Before the advent of modern operational analysis, military decisions relied a good deal on a list of maxims known as The Principles of War, based on centuries of harsh experience in the field. The first and foremost of these was The Selection and Maintenance of the Aim, an acknowledgement that in the confusion and trauma of war the best laid plans can be lost sight of. How strange then that in the European movement something similar has happened even though the forgotten aim is not war but preventing war. It is not the fog of war that has blurred Europes vision, but rather the distractions of peace.
I believe this has been due to four factors, which are poorly understood and on which a military perspective may here and there lend some clarity: firstly, it is not well appreciated that the new Europe was intended by its founders to be a peaceful influence on the world, not just on Europeans; secondly, in order to perform this larger role nowadays we must be militarily strong; thirdly, the virtual impossibility of being militarily strong without political unity; and fourthly, the effect of uncertainty of aim on public enthusiasm for the movement and the way this hampers its development.
Europes military dimension
In the late 1940s, the fathers of the European movement saw far beyond the need to avoid a third world war, crucial as that was. They realised that, in the next half century, democracy had to spread if civilization was to recover from the terrible epoch of political extremisms that had survived or might be revived after the 193945 war. They saw that Europe must play a key part in this, both in continuing as a partner of the USA and also in reviving its own historic influence as the source of Western culture and democracy. If, for instance, Europe resumed warring within itself (committing civil war as they described it) what price then the world image of Western values and democracy?
It is all too easy to confuse this last point (the necessity for peace) with a pacifist agenda. The opposite is often the case as the Romans appear to have understood in saying, Let him who desires peace prepare for war (Vegetius, De re mil. 3, Prologue). Or as a modern military historian has expanded the theme, At the root of all but the most primitive or most celestial organizations must lie the sanction of force (A)s yet no community of any degree of complexity has succeeded in existing without force, and the manner in which that force is exercised and controlled will largely determine the political structure of the state (Michael Howard, Soldiers & Governments, 1957; italics added).
It was no doubt excusable in the 1950s, in the 1960s and perhaps even in the early 1970s that, after the exhaustion and devastation of war, Europeans were keener on the peace dividend than on re-armament. In any case, for a time, the Americans, British and Free French were still on the continent in some force. When during the 1950s relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, the Americans made clear that their own front line was in Western Europe and that they would provide the overwhelming proportion of the forces needed to maintain Europes frontiers. (In fact, it can be argued that the US has been decisively involved in European defence three times: between 1917 and 1918, from 1941 to 1945, and for over forty years throughout the cold war.)
So, at first there was nothing too unusual in Europeans not hustling to be self-sufficient in their own continental defence. Also, for the colonial powers there was their pre-occupation with withdrawal from empire, especially for the British and French who each fought a number of military campaigns in the process.
But, of course, it was one thing for Europe in those mid-century circumstances to be unable to defend itself against the USSR, a superpower, and it is quite another for the Europe of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to be still relatively impotent, now that the world power structure has changed so radically. Japan, India and China have now become major industrial powers and the expanding industrial world is ever more rapidly widening the potentially dangerous economic gulf between itself and the Third World. Moreover, into this tense milieu, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are gradually becoming widespread.
Geopolitically therefore, we may be on the way to the kind of world power structure foreseen by Kissinger (cf his Diplomacy, 1994) in which power blocs compete for the loyalties of the remainder. Kissinger stressed that, in this scenario, the US would be in great need of a major Western partner and would certainly look to Europe as its natural ally.
This picture compares starkly with the recent Balkan experience where the European Union seemed powerless to halt a recurrence of aggression and genocide of a kind not seen since the Second World War, relying on the Americans not just militarily but for political leadership. So, even on its own continent the European Union is not a decisive political entity or military power.
But only just beyond Europes borders there are now a war in Afghanistan and turmoil in the Middle East, both rooted in the economic and racial tensions mentioned above. Can Europe afford to be almost a bystander in the face of neighbouring situations, which may impact on us physically as prominent members of the prosperous Western industrial camp, vulnerable to Islamic terrorism? As Per Wirtén remarks in an associated paper in this series: If ever there was a point to the project of the European Union now is the time to prove it.
Armed strength requires political unity
This raises the third of my opening points, the failure to realise that Europe cannot be strong without becoming politically united. Although the combined European GDP almost equals that of the US, we could not equal their level of military strength even if we raised our percentage spending on defence to their much higher level. The US is one nation with a national defence policy, a coordinated defence industry and rationalised armed forces. Europe has none of these and no common foreign policy. Our defence industries are in competition with each other for both continental defence and overseas sales, and without political unity national economic and social interests hinder rationalisation.
But, in any case, as Clausewitz observed two hundred years ago, in all but military dictatorships armies are instruments of political policy. With no common foreign policy, armed force has to be employed by committee. This, of course, is why not just Europe but also the United Nations Organisation are so militarily indecisive even when they have managed to assemble the necessary forces, which is difficult enough. One can put any number of European soldiers together in mixed battalions or joint mobile forces without overcoming the problem of how and when to use them politically. Enlarging the European Union to the east will of course compound the problem.
European sentiment vis-à-vis the future
The second but equally important item in the old Principles of War is The Maintenance of Morale, the recognition that however clever the selected aim, it cannot be achieved unless the troops believe in it and are eager to try it. In the European movement today the chief characteristic of the aim is its sheer uncertainty; in fact, as regards the intention whether or not to unite politically, one might almost say duplicity. It is as if the Treaty of Rome itself were under attack from across the Tiber with those behind shouting forward! and those ahead crying back!.
Europe has achieved striking economic success and its people enjoy unprecedented prosperity. But the young have known nothing else and are not inspired by it, whilst for many older people its value is offset by what they see as gross interference with national custom and tradition without political representation. The fact that prosperity is largely due to these rationalisations is too technical to be inspiring. Moreover, those politically aligned towards nationalism and against collectivity at any price fail to see that the values that do inspire them can no longer be defended nationally in the modern world.
It has been observed that loyalties are complex and hierarchical. We are loyal to family, colleagues, institutions, nations and religions and other ideals, but in different ways in each case. Patriotism, the old focus of secular loyalties in a world of nation states is out of focus in a large economic association and demands some substitute at that higher level. Regiments are in a similar situation when serving under higher formations; their close loyalties then have to serve a higher aim. Large armies without a higher aim, as when just after victory or defeat, are notoriously difficult to motivate and discipline.
In essence, this is the present European situation, laagering at a political waypoint with nowhere to go. It presents dangers, especially for the young whose energies need outlets. Europe offers them prosperity and has been foremost in encouraging new attitudes on human rights and liberal values. But is all that enough? I think not. The world is at a dangerous turning point and the old tend to hold back from tackling such huge problems due to lifes accumulated inhibitions. But the young are not so restrained: extremisms of the Left or Right can seem to offer inspiration and may be tempting options if the formal system lacks direction.
Thus, for both external and internal reasons, and because the first depend so much on the health of the second, the European Union needs to unite politically and offer its citizens the opportunity of loyalty to crucial international policies.
