Currently, Europe has about 170 major weapons systems, compared to just 30 in the US. Consolidation would mean reaching an agreement that, for example, a type of fighter jet should be produced in Italy and Sweden, closing a factory in France, while a certain air defense system should be produced in France and Britain, closing a factory in Germany. Imagine how easy that would be
By Timothy Garton Ash
Should we all be Gaullists now? In the language of France’s most important European partner, the answer is “Jein!” (a German word combining ja for “yes” and nein for “no”). Yes, Emmanuel Macron has been right to warn us since he became French president in 2017 that, seeing a long-term trend of US withdrawal, Europe must be ready to defend itself. Now, faced with Donald Trump, a recalcitrant American president who is questioning an 80-year commitment to protecting Europe from Russia, lifelong Euro-Atlanticists like me must recognize that we need not only a more powerful Europe – something I have always argued for – but also the real possibility of a European “strategic autonomy.” Oui, Monsieur le Président, you were right.
And yet, en même temps (at the same time), to use Macron’s favorite phrase, we must answer “Non.” De Gaulle, a great man of his time, believed that defense should be exclusively in the hands of the nation state; that the emerging European Community should be a Europe of states (a non-unified version of the European Union, to which today’s far-right populist parties dream of returning); that Britain should be excluded from the European project (hence his famous “Non!” to British membership in that emerging community); and that Europe should be built as a counterweight to the United States, while maintaining close relations with Russia and China.
Above all, any realistic plan to defend oneself from Vladimir Putin’s Russia must begin with the only serious military organization in Europe today, which is NATO. Here are the dedicated, trained, and interconnected forces of all the European NATO member states, command and control, intricately coordinated air operations, detailed plans for an Allied reaction force to be deployed to defend the eastern border, and a credible degree of (mostly American) nuclear deterrence. The EU has nothing like this. History might have been different if the initial idea of building a more integrated Europe around defense had not been defeated by Gaullist (and communist) votes in the French National Assembly in 1954. For, as de Gaulle’s biographer Julian Jackson reminds us, he “never attacked a supranational organization more savagely than the European Defense Community that failed to emerge.”
So, regardless of initial ideological preference, whether Gaullist or Atlanticist, if you are serious about defending Europe, you should start with NATO – and then see how we can Europeanize it as quickly as possible. But, at the same time, in the face of the radical uncertainty that Trump brings, we should think again about expanding the coverage of the French and British nuclear deterrent.
The EU is already becoming a major player in the field of defense, especially in support of Ukraine. And because both the EU and NATO have within them pro-Putin blockers like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, some of the most advanced defense engagements will require “coalitions of the willing,” like the one for Ukraine, on which the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has been working closely with the French president. The former French minister for Europe, Clément Beaune, tweeted a photo from the impromptu meeting of European, Turkish, and Canadian leaders that Starmer organized in London, accompanying it with the three words “Les États unis” (the United States). But there is a big difference between being “the United States” and being “the United States,” les États-Unis—a single state, capable of using extraordinary military power with a single executive decision.
The challenge for Europe is to make a rapid, coherent and credible transition from the security we have enjoyed for almost 80 years, within a US-dominated alliance, to a Europe without a single hegemony, but which is nevertheless capable of defending itself against a great and aggressive power.
This is an incredibly difficult mission. Being a non-hegemonic great power in product regulation or trade policy is one thing; doing so in a field like defense, which requires young men and women to sacrifice their lives – is something else entirely.
There are three main obstacles to achieving this ambitious but now existential goal. The first is the radically different historical understanding that European countries have of national security. In an international crisis, every British prime minister thinks he must be Winston Churchill and every French president, De Gaulle. The national models of other European leaders are less clear – post-war chancellor Konrad Adenauer for Germany? Interwar marshal Józef Piłsudski for Poland? Foreign Minister of the “hour of Europe” in the 1990s, Jacques Poos, for Luxembourg? But their strategic instincts and cultures are equally diverse. The approach that Europe needs, therefore, is a Churchillo-Gaullism, a combination of the best of our continent’s two most influential traditions when it comes to a world at war. This is a formula that not only Macron and Starmer, but probably most European leaders, agree with.
Second, the policies we need are European, but our democratic politics still remain national. Behind last week’s headline that the EU will spend €800 billion on defence, there is actually only €150 billion of complex European funding. The rest, €650 billion, is simply a license for member states to spend those sums individually. Every national leader who announces an increase in the defence budget explains it as a way to create jobs in his country. But, besides greater arms production, what Europe urgently needs is rationalisation and consolidation.
Currently, Europe has about 170 major weapons systems, compared to just 30 in the US. Consolidation would mean reaching an agreement that, for example, a type of fighter jet should be produced in Italy and Sweden, closing a factory in France, while a certain air defense system should be produced in France and Britain, closing a factory in Germany. Imagine how easy that would be.
All this is happening while most European countries are deeply in debt and their increasingly aging populations are demanding increased spending on health, social care, pensions, and more. This brings us to the final obstacle, which is perfectly summed up in something Churchill said to de Gaulle when the latter awarded him the Croix de la Liberation in 1958. Contrasting the complex challenges of the 1950s with the clear purpose of their wartime partnership, Churchill observed: “It is more difficult to seek, even among friends and allies, that vital unity of purpose, in the face of a world situation which is neither peace nor war.”
And that is exactly where we are now: somewhere between peace and war. As we have seen in recent days, as soon as the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine appears, public opinion is desperate to believe that we can quickly return to the way of life we had after 1989. It is now the task of European leaders not only to revive the fighting spirit of Churchill and De Gaulle, but also to honestly explain to citizens that we are facing another long war – and if we really want peace, we must prepare for war.
That’s why I say: Vive l’Europe! Vive le Churchillo-Gaullisme!
(The Guardian)
