As part of my National Security Lecture I just finished reading a very good paper by Jolyon Howorth (published in Christopher Hill & Michael Smith (eds.), The International Relations of the European Union, Oxford University Press, 2004) on the EU’s defence and security outlook. While Germany is struggling with it’s deployment of troops in Afghanistan, Austria is buying planes while not knowing what to use them for and discussing a new law adressed for Austrians who trained in terror camps one wonders where the plans of the EU about it’s multilateral national security looks like. Howorth (in 2004) sees positive developments. Especially on the olitical scene a lot has moved since then – from what one reads in the media, not a lot on the side of putting ideas into action.
On the low army budget of some European states, the 21 states with the lowest budget together spend less than Vietnam on their armies, Howorth remarks:
One might ask exactly what those nation states believe they are buying with their money.
An interesting concept he brings up from the Venusberg report is the fighting intensity scale:
This poses the crucial question of the type of warfare the EU intends to fight. According to one analysis (Venusberg 2004: 68), the average US soldier, trained for high intensity warfare, operates at levels 8 to10 on an intensity scale of 1 to 10. If forced to, he can “operate down” to level 6 but is uncomfortable with that, owing to lack of training in the art of peace-keeping and nation-building. Many UK and French troops as well as some crack German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch special-forces can operate up to level 8 but the vast majority are more comfortable lower down the intensity scale dealing with irregular forces in a peace-keeping environment. Most other EU troops cannot operate much above level 5 on the US intensity scale and are therefore incapable of assuming peace-keeping duties such as those required in 2004 in Iraq.
While he sees that as a problem for European troops (and I agree), in light of the current troubles in COIN, I see the fact that the average US soldier “is uncomfortable with [the low intensity warfare]“, an equally problematic aspect.
A book by Howorth on the topic is available here.
(The title of the post comes also from the article (“When, in 1958, the UK prime minister was asked by a young journalist what can most easily steer a government off its chosen course, Harold Macmillan replied: “Events, dear boy! Events!”), and made me wonder about Austrian internal politics. If there is no chosen course, you need no events …
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
I am really not in favor of a pull-out now immediately. But what Merkel is talking about here is quickly plucked together half known facts, that were thought up by, as she herself notes “quickly looking at a map”. Well great, so that’s what it takes… Once the argument was opium, now its nuclear arms, then again it’s women’s rights. The fact that them being in there are clueless is troublesome.
>>“The international community went in together, and we will pull out together. If we do not then the consequences, I am convinced, would be far more disastrous than the results of the September 11, 2001 attacks,” Merkel said.
“Just looking at the map makes this clear. Right next door to Afghanistan is nuclear-armed Pakistan, and we have to assume that another neighbour, Iran, is also doing everything it can to become a nuclear power,” she said in parliament.
In a spirited defence of the deployment following the deaths of seven German soldiers this month, Merkel noted that a recent conference organised by US President Barack Obama had agreed that “nuclear terrorism is one of the world’s biggest security dangers.”<<