After the Arab League urged creation of a no-fly zone over
Libya, Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the Libyan Transitional
National Council, said, “We hope the Europeans will deliver now.”
But with divided opinions and shrinking militaries, the Europeans
can’t deliver.
The Libyan crisis again demonstrates that the emperor has
no clothes, at least in Europe. For years a transnational European
elite hoped to turn the continent into a third Weltmacht to compete
with America and China. While the Common Market and then European
Union created an economic colossus, leading European politicians
wanted more.
The Euroelite frustration was palpable. For years the EU
talked about forging a united foreign policy separate from that of
America. Plans were advanced for European military planning and
multinational units.
These efforts came to naught. No one thinks of Europe in
confronting geopolitical problems. Charles Grant, director of the
Centre for European Reform, complained: “On many of the world’s big
security problems, the EU is close to irrelevant. Talk to Russian,
Chinese or Indian policy-makers about the EU, and they are often
withering. They view it as a trade bloc that had pretensions to
power but has failed to realize them because it is divided and
badly organized.”
The answer, the Eurocrats said, was the Lisbon Treaty,
which came into force at the end of 2009. The agreement
consolidated power in Brussels, expanded EU authority at the
expense of national parliaments, and created a de facto president
and foreign minister. French President Nicolas Sarkozy argued that
the treaty — ratified only by overriding normal democratic
processes — was necessary because “Europe cannot be a dwarf in
terms of defense and a giant in economic matters.”
Libya, on Europe’s southern doorstep and sporting
extensive ties to several European nations, offers Europe an
obvious opportunity to act. Yet the EU again has demonstrated why
it remains essentially irrelevant to “the world’s big security
problems.”
The Europeans remain badly divided over the popular
explosion in the Arab world. Many European countries, especially
colonial powers Britain, France, and Italy, enjoyed profitable ties
with the discredited autocrats. In Paris Foreign Minister Michele
Alliot-Marie resigned because of her ties with the ousted Tunisian
dictator, to whom the French government initially offered security
assistance. Italy embraced Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak before his fall.
British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in the region with a
gaggle of British defense contractors on a sales trip as protests
erupted.
While EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso
grandiloquently announced that “It is our duty to say to the Arab
people that we are on their side,” many member governments worried
more about oil, trade, and terrorism. Even after Barroso spoke,
Finnish Foreign minister Alex Stubb stated that the EU’s main
concern about Libya was to “control immigration” to the
continent.
Largely AWOL were the two officials created by the Lisbon
Treaty, European Council President Herman van Rompuy and High
Representative for Foreign Affairs Baroness Catherine Ashton. The
latter is nominally in charge of EU foreign policy and even
oversees the “European External Action Service,” or EU diplomatic
corps. However, she has been little more than a bit player in this
crisis, calling for sanctions to “put as much pressure as possible”
on Gaddafi while refusing to opine on much else.
Other officials’ political pirouettes have been
breathtaking. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi turned on
one-time friend Moammar Gaddafi. Prime Minister Cameron tossed
aside his predecessor’s friendly relationship with Tripoli. Malta
and the Czech Republic endorsed stability in Libya as Gaddafi
tottered. Malta and Cyprus, worried about increased refugee flows,
opposed economic sanctions. Noted Nikolas Gvosdev of the U.S. Naval
War College, “A month ago, though no less dictatorial or
repressive, Khadafy was the poster child for how to bring rogues in
from the cold — an eccentric despot who nonetheless gave up his
WMD program and renounced support for terrorism in return for an
end to his international isolation.”
The Europeans have become born again democratizers. EU
governments are demanding Gaddafi’s departure and imposing
sanctions. With Gaddafi still determined to fight, President
Sarkozy announced French recognition of the National Transitional
Council as Libya’s legitimate government. The French president also
advocated creation of a no-fly zone, which has become the military
option du jour. The European Parliament endorsed creating such an
area.
Sarkozy went even further, proposing “targeted strikes” on
Gaddafi’s forces. Here he left behind what little continental
consensus had formed, however. The result has been a confused
cacophony.
While European leaders agreed to look at “all necessary
options,” few seem inclined to go to war. Belgian Foreign Minister
Steven Vanackere said the bombing proposal “didn’t win a consensus;
quite the opposite. It won reserved, even negative,
reactions.”
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said, “We don’t
want to get sucked into a war in North Africa,” and complained that
Sarkozy appeared have acted “on a whim.” German Chancellor Angela
Merkel noted that “we must be very careful not to start something
we can’t finish.” Despite British support for a no-fly zone, even a
top London official responded to Sarkozy’s bombing proposal with
talk of going “step by step.”
At a meeting of defense ministers NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the French ideas “were not
discussed at all.” Czech Defense Minister Alexander Vondra said the
proposal might have been “something for media
consumption.”
BUT THE EUROPEANS FACE an even more fundamental problem
than disunity. They don’t have the military assets necessary to do
anything more substantial.
European governments long have emphasized quantity over
quality in their militaries. During the 78-day war against Serbia,
military analysts estimated that the Europeans possessed barely 15
percent of America’s effective combat capabilities. Only U.S.
participation, despite the lack of any serious American
geopolitical interests, made that operation
possible.
Even during the Cold War, facing the Soviet Union,
European governments underfunded defense. The European members of
NATO routinely promised to up military outlays and just as
routinely violated their promises. But they knew Washington would
defend them in any case.
The pattern has repeated itself with the rise of the
European Union. In the midst of routine chatter about creating the
European Security and Defense Policy, now part of the EU’s Common
Foreign and Security Policy, the Europeans regularly reduced the
size of their militaries. While strengthening the EU structure in
order to establish a common international approach, member
governments cut back on the military forces necessary to implement
such an approach. The Europeans seem to believe the continent can
be a military power without possessing military power.
The ongoing fiscal crisis has caused the Europeans to
reduce defense outlays even more deeply. Virtually every country,
including Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and France, is making
substantial cuts.
European governments are shrinking their militaries
because they perceive few security threats. The likelihood of a
Russian attack on major Western states is about the same as that of
a Martian invasion, à la a modern War of the
Worlds. The Central and Eastern Europeans worry more about
Moscow, but are doing little more to maintain effective militaries.
Virtually all European peoples prefer to preserve welfare benefits
than guard against security threats.
NATO’s Rasmussen worried: “If the cuts are too deep, we
won’t be able to defend the security on which our democratic
societies and prosperous economies depend.” Those deep cuts,
however, seem inevitable. Stated Ian Brzezinski and Damon Wilson of
the Atlantic Council: “All allies are cutting or flat-lining
defense spending.”
U.S. officials grumble about the negative impact on
Europe’s military capabilities, which they worry will force greater
reliance on American forces in a crisis. But the Europeans have
every right to tailor their militaries to perceived dangers.
Washington should stop hoping the Europeans will convert to
neoconservatism. Instead, the U.S. should stop taking on Europe’s
problems as America’s own.
In Libya the Obama administration should not let the
Europeans dictate U.S. decision-making. Officials say they hope to
achieve consensus within NATO. But there will be no consensus on
military forces within NATO. Any action would be America and a
couple others.
Rather than worry about whether the Europeans reach
agreement on Libya, the Obama administration leave the issue to the
Europeans. Libya was an Italian colony and long has had closer
relations with Europe than with America. Protracted conflict or
civil war in North Africa would have far greater consequences on
Europe than on the U.S. There is no geopolitical reason to drag
Americans into the Libyan imbroglio.
The unnecessary debacle in Iraq illustrates what happens
when Washington leads badly. The
point is not that a failed Libyan
state would have no consequences for the U.S., but that the
consequences likely would be far less costly than getting involved.
Being a superpower means being able to ignore foreign chaos and
war. Doing so wouldn’t lessen the humanitarian tragedy, but
military intervention is not charity. Even those supposedly being
helped pay a high price: Perhaps 200,000 Iraqi civilians have died,
and many more have been wounded. Washington should not repeat this
disaster.
European politicians desperately want to make a difference
internationally. But they lack the continental unity necessary to
act as a world power. They also lack the military means to back
their decisions. Washington should impart a simple message
regarding Libya and beyond: the U.S. government will not treat
Europe like a great power until the latter starts acting like
one.
