Conference notes EGMONT

Summary; this is not an official record of proceedings and specific remarks are not necessarily attributable.

Jan Joel Andersson

Jan Joel Andersson outlined the historical context of the ESS, while arguing that in recent years a distinct European approach to security was already emerging. “The European failure on Iraq in 2003 demonstrated the need for a more effective CFSP”. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the EU tasked Javier Solana with the elaboration of a strategic document: the European Security Strategy (ESS) which has been adopted by the European Council in December 2003.

The book analyses the ESS and its impact on the EU and the world. Solana’s paper received mixed reactions, because it is in fact a “codification of existing European foreign policy guidelines established during ten years of CFSP”, as Sven Biscop explains in the first chapter.

Aiming to integrate all the dimensions of EU’s foreign policy, from aid and trade to diplomacy and defence, the Strategy renders explicit a holistic approach. The challenge to put this to value is discussed more in dept by several authors in the book. The difficulty is that on a number of particular issues the Strategy remains rather vague and prone to interpretation. No clear choice is being made with regard to more specific objectives and/or with regard to the instruments to apply, because of lack of consensus between member states.
Despite its weaknesses, Sven Biscop argues that the ESS is a key contribution to the growing trend of more holistic approaches to security, and it may also serve as inspiration for alternative comprehensive security policies.

According to Jan Joel Andersson, “the ESS is a unique document, because it identifies clearly the threats to the EU: international terrorism, WMD, proliferation, regional conflicts, failed states and organised crime. Unfortunately, it does not prioritise these threats”. Making clear that the first line of defence lies beyond the traditional form of border defence, this implies the projection of hard and soft power in a new way. The document calls for a more extrovert role in the world, but at the same time, we see an increasing inwards looking Europe. “The answers to the old threats and the management of the new risks must be collective. This requires a unified diplomacy and military capabilities that don’t yet exist”, underlined Andersson.

The speaker then examined effective multilateralism. The ESS has been less clear on its call for international order based on effective multilateralism. Despite competing definitions of this concept, the ESS strongly emphases the importance of the UN: “an effective UN must be a European priority”. In chapter three of the book, Richard shows the EU has a diffuse set of ad hoc forms of cooperation with the different elements of the UN systems, but it does have an effective cooperation on state failures for example. Unfortunately, the EU is not a coherent actor in the UN which causes great frustration as the EU could carry immense weight within the UN. In the face of a crisis, the EU often looses coherence and so far, the ESS has not been able to improve the situation.

Jan Joel Andersson went further on analysing the impact of the ESS, mentioning its important role in healing the transatlantic rift over the Iraq crisis. “Its timing and message were both critical for the US administration: it provided a key support for those who argued for the significant role of allies and multilateral organisations”. The ESS also offered an opening in the transatlantic relationship that culminated in a mutual understanding: “we can agree to have the alliance, but disagree about if it was right to go to war in Iraq”.

What relevance the ESS will have in the future for the EU-USA relationship remains less clear! Now the discussion about an update of the ESS emerges.  Nevertheless, the broad principles in the ESS allow the US and EU to cooperate on pressing issues, such as the fight against WMD proliferation and global terrorism.

Stating that with the strategy, the EU can be a real actor and not only a reactor in the international arena, Andersson argued that “its continued relevance may depend on factors beyond the strategy paper itself!” Foreign policy challenges are ever increasing: the EU is uncertain about its relationship with Russia, the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the nuclear challenge from Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict etc. demand a more active EU involvement. Ultimately, it is up to the member states to determine what kind of global actor the EU is and will become.

Each author has analysed to what extent the ESS has contributed to a more effective EFSP. Andersson stressed that there is a general agreement among the authors that the ESS continues to be the reference framework in the forging of a global Europe.

Sven Biscop

Sven Biscop looked at the prospects of the ESS and asked whether the strategy’s objectives should be reviewed.

The ESS document is omnipresent in EU discourse, in statements by European as well as other policy- makers, in the debate in think tanks and academia and proves that its importance should not be underestimated. The topics outlined in the ESS do matter enough to start the debate on the review, as Karl Built and Sarkozy have done.

Sven Biscop admits that the ESS is not perfect and there is room for improvement, f.ex. concerning the implementations of the Lisbon Treaty. The document could reflect the new solidarity clause in the Treaty and the link between internal and external security. In Biscop’s view, most important is the review of the implementation of the strategy, not the document as such, what the EU council decided over in December. He stressed that “the review should be comprehensive”.

Sven Biscop then gave a brief summary of 5 topics that could be discussed: the military dimension of the ESDP, the bilateral relations with neighbours, the holistic approach, strategic partners of the EU and the transatlantic partnership.

Firstly, a link between the ESS objectives and the ESDP in practice is missing. The objectives should be translated into more precise quantifiable level of ambition as a crisis manager. Capability development in ESDP is a bit detached from our broad political objective.  The ESDP doesn’t reflect the more ambitious ESS, nor does it reflect the 2 million persons in uniform that we actually have in Europe. “Would it not be possible to come up with some sort of civilian-military sub-strategy to the ESS, just as the NSS of the USA where the Defence Department details it further for the military?”, asked Sven Biscop.

Secondly, in dealing with the neighbouring countries, the EU tries to translate the holistic approach of the ESS into practice, but it is not clear what the desired endstate of this policy is? If it is full-scaled democratisation of all our neighbouring countries, does the EU have all the instruments? Will the EU accept temporary instability which changes always bring? Prof. Biscop thought about the EU attitude to the election victory of Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. What about working with stable, authoritarian, regimes who deny human rights, economic prosperity etc.? In the longer term such “stable” regimes can provoke an eruption and the negative fall-out can seriously affect the EU.

The third topic concerns the holistic approach in foreign policy. Following issues should be discussed according to Prof. Biscop: “Have basic orientations of the ESS really been incorporated in all parts of the EU operators? Do all parts of our policies really fit together?”

The fourth issue is that in the ESS, the criteria qualifying who is a strategic partner are left unspecified. The ESS mentions a few strategic partners: the USA, Russia, Japan, China, India and Canada which is rather an odd grouping. Sven Biscop said that “in economic terms, the EU has a lot of strategic partners, but in diplomatic or military terms, it has a lot of strategic dialogues, but less strategic partnerships”. He posed the question “how to give more substance to political-military dimension of these strategic partnerships, for example with China?” Sometimes China is more cooperative, such as during the negotiations with Iran. In other cases, China, not being conditionality-based, undercuts European policies when the EU installs sanctions. How can we give substance there?

Finally, on transatlantic relations, Sven Biscop stated that “the EU is more a reactor than an actor”. The ones in the EU who are more Atlantic-oriented slow down the CFSP and ESDP and those more Europe-oriented slow down NATO. Thus, both EU and NATO are not functioning well. He is convinced that the EU member states should constitute a autonomous pole in a multi-polar world, “not to be anti-American, but to make policy in function of our own interests. This will not always coincide with the US policy, but in a mature partnership, that should be possible”. Agreeing on that understanding would be an important addition to the ESS.

Concluding on this review process, Sven Biscop was very positive about the fact that the big strategic questions re-emerge during this debate at strategic level. He underlined that “the ESS can be a strategic tool to assess the existing policies, to identify those areas in which the ESS has not yet been translated into such strategies and actions and to avoid contradictions in different policy areas”. He proposed that the reinforced High Representative with his policy Unit in the External Action and Services should be the pilot of this process in which all European institutions as well as other actors, such as think tanks and academia, could have their input.

Q & A session

On the question of nuclear arms in Iran, Mr Andersson commented that one has the right to develop peaceful nuclear power in certain guidelines if one renounces any nuclear weapons programme. Mr Biscop agrees with some American observers arguing that now Iran will not renounce completely any nuclear capacity. According to him, the possession of civilian nuclear capacity should not be seen as a security threat. He is of the opinion that there is still scope for negotiations, because there are competing actors within Iran.

On streamlining the review of both ESS and NATO’s strategic concept, Mr Andersson thinks that this could only be positive for NATO, because the EU is a less experienced actor in this exercise. The EU should not bring in the US or Canada to review or implement the ESS.  Furthermore, a lot of aspects would delay NATO’s review, while some member states want to review the ESS now. Mr Andersson underlined that revising the strategy is more difficult than writing it, because the stakes are higher and more actors are involved.
Sven Biscop reminded the audience that the ESS covers not only ESDP, but also development, trade, human rights etc. In that view, NATO’s concept is more of a subset of the ESS. He added that “if we coordinate, then the EU should input a coordinated point of view in the debate on the strategic concept”.

Questioned about the external relations of the EU, Mr Andersson admitted that the connection between internal security (protection European citizens) and external security - the security strategy explaining why we are doing missions - is missing in the ESS.

On the issue of coherence through the new institutions that Lisbon will create, Mr Biscop saw a great potential in that area, but he said that everything depends on the practice of implementation. Which services will be integrated in the External Action Service? How to coordinate actions between different services? The High Representative could be a more important act engine of EU actors that it is today.

Concerning the military, Mr Biscop argued that “the ESS advocates an approach in which the military is just one part, a tool that you need, very useful in Darfur f.ex. The ESS tries to respond to underlying causes of instability, which can be social, economic and political”.

On the issue of moving from intergovernementalism to the community method with arms export as example, Mr Biscop stated that much more integration and coordination in the defence area is needed. He is in favour of supra-nationalism, including in the field of ESDP where Belgium is running very far ahead, but he acknowledged that this process has a long term perspective.
He is very optimistic on the work of the Defence Agency that will present a new capability plan in June. Mr Biscop will compile a database of all programmes planned or established by the member states in order to identify options for cooperation.

Mr Andersson agreed that the ESS is very little focussed on the military, because the ESS is a rather new concept. Comparing with the security strategy of the USA, there is a different view on the use of arms. According to the speaker, the EU needs more well-equipped intervention forces in horrible crisis areas in the world and referred to Dallaire’s demand for troops in Rwanda and the situation in Afghanistan.