December 21, 2011
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INDUSTRY NEWS: Bye-Bye Europe
December 17, 2011 By Kevin Baron U.S. officials for years have begged European allies to do more, pay more, and fight more for their own defense. After all, American troops cannot defend Europe’s ramparts forever or fight the world’s terrorists on Europe’s behalf. But for years, Europeans called Washington’s bluff, never fulfilling their commitments to NATO’s budget or furnishing the complement of troops promised for Afghanistan. Sleek-suited defense ministers and diplomats watched former Defense Secretary Robert Gates – and now his successor, Leon Panetta – plod through Brussels, increasingly agitated about the divided "two-tier alliance" of member states that fight and those that don’t. But with America’s budget tightening, wars ending, and strategic attention pivoting toward Asia – the Defense Department may move thousands of troops and families off the Continent – Europeans have begun to realize that, ready or not, their time has come. "If there ever was a time in which the United States could always be counted on to fill the gaps that may emerge in European defense, that time is rapidly coming to an end," warned U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, meeting defense reporters in Washington this month. Europe finally will step up, but not necessarily in the way Americans envisioned. NATO members, consumed by their own economic crises, have no desire to increase defense spending, much less cough up the 2 percent of their gross domestic product required by NATO rules. (One European diplomat in Washington last month said that this was "a pretty crude and unsophisticated way" to do business and that the alliance is looking beyond it.) In any case, there is little chance that Europe would raise new brigades of troops to fill the barracks that the Americans are vacating. Instead, Europe’s plan is what NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen calls "smart defense." It means getting efficient, but it’s a tall order. Every NATO member and partner must take inventory of every ship and soldier, willfully eliminate military redundancies across their borders, and forge a unified, pan-European capability that will require perhaps dozens of sub-alliance defense agreements between two, three, or four countries at a time. It will take a while, and not every country may go along. "Where the rubber hits the road," the Western diplomat said, "is whether countries wish to maintain national capabilities rather than reliance on other members of the alliance." Former Soviet states near Russia want to keep more of their own assets for national defense than other Western giants think is necessary, while the United Kingdom and France last year signed an agreement for joint exercises and deployments, looking for ways – including procurement – to cooperate. The balance they strike has billion-dollar implications. Each system could rely on several countries to deploy. AWACS aircraft, for instance, are based in Germany, are crewed by 14 nations, and can use forward bases in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Norway. Operation Unified Protector over Libya was a wake-up call, Daalder said, exposing NATO’s reliance on the United States for capabilities such as logistics, drones, and intelligence analysis. Critics say that the alliance also needs a modernized fifth-generation fighter jet like the F-35, aerial refueling tankers, and airlift capacity to reach deep into Central Asia. The weak economy, however, is pushing some of those goals out of reach. Countries are slowing orders for F-35s and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet, causing British manufacturer BAE Systems, one of the biggest defense companies in the world, to announce in September that it will cut 3,000 jobs. "I worry about our allies coming to the conclusion that they be capable only in niches of conflict," said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing the Atlantic Council, a NATO-focused think tank, in Washington last week. Another problem with shared defense is that members disagree on what threatens their security, how NATO should respond, and when to use military force. "These are problems that are not ready to be solved, and no amount of reforms that we can do can fix this," said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. He argued that, during an economic crisis that inhibits real reform, NATO could focus for now on a modest homeland-security model that merely protects Europe’s borders. "I would wait for better days to try and talk about some of the fundamentals." And even if everyone agreed about everything, the problem of supply and demand remains. "It’s blindingly obvious," said Marshall Billingslea, a former assistant secretary general of NATO, at an Atlantic Council panel last week, "there are fewer and fewer allies that are producers of security. Vast majorities are rampant consumers of it." That has to change, he argued. U.S. officials do not want to reveal exactly how they are planning to scale back in Europe, saying only that the Pentagon is reassessing its global footprint to include Europe. But Daalder noted that two of the four U.S. brigades stationed in Europe have been deployed in war zones, and Europe survived just fine. Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced that it would draw down to three brigades in Europe, but it could still easily withdraw another, bringing home up to 5,000 additional troops, families, and support staff. Defense Department officials will decide in January, well ahead of the NATO conclave for heads of state in Chicago planned for May. Ready or not, the Europeans will have to fend for themselves. |
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