Paris and Berlin prepare alliance to rival Nato
April 28, 2003
From Charles Bremner in Paris
EUROPE’S self-inflicted wounds over Iraq will be on display
tomorrow, when the leaders of France and Germany —
dubbed the “Axis of Weasels” in America — start to try to lay
the groundwork for a European Union military alliance that
would compete with Nato.
At a meeting in Brussels with the Prime Ministers of Belgium
and Luxembourg, President Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, the
German Chancellor, want to clear the way for a common
European defence system that would start with a core of
volunteer states.
Although the Germans have qualms about a confrontation with
Nato, the French are not hiding their aim to achieve their
long-standing goal of unhitching the United States from
European defence. This has become more pressing with the
reported plans of the US to punish France for its stand on the
war in Iraq by excluding it from Nato decision-making.
Last night, however, Tony Blair gave warning to M Chirac
against placing Europe as a rival to the United States, calling
such a move “destabilising”. In an interview with the Financial
Times, he said: “I am not really interested in talk about
punishing countries, but I think there is an issue that we have
to resolve here between America and Europe and within
Europe about Europe’s attitutde towards the transatlantic
alliance.
“I don’t want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America. I
think it will be dangerous and destabilising.”
The mechanism for founding what would be a unified EU
military force was tabled last week without much fanfare by
the chiefs of the convention that is drafting a new EU
constitution. The arrangement, akin to the foundation of
monetary union, would be far more ambitious than the existing
European security and defence policy that was launched by
Britain and France in 1998. That policy, which includes a rapid
reaction force, is limited to humanitarian, peacekeeping and
crisis management in co-operation with Nato.
Although Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister,
proposed the mini-summit months ago, London and other EU
capitals view the Brussels initiative as akin to provocation by
the four most active opponents of American policy over Iraq.
Despite denials from Paris and Berlin, the session looks like a
manoeuvre by French-led “old Europe” against the pro-Atlantic
axis, led by Britain and Spain and featuring new EU states,
which Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, called
“new Europe”.
Britain, which has the EU’s most powerful Armed Forces, was
not invited. Nor were the leaders of the EU’s other main
pro-Atlantic states — Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said that the Brussels
meeting “risks sending a message of division about the the
creation of a defence policy separate from Nato”. Britain was
adamant that the EU’s present security arrangement had
nothing to do with a common defence, which was the domain
of Nato, Mr Hoon told a French newspaper.
Britain is especially opposed to the French-backed idea of
creating an EU military general staff, but it supports the view,
shared by France and the others, that the EU needs to raise
defence spending and to create a centralised arms agency,
which would avoid duplication and help competition with the
American defence industry.
While Europe’s split over Iraq has given impetus to the defence
initiative, the project has been looming since the 1950s and in
particular since President de Gaulle took France out of the Nato
military structure in 1967. Differences over autonomy from
Nato were buried and not resolved after M Chirac and Tony
Blair launched their security initiative in St Malo in 1998.
The confrontation with the United States over Iraq was seen
by M Chirac and his allies as a coming-of-age test that the
expanding Union had failed. To become a real power, the EU
must, in their eyes, define itself as a “balance” against the
United States. An independent defence force is a primary
condition for confirming Europe’s identity as more than an
economic bloc, they say.
Extending the defence concept over the weekend, Michele
Alliot-Marie, the French Defence Minister who was visiting
Moscow, sought to involve Russia, the ally of France and
Germany in the anti-war front over Iraq, saying that “Russia
should be associated with the planning work that we are
carrying out”.
Britain and other opponents of the plan point out that even with
French power, the proposed four-nation core marshals only 35
per cent of EU defence spending. Britain is likely to oppose
inclusion in the new constitution of the machinery for creating
a defence alliance.
Spending power
Germany
Defence budget: £16.9bn
Armed Forces: 296,000
France
Defence budget: £20.1bn
Armed Forces:260,400
United Kingdom
Defence budget: £29.3bn
Armed Forces: 210,450
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