATO development has been the announcement of a "rapid reaction unit" that could be mustered quickly and sent to "hot spots" around the world. This unit is the brainchild of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said in September if NATO does not have a "force that is quick and agile . . . then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century."
How does NATO acquire such a force? By increasing military spending and purchasing US equipment. Joseph Fitchett, political correspondent of the International Herald Tribune, notes: "Although no one has said so officially, the force would probably be expected to buy, collectively, new 'NATO assets' . . . that the United States has wanted Europe to acquire." NATO is already dependent on the US armaments industry for the vast bulk of its military equipment.
The EU spends about $150 billion on the military each year. The US alone will spend upwards of $380 billion next year. Kent Kresa, the head of Northrop Grumman, the fifth-largest armaments contractor in the US, echoed concerns about NATO's relevance in October, warning that if European countries don't start spending more on the military, "they will become less relevant in the world . . . there will be atrophy." Atrophy here refers to that most dreaded prospect for arms dealers - a world where no one wants to buy their weapons.
The influence of the arms industry on US policy is incalculable: anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, with reference to the most powerful of the corporations concerned, appositely describes the Bush administration as "the Lockheed Martin presidency". But underlying this push to increase European military spending is the larger question of NATO's role, and that of the EU. When Rumsfeld floated the idea for a NATO rapid reaction unit the EU was already working to establish a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) of its own, in which Ireland is set to participate. Is Washington concerned that an EU military force represents a potential alternative to the US and NATO approach to international "security", and that the emergence of an independent European military capacity might challenge US hegemony?
If so, they should not be so worried. NATO and the EU's emergent military force are so closely linked that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. All EU countries that are also members of NATO, with the exception of France, send the same representatives to the EU Military Committee (co-ordinating body for the EU's RRF) as they do to the NATO Military Committee. During the crisis in Macedonia in 2001, the EU and NATO worked together hand in glove. Co-operation between NATO and the EU seems set to remain the order of the day - Rumsfeld has stated that "troops or equipment earmarked by European nations for the NATO rapid reaction unit could also be used for EU missions."
The question is then begged: is there a distinctive European approach to international security issues, as opposed to that of the US? It is instructive to examine the historical record here.
The EU unanimously endorsed the 1999 Kosovo-related bombing campaign by NATO, a campaign that only accelerated the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovar Albanians at the same time as it itself killed up to 2,000 civilians, and which prompted Amnesty International to accuse NATO of war crimes. The EU also unanimously endorsed the 2001 US assault on Afghanistan, again resulting in the loss of thousands of civilian lives. And, for all the fuss made about the German Chancellor's opposition to war on Iraq during his recent election campaign, Schröder is effectively lending support to current US war plans by relieving US troops of burdens elsewhere - Germany is to assume co-command of the international force in Afghanistan next year - and by offering Germany as a staging area for an invasion of Iraq.
When push comes to shove vis-à-vis military intervention in the outside world, the EU and US leaderships seem to have more that unites them than divides them.
THE emergence of a European military capacity does not, in itself, offer hope of a less militaristic and dangerous approach to international affairs. The lesson of the US "military-industrial complex" is that, once developed, an arms industry and a high-powered military machine feed off each other to drive conflict in pursuit of profit and institutional self-interest. That is not the route Europe needs to take. On the contrary, the last thing the world needs is further commercially-driven militarisation by either NATO or the EU.
Many European people, if not their leaders, recognise that. This is why Schröder had to at least appear to adopt an anti-war position during his campaign for re-election. During the Nice Treaty referendum campaigns in Ireland in 2001 and 2002, opposition to the militarisation of the EU emerged as a major concern on the part of the electorate. Last month over half a million marched in Florence in protest at plans for a war against Iraq and any European participation in it. And there is a substantial, if under-reported, anti-war movement in the US, also.
It is with these movements for peace - in Europe and in the US - that real hope lies, not in the false promise of a militarised Europe emerging as a counterweight to US power.
Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate with the World Policy Institute in New York. Andy Storey is a lecturer in development studies and a director of the advocacy group Action from Ireland (Afri).