Today, at the top of European political and security agendas is the eventual constitution of a Defense organization which, informally, has been called a European Defense Union (UDE).
This is obviously a delicate and complex issue. But it is also a necessary issue and, as such, mandatory consideration.
This text aims to contribute to this debate by suggesting, in a simplified way, some essential points found.
The first consideration is that Europe has the critical mass, resources, knowledge, experience and responsibility to develop and maintain its own Defense organization.
Afterwards, a European Defense organization must aim to ensure the Security and Defense of Europe and to protect and assert legitimate European interests anywhere in the world.
A European Defense organization can be established within the European Union (EU) or outside the EU structure, but always in the spirit of the EU and remaining within its “universe”. The Economic and Monetary Union offers an example in this regard. The first model provides institutionalization and hinders flexibility in considering non-EU members and the second can be characterized exactly in the opposite way.
Building a European Defense organization requires vision, unity and cohesion.
The doubts and difficulties that, unfortunately, exist today regarding NATO and the transatlantic relationship make it very difficult to understand and accept concepts such as “Europeanization of NATO” and “European pillar of NATO”.
A fundamental prerequisite for the establishment of a European Defense organization is the agreement of all its Member States to recognize a common list of threats and challenges, even though, individually, each Member State may value each of these threats and challenges differently.
It is preferable to have a European Defense organization with fewer States, but without significant divisions between them, than an organization with 27 States, but marked by deep divergences.
It is desirable that a European Defense organization has sufficient flexibility to allow the participation (Members or Associates) of States such as Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom and States in the process of joining the EU, including naturally Ukraine, while maintaining active forms of partnership in other geographies, for example with Canada, Brazil, India, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand or Australia.
At the political level and in addition to the Summit (Heads of State and Government) and Council of Foreign Ministers formats, a UDE must formally host a Council of Defense Ministers.
The creation of a European Security Council may be an interesting possibility, but it will no longer be so if it contains permanent members with veto rights.
A UDE needs to consider the very delicate issue of the decision through Qualified Majority Voting.
A UDE must develop its Force Structure to which Member States contribute, assigning forces at different stages of readiness. Such a process does not dispense with an adequate Defense Planning Process, an issue for which NATO’s current Defense Planning offers a formidable and much tested reference.
The Force Structure of a UDE must cover all Defense domains: land, sea, air, cyberspace and space.
The military forces of a UDE must be fully manned, well armed, well equipped, well instructed and well trained.
Rearming Europe means spending better, spending more, spending more together and spending European. And do so with a high technological standard.
The rearmament process and its articulation with the European Defense Technological and Industrial Base justifies its own roadmap. A debate on the nuclear dimension is essential. In this context, good coordination between British and French nuclear capabilities is desirable, with the aim of ensuring coverage, through nuclear deterrence, of the entire UDE territory. It is also important to develop a perspective regarding a possible process of horizontal nuclear proliferation in Europe. States such as Poland, Sweden and, possibly, also Germany or Italy, although facing particularly complex difficulties and sensitivities, may wish to follow this path.
A UDE cannot fail to have military bodies (general headquarters) capable of planning to command and control operations at different levels of intensity of military violence.
A UDE must develop a catalog of critical strategic capabilities that no State is capable of providing on its own. Strategic facilitators (strategic enablers) should deserve priority, particularly in the areas of communications, strategic transport, strategic information and logistics.
It is necessary to improve and strengthen the current EU Military Staff.
It is also necessary to strengthen and better structure the different bodies that make up the European External Action Service, a service that needs to work together and with a common purpose.
Former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and current President of Eurodefense
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