By virtue of her long stint as German chancellor and her country’s political weight, Angela Merkel is the unacknowledged leader of Europe. Her canny political instincts usually hold her back from provocative remarks.
When, therefore, she says – as she did after the recent confrontational Nato summit and G7 meetings – that the European Union can no longer count on the US and Britain, traditionally two of its staunchest security partners, and “must in future take its destiny in its own hands”, she has to be taken seriously.
Merkel, fighting a general election in Germany, has tried to calm fears following her remarks and its inevitable interpretation as a historic rupture with the US and Britain.
She has insisted that she remained a strong Atlanticist despite her view that the allies were no longer “completely reliable”. Her spokesman has stressed that German-American relations remained a “firm pillar” of Germany’s foreign policy.
So wherein lies the truth? Merkel has sounded warnings before about the US’s isolationist policies, what she has justifiably called “putting up nationalist blinkers”. But her remarks cannot be divorced from the criticism she has received during the German election campaign over her agreement that Germany should raise its defence spending towards the Nato target of two per cent of GDP since, for historical reasons, it has always sought to keep defence spending low and invest more in humanitarian aid.
It is obvious Merkel does not enjoy warm relations with President Trump. She did not like his campaign rhetoric and made it patently clear. She had a frosty White House meeting after he came to power. She did not appreciate his hostility to the EU or recent remarks that Germany was “bad, very bad” for selling too many cars to the US.
And she was rightly upset that the President refused to back the Paris climate accord, compounding this in European eyes by his failure to endorse Article 5 of the Nato charter (that an attack on one nation is an attack on all).
The mercurial Trump is quite capable of doing a U-turn and embracing policies totally opposite to those he espoused earlier – nudged along by wiser officials around him
Few leaders, apart from King Salman of Saudi Arabia, have shown much enthusiasm for Trump. But by speaking out in the way she did Merkel is in danger of turning a spat into a dangerous rift. The mercurial Trump is quite capable of doing a U-turn and embracing policies totally opposite to those he espoused earlier – nudged along by wiser officials around him.
Whether by coincidence or design, in the wake of these remarks by Europe’s most powerful nation, plans for the foundation of a European “Security and Defence Union” by 2025 to rival Nato have recently been unveiled in Brussels.
The blueprint envisages the organisation taking over from the established American-led alliance as Europe’s first line of defence in a political landscape which has been irrevocably altered by Brexit and the election to the White House of Trump.
Some in Europe have hailed this plan as the biggest leap in integration since the single currency. It is seen as fulfilling the need for Europe to grow up and be able to defend itself. Europe’s defence ambitions have been dogged in the past by British vetoes, German reluctance to commit military forces to operations and a sole reliance on the US for both leadership and hardware in, for example, Libya in 2015.
Britain’s decision to leave the EU and Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014, together with its belligerence in the Ukraine, have revived enthusiasm for common defence structures. These plans have inevitably been accelerated by the result of the American presidential election six months ago.
The so-called “reflection paper” which the EU Commission issued when announcing the Security and Defence Union envisages an EU military force that can act independently of Nato to run “high-end operations to better protect Europe, potentially including operations against terrorist groups, naval operations in hostile environments and cyber-defence actions”.
To begin with, it envisages that the “EU would take more decisive action in dealing with threats and challenges falling below the threshold” of Nato’s Article 5 collective defence clause. In the longer term, however, the objective will be “fully synchronised” defence planning, shared intelligence and “agreed priorities” on military capabilities with a “greater level of integration of states’ defence forces”.
The problem is that the sceptical among us have been here before. Although the union’s so-called “battle-groups” (consisting of 1,500 to 2,500 troops from several EU member states) have been operational for 10 years, they have never actually been deployed on a single foreign mission.
They were launched to great fanfare in 2004 and were fully operational three years later. But when it became necessary for the EU to intervene – for example, in the Central African Republic in 2013, France sent its own troops. The EU’s “battle groups” have not been brought forward as a credible answer to any current crisis.
The trouble is politics. No country would own up to disagreeing with a well-meaning EU military intervention. Instead, those objecting cite other reasons, from technical issues to funding. But unlike UN peace-keeping operations, battle groups are funded primarily by the participating countries. Costs therefore lie where they fall.
Consequently, the EU troops stay put and that seems to suit the EU members too. This is because making battle groups viable would open a can of worms about sovereignty. During missions, member states would abdicate control of their troops to the battle group’s lead nation and the EU itself. If countries can give up control of battle group units, that should be possible for their entire armed forces too. Even in 2017, such dilution of sovereignty would be hard to accept.
Merkel’s suggestion that the US and Britain were becoming less reliable allies for the Europeans may become a dangerously self-fulfilling prophecy. If, even inadvertently, Merkel’s remarks create fissures in Nato’s structure, the only happy politician will be President Vladimir Putin.
By suggesting that the US may no longer be a reliable ally, she is exacerbating what may be a temporary divergence of views. She is overlooking the real and long-standing criticism that Europe is not pulling its weight at paying for Nato. Moreover, she has appeared insensitive to America’s long record of defending Europe and helping her own country to rebuild from the rubble of World War II 70 years ago.
Before the European Union disengages from Nato and opts for the chimera of a “Security and Defence Union” and its own “EU Army”, it should reflect more carefully and realistically on the security, geo-political, funding and practical implications of one day withdrawing from an organisation which has kept the peace in Europe for almost 70 years.