For decades, the European Union has struggled with its vision and sense of purpose: is it a trading bloc of independent states with like-minded ideas and overlapping interests, or a mission to create an ever-closer union of countries?
This issue is often responsible for some of the most tumultuous events that occur in politics; In 2016, the British public felt that Euro-federalism was dominant in Brussels and chose to leave to safeguard Britain’s sovereignty and prosperity. Last week, the European parliamentary elections saw a increase in votes for nationalist parties a reflection of this same concern.
The next frontier of the EU’s federalist project is to gain control over what makes states sovereign – defense. Debates raged in Brussels over how to achieve this. Will EU Member States place their forces under the control of an EU command? Or could Brussels dictate which defense industries are located in the EU, thus making all members dependent on each other and the center?
Fortunately, the worst excesses of this type of thinking are challenged by those in Europe who wish to maintain and preserve their national sovereignty. But as a result of political compromises, there risks emerging a confusing EU “defence union” model, real enough to undermine European security but not powerful enough to defend it.
For example, at a time when there is growing criticism of US protectionism on trade, the EU seeks to create a common defense industry with protectionist elements that could harm key defense allies such as Britain. Contracts awarded by the EU defense fund on the basis of “promoting the strategic autonomy of the EU” will undermine the ability of Member States to work with allies in complex coalitions on new defense projects, just as Italy worked with Britain and Japan in the Global Combat Area Program to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter.
Britain has left the EU and works on defense and security issues with the bloc in an ad hoc manner, preferring to work mainly through NATO and our main bilateral relationships. This independence has allowed us to consistently advance faster and further in arming Ukraine, providing tanks when no one else would, and allowing our allies to attack targets inside Russia while our allies hesitate and then follow suit.
Given our independence, there will be those here and in Brussels who say that the EU’s defense plans are none of Britain’s business. This could not be more wrong, since the emergence of a European defense union would have a direct impact on NATO and the security of the continent.
The countries are members of NATO because they are sovereign states with a common interest in the security of the Euro-Atlantic. They are not members because they believe in the European political project.
And so an EU defense project risks undermining our collective security in three ways. The first is money. Very few European NATO members currently make a 2 percent of GDP commitment for their defense budgets, with 80 percent of NATO’s defense spending accounted for by the alliance’s non-EU members. Given that EU structures do not require members to allocate more funds, it is almost inevitable that money will be diverted from NATO’s core functions.
The second risk is a duplication of the organization. Brussels’ fixations on the process and political aspects of defense have created a labyrinthine labyrinth of EU defense initiatives, programs and acronyms. The creation of EU organizations is redundant when NATO and national systems are already in place.
The third risk is the political weakness of the EU. The UK knows this well, but our American allies must understand that EU defense initiatives will not primarily compliment NATO’s capabilities, but rather bog them down in infighting and vetoes from a Brussels bureaucracy that would be responsible for sending men and women into combat, but fundamentally being disconnected from any responsibility.
A new report from the Legatum Institute outlines the EU’s plans for a defense union and outlines the risks they pose to Britain. It is worrying that Labour’s manifesto plans to reach a security pact with the EU and risks putting us in a situation where the UK could be forced to support the development of EU defense deals over which it has no control and that weaken our collective security.
Attempts to create parallel defense structures in the EU are misguided and risk becoming an expensive vanity project. O dangers to European security they are all too real and Labor must not risk our collective defense while trying to create a closer relationship with the EU for political purposes.
