With NATO enlargement and missile defence grabbing all the headlines at last week’s summit in Bucharest, EU-NATO relations barely got a look in. Yet dramatic changes are taking place inside both organisations that are putting a major strain on that relationship. In an exclusive interview, the man recently nominated to be the US ambassador to NATO said that the EU’s expanding role on defence was not - as some believe - undermining NATO.

«There is no reason why having stronger European defence capability has to come at the expense of NATO and why an EU commitment to solidarity should undermine the NATO commitment. It is a question of how it’s done,» Kurt Volker, currently US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, told Europolitics. «In the past we saw efforts to create duplicative and competitive structures but I do not believe that is a strong impetus within Europe now,» he said, referring to the infamous ‘chocolate summit’ in 2003 when France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg discussed creating an EU military operational headquarters. Practical considerations more than politics have caused this rethink, Volker maintained: «I do not thing countries feel they have the resources to spare to be able to create two sets of structures.»

The ambassador-designate’s upbeat assessment of EU-NATO relations was not shared by the British shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who was in Washington this week voicing his fears that EU integration was putting NATO’s future in peril. «A flawed system building up trouble for the future,» was how Fox characterised NATO-EU relations at a conference at the Heritage Foundation think-tank on 7 April. Fox, who is from the eurosceptic British Conservative party, urged the US not to make a «mistaken presumption that EU developments are necessarily benign», adding that «American isolationism and Euro-integrationism are threatening the transatlantic bond».

Fox predicted that the December 2007 Lisbon EU Treaty, currently being ratified by EU member states, would lead to the EU supplanting, not supplementing NATO. He said the treaty’s provisions on ‘permanent structured co-operation’ were «anathema to improving NATO’s military capability» and would create «an EU pillar in NATO» while the mutual defence solidarity clause would make NATO subordinate to the EU. Fox laid out an alternative vision in which NATO’s role would be expanded by extending NATO’s mutual solidarity clause to cover cyberterrorism and energy security - two policy fronts that the EU is increasingly busy on. He urged Washington to assert NATO’s primacy rather than merely viewing the organisation as «one of a variety of tools it can use».

Dividing up duties between the EU and NATO is an issue policymakers have grappled with ever since the 1990s when the Soviet communist threat, NATO’s original raison d’être, ceased to exist and the EU began developing a common security and defence policy. In the meantime, the EU and NATO have deployed military, police and rule of law missions to eleven different trouble spots in Europe, Africa and Asia (see table for details). Asked who should be doing what, Volker said «NATO’s relative strengths are on the military side and defence planning. The EU has relative strength on the humanitarian, reconstruction and development, and police training side. But there is overlap too: the EU also has the capacity to put together more traditional military operations such as its missions in Bosnia and Congo.»

Probed on when NATO should lead a mission rather than the EU, Volker said US involvement was key. «If the US is going to participate in a security and defence operation - like we did in Kosovo and Afghanistan - it ought to be under a NATO banner. But when we are not, then why not do it through the EU» as has happened in Congo, Chad and Aceh, he said. Volker said US soldiers would not serve under the EU flag in a military operation but that «with a civilian-based mission, we are perfectly happy to work directly with the EU». He mentioned Kosovo as an example where the US is providing prosecutors, judges and police training experts to help the recently deployed EU rule of law mission. Volker was opposed to designating specific regions as ‘spheres of influence’ for each organisation - for example Africa for the EU and Asia for NATO. «I do not agree with geographic allocations. It does not make sense,» he said, noting how the US was keen to get involved in Darfur, for example but not in Chad where the EU has the lead.

NO EU ROLE ON MISSILE DEFENCE

There was one issue where the ambassador-designate was adamant that NATO, not the EU, should be in the driving seat: missile defence. «The EU really does not have a role. This comes on the backbone of a US lead so it makes sense to do it within NATO,» he said. Washington hopes to sign a deal with Czech Republic in May to install a radar on Czech soil while an agreement with Poland to install missile interceptors inside Poland is likely to be concluded by the end of 2008, he said. NATO would meanwhile study how to extend a missile defence system to areas not already covered, including Turkey, southern Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. The US would be «supportive of» any Russian efforts to extend coverage to Russian territory, he added. Moscow has made it very clear that it opposes the Czech and Polish sites despite US claims these systems will not be pointed at Russia but are rather designed to stop missile attacks from Iran.

Volker admitted not everything was coming up roses when it came to EU-NATO relations. «We would like to see greater EU contribution to police training in Afghanistan,» he said. But a more systemic problem, he felt, is the dispute over Cyprus, which remains split between the Turkish-occupied north, which runs a de facto yet unrecognised state, and the official, Greek Cypriot-dominated government in the south. Squabbling between Turkey, which is in NATO but not the EU, and Cyprus, an EU but not a NATO member, has made it difficult for the EU and NATO to co-operate, he said. For example, the vetoing by Turkey and Cyprus of each others’ involvement in operations has prevented an agreement being concluded to allow NATO personnel to extract and if necessary evacuate EU personnel in emergency situations in hotspots like Kosovo and Afghanistan.

A big worry for Volker was the relatively paltry size of most European states’ defence budgets. «We want to see them raising their levels of spending. The NATO average, if you subtract the US, is at an historic low - about 1.3% or 1.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) and is not going in the right direction.» Of the 30 European countries that are either members of the EU or NATO or both, only Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Slovenia have raised that percentage since 2000 (see table). By contrast, the US has boosted its spending by about 1% of GDP since launching wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and now spends roughly 4% of its GDP on defence.

Shadow Defence Minister Fox echoed Volker’s concerns, noting at the Heritage Foundation how «13 EU member states have militaries smaller than the London metropolitan police» while Britain’s spending on defence is the lowest it has been since 1931. «In the last ten years, the German army shrunk from 330,000 to 247,000, the French from 449,000 to 354,000 and the Italian from 402,000 to 298,000,» Fox noted. He slammed the ‘costs lie where they fall’ formula used by NATO and EU for deciding how much each country should contribute to operations. «The few carry the many,» he said, meaning that only a few countries provide most of the troops and foot most of the bill. Under EU treaty rules, more than 90% of the cost of EU military missions is covered by national budgets, not the EU budget, which gave just €57.3 million in 2007 for defence operations.

«It is quite wrong for everyone to get the same insurance policy when only a few pay the premiums,» said Fox. The Conservative MP noted how the defence minister of Turkey, which spends 3% of its GDP on defence, told him recently that Turkey would help out more in Afghanistan militarily if other countries would provide the funding. He called for a common fund to be set up for all NATO operations.

Asked what he thought about EU efforts to get EU member states to work together more on defence procurement - notably by creating a European Defence Agency (EDA) in 2004 - Ambassador-designate Volker was encouraging. «If the EDA can help countries to pool their resources and negotiate better deals, that is not a bad thing,» he said. He was «not presently worried» about the prospect of European protectionism leading to defence purchases of US products being excluded, saying simply «the key is to have a fair and transparent procurement procedure». Defence procurement has been a political hot potato in Washington ever since the US Air Force decided on 29 February to give a $35 billion contract to refuel its planes to the Euro-American EADS-Northrop Grumman consortium instead of to US aircraft manufacturer Boeing. With Boeing contesting this decision and some US Congressmen threatening to cut the funding for the contract won by EADS, some predict a protectionist backlash in the US (see Europolitics3493 for details).

UKRAINE, GEORGIA PUSH

One major development at the NATO summit was the leaders’ declaration that Ukraine and Georgia «will become members of NATO». This was something of a coup for the US, which had been twisting the arms of some reluctant western European countries on the issue, notably France and Germany. Asked if the declaration might improve Kiev and Tbilisi’s chances of joining the EU too, Volker said «it is true NATO enlargement has preceded EU enlargement along the way. But it is a little early to predict whether that will be a pattern that will follow in the case of Ukraine and Georgia». He stressed that given Ukraine’s large size and pressing need for economic reform, EU membership was «not realistically on the cards right now». Washington has lobbied for many years for its NATO ally Turkey to join the EU but has not yet taken a position on Ukraine and Georgia joining. While formally there is no link between membership of NATO and the EU, in practice many countries in central and eastern Europe have joined or applied to join NATO shortly before they joined or applied to join the EU (see table).

Rival Solidarity Clauses

EU Lisbon Treaty Article 28(a)7: «If a member state is a victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance and by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.»

NATO Treaty Article 5: «The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.»

NATO Bucharest summit (3 April 2008) : «We are therefore determined to improve the NATO-EU strategic partnership...to achieve closer co-operation and greater efficiency, and to avoid unnecessary duplication in a spirit of transparency, and respecting the autonomy of the two organisations. A stronger EU will further contribute to our common security.»