Union armed and ready to replace the WEU

Date: 06/05/1999

The recent NATO summit effectively spelt the end of the Western European Union. Simon Taylor explains why

NEXT week's meeting of ministers from the 28 countries which belong to the Western European Union will be like a meeting of employees at a company which is about to be closed down.

All those round the table will studiously ignore the most important issue facing them: namely, that the institution under whose auspices they are meeting does not have a future.

The group's death warrant was effectively signed at last month's NATO summit in Washington. As Turkey dropped its opposition to an independent European defence and security capacity, the way was cleared to wind down the WEU and pass political control over future European military missions to the EU.

However, the sparse agenda for the two-day meeting of WEU foreign and defence ministers in the north German town of Bremen which begins next Monday (10 May) only underlines the lack of ambition for the putative EU security group.

WEU sources freely admit that the meeting will not be able to deal with the key issue of the organisation's future because that will be tackled by Union leaders at their summit in Cologne in June.

In addition, while next week's session will be dominated by discussions on the ongoing crisis in Kosovo, the WEU's minor role in the region - limited to an operation helping the Albanian police deal with the refugee crisis - further serves to underline how marginalised the organisation is.

“There is no discussion of the WEU doing more,” said one source, while stressing that the meeting would offer a valuable forum for its 28 member countries to discuss their strategy in Kosovo without the US breathing over their shoulders.

The debate about future European defence policy has taken on strangely theological tones - with an added ironic twist.

Moves to merge the WEU into the EU were long opposed by the UK when it was governed by a Conservative administration. Never a big fan of the Union's fledgling military wing, the UK was nevertheless happy to see it continue while it provided an outlet for any Franco-German plans which might undermine NATO's dominance as a military power.

Then, last year, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair indicated that he could live with merging the WEU into the EU as part of the UK's bid to create a proper independent European defence identity.

In fact, Blair was fairly agnostic about the fate of the WEU, preferring to concentrate on getting the best possible results from EU defence cooperation rather than worrying about how that was achieved. But ironically, now that the UK is finally on board, other EU countries have now started pushing for changes which would mean the creation of structures independent of the WEU.

” A lot of things are going to change. Always in the past we were only talking about the WEU using NATO assets. Now it seems there could be action without them,” says Ottfried Nassauer of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security.

As defence experts point out, the conclusions of the Washington summit refer to the EU as well as the WEU as a partner for NATO, providing a strong hint that - in the not too distant future - it will be the EU which runs European defence policy and not its low-profile shadow.

In addition, a German paper on how to move ahead with creating a common European security and defence policy which was presented to foreign ministers at their informal meeting in Reinhartshausen last month only mentioned the WEU twice - and one of those references was in a question about integrating it into the EU.

Not surprisingly, WEU sources insist that rumours of its imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. Instead, they see the organisation developing its responsibilities organically with a view to the EU taking over the running of a common European defence policy in the future.

The main argument for keeping the WEU alive before integrating it into the EU is that it has built up precious expertise as an interface between the EU and NATO. As the organisation's Secretary-General José Cutileiro stressed in a speech in March: “The WEU has built up the politico-military and military structures needed to launch an operation under European control.

The WEU today could not only handle a military operation where the US chose not to take part, but could handle a three-way operational partnership with the EU providing political leadership and NATO lending us the necessary assets and capabilities.”

As one source pointed out, useful work being done now by the WEU could form the basis for EU countries to define their own spending priorities.

One example of this is the code on consultations between NATO and the WEU which would ensure coordination between the two bodies' activities before military action began. The procedure has now been streamlined significantly and would therefore be easier for the EU to take over in the future.

Yet there are few arguments for keeping the WEU alive and many for laying it to rest.

By limiting the EU's security and defence role to humanitarian initiatives such as peacekeeping missions, known in the jargon as the Petersberg tasks, governments have gone a long way to pre-empting political opposition to merging the WEU into the EU from the neutrals - the non-NATO EU members Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland - which would otherwise have balked at the militarisation of the EU through the backdoor. These countries already happily take part in peacekeeping missions and so could be expected to opt in to EU-sponsored missions.

Only dealing with Petersberg tasks will also allow the EU to head off any objections from the US. While NATO will continue to be responsible for 'hard' security tasks such as the airstrikes in Kosovo, Union governments can take more responsibility for 'soft' jobs like policing Kosovo after the conflict. Besides, Blair would not have taken such a strong lead in moves to create an independent European defence capability if they would have antagonised the US.

There would, however, be one crucial advantage in sidelining the WEU: it would allow the EU to get round its commitment to rely on using NATO assets, something which the French and others see as giving the US a de facto veto over independent military action.

A WEU audit of European defence assets, due to be discussed in Bremen, highlights the well-known gaps in the EU military hardware, notably the lack of long range transporters and a military intelligence network.

As defence analysts point out, the military needs an extensive satellite monitoring network if it is to launch a major mission beyond the Union's borders.

The WEU only has one, in Torrejon in southern Spain.

To mount a credible campaign without using NATO assets - i.e. the US' extensive satellite network - EU countries would have to invest massively in their own facilities.

While this seems unlikely at a time when governments are trying to keep a tight rein on public spending, defence analysts say most of the money would have to be spent anyway on NATO equipment.

They point out that European members of NATO already spend nearly two thirds as much as the US on defence, but with about one tenth of the US' operational effectiveness (see table opposite).

According to a forthcoming study drawn up by the Centre for European Reform, only the UK and France come close to the 30&percent; of total defence expenditure the US spends on equipment and research and development.

Eliminating duplication between EU member states and pooling resources by, for example, agreeing to buy the European-produced Eurofighter instead of US jets could also generate substantial savings in the defence field.

Some defence sector specialists such as Pat Chilton at Manchester Metropolitan University also see promoting a European satellite network as an opportunity to boost the EU's research and development and industrial policies, and create new highly skilled jobs.

But many of these decisions are for the relatively far off future. In the meantime, the WEU ministerial meeting will be little more than a staging post on the road to the Union's new role as a credible security power.