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✍️ 'Breaking the transatlantic alliance would play into Moscow’s hands' | Writes Geoffrey Van Orden

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Geoffrey Van Orden
An EU army can’t protect Europe. Only Nato can
Breaking the transatlantic alliance would play into Moscow’s hands
When Donald Trump was in Davos last week, Nato’s military committee, its highest military decision-making body, was in session in Brussels accelerating the delivery of military capabilities and looking afresh at Arctic security.

Nato multinational battlegroups on the eastern flank are being bolstered to brigade level, with some allies now transitioning to being permanently based there. For the first time since the Cold War, specific national forces are now pre-assigned to defend specific geographic regions.

Reassuringly, the recently released US National Defense Strategy makes clear that Washington would still aim to provide critical support to Europe, albeit more limited.

In the interests of credible deterrence everything must be done to ensure the United States continues to have its dog in the fight. This will clearly depend on the evidence that European nations – which doesn’t mean the EU – are increasingly willing to do more to defend themselves. Trump is merely giving greater substance to the demand of successive US presidents over the past 70 years.

Aside from its lack of credibility, any idea that an EU army might be a substitute for Nato should be dismissed. It would lack American strategic capabilities and the massive deterrent effect of US commitment.
Additionally, is anyone seriously suggesting that France, for example, is a more reliable ally than the United States? She left the military structures of the Nato alliance for 43 years from 1966-2009 and is still determined to humiliate and obstruct Britain at every opportunity across a range of policy areas.

In 1986, when the Reagan-Gorbachev talks in Reykjavik created jitters in Paris, London and Bonn, times were very different. There was no armed conflict in Europe, Britain was spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence and our combat divisions were stationed forward in Germany along with Nato allies (except France), to deter aggression.

2004 to 2014 were the locust years. The Europeans turned a blind eye to massive increases in Russian military expenditure and continued to run down their military capabilities. Regional conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya merely exposed their military limitations and increased tension with the US.
The EU made cosmetic arrangements for military planning and command structures and focused on trying to be a global actor. It was all about political integration, not military capability.

Moscow’s prize objective, meanwhile, has been consistent: to break the transatlantic alliance and separate the US from Europe, leaving Russia to deal piecemeal with the Continent.

The danger now is that we once more become distracted by structure and process rather than upgrading our deterrent and war-fighting capabilities.

There is loose talk about British involvement in the EU army project. There are many reasons why this would be the wrong route. Except on self-regarding EU terms, it excludes non-EU countries: Britain and Turkey, as well as strategically-vital Canada, Iceland and Norway, and crucially the United States.
Britain would be regarded as a supplicant “third country”, only to be involved once key decisions had been taken, and only participating in weapons procurement and market access at great cost.

The whole saga would be wrapped in bureaucracy and EU regulations, and subject to supervision by the European parliament and the European Court of Justice.

The least dangerous approach would be an enhancement of the European stance within Nato with minimum disruption. Additional forces and military capabilities adapted to 21st century warfare would need to be rapidly introduced.

This would not only reassure the Americans that the Europeans were taking defence seriously and deserved a robust US commitment but, most importantly, they were doing the right thing for their own people.

Geoffrey Van Orden is a former British Army officer and Conservative MEP
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