At the NATO/GMFUS Conference Brussels, 3 October 2002

Question & Answers Panel discussion: "How can Europe bridge the capabilities gap?" Chairman: Thank you very much Julian and Klaus. You will have noticed that there is no complacency on the part of the Europeans about the situation, at least on this podium, and perhaps this is a very good introduction to some further thoughts. Would anyone like to raise any questions or tell us that Europe is not in such bad straits as we have all said. Question (Barry Posen of Transatlantic Centre) If you start looking at figures in terms of defence spending and manpower in this part of the world relative to the United States, one thing jumps out at you immediately and that is the Americans spend about four times as much money per person in uniform as people do in this part of the world and a lot of the discussion here has been about finding more money, or re-allocating more money, but to get up to the kinds of capabilities that we heard talked about at lunch today, it seems that one way to get there is to have really massive surgery on the personnel side here. It seems like the Europeans are at least maintaining two times as many people under arms as makes any sense at all, given the vision of the military future that has been described on these panels. And I am wondering what do you think the odds are that instead of having a big dispute about raising more money, you had a big dispute about having that major surgery? Klaus Naumann I believe for the time being we will not get much more money in Europe. I’m very pessimistic on that and for that reason I said in my talk, until 2006, the year of the stability pact of the European Monetary Union, I do not see a realistic real increase more or less following the laudable model of our French allies. So for that reason I believe we have to look into possibilities how we can spend our money more effectively, more wisely. We have to reconsider many of the projects which are in the making right now, be they in NATO or be they within nations, and we have to invest in those capabilities which really matter in the future. We cannot copy the Americans but we can start to transform the forces and for that reason I propose this look into the grid which is for Network Centric Warfare, and that is the future, it is the crucial element, and then you can also better exploit the legacy forces which you still have since you have dominant battlefield awareness, and with that you maximise the efficiency of your forces. That I think is the interim solution. It’s only a first stepping stone and at the same time Europe should engage into capabilities for let’s say the next ten years, and from my perspective, I am always telling German audiences, if you all were prepared to smoke one cigarette less a day, statistically, then we could easily finance the entire modernisation of the German armed forces and that is also true for all Europeans. It’s not a big amount of money. It’s a small sacrifice but we have to start it now in order not to miss, and that Ladies and Gentleman is my real concern. We have missed the train of the first revolution in military affairs in Europe. The next revolution in military affairs based on biotechnology and nonotechnology is already knocking at our doors and if we do not act now we will miss the next train, and then the amount of planning which has to be done, force planning, is no longer manageable and then the European nations will really be confronted with a disaster. For that reason it’s urgent to take modest steps now and to stop all the investment in legacy forces, be they tanks, ships or aircraft. Julian Lindley-French It’s a good question. Part of the problem is one of strategic choice, if you like. It’s kind of frightening out there, we don’t know quite where to put our limited money. One can talk very nicely about generic capabilities, but we are not going to have a broad spectrum as Europeans, we’re going to have to focus in certain areas. I think many politicians are bemused by the options that they face. The other problem I think is one of profile, that the cost of modernisation and professionalisation goes like that, and that in the early days of modernisation and professionalisation you actually had a hike, which, given the constraints that Klaus rightly identifies, is also intimidating quite a few governments from going down this road. Thereafter you do obviously save money, you do spread it over the lifecycle, say, of a defence planning cycle, but politicians don’t think in those terms, they think in terms of next year’s budget, we’re going to have to spend this money with no ostensible return for many years. And I fear that Klaus’ point about threat and, indeed Mark’s point about threat, is probably the only way that politicians will feel able to face up to their populations about this, but ultimately, as I said, it comes down to political guts. If we wait until it’s too late before we modernise, professionalise, reorganise, reinvest, then the classic historical European problem of being one defence planning cycle behind the threat will once again be enacted and we’ll find ourselves trying to do security with training, doctrine, equipment and personnel belonging to a previous age. Question The price that we will pay for a force which can respond very rapidly is quite a high premium. It’s expensive to have a rapid response force to the extent that we envision. My question is what does your crystal ball tell you about the willingness politically to take decisions which would in fact require a force that could respond that quickly or to allow pre-decisional actions to be taken to enable the use of such a force because if we’re not prepared to do that then we’re perhaps spending a premium for responsiveness that won’t be called upon? Klaus Naumann Well, I think we come back to two points which have been raised earlier. I think that the real ultimate prerequisite is that our politicians have to be convinced that there is a danger. At the moment many of our politicians, many of our citizens, do not believe that there are any risks, and as long as we don’t get this across, that there is a world full of dangers and full of risks, transnational and others, we will not succeed in getting the public behind increased defence spending, and having said this, I really call on the intelligence communities of our world to give up this bloody cold war attitude of not revealing sources and protecting sources. They are backfiring on us. If we don’t tell the people what really is at stake they won’t believe and we did not do a very good job. Take this recent example on Iraq. You had a different debate in Europe. If we had a convincing case, that there is really an imminent danger, all these wonderful papers, Tony Blair’s papers, the IRS paper, they raised questions but they did not provide crystal clear answers, and that I think is one of our problems. I dare to say, looking at my own nation which I know better than any other one, perhaps the British I know quite good, if we got this message across I would not see the slightest problem to get an increase in defence spending. That’s, in my view, the main point. Julian Lindley-French Just to follow on to that very briefly. You put your finger, Sir, on the issue of decision making. If we don’t actually have a mechanism that enables for rapid and effective decision making in what are very rapidly changing operational environments, then I think what we will see is the progressive renationalisation of the effort by the major powers. And I’m going to be very controversial here, I think London is very disappointed with what’s happening at the moment. I think the decision that the Royal Navy is about to embark on the largest equipment programme in its history with a whole suite of command and projection capabilities, this will have profound implications for an intra-European gap that we really will have to manage because it could, if not handled carefully, (a) mark the end of the European project, but (b) equally importantly, mark the end of consensus as a model for doing security. Chairman: Thank you very much. I would like to thank both speakers.