From Pax Americana to Pax Transatlantica?
The Western Quest for Supremacy in the Era of Persistent Conflict
by Jürgen Wagner
Information on Politics & Society.
News, Reports and Analysis from the European Parliament, No. 2/April 2010. Published by Sabine Lösing, MEP
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. A Transatlantic New Deal for indefinite Western Supremacy
1.1 The Decline of the West and the looming New Cold War
1.2 The Transatlantic New Deal: The more you fight, the more you decide
1.3 Implementing the Transatlantic New Deal
2. Military Neoliberalism: Preparing for the Era of Persistent Conflict
2.1 The State-Capitalist Challenge to Neoliberal Globalization
2.2 Fighting the Poor, instead of Fighting Poverty
3. Colonialism Reloaded: The New Western Way of War
3.1 Rapid Reaction Forces: Spearheads of the New Interventionism
3.2 Civil-Military Cooperation and the New Colonialism
4. The Imperial Makeover of NATO and the European Union
4.1 Imperial Makeover I: European Union
4.2 Imperial Makeover II: NATO
Conclusion
Box 1: Resource Wars and the Contours of the New Cold War
Box 2: NATO-EU-Cooperation: Counterinsurgency in Kosovo
Box 3: Somalia, Globalization and War
Box 4: Thomas Barnett: System Administration and Military Neoliberalism
Box 5: CIMIC in Afghanistan – A Deadly Failure
Foreword
We are indeed living in an era of change.
The latest financial and economic crises not only underscored the
bankruptcy of the exploitative neoliberal system but also accelerated
the profound ongoing shift of power away from the Western countries.
Russia and especially China are questioning their continued supremacy
which had been taken for granted for centuries. As a result, we can
currently observe rapidly growing geopolitical tensions that could
well spiral out into some sort of a New Cold War. Furthermore, there
are more and more military interventions – euphemistically called
"Stability Operations" – which are a desperate Western
attempt to protect the crumbling neoliberal order (and therefore the
profits of their corporations).
At the same time, yesterdays heavy conflicts
between the United States and the European Union are now put aside
for the moment. We can see a massive transatlantic rapprochement
which is motivated by the common interest to uphold Western supremacy
no matter what the costs. For this purpose, the transatlantic
relationship is currently set on a fundamentally new footing. As the
United States' power has declined over the last decade to the extend
that they are no longer able to guarantee the dominance of the West
largely on their own, they desperately need – and loudly demand –
more military support from their allies. Provided they are willing to
deliver more boots on the ground, in a "Transatlantic New Deal",
the United States is willing to grant the Europeans a much a greater
say within the alliance and its most important institution, NATO.
This study convincingly shows that this
Transatlantic New Deal is currently in the process of its
implementation in order to militarily uphold the international
pecking order and that this will prove to be a dangerous recipe for
disaster. Additionally, by an imperial makeover of NATO and the
European Union, the Western powers are even willing to sacrifice the
– at least on paper – much lauded "democratic principles"
in order to be able to employ force more effectively in the future.
The reason for this militaristic approach is the
reluctance to seriously try to establish a more social international
order, one that is based on equality, not hierarchy, on fairness, not
exploitation. As this will be the only way to avoid serious
conflicts, there is indeed an urgent need for Western policy to change,
as the leading social theorist David Harvey points out: "And if
that means socialism, nationalizations, strong state direction,
binding international collaborations, and a new and far more
inclusive (dare I say 'democratic') international financial
architecture, then so be it."
Sabine Lösing, Member of the European Parliament (MEP)
Introduction
"The US and Europe are the best allies they've each got. Yes, they have
similar traditions, share values and have a history of cooperation
behind them. Yes, those interests are not always the same. But most
importantly, the US and Europe are on the same side of today's
geopolitical dividing line: both are declining powers with a shared,
vested interest in the liberal status quo. […] Together, the US and
Europe can help manage and perhaps even mitigate their collective
decline. Alone, however, both will be hunted."
Daniel Korski: Partners in Decline, European Council on Foreign
Relations, 02.03.2010
Not long ago, the conflicts between the United States
on the one side and particularly Germany and France, two of the most
important countries of the European Union on the other reached such a
dimension that many analysts saw those powers as being inevitably on
a collision course.1
Yet, recently, the relationship has significantly improved, a fact
that is commonly attributed to the election of a new president in the
United States. As Barack Obama, who took office in January 2009,
shows a far greater willingness to respect European interests than
his predecessor George W. Bush, this paved the way for a new
beginning, so the argument goes: "Barack
Obama's approach to foreign policy has nothing in common with that of
George W. Bush. US foreign policy has changed radically under
President Obama, and the radical departure from the confrontational
style of conducting foreign policy that characterised the Bush era
throws a window of opportunity wide open for the EU ambition of a
world governed by effective multilateralism – a notion that echoes
the 'assertive multilateralism' of the Clinton years – to see the
light of day."2
In reality, it is quite to the contrary: the fundamentally shifting distribution of
power in the international system mandates a new approach and Barack
Obama is seen as the ideal person that has the credibility and
sympathy from the European side to set the transatlantic relationship
on a new footing.3
In a highly alarmist tone, eight of the most relevant think tanks
from both sides of the Atlantic underscored the necessity for change
in December 2009: "With the Cold War over and new powers rising, some say the transatlantic
partnership has had its day. We disagree. […] The world that
created the transatlantic partnership is fading fast. The United
States and Europe must urgently reposition and recast their
relationship as a more effective and strategic partnership. It is a
moment of opportunity -- to use or to lose."4
Perhaps it is way too
early to proclaim the end of Western dominance, as it is fashionable
these days.5
But the combination of a rapidly declining acceptance of the
neoliberal – or anglo-saxon – economic model in the so-called
Third World, combined with the rapid emergence of new powers – or,
as strategists call them, "potential rivals" –,
especially China and Russia, currently poses a striking challenge to
Western supremacy. A clear signal that the times they are a changing
was the publication of the report "Global Trends 2025" by
the US intelligence community in November 2008. In this document,
America's intelligence agencies predicted - for the first time –
that the power of the United States will diminish significantly in
the years ahead. China and Russia are particularly pointed to as new
emerging powers and – more troubling – as potential rivals of the
United States. Moreover, the study forecasts growing "turmoil"
and "unrest" in the so-called Third World and an increasing
demand for "Stability Operations" in order to manage those
conflicts.6
Equally, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) of the European Union, its most relevant think tank, concludes
that not only the influence of the United States but also of the
European Union is declining and that the West will have a tough time
in order to uphold its supremacy. Therefore it notes, that in light
of "Global trends 2025", the views on both sides of the
Atlantic have converged recently.7
In Germany, the intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst(BND) was
tasked to prepare an assessment on how the international landscape
will change in the years ahead. The results have been circulated
within top decision-makers to guide their future policies: "In
mid-April [2009], BND President Ernst Uhrlau presented German
President Horst Köhler with his analysis of the repercussions of the
current situation. During the meeting at Berlin's Bellevue Palace,
the president's official residence, the two men discussed a
'metamorphosis in geopolitics' and the future political make-up of a
world that will never be the same again. The core message for the
German government is that Europe and the United States will come
under growing political pressure, and will face growing competition
from China. Beijing will be one of the likely beneficiaries of future
shifts on the political map."8
In this context, it is important to note that the constant bickering over the transatlantic power and burden
sharing is dwarfed in light of the interests the Unites States and
the European Union have in common. Both are keen to maintain the
current hierarchy vis-à-vis the "contender states" (China
and Russia9)
as well as to ensure the stability of the current exploitative
neoliberal economic order: "By and large, American priorities
are the same as Europe's. This can hardly come as a surprise, since
US and EU interests virtually coincide as well."10
So there are strong incentives for working more closely together, as
four leading American think tanks point out: "Skeptics point to
the relative decline of North America and Europe when it comes to
global population trends or the world economy. Yet those trends
underscore the need to deepen, not dilute, transatlantic cooperation.
A weaker transatlantic bond would render Americans and Europeans less
safe, less prosperous, and less able to advance either our ideals or
our interests in the wider world."11
On the base of these considerations, the West is currently making serious efforts in a number of areas in
order to uphold its supremacy:
First,
as an analysis for the European Council demands, in light of the
declining power of the United States, the "transition from pax
America"
will lead to a new world order which should be "overseen by a
new pax
Transatlantica."12
For this purpose, a new division of power and labour between the
United States and the European Union, a "Transatlantic
New Deal",
is necessary. As Zbigniew Brzezinski points out, this "means to
re-establish a shared sense of purpose between America and Europe
[…], as well as in NATO, pointing towards more truly shared
decision-making."13
While the United States desperately needs and loudly demands a
greater military support from its allies, they offer them as a reward
a greater say within the transatlantic alliance. So, the essence of
the Transatlantic New Deal, currently on the way to being
implemented, boils down to an American offer the Europeans seem to be
willingly accepting: the more you fight, the more you decide.
Second, besides the growing geopolitical rivalries between the great powers, there is
another driver for the need to improve the transatlantic
relationship: while China and Russia are currently challenging the
economic rules of the game, this is all the more troubling as the
neoliberal system produces increasing conflicts and resistance in the
so-called Third World. As neoliberal globalization increasingly
breeds poverty and poverty is the main root cause of conflict and
civil wars, the strategic community stresses the need for more
"Stability Operations". As there is no interest in
establishing a more just economic order, the new "Military
Neoliberalism" aspires to fight the poor, instead of fighting poverty.
Third, in order to cope with the new challenging international environment,
a "New Western Way of War" has taken shape, which can be described as follows: "By the time the Cold
War ended, imperialism seemed a relict of a bygone era. […] Although the former
imperialist powers continued to dominate the world stage militarily
and economically, they had gone out of the business of invading and
exercising permanent military control over foreign lands. But
something odd happened in the years since the 1990s. For reasons that
are complex, many of the same powerful Western states that contritely
rejected imperialism a few short decades ago today are increasingly
resorting to military force to intervene in the territories of other
states, and in many cases, they are remaining on as de facto
governments years after the fighting ends."14
To be prepared for this New Colonialism, the United States, NATO and the European Union have
initiated a fundamental transformation of their militaries in order to improve their capabilities to occupy "problem states".
Fourth, to satisfy the demand for a more rapid and "efficient" application of
force, new mechanisms in order to "streamline" the
decision-making have already been created (European Union) or are
currently in the planning phase (NATO). As we will show, the result
is (or will be) an "Imperial
Makeover of NATO and the European Union",
a profound and heavily undemocratic restructuring, where power is increasingly concentrated within the hands of a few states.
Sure, as the saying goes, predictions are difficult, especially regarding the future. And
indeed, there are a number of caveats, some of them will be addressed
in the final chapter, that could lead to a different outcome than the
one forecasted in this study. Yet, as will be argued here, there are
strong incentives for the United States and the European Union to
work more closely together in order to uphold their supremacy. The
egoistic, interest based rationale behind a transatlantic
rapprochement (in their words "multilateral co-operation"),
has been most aptly described by Lord Robertson, a former
General-Secretary of NATO, and Lord Ashdown, the West's ex-proconsul
(or "Special Representative") of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
"For the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a
world not wholly dominated by the West. If we want to influence this
environment rather than be held to ransom by it, and if we want to
take hold of some of the worrying features of globalisation, then
real, practical multilateralism is a strategic necessity, not a
liberal nicety. […] But multilateral co-operation at European level
must also involve greater defence co-operation if it is to be taken
seriously. The drive to create EU battle groups should be
accelerated, made fully compatible with Nato response forces and
should form the basis of an emerging European counter-insurgency
capacity capable of operating in failed states and post-conflict
environments. This will be vital if we are called upon by the UN or
others to extend public authority into some of the ungoverned spaces
that globalisation is helping to generate."15
1. A Transatlantic New Deal for indefinite Western Supremacy
Within the strategic community, a consensus emerged that in light of an ever
more evident crisis of the neoliberal economic system (a point which
will be addressed
in chapter two), and the rise of new rivals questioning Western
supremacy, there is an urgent need for closer transatlantic
cooperation. For this to happen, a Transatlantic New Deal, a new
division of power and labour between the United States and the
European Union is necessary. While the United States wants burden
sharing, its European allies insist on a more equal power sharing
within the transatlantic alliance. To address those two potentially
conflicting interests in one package-deal is at the core of the new
arrangement currently being implemented.
1.1 The Decline of the West and the looming New Cold War
Up to now, it had been the United States that shouldered most of the
burden to uphold and guarantee Western dominance over the rest of the
world. For this service it claimed the unquestioned leadership within
the transatlantic alliance and its most important organization, NATO.
But the disastrous consequences of the attempt during the term of
George W. Bush, to unilaterally cement America's unquestioned
dominance by force (the
so-called "War against Terror") led to a military, economic
and political disaster. Robert Pape sums the whole situation aptly
up: "America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted
wounds of the Iraq War, growing government debt, increasingly
negative current-account balances and other internal economic
weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of
rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends
continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the
death knell for American hegemony. […] America's shrinking share of
world economic production is a fact of life and important changes in
U.S. grand strategy are necessary to prevent the decline in America's
global position from accelerating."16
As a result, the United States cannot any longer "go it alone",
it desperately needs – and loudly demands - more (military) support
from its European allies: "A strong Europe is essential to
America's recovery. The United States is too stretched - militarily
and economically - to do without the cohesion of its
closest allies."17
On the other hand, the power of the European Union is also dwindling and
it will not be able to effectively enforce its interests without the
United States – especially not in an era of renewed geopolitical
rivalry.18
Therefore, out of necessity, a transatlantic rapprochement is also in
the interest of the European Union, as Robert Kagan points out: "In
Europe there is also an unmistakable trend toward closer strategic
relations with the United States. A few years ago, Gerhard Schroeder
and Jacques Chirac flirted with drawing closer to Russia as a way of
counterbalancing American power. But now France, Germany, and the
rest of Europe have been moving in the other direction. This is not
out of renewed affection for the United States. It is a response to
changing international circumstances and to lessons learned from the
past. The more pro-American foreign policies of Nicolas Sarkozy and
Angela Merkel are not only a matter of their unique personalities but
also reflect a reassessment of French, German and European interests.
Close but not uncritical relations with the United States, they
believe, give a boost to European power and influence that Europe
cannot achieve on its own."19
Closing the transatlantic ranks is deemed to be all the more necessary as we
currently can observe the emergence of new rivals to Western
supremacy, most notably China and Russia. In 2008, the US
intelligence community predicted that the combined Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the "BRIC"
states) will overtake that of the G7 between 2040 and 2050.20
Moreover, the financial and economic crisis was a major "geopolitical
setback for the West" which will likely accelerate this shift of
power.21
For example Goldman Sachs now concludes that the BRIC states will
leave the G7 behind them as early as 2027.22
At
the same time, this
"profound
shift in the global-strategic correlation of forces"23
goes along with growing tensions in a number of areas which already
foreshadows the potential trouble ahead: Russia's attempts to
methodically
try to monopolize Europe's gas supply in order to get a lever against
what is perceived as hostile policies by the European Union, has
led to a fierce competition between Moscow and Brussels.24
Moreover, China also has adopted a more confrontational policy
vis-à-vis the United States: "China has challenged the United
States on multiple policy fronts since the beginning of 2009. On the
security dimension, Chinese ships have engaged in multiple skirmishes
with U.S. surveillance vessels in an effort to hinder American
efforts to collect naval intelligence. China has also pressed the
United States on the economic policy front. […] The head of the
People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, [published] a paper
suggesting a shift away from the dollar as the world's reserve
currency."25
Subsequently, at the first BRIC-summit which was held in June 2009 in
Yekaterinburg,
the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China openly called for an
end of the dollar hegemony, which would be a fatal blow to the United
States.26
Finally, the
Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation
(SCO), a security alliance between China, Russia and four Central
Asian states, is slowly but steadily developing into some sort of
"Anti-NATO" – at least this is the fear among many
Western
strategists: "Since
the summer of 2005,
'balancing' is happening big time, led by China and Russia. What
could still be loosely described in the 1990s as an amorphous
'Sino-Islamic Axis' (Huntington) has taken, a decade later, a more
institutionalized form to the point where some Western observers
describe the China/Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
over Central Asia as an emerging 'Nato
of the East.'"27
Against
this background,
it is no wonder when many analysts predict that this
current power shift will inevitably lead to growing geopolitical
rivalries. For example, an article in one of the leading magazines on
European affairs points out: "Geopolitical changes to the
post-World War II international order mean that power politics and
remilitarisation to protect national interests are likely to become
dominant features of international relations."28
Numerous authors indeed predict a new epochal confrontation, a New
Cold War between "Democracies" (the West) and "Autocracies"
(China and Russia).29
In this context, it is alarming that this view is obviously also
shared by high ranking officials in the Obama administration.
Anne-Marie
Slaughter, the influential Director
of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department writes: "The
United States should work to sustain the military predominance of
liberal democracies and encourage the development of military
capabilities by like-minded democracies in a way that is consistent
with their security interests. The predominance of liberal
democracies is necessary to prevent a return to great power security
competition between the United States and our allies, on the one
side, and an autocracy or a combination of autocracies, on the other
– the sort of competition that led to two World Wars and one Cold
War."30
So,
not surprisingly, the
American "National Intelligence Strategy" of August 2009
unmistakably singles out China and Russia (as well as Iran and North
Korea) as explicit threats to the United States.31
Similarly, Barack Obama postulates a danger, coming "from rising
powers that could challenge both America and the international
foundation of liberal democracy."32
Consequently, Obama's Defence Minister stresses the need to maintain
military dominance over those perceived rivals: "Both Russia and
China have increased their defense spending and modernization
programs to include air defense and fighter capabilities that in some
cases approach the United States' own. […] The United States cannot
take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the
programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance's
persistence."33
On
the other side of the Atlantic,
there are also high level studies predicting renewed rivalries among
the great powers34
and Miguel Moratinos, Spain's Foreign Minister during its EU Council
Presidency, declared in February 2010: "Indeed, the world has
changed. Geopolitics is back. We see a new 'multipolar world', with
the emergence of new powers looking for international recognition."35
Even the future agenda of the "European Security Research
Programme" is based on the assumption, that there will be
"strained relations with authoritarian powers."36
Moreover, one of the most important documents regarding Europe's
future military policy argues with regard to Russia that there is a
need to built up "a capability to support hard power politics,
both for Clausewitzian influence and possible
direct military confrontation."37
But China is also increasingly viewed as a rival not as a partner by
the European Union: "Until
very recently, many Western politicians, bankers and business people
were broadly optimistic about the rise of China. […] But over the
past year China's behaviour has changed. Relatively hard-line and
nationalist elements in the leadership appear to have sidelined those
with liberal and internationalist instincts. This shift is spurring
the EU's governments and institutions to reappraise their China
strategies. China's foreign policy has become more assertive."38
Box 1: Resource Wars and the Contours of the New Cold War
Currently,
with rapidly declining worldwide reserves and high-rising demand,
the most visible area of the intensifying geopolitical rivalry is
the growing competition to control oil rich regions. As one analyst
pointed out: "In the minds of many, the geopolitics of energy
relationships has replaced or absorbed the traditional geopolitics
of military balances. In Russia, oil and gas, rather than the army
and the navy, are being touted by ascendant conservatives as the
country’s most important assets. In Europe, concerns about the
Fulda Gap have been succeeded by concerns over the Nord Stream
pipeline. And Gazprom acquisitions are regarded with almost the same
anxiety as local Communist party gains were in various western
countries during the Cold War. Indeed, the arrival of some new
version of the Cold War, fought in part with energy weapons, is
repeatedly prophesied. "[1]
The
United States' "Army Modernization Strategy" of 2008
argues: "Finally, we face a potential return to traditional
security threats posed by emerging near peers as we compete globally
for depleting natural resources and overseas markets." [2]
Equally, the US intelligence community warns in "Global trends
2025": "Descending into a world of resource nationalism
increases the risk of great power confrontations."[3] Regarding
Russia, the report states: "A more proactive and influential
foreign policy seems likely, reflecting Moscow’s reemergence as a
major player on the world stage; an important partner for Western,
Asian, and Middle East capitals; and a leading force in opposition
to US global dominance. Controlling key energy nodes and links in
the Caucasus and Central Asia - vital to its ambitions as an energy
superpower - will be a driving force in reestablishing a sphere of
influence in its Near Abroad."[4] On the other hand, Moscow
also seems to have no illusions as to where the international
constellation is moving. In its "National security Strategy to
2020" of May 2009, it predicts heavy conflicts over the control
of energy: "The international policy in the long run will be
focused on getting hold of energy sources, including in the Middle
East, the Barents Sea shelf and other Arctic regions, the Caspian
and Central Asia. In the face of competition for resources, the use
of military force to solve emerging problems cannot be excluded."[5]
Yet,
this is not just bullish talk. From the very moment when Russia
started flirting with the idea of forming a Gas-OPEC, this ambition
has been treated as almost a declaration of war by the NATO
countries. In November 2006, shortly before the NATO summit in Riga,
NATO's economic committee produced a confidential study which was
submitted to all member states, stating that Moscow is pushing for a
Gas-OPEC to strengthen its leverage over Europe and emphasizing the
danger of an increasing willingness of the gas producers to use
their resources for political purposes (the "energy
weapon").[6] Then, at the NATO summit in Riga, the influential
US senator Richard Lugar, who was for a short time a possible
candidate as Obama's Defence Minister, proposed the formation of an
"Energy NATO" which would treat a disruption of oil
supplies to the West similarly to a direct military attack: "Under
the worst case scenarios, oil and natural gas will be the currency
through which energy-rich countries leverage their interests against
import dependent nations. The use of energy as an overt weapon is
not a theoretical threat of the future; it is happening now. Iran
has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil exports to selected nations
if economic sanctions are imposed against it for its nuclear
enrichment program. Russia’s shut off of energy deliveries to
Ukraine demonstrated how tempting it is to use energy to achieve
political aims and underscored the vulnerability of consumer nations
to their energy suppliers. [...] The Alliance must avow that
defending against such attacks is an Article Five commitment. [...]
We should recognize that there is little ultimate difference between
a member being forced to submit to foreign coercion because of an
energy cutoff and a member facing a military blockade or other
military demonstration on its borders."[7]
This
sabre rattling heavily backlashed, as Russia responded by
strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), its
alliance with China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan. Those countries are home to 25% of the world's
population, 8% of its oil and 31% of its gas reserves. Beginning in
2007, Moscow started to emphasize the military dimension with joint
manoeuvres. Furthermore, like NATO, the SCO is also trying to expand
its sphere of influence. Because its explicit aim is to counter the
growing Western influence in Eurasia, it is not surprising that
Washington has been denied its requested observer status. Even more
telling is that observer status has been granted to Iran and
Pakistan in 2005 and both countries have applied for full
membership. Although the final decision has not been taken yet,
despite clear warning from the United States, SCO Secretary-General
Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev stated in February 2010 that this
issue will be appraised soon. He also indicated that there is a good
chance that both countries that they could be granted full
membership.[8]
This
would be a geopolitical nightmare for the West. Adding Iran would
boost the oil reserves of the SCO-countries to 18% and the gas
reserves to 37% of the world's total. Furthermore, as in August
2007, an "SCO-Energy-Club" had been established with the
goal of closely coordinating policies in this area and with the
Gas-OPEC finally established on Moscow's initiative in December
2008, we can already observe the contours of the New Cold War.
Indeed, the SCO is a serious contender, especially if Iran is
admitted to the alliance, as David Wall, professor at the University
of Cambridge's East Asia Institute, points out: "An expanded
SCO would control a large part of the world's oil and gas reserves
and [a] nuclear arsenal. It would essentially be an OPEC with
bombs."[9]
[1]
Trenin, Dimitri: Energy geopolitics in Russia-EU relations, in:
Pipelines, Politics and Power: The future of EU-Russia energy
relations, Centre for European Reform, October 2008, pp. 15-24, p.
15.
[2]
America's Army: The Strength of the Nation, The Army Modernization
Strategy 2008, p. 5f.
[3]
National Intelligence Council 2008, p. v.
[4]
Ibid., p. 32.
[5]
УТВЕРЖДЕНА Указом Президента Российской
Федерации от 12 мая 2009 г. № 537. Unofficial
translation on
http://trueslant.com/joshuakucera/2009/05/14/russias-national-security-strategy-in-plan-english/
(accessed 20.01.2010).
[6]
Kreimeier, Nils/Wetzel, Hubert: EU und USA zittern vor neuer „opec“,
Financial Times Deutschland, 06.03.2007.
[7]
Lugar, Richard: Energy and NATO, November 27, 2006, URL:
http://www.rigasummit.lv/en/id/speechin/nid/36/ (accessed
18.02.2010).
[8]
The SCO Military Alliance Appraises Membership of Iran, Pakistan,
China Daily, 04.02.2010.
[9]
Kimmage, Daniel:Iran and the 'OPEC with bombs', Asia Times Online,
15.06.2006.
In light of this looming New
Cold War, many authors and strategists like Robert Kagan call for
much closer cooperation between the United States and Europe in order
to uphold their supremacy vis-à-vis the contender states: "The
old competition between liberalism and autocracy has also reemerged,
with the world's
great powers lining up according to the nature of their regimes. […]
History has returned, and the democracies must come together to shape
it, or others will shape it for them."39
This view is directly reflected in the "German Coalition
Agreement" of October 2009 which also aptly summarizes the need
for a Transatlantic New Deal: "In the globalized world of the
21st
century, we regard the idea of the West as the foundation and its
institutions as the platform of the German foreign policy. In the age
of globalization, the West has to become more united in order to be
able enforce its interests. […] We see close political coordination
with the United States as a power maximizer for our interests which
will increase the weight of Germany and Europe in the world."40
1.2 The Transatlantic New Deal: The more you fight, the more you decide
As mentioned, in light of the new challenging international environment,
a number of recent studies call for closer cooperation between the
United States, NATO and the European Union.41
But this will only happen if a Transatlantic New Deal is able to
satisfy the expectations of both sides: Washington has voiced its
interest very loudly, it wants more military contributions from its
European allies - no more free-riding and buck passing. These calls
for more troops are most directly articulated regarding the European
contributions to the war in Afghanistan. For example, America's
ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, undiplomatically challenged the
allies in July 2009, when he complained: "Let me be frank. The
United States is doing its part. […] I recognize that Europe –
including Germany – has done a lot as well. Even so, Europe and
Germany can and should do more."42
If they don't deliver, the Europeans cannot expect what they have
demanded for decades - a greater say within the transatlantic
alliance. As then NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
pointed out in February 2009: "[A] 'two way street' must also
apply to the rebalancing of the relationship between the US and
Europe, including through NATO. […] 'Leadership and burdens'.
They go together. I am frankly concerned when I hear the US
planning a major commitment for Afghanistan, but other Allies already
ruling out doing more. That is not good for the political balance of
this mission. It also makes the calls for Europe's voice to be
heard in Washington ring a little hollow."43
So,
because not playing second fiddle within NATO any longer is a core
interest of most European states, particularly of France and Germany,
they are willingly responding to America's call to arms.44
As a reward they truly expect that the partnership, which has been
solely dominated by Washington for decades, will move gradually but
steadily into one of co-equals. This is the essence of the current
transatlantic quid pro quo: "The greater the European effort,
the greater the say Europeans will demand."45
That the Transatlantic New Deal indeed only works as a two way street
has been clearly pointed out in the "Report <Titre>on
the role of NATO in the security architecture of the EU", which
was adopted by the European Parliament </Titre>in
February 2009: "[The
European Parliament] notes the significant difference in scale as
well as effectiveness between the defence spending of European
members of NATO, on the one hand, and the USA, on the other; calls on
the EU to commit itself to fairer global burden-sharing; also calls
on the USA to show a greater willingness to consult its European
allies on issues related to peace and security."46
In
fact, there are currently numerous signs that both sides are willing
to live up to the expectations. The United States is making
allowances regarding the transatlantic power sharing, while the
European Union is taking over more of the military burden.
1.3 Implementing the Transatlantic New Deal
It was at the Munich Security Conference in
February 2009 where the United States offered the Transatlantic New
Deal to its European allies. In his programmatic speech, Vice
President Joseph Biden emphasized that "the threats we face have
no respect for borders. No single country, no matter how
powerful, can best meet them alone." Moreover, he proclaimed a
"new era of cooperation" grounded on the following basis:
"America will do more, but America will ask for more from our
partners."47
Regarding the European military policy he continued: "We also
support the further strengthening of European defense, an increased
role for the European Union in preserving peace and security, a
fundamentally stronger NATO-EU partnership."48
This is a tremendously important concession by the United States. Up
to now, it did what it could to torpedo Europe's emergence as a
unified and military capable international actor, able to act
autonomously from NATO (and therefore from Washington). Showing this
new willingness to allow – and even encourage – Europe to play a
far larger role in the military arena is one – perhaps even the
most – important reconfiguration of America's grand strategy since
the end of the Cold War. So far, such a development was not on the
cards, as it was feared that Europe could thereby develop into a
powerful rival for America's supremacy.49
To
name another arena where the United States has made huge concessions:
as a reward for France's re-integration into NATO's military
structures, Washington offered Paris the leadership over "Allied
Command Transformation" (ACT) in Norfolk. ACT is one of the
alliance's two Supreme Commands which had been American-led since
NATO's creation (although most of the time, it was termed otherwise).
Up to now, such a tremendous hand-over of power by the United States
would have been unthinkable, now it is part of the new transatlantic
package-deal: on September 9, 2009, a French officer took over the
control of ACT.50
On
the other hand, the European Union also has lived up to some of
America's expectations. For example, the new US administration has
made it unmistakably clear that it does not intend to terminate the
occupation of Iraq in the foreseeable future51,
a fact that should be well known by European decision-makers.
Nevertheless, only one week after the election of Barack Obama, the
European Union decided to allow its EUJUST LEX mission for the
training of Iraqi officials (mainly judges and police officers) for
the first time to operate within the country itself.52
Since mid-2009, the European Union is supporting the occupation with
a presence on the ground and there are already proposals to further
enlarge the engagement.53
Similarly, the North Atlantic Council decided in December 2008 that
the "NATO Training Mission in Iraq" (NTM-I) should from now
on also operate within the country.54
Furthermore, in its summit declaration of April 2009, NATO offers a
long-term commitment to Iraq: "We reiterate our willingness to
continue providing a broad range of training support to the Iraqi
Security Forces through the NATO Training Mission in Iraq (NTM-I).
[…] We recall our offer to the Government of Iraq of a Structured
Cooperation Framework as a basis for developing a long-term
relationship."55
This new support for America's occupation is of particular importance
against the background of the fierce conflicts between the United
States and the European Union, and here especially with France and
Germany, in the context of the invasion of Iraq only several years
ago. It is an important signal to the United States (forget the
"infightings" in 2003, now we stick together) as well as to
the rest of the world (the transatlantic ranks are closing again).56
However,
the
most important battleground for whether the Transatlantic New Deal
will be successful, is Afghanistan. Its relevance for the future of
the whole transatlantic relationship has been clearly articulated by
the European
Council on Foreign Relations:
"President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton, have made it clear that they expect a significant
enhancement of the European effort in Afghanistan. The issue is
likely to be viewed in Washington as a litmus test of whether the
Europeans can be taken seriously as strategic partners."57
Due to their interest in the Transatlantic New Deal, the Europeans
have recently delivered what is most demanded – more boots on the
ground. The European contributions to NATO's ISAF in Afghanistan
nearly doubled from 17,000 troops in 2006 to about 33,000 at the
beginning of 2010 – with many more to come in the next months.
Finally,
and as a
consequence, we can currently observe an intensification of the
cooperation between the United States, NATO and the European Union.
This applies to Afghanistan, where the EU mission EUPOL closely works
together with NATO's ISAF mission as well as to Kosovo. Here, the
United States is for the first time taking part in a mission in the
context of the European Security and Defence Policy, while the EU
EULEX mission is also operating hand in hand with NATO's KFOR: "In
Kosovo and Afghanistan, the EU is implementing its own civilian
crisis management missions alongside NATO military operations, and
cooperation takes place at a practical level on the ground."58
Box 2: NATO-EU-Cooperation: Counterinsurgency in Kosovo
In Kosovo, NATO and the
European Union are working hand in hand in order to cement the
secession of the province from Serbia. As more and more people in
Kosovo are upset over their miserable economic situation, which is
in large part
a result of the neoliberal "reforms" dictated by the
Western occupiers, there are increasing protests against the
presence of NATO and the European Union.[1]
To suppress those protests
more effectively, NATO's KFOR and Europe's EULEX mission have begun
to undertake joint "Crowd & Riot Control Exercises".
That the goal is indeed to fight social protests can be seen in the
following description of one of those manoeuvres: "The
exercise’s scenario was based on real facts. European Union
parliament made the decision to redirect donation of money to Kosovo
from building two hospitals, as it was announced an early spring
press release, to establishing trash recycling centre in Kosovo.
The following day, after the announcement Kosovo television and
radio station reported upset and disappointed local civilians. In
response to the news, the hospital workers association (HWA) called
for demonstrations and actions to be taken against EU, EULEX and the
Ministry of Environment and Spatial planning (MESP) on 17 June
[2009] in Camp Vrelo. […] As a result, exercise’s participants
were taught valuable lessons on being readily prepared in case they
are faced with a furious mob, the ability to anticipate what the
crowd may do and finally, practice their crowd riot control
techniques."[2]
[1]
See on neoliberal Nation Building in Kosovo Hofbauer, Hannes:
Experiment Kosovo. Die Rückkehr
des Kolonialismus, Wien 2008.
[2]
The Balkan Hawk 2009 CRC Exercises, NATO.int, 30.06.2009, URL:
http://www.nato.int/kfor/docu/inside/2009/06/i090630a.htm (accessed
18.02.1010).
2. Military Neoliberalism: Preparing for the Era of Persistent Conflict
Forty
years of neoliberalism led to a massive impoverishment of vast
sections of
the world's population and have widely discredited this exploitative
economic system.59
Because there is currently absolutely no interest to create a more
just economic order60,
this poverty is breeding more and more conflicts and failed states
which have to be "stabilized" ever more frequently by
military means in the view of Western strategists.61
As both the United States as well as the European Union have a common
interest in guaranteeing the stability of the current economic order
(and the resulting profits for their corporations), they need their
militaries to play "globalization's bodyguard."62
2.1 The State-Capitalist Challenge to Neoliberal Globalization
We
start this chapter with the statement
that TINA ("there is no alternative") no longer applies.
For decades, the countries of the Third World were being told that
there is no other possible form of organizing their economies than
along the neoliberal lines dictated by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World
Bank. And
indeed, for a long time, there were virtually no other options
available for them. But this situation has changed dramatically over
the last several years.
Those
who are
interested in the question of why exactly the rise of China and
Russia is seen as such a major problem - besides the fact that states
always compete for power within a capitalist system - will find a
highly interesting passage in the intelligence report "Global
Trends 2025": "For the most part, China, India, and Russia
are not following the Western liberal model for selfdevelopment but
instead are using a different model,
'state capitalism.'
State capitalism is a loose term used to describe a system of
economic management that gives a prominent role to the state. […]
By 2025 […] power will be more dispersed with the newer players
bringing new rules of the game while risks will increase that the
traditional Western alliances will weaken. Rather than emulating
Western models of political and economic development, more countries
may be attracted to China's alternative development model. […] The
transfer is strengthening states like Russia that want to challenge
the Western order."
63
So, here we are, the real problem is that Russia as well as China are
posing a challenge to the Western dominated neoliberal economic
order.64
Indeed,
China is already challenging the policies of the International
Monetary Fund
and the World
Bank in
Africa65
and the new Russian "National Security Strategy", published
in May 2009, unmistakably criticises the Western neoliberal order:
"The development of the world moving towards globalization in
all spheres of international life, has high dynamic and
interdependent events. Exacerbated tensions between the states
associated with the uneven development as a result of globalization
processes, the growing gap between the well-being of nations. The
values and models of development have been the subject of global
competition."66
Sergei Karaganov, a leading Russian analyst on foreign affairs,
already predicts "A New Epoch of Confrontation" (NEC):
"Bitter multi-level competition – economic, geopolitical and
ideological – will become another characteristic of the NEC.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has formulated this
peculiarity of the new world in the following way: 'The paradigm of
contemporary international relations is determined by competition in
the broadest interpretation of this notion, particularly when the
object of competition is value systems and development models. The
novelty of the situation is that the West
is losing its monopoly on the globalization processes.
This, perhaps, explains attempts to present the current developments
as a threat to the West, its values and way of life.'"67
In
the view of the Western powers, this troubling situation is further
complicated by the fact that the neoliberal system in itself
generates more and more conflicts which have to be "stabilized"
by military means.
2.2 Fighting the Poor, instead of Fighting Poverty
In
the last several years, the frequency of Western interventions in the
Third World has risen tremendously. Obviously, the way in which the
West enforces its economic interests has taken a more "robust"
form of "military neoliberalism"68:
"Under what we are identifying as neoliberal
geopolitics
there
appears to have been a new development in these patterns of
state-managed liberalization. The economic axioms of structural
adjustment, fiscal austerity, and free trade have now, it seems, been
augmented by the direct use of military force."69
This
is, as we will argue, no accident, because sticking to neoliberalism
and thereby knowingly accepting the further impoverishment of many
people in the periphery, is a decision which has vast implications
for the question of war and peace in the world. In sharp contrast to
the picture painted by the mass media and many think tanks as well as
politicians, civil wars do not primarily erupt because of "home
grown" factors (religious hatred, ethnic conflicts, greed by
some warlords, etc.), as they want us to believe. Instead, there is a
vast consensus within the scientific community that poverty is by far
the most important factor for the outbreak of violence. Even the
World Bank
concludes: "Empirically, the most striking pattern is that civil
war is heavily concentrated in the poorest countries. War causes
poverty, but the more important reason for the concentration is that
poverty increases the likelihood of civil war. Thus our central
argument can be stated briefly: the key root cause of conflict is the
failure of economic development."70
As neoliberalism breeds poverty and poverty breeds violent conflict,
the "need" for "Stability Operations" in order to
contain those growing conflicts will grow tremendously in the future.
For example, the European
Council on Foreign Relations
predicts: "Recent research suggests that the number of civil
wars is once again on the rise, and the EU can expect to find itself
called upon to deploy into countries or regions emerging from
conflict."71
Box 3: Somalia, Globalization and War
An
actual example of
the vicious circle of neoliberal structural adjustments leading to
the impoverishment of the population and the outbreak of violence
that has to be "stabilized" by Western forces are the
pirates operating at the Horn of Africa.
Like
many other countries, Somalia was forced to adopt neoliberal
structural adjustments in the 1980s, causing the state to collapse:
"The crisis [in Somalia was] directly a precipitate of ruthless
exploitation, underdevelopment and marginalization of the Somali
social formation by the forces of Western imperialism. […] It is
into this crisis, precipitated by internal and external forces, that
the IMF and the World Bank waded in the 1980s only to deepen
contradictions, destroy the foundations of stability, erode the
legitimacy of the state, [and] intensify poverty and alienation."[1]
Thereafter,
the Somali state could not pay most of its officials any longer and,
for example, the Coast Guard had to be dissolved. With no one
protecting the country's 12 Mile Zone, European fishing trawlers
started looting the fishing stock which had been the income source
for many Somalis. As a result, the former Coast Guards and Fisherman
grouped together as the "pirates" now acting in the
region: "At first, the trawlers were tapped for 'licensing
fees', which provided a new source of revenue for jobless fishermen,
too. This successful business model was then applied to merchant
vessels as well. Now Europe is left with no alternative but to send
in the military to keep pirates at bay off the African shore. But it
should finally start thinking about how to put an end to its own
form of piracy."[2]
As
Somalia lies at an important shipping lane where large parts of the
world's oil flows have to get through, NATO (Operation Allied
Provider and Allied Protector) and the European Union (Operation
ATALANTA) saw themselves forced to sent war ships into the region in
order to fight the symptoms (pirates) as they are unwilling to
address the root causes of the conflict (neoliberalism and
poverty).[3]
[1]
Ihonvbere, Julius O.: The World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment
Programs and the Somali Crisis, A paper prepared for the symposium
on "Towards Conflict Resolution in the Horn of Africa,"
November 19, 1994, URL:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/33/006.html (accessed
15.02.2010); see also Michel Chossudovsky: Global Brutal, Frankfurt
2002, pp. 109-117.
[2]
Somali piracy, made in Europe, Die Welt, 27.07.2009, URL:
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/63741-somali-piracy-made-europe
(accessed 18.02.2010).
[3]
See Haydt, Claudia: Kanonenboote und Piraten: NATO, EU und die
Kontrolle der Meere, in: DFG-VK/IMI: Kein Frieden mit der NATO,
Tübingen 2009, pp. 11-15; Pflüger, Tobias: Gefährliche Gewässer,
Junge Welt, 23.10.2008.
In this context, the
military is tasked to cope with "The Wretched of the Earth"
(Franz Fanon) who are finding themselves permanently on the dark side
of globalization. The United States' "Army
Modernization Strategy"
already predicts an "Era of Persistent Conflict" in which
the West has to deal with the global have nots: "Globalization
accelerates the redistribution of wealth, prosperity, and power,
expanding the 'have' and 'have not' conditions that can foster
conflict. The scale of this problem is evident in the
projection that 2.8 billion people are expected to be living below
the poverty line by 2025."72
Likewise, the NATO
Defence College
defines the primary task of the alliance as follows: "In its
broadest sense, NATO today is the protector
of globalization.
By defending its constituting freemarket democracies and projecting
security and stability in critical regions of the world NATO
simultaneously drives and protects the process of modernization and
liberalization."73
Finally,
one of the most important document regarding Europe's future military
tasks demands, in a shockingly open way, "Barrier
operations
–
shielding the global rich from the tensions and problems of the poor.
As the ratio of the world population living in misery and frustration
will remain massive, the tensions and spillover between their world
and that of the rich will continue to grow. As we are unlikely to
have solved this problem at its root by 2020 – i.e. by curing
dysfunctional societies – we will need to strengthen our barriers.
It is a morally distasteful, losing strategy, but will be unavoidable
if we cannot solve the problems at their root." Moreover, the
article also concludes that there is not only a need to strengthen
"Fortress Europe", but also to act in a more offensive way,
when it demands "Boots on the Ground (BOG) operations, providing
security for conflict resolution or state building, from consensual
peacekeeping to enforcement. Such peace support operations differ
from the direct unleashed violence since they are in essence a
subordinate part of a broader
social engineering campaign.
[…] This is the predominant focus of today's military agenda, and
the ESDP and EU Battle Groups are typical products of this
requirement."74
Based
on these considerations, the "Stability
Operations" which have come to the center stage of contemporary
Western security policy, aim "at taming chaos through
disciplinary and regulatory mechanism directed at reforming the
institutions of potentially disorderly states."75
In this context, it is a bitter irony that the economic remodelling
that is thereby being implemented at gunpoint is a big part of the
problem, not of its solution: "[Peacebuilding]
has centred on neo-liberal state building, which is focused on the
constitution of free markets designed to stimulate growth led by the
private sector. Informed by the development orthodoxies embodied in
the 'Washington Consensus', neo-liberal state building requires the
construction of a particular type of state: one that is oriented
towards regulating and supporting markets, while providing a residual
welfare floor for its citizens in lieu of growth led by the private
sector. But the neo-liberal state has proved to be a poor model for
successful post-conflict state building. Most rebuilt neo-liberal
states have struggled to catalyse the private-sector investment that
is central to its developmental approach. [...] Neo-liberal state
building thus has the paradoxical effect of leading to the
construction of weak, even stillborn, states."76
In its most direct form –
in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and in Iraq – what we term "military
neoliberalism" turns out to be a "neo-colonial top-down
imposition of a liberal peace."77
Thereby, the vicious circle of neoliberalism, poverty and the
resulting conflicts, Western interventions and, finally, more
neoliberalism is perpetuated indefinitely. That is exactly the reason
why there is an increasing demand for "stabilizing" the
periphery.
3. Colonialism Reloaded: The New Western Way of War
Within
the transatlantic alliance, a new common cause regarding the current
primary military tasks has been found, as the Institute
for Security Studies
points out: "On
both sides of the Atlantic there is a growing desire to move beyond
these differences to generate more effective collaboration on
conflict prevention and crisis management, not only between NATO and
the EU, but also potentially between the US and the EU directly.
Peace-building and stabilisation operations have become a dominant
paradigm for the use of force in the post-Cold War world, and offer a
framework in which EU-US collaboration may be advanced."78
For this
purpose, a deep transformation of the Western militaries has been
initiated which focuses on two aspects: on the one hand, troops
should be deployable on far shorter notice in order to suppress
"unrest" and "insurgencies" in the Third World as
quickly as possible. On the other hand, these "Rapid Reaction
Forces" should primarily prepare the way for the quasi-colonial
occupation forces which subsequently follow.
Yet,
this New Colonialism faces a significant
problem. The US Military estimates that in order to "successfully"
stabilise a failed state, it would take a force of 20 solders per
1,000 inhabitants and an occupation lasting between 5-8 years.79
These numbers indicate that a "Stability Operation" will
only be conducted when important interests are at stake – there are
simply not enough resources for another approach. So, a country in
the Third World will only "enjoy" a Western intervention
with a subsequent occupation, when it is worth the price – or, in
the words of the most important scientific advisory board of the
Pentagon, when the country is "ripe and important"80.
Nevertheless, even in the limited cases where vital interests
necessitate a direct occupation, Western forces are not able to
mobilize enough boots on the ground. Therefore, one of the main
questions of current military planning is about how to occupy
countries more effectively in the future – and "Civil-Military
Cooperation" (CIMIC) is currently promoted as the answer.81
3.1 Rapid Reaction Forces: Spearheads of the New Interventionism
To begin with the Rapid Reaction Forces:
As early as 2001, then US President George
W. Bush authorized "a comprehensive review of the U.S. military,
the state of our strategy, the structure of our forces, the
priorities of our budget." Bush clearly named the priorities of
this transformation: "lighter," "more lethal,"
"easier to deploy and sustain," and with "pinpoint
accuracy."82
Similarly, in
2003, France and Great Britain (soon to be joined by Germany)
developed the "Battle Groups Concept". The three countries
detailed their proposals for a strengthened European rapid reaction
capability in a "Food-for-thought
paper" circulated in early 2004. The paper emphasised that the
future tasks will "be critically dependent on speed of response
e.g. in support of conflict prevention. […] Success will almost
always rely heavily on the ability to act decisively as well as
quickly."83
To satisfy this demand, the paper proposed the creation of so-called
"Battle Groups" composed of around 1,500 soldiers which
have four specific characteristics: First, they can be deployable
nearly worldwide (6,000km around Brussels) and on very short notice
(within 5-30 days); second, they can be deployable without
a mandate from the United Nations Security Council - a clear
violation of international law; third, they are primarily focused on
"fixing" failed states, especially in Africa; and finally,
these troops are supposed to clear the way for the subsequent
occupying forces (so-called "Peacekeepers") to administer
the invaded country.84
The European Council approved the Battle Group Concept with the
Helsinki Headline Goal 2010 in June 2004 and since January 2007, two
of those Battle Groups are permanently on stand-by to be sent abroad
in order to enforce European interests.
Likewise,
the decision to set up a "NATO Response Force" (NRF),
formally taken at the summit meeting in November 2002, followed the
same logic. The 25,000 soldier strong NRF is "a highly ready and
technologically advanced force made up of land, air, sea, and special
forces components that can be deployed at short notice to wherever
needed."85
Regarding its primary tasks, General Ray Henault, then Chairman of
NATO's Military Committee, argued in 2007: "Crises do pop up and
the primary threats to the Alliance as laid out in the Comprehensive
Political Guidance are the threats of terrorism, proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, and the impacts of failed and failing
states and that's what the NRF will be prepared to respond to."86
Although there are still questions about whether this is actually the
case, the NRF declared that it had reached "Full Operational
Capability" in 2006.87
These Rapid Reaction Forces are the spearheads of the new Western
interventionism, or, in the words of the influential former Pentagon
adviser Thomas Barnett, the "Leviathan". But the New
Western Way of War has another important component, which is
described by Barnett as follows: "The Leviathan (planes and
smart bombs) will shock and awe, just as it did in Afghanistan and
Iraq; the SysAdmin force (military police, humanitarian aid, etc.)
will follow, doing what we failed to do in Iraq. We need to build up
our SysAdmin capabilities."88
Box 4: Thomas Barnett: System Administration and Military Neoliberalism
In
order to fundamentally overhaul the structure of the US forces, the
2001 Quadrennial Defense Review created the Office of Force
Transformation, directed by Arthur K. Cebrowski.[1] In a speech
before the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Cebrowski named the real
mastermind behind the transformation of the military: "much of
what you see is the product of [my assistants] work, principally my
assistant for strategic futures, Dr. Tom Barnett."[2]
According
to Barnett, a former Professor at the US Naval War College, who also
extensively briefed Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence under
George W. Bush, there exists a "nexus between terrorist
networks, terrorist states, and weapons of mass destruction […]
that can make mighty adversaries of small or impoverished states and
even relatively small groups of individuals."[3] On the base of
this assumption, he further claims that these dangers only originate
in those parts of the world he calls the non-integrating gap which
are disconnected from neoliberal globalization. Therefore such a
"Disconnectedness defines danger."[4] Because of his
importance, it is worth to quote Barnett extensively: "Show me
where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will
show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes,
widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most
important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation
of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the
Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap. […] So where do we schedule the U.S.
military’s next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged
since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.
[…] If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the
cold war, […] we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in
the regions of the world that are excluded from globalization’s
growing Core. [...] If a country is either losing out to
globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with
its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up
sending forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely
functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our
forces there to restore order to eradicate threats."[5] From
this point of view, as it is the only way to prevent future terror
attacks, the (military) integration of countries into the neoliberal
world order becomes a "strategic imperative".[6]
Due
to their almost symbiotic relationship, it is also not surprising
that Cebrowski's own writings largely correspond with those of
Barnett: "For example, disconnectedness now is one of the great
danger signs around the world. It's an indicator of where the
Department of Defense might be spending more and more of its time.
[…] There are a lot of nations functioning within globalization.
These are nations that accept the rules. [...] If you are fighting
globalization, if you reject the rules, if you reject connectivity,
you are probably going to be of interest to the United States
Department of Defense."[7] Cebrowski perfectly described the
function of the US military as enforcer and stabilizer of the
exploitative neoliberal world economic order, when he argued that
"our role is that of Systems Administrator. Instead of stopping
something, the role is to keep the system up and running, just like
with your computer system."[8]
[1]
Cebrowski led the Office until he died in November 2005.
[2]
Cebrowski, Arthur: Speech to the Heritage Foundation, 13.5.2003,
URL: http://www.defensedaily.com/reports/cebrowski.pdf (accessed
30.05.2004), p. 1.
[3]
Quoted in Record, Jeffrey: The Bush Doctrine and war with Iraq, in:
Parameters (Spring 2003), pp. 4-21, p. 5. See also the National
Security Strategy of United States, September 2002, p. 1: "America
is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing
ones." It should be noted here that such a connection between
failed states and terrorism is unproven at best. See Hehir, Aidan:
The Myth of the Failed State and the War on Terror: A Challenge to
the Conventional Wisdom, in: Journal of Intervention and State
Building, November 2007, pp. 307-332; Dempsey, Gary T.: Old Folly in
a New Disguise Nation Building to Combat Terrorism, CATO Policy
Analysis no. 429, March 21, 2002.
[4]
Barnett, Thomas P.M.: The Pentagon's New Map, in: Esquire, Vol. 139,
no. 3, pp. 174-179 & 227-228.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Marshall, Will: Closing the National Security Gap, DLC Blueprint
Magazine, 25.07.2004. See also Lieberman, Joseph I.: Interrelation
of Economic Development and Security, Speech at the 41st Munich
Security Conference, 12.02.2005: "The suggested policy for a
safer tomorrow, therefore, is to economically integrate the
countries currently outside the global economic network in which
Islamist terrorists - our most threatening enemies - will otherwise
grow."
[7]
Cebrowski 2003, p. 4.
[8]
Ibid., p. 5.
3.2 Civil-Military Cooperation and the New Colonialism
The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that effective
"stabilization" (read: control) within the context of an
occupation has become just as significant as the military victory
itself. As the "Long Term Vision", a core document of the
European
Defense Agency,
points out: "ESDP operations will be expeditionary,
multinational and multi-instrument, directed at achieving security
and stability more than 'victory'. […] In such circumstances, the
military will be only one of a range of instruments applied to
achieve the campaign goals."89
Nowadays, it does not suffice to win on the battlefield because the
ambition is to "help a failed state to exercise responsible
sovereignty."90
In other words, countries being invaded by Western Rapid Reaction
Forces are to be occupied afterwards until they are correctly
functioning within the neoliberal system and adhere to the rules of
the game. Indeed, there are high ranking policy makers like Stephen
Krasner, former Head of the State Department's influential Policy
Planning Staff, who are openly calling for the re-colonisation of
so-called failed states – or at least those where vital interests
are at stake: "In some cases, decent governance may require some
new form of trusteeship, almost certainly de facto rather than de
jure."91
Another
top decision-maker, Robert Cooper, lead author of the "European
Security Strategy" and one of the most influential shapers of
Europe's military policy92,
openly pleads for a "new liberal imperialism": "Postmodern
imperialism takes two forms. First there is the voluntary imperialism
of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international
consortium through International Financial Institutions such as the
IMF and the World Bank. […] The second form of postmodern
imperialism might be called the imperialism of neighbours.
Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can
ignore. Misgovernment, ethnic violence and crime in the Balkans poses
a threat to Europe. The response has been to create something like a
voluntary UN protectorate in Bosnia and Kosovo. […] The challenge
to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double
standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open
cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds
of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to
revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive
attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still
live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among
ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle,
we must also use the laws of the jungle."93
This
New Colonialism, however, requires capabilities that are only
scarcely available in the military, or not at all. What is needed is
lawyers, engineers, military police or "police-soldiers"
who are trained in counterinsurgency, etc. – in short, everything
that was required for a traditional colonial administration. To amend
these shortcomings, the European Union developed the concept of
"Civil-Military Cooperation" (CIMIC) which is called
"Whole-of-Government-Approach" in the United States and
"Comprehensive Approach" by NATO. Notwithstanding these
different terms, these concepts all boil down to the same interest.
Their "logic" is described by five former NATO generals
using the term "integrated approach" as follows: "We
[…] firmly believe that one can no longer win in an armed conflict
simply by killing or capturing as many of the enemy as possible or by
just destroying his power base. Non-military means must be part of an
integrated strategy: one in which non-military means are coordinated
and deployed with maximum precision, concision and integration."94
Or, in the words of the "European Security Strategy": "We
could add particular value by developing operations involving both
military and civilian capabilities. […] In almost every major
intervention, military efficiency has been followed by civilian
chaos. We need greater capacity to bring all necessary civilian
resources to bear in crisis and post crisis situations."95
In short, the goal is to use the whole panoply of instruments, be
they military or civilian, in order to effectively occupy a given
country.
As
said, as done: with "Department
of Defense Directive" (DoDD) 3000.05, issued in November 2005,
the Pentagon commanded a comprehensive integration of civilian
capacities into the planning process and emphasized that from now on
"Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the
Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct with proficiency
equivalent to combat operations. […] Integrated civilian and
military efforts are essential to the conduct of successful stability
operations."96
This directive has far reaching implications: "To put 'stability
operations' and 'combat operations' on an equal footing—not just in
a memorandum but for real—is to alter the way that the Pentagon not
only plans and fights wars but also recruits, organizes, and even
envisions the U.S. armed forces, especially the Army and Marines,
which do the fighting and stabilizing on the ground."97
Subsequently,
the implementation
of DoDD 3000.05 was put into fast forward.98
Therefore, the Institute
for Security Studies
described the potential end point of this development as follows:
"Training
programmes are starting to be modified in military academies to
include courses related to 'integrated operations', civilian-military
work, stabilisation and reconstruction. In short, an army with
'colonial' capabilities is being potentially prepared for tomorrow."99
An
integral part of such "Stability and Reconstruction Operations"
(S&R) addresses the necessity to deal with those that do not have
much sympathies for being colonized: "If S&R operations are
to be successful, counterinsurgency operations must have the credible
presence and capability to deal with these threats to stability
decisively."100
As a result, an updated version of FM-23, the "US
Counterinsurgency Field Manual" was prepared under the auspices
of the new star general David Petreus at the end of 2006. Quite
tellingly, FM-23 tries to draw the lessons from past uprisings
against colonial powers and stresses the need to incorporate civil
competencies in order to be able to combat insurgencies more
efficiently.101
On the base of this manual, "counterinsurgency is fast becoming
the U.S. Army's organizing principle."102
Under
President Obama, this course was even further accelerated: Department
of Defense Directive 3000.07, signed on December 1, 2008, states that
"irregular warfare is as strategically important as traditional
warfare."103
Consequently, in April 2009, Robert Gates granted a significant
budget increase to stability and counterinsurgency operations.104
Finally, DoDD 3000.05 was updated by the Obama administration in
September 2009 without changing the main direction of the previous
version.105
No wonder,
Thomas Barnett has been enthusiastic about this document, calling it
"The New DoD SysAdmin directive".106
Similarly, Civil-Military Cooperation is at the heart of the European Foreign
and Security Policy. To give just one example, within the new
External Action Service,
which will be set up in the course of 2010, the competencies of the
European Commission (foreign, trade, and development policy) and the
Council (civilian and military operations) will be united under the
hat of one single "super-ministry". Furthermore, Council
Directorate E-VIII which is responsible for military mission planning
and Directorate E-IX (civilian operations) will both merge into the
new "Crisis
Management Planning Directorate" (CMPD). Thereby, a separation
of civilian and military missions virtually ceases to exist. This
poses the "risk that the proposed integration of civilian and
military dimensions of EU crisis management strategic planning could
lead in effect to the absorption of the civilian dimension into the
military dimension.107
Catherine Ashton, High Representative of
the EU since December 1, 2009 and therefore head of the External
Action Service, summed the whole
approach up as follows: "We must
mobilise all our levers of influence —
political, economic, plus civil and military crisis management tools
— in support of a single political strategy. […] The
creation of the European External Action Service is important to
promote exactly the kind of joined up thinking and action we need.
This is not just a bureaucratic exercise, It is a once-in-a-
generation opportunity to build something new. […] I hope by now
you get my point. The days when EU foreign policy could be dismissed
as all talk and no action are long over."108
Finally,
with regards
to NATO, there are already a number of proposals to adopt state
building as the central task of the alliance109
as well as to set up a civil-military army for this purpose:
"Consideration should be given to the creation of a NATO
Stabilization and Reconstruction Force (SRF), an integrated,
multinational security support component that would organize, train
and equip to engage in post-conflict operations, compatible with EU
efforts."110
Therefore, it is not surprising that, for example, the German
Government explains that the Comprehensive Approach will form a
central element in NATO's New Strategic Concept which will be adopted
in Autumn 2010.111
Furthermore, the Comprehensive
Approach is also seen as the ideal starting point from which to
improve the cooperation between NATO and the European Union: "Poor
cooperation between the two institutions makes it difficult for NATO
and the EU to adopt a truly 'comprehensive' approach to warfare,
which integrates civilian and military capabilities. [...]
With civil-military co-operation and
'reassurance' likely to be front and centre in the new strategic
concept, the EU and NATO governments should relaunch their efforts to
boost cross-institutional co-operation."112
Should
this development continue unchecked, a complete
amalgamation could occur. The call of Stiftung
Wissenschaft und Politik,
a think tank that directly advises the German government, for the
creation of a new strategic planning unit in the Federal Foreign
Office confirms this fear: "Its task would be to merge the
political, economic and military aspects of the counterinsurgency
effort. [...] With the help of this planning unit, it would be
possible to develop and realise a common civil-military strategy for
all ongoing foreign missions on a continuous basis."113
Furthermore, the military should always be in command on the ground:
"On an operative level, the integration of civilian and military
resources should occur within the engagement command structures of
the ministry of defence. [...] In general, consideration should be
given to incorporating the personnel of the civilian ministries
involved in foreign missions into the structures of the defence
ministry for the duration of the engagements. [...] An important
advantage of a civil-military organization specifically responsible
for foreign missions would be the ability to guarantee continuity
with regard to personnel and content. This unit, for example, could
coordinate joint mission preparation for civilian and military
personnel."114
Box 5: CIMIC in Afghanistan – A Deadly Failure
NATO's biggest war is also the prototype, where Civil-Military Cooperation
(or the Comprehensive Approach) is practiced for the first time on a
large scale: "Afghanistan has become the laboratory in which
the experimental Comprehensive Approach is being tested."[1]
This primarily
works via 26 – military controlled – Provincial Reconstruction
Teams (PRTs) which are composed of soldiers as well as civilians.
With those units, civilian reconstruction and humanitarian
assistance are conflated with purely military tasks: "On any
given day they could theoretically be shooting at people in the
morning and then distributing aid in the same area that afternoon.
The teams can even call in coalition air strikes if a local
situation deteriorates."[2] In a highly informative peace
titled "The Integration of Special Operation Forces and USAID
in Afghanistan", the Small Wars Journal detailed how the US
Development Agency directly supports the war. "The military
must think beyond lethal options and development agencies must take
the kid gloves off when dealing with communities pandering to both
sides – the insurgents and the government. […] USAID has four
objectives operating in a COIN [Counterinsurgency] environment: (1)
strengthen local ties to national government, (2) demonstrate
benefits of alliance with the IRoA [Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan], (3) reward communities who drive insurgents of out of
the area, and (4) strengthen local will and ability to resist
insurgents."[3] No wonder then, that Afghans are highly
irritated regarding the role and function of humanitarian actors in
the country. This is all the more the case, as some civilian actors
are obviously spying for the military. "Anne Bodine, a US State
Department political analyst and senior advisor to the PRT in Herat,
said: ‘We are the eyes and ears of the US government.’"[4]
For sure, most
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) object to any form of support
for the war, but they are unable to efficiently distance themselves,
as it is a little too much to expect from the Afghan insurgents to
be able to differentiate between "good" and "bad"
civilian actors – this is virtually impossible in stress
situations like in Afghanistan. In the eyes of the armed opposition
against the Western troops, every civilian actor in the country is a
potential collaborator of the occupiers and therefore, like it or
not, a legitimate target. And this is exactly what happened. As the
Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) documents, attacks on NGOs
skyrocketed in the last few years from 106 (2006) to 137 (2007) and
finally to 172 (2008). Furthermore, ANSO notes that those attacks
have become "politicised" as there is a "shift from
criminal to conflict related actors."[5] As a result, numerous
NGOs have been forced to terminate their work and to withdraw from
the country.
Against
this background, in January 2010, eight of the largest international
NGOs issued a devastating critique of the Civil-Military Cooperation
practised in Afghanistan: "As political pressures to 'show
results' in troop contributing countries intensify, more and more
assistance is being channelled through military actors to 'win
hearts and minds' while efforts to address the underlying causes of
poverty and repair the destruction wrought by three decades of
conflict and disorder are being sidelined. […] There is little
evidence this approach is generating stability and, in some cases,
military involvement in development activities is, paradoxically,
putting Afghan lives further at risk as these projects quickly
become targeted by anti-government elements. […] Part of the
problem is that the militarized aid approach focuses not on
alleviating poverty but on winning the loyalty of Afghans through
the provision of aid. In 'Commanders’ Guide to Money as a Weapons
System,' a US army manual for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, aid is
defined as 'a nonlethal weapon' that is utilized to 'win the hearts
and minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the
insurgents.'"[6]
[1]
Lindley-French 2009, p. 22.
[2]
Christian Aid: The Politics of Poverty. Aid in the New Cold War, May
2004, URL: http://www.un-ngls.org/orf/politics%20of%20poverty.pdf
(accessed 18.02.2010).
[3]
Mann, Sloan: The Integration of Special Operation Forces and USAID
in Afghanistan, in: Small Wars Journal, August 2008, URL:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/79-mann.pdf (accessed
30.09.2009).
[4] Christian Aid 2004, p. 47;
see also Baumgard, Frank: Zivil-Militärische Zusammenarbeit in der
Bundeswehr, in: Wehrtechnik V/2008, 96-105, S. 98.
[5]
ANSO Quarterly Data Report, Kabul, April 2009, URL:
http://www.afgnso.org/2009/2009%20Q1.pdf (accessed 30.09.2009).
[6]
Quick Impact, Quick Collapse. The Dangers of Militarized Aid in
Afghanistan (Action Aid, Afghanaid, CARE, Christian Aid, Concern
Worldwide, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Trocaire), January
2010, URL:
http://www.oxfam.de/download/20091127_QuickImpactQuickCollapse_158kb.pdf
(accessed 18.02.2010); see also Was will Deutschland am Hindukusch?,
VENRO-Positionspapier 7/2009; Caritas fordert Strategiewechsel für
Afghanistan, Pressemitteilung, 10.06.2008.
Such proposals must be
fiercely rejected. Soldiers are soldiers, and civilians are civilians
– both pursue completely different priority objectives, or at least
they should. Humanitarian aid is strictly committed to direct poverty
reduction, at least on paper; it must not be used as an instrument to
support Western
colonial engagements. This is all the more the case, as the European
Union and NATO are on their way to streamlining their decision-making
mechanisms in such a way as to be able to conduct these types of
missions far more often in the future.
4. The Imperial Makeover of NATO and the European Union
While
there is a vast
amount of literature analysing the United States as an empire115,
it has largely gone unnoticed that the European Union and NATO are
developing in the same direction. One of the defining elements of an
empire is that power is heavily concentrated within a small core:
"Imperial boundaries do not divide political
units possessing equal rights; instead they involve gradations of
power and influence. […] Empires have no neighbours which they
recognize as equals. […] There is almost always a scale
of integration descending from centre to periphery, which usually
corresponds to decreasing rights and an increasingly limited capacity
to determine the politics of the centre."116
As we will point out below, this already applies to the European
Union and, perhaps, soon also to NATO.
4.1 Imperial Makeover I: European Union
Quite
a few observers have
noticed the recent transformation of the European Union which is
increasingly becoming structured like an empire. One of the
exceptions is Jan Zielonka, who argues that the eastern enlargement
in 2004 "has dramatically and irreversibly transformed the
nature of the Union. [It] was an impressive exercise in empire
building. […] In other words, the Union not only started to
organize its internal political space along an imperial pattern; it
also started to behave towards its neighbours in a truly imperial
fashion."117
In
the external
dimension, the European Union is steadily expanding its sphere of
influence, preferably by non-military means but increasingly with
brute force – over 20 missions which have taken place under the
auspices of European Defense and Security Policy since 2003 are cases
in point. For a long time, the usual tool for expansion was formal
enlargement, but in recent years a new approach is taking shape. Via
the "Neighbourhood Policy", the goal is to absorb as many
countries as possible into a European Empire without giving them a
meaningful influence over its policies by denying them EU membership.
Mark Leonard, director of the highly influential European
Council on Foreign Relations,
precisely sketched out the ambitious scope of this European Empire he
calls the "Eurosphere": "The
EU's reach goes beyond those applying for membership. There is a belt
of 70 countries surrounding it – home to 20 per cent of the world's
population – which are heavily dependent on the EU. These 1.3
billion people live in the European part of the former Soviet Union,
the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. The EU is their
main source of trade, international bank credit, foreign direct
investment and development assistance. The EU has used this
dependence to develop institutional links with these countries,
designed to bring them under the European legal and political
umbrella. […] The EU will need to think carefully about how these
arrangements can be strengthened – perhaps by developing a stronger
neighbourhood policy with 'deep free trade' agreements, a European
energy community, and security partnerships – to ensure that its
'transformative power' can have an impact on countries that will
never join the EU."118
But
the European Union has
also started an imperial makeover of its internal structure. Until
then, it had been an organization with relatively flat hierarchies
where the influence and power of big and small states was distributed
fairly equally. But this changed dramatically because Core-Europe,
the top dogs, Germany, France and Great Britain, were concerned that
they could lose control over Europe's policies with so many new
states entering the Union in 2004. Therefore, in advance of
enlargement, they drafted the European Constitution which had as one
of its primary aims to concentrate the decision-making power in the
hands of those few countries far more heavily than before. Due to
several problems, not least because the “newcomers” were not
overly enthusiastic about this "imperialisation" of the
European Union, the Constitution did not come into force until
December 1, 2009 and by then, it was known as the Lisbon Treaty.119
Two
"innovations" in this new treaty are of particular
importance in this context. First is the introduction of double
majority voting in the most important EU body, the Council of the
Heads of State and Government. As a result of this, Germany will
nearly double its share of vote in the Council from 8.4% to 16.73%
(the other winners are France, Great Britain and Italy), while all
other states will significantly lose influence. With the passing of
the Lisbon Treaty (Article 9c) this dramatic power shift will be
introduced as normal practice starting in 2014.
In
the military area, this centralisation of power is mirrored by the
introduction of the Lisbon Treaty's "Permanent Structured
Cooperation" (PSC). Previously, Member States were forbidden
from creating any kind of "core", "avant-garde"
or "pioneer" groups in which only a few countries would
decide over specific aspects of Europe's security policy. For the
whole European Security and Defence Policy, the unanimity rule
applied, which gave the smaller Member States some sort of influence
over its course. But this changed with the Lisbon Treaty entering
into force because the PSC not only allows Member States to form such
core groups, but it also abolishes the consensus principle. It takes
only a qualified majority vote in the Council to establish such a PSC
and afterwards, countries not taking part are deprived of any say on
its actions. As the Lisbon Treaty states (Article 46,6): "For
the purposes of this paragraph, unanimity shall be constituted by the
votes of the representatives of the participating Member States
only." Moreover, the participating states can solely decide
whether new countries are allowed to take part in an already
established PSC.120
According to Henry Bentégeat, Chief of Europe's Military Committee,
even the decision to start a military operation could be delegated to
a PSC, which – according to his view – has the "advantage"
that it would only require the agreement of a few countries in order
to go to war: "In particular, the possibility afforded by the
new Treaty of establishing enhanced cooperation in the field of the
common foreign and security policy, opens up great potential for EU
operations. Just one third of the Member States will be needed to
take a decision in the Council to launch an operation."121
Particularly
troubling in this context is the fact that the Lisbon Treaty erects
huge barriers for smaller countries to be able to participate in such
a core military group. Article 46 states that only Member States
"which fulfil the criteria and have made the commitments on
military capabilities set out in the Protocol on permanent structured
cooperation" are allowed to take part in a PSC. This refers to
the Lisbon Treaty's Protocol 10 which specifies the entry criteria as
follows: "The permanent structured cooperation […] shall be
open to any Member State which undertakes, from the date of entry
into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, to:
(a) proceed more
intensively to develop its defence capacities through the development
of its national contributions and participation, where appropriate,
in multinational forces, in the main European equipment programmes,
and in the activity of the Agency in the field of defence
capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments
(European Defence Agency), and
(b)
have the capacity to supply by 2010 at the latest, either at national
level or as a component of multinational force groups."
(Protocol 10, Article 1)
To
put it bluntly:
only those countries that are setting up Battle Groups and taking
part in Europe's most ambitious (read: expensive) armaments projects
and military missions, will be allowed to take part in a PSC and
therefore to have a say over important parts of Europe's military and
security policy. Currently, there are several proposals about how
these criteria could be further clarified: "Pierre Lellouche,
defence spokesman for UMP ([Sarkozy's] Union pour un Mouvement
Populaire) explained that 'permanent structured cooperation' aims to
create 'a
hard core'
of the six biggest EU countries - France, the UK, Spain, Germany,
Poland and Italy - referred to as a 'Defence
G6'. As a
precondition for joining this hard core, Lellouche proposes that the
participating Member States should: devote two per cent of their GDP
to defence; establish a common procurement market for defence
equipment; further develop the battle group concept (each comprising
10,000 troops); and launch major defence infrastructure projects,
such as space and intelligence technology, and missile defence."122
Others argue for some sort of military Maastricht criteria: "With
the implementation of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PSC), as
foreseen by the Lisbon Treaty, to be established among a few able and
willing EU members, the prospect of common defence expenditure
standards will arise, and of fixing targets and conditions, similar
to what has been done for the core eurozone states in the monetary
field."123
So, countries unwilling – or unable - to pursue these policies
could well end up being completely sidelined in most parts of
European security policy. The central idea of the PSC was expressed
by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, when he proposed to use it as a
means to create a "European military directorate", composed
of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland.124
There
are a number of other areas in which the European Union is also
undergoing an imperial makeover, as has been pointed out elsewhere in
detail.125
So, European Commissioner José Manuael Barroso is right, when he
says: "Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the
organisation of empire. We have the dimension of empire."126
4.2 Imperial Makeover II: NATO
Not unlike the European Union, a similar process of centralisation is in
the making within
NATO – or at least, it is high on the wish list of the most
powerful countries. In order to "streamline" the
decision-making mechanisms of the alliance, the two most important
proposals – the "Naumann-Paper" and "Alliance
Reborn" - for NATO's new Strategic Concept, scheduled for the
end of 2010, similarly propose the following institutional
innovations:
Abolishing
NATO's consensus principle:
Currently, every decision within NATO has to be taken by consensus.
From time to time, this necessitates painful and time consuming
negotiations with countries unwilling to support one war or another.
Therefore, the Naumann-Paper demands "that NATO should abandon
the consensus principle at all levels below the NATO Council, and
introduce at the committee and working-group levels a majority voting
rule."127
Similarly, "Alliance Reborn" argues: "While this is an
important symbol of unity, especially when the NAC votes to deploy
forces, the consensus rule also allows one nation to block the wishes
of all others and also leads to lowest-common-denominator decisions.
[…] Qualified majority voting, or upholding a simple majority, have
each been suggested as alternatives, especially in committees lower
than the NAC."128
If adopted, the abolition of the consensus principle would make it
extremely hard for smaller countries to have their voices heard in
the future. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2010,
German Defence Minister zu Guttenberg picked up this proposal by
calling the consensus principle a "cultivated absurdity"
and demanding its abolition.129
Abolishing
the Caveats:
At the moment, countries which decide to take part in a military
mission still have the option to formulate caveats, which can prevent
their troops from having to take part in specific aspects of an
operation.130
As this constrains the war fighting capabilities of the alliance,
another action the strategists "suggest in order to enhance
NATO's capabilities is the abolition of the system of national
caveats, as far as this is possible."131
Only
who fights,
plays: Another
far-reaching proposal is that NATO countries which do not actually
contribute to a combat mission should be deprived of a say in the
decision-making. "It has always been left to individual nations
to contribute what capabilities or forces they can. But nations that
do not contribute forces should also not have a say in the conduct of
military operations. We therefore propose […] that only those
nations that contribute to a mission – that is, military forces in
a military operation – should have the right to a say in the
process of the operation."132
A
New Burden Sharing: With
respect to the financing of NATO's wars, currently the "costs
lie where they fall" principle applies: those willing to fight
have to pay for the costs largely on their own. As burden sharing is
at the top of the agenda, it is now proposed that countries, not
taking part in a specific NATO war, should nevertheless pay for it:
"New procedures for funding NATO operations are urgently needed.
The current cost-sharing system of 'costs lie where they fall' must
be abandoned entirely. […] What is needed is a common cost-sharing
formula, to which all allies contribute. We therefore recommend the
creation of a commonly financed NATO operations budget."133
Taken
together, this could well lead to the grotesque situation where a
member state could have to pay for a war it does not want to support
and in which it has absolutely no say regarding the actual fighting
on the ground. As it is highly possible that some or all of these
proposals will find their way into the new Strategic Concept, this
will shift the decision-making power heavily in favour of the big
NATO countries and turn the alliance into a strictly hierarchic and
undemocratic organization.
Conclusion
Obviously, whether things will materialize as predicted in this study is not
certain. It depends on a number of factors. For example, is the
United States really prepared to cede power to its European allies?
Or are the recent signals merely empty promises? In fact, there is
already discontent with how little has been actually been done
despite the Obama Administration’s pledge to respect European
interests: "The German Institute for International and Security
Affairs (SWP) in Berlin writes that President Obama, upon taking
office, aroused 'great expectations' in terms of an intensified
cooperation with Berlin and the EU. But in fact, there has been
'little more than a shift of accents'. Washington still merely
concedes an instrumental role to 'multilateralism' - a codeword for
the German-EU ambition to share world power with the USA."134
Yet,
in light of Europe's (and especially Germany's) own decline, there
are not many options available, other than to strengthen the alliance
with the United States: "Some strategists are calling for
caution in the transatlantic rivalry. If the USA loses its
predominating role this could cause grave 'problems' for Germany. The
warning refers to China's rapid rise, which appears to have been
accelerated by the economic crisis. Economists see the possibility of
Europe's abrupt decline and are predicting a global rivalry solely
between the USA and China. In such a case, according to Berlin,
Germany could at best have influence as the United States' junior
partner."135
Furthermore, European leaders are obviously concerned that they could
end up completely sidelined as a result of closer Sino-American
cooperation (G2). For example, Italian Foreign Minister Franco
Frattini warned: "If we do not find a common foreign policy,
there is the risk that Europe will become irrelevant. We will be
bypassed by the G2 of America and China, which is to say the Pacific
axis, and the Atlantic axis will be forgotten. We need political will
and commitment, otherwise the people of Europe will be disappointed.
People expect a great deal of us."136
So, in order to avoid such a fate, there is an enormous pressure on
the Europeans to satisfy the American demand for more military
support. Whether they will be able to put substantially more troops
on the ground in light of their relatively war-averse electorate137,
will be one of the most crucial issues deciding the future of the
Transatlantic New Deal.
On the other hand, for the
United States,
the European Union by far remains the most preferable partner due to
their largely overlapping interests, particularly as the
confrontations with China have become sharper and sharper.138
Therefore, the incentives for a transatlantic rapprochement are very
strong – for good or evil, the United States and the European Union
desperately need each other in order to uphold their position on the
international stage. Most recently, Obama's National Security
Adviser, James Jones, once again emphasised the rationale for a
Transatlantic New Deal at the Munich Security Conference in February
2010: "At this conference last year, Vice President Biden and I
came here to represent an administration that had been in office less
than three weeks. We reaffirmed President Obama's pledge of a new
beginning in America's relations with Europe and the world. A new way
of conducting foreign policy—not lecturing, but listening; not
making decisions unilaterally, but consulting and coordinating with
allies and partners. […] Reports of the demise of the
Trans-Atlantic partnership have been greatly exaggerated - for
decades. But our partnership endures for a simple reason - because it
reflects our common values, our shared interests and is the
foundation of our collective security and prosperity. Indeed, long
gone are the days when Europe was a challenge to be managed by the
United States. Rather, Europe today is our indispensable partner.
[This] underscores what President Obama has called a 'fundamental
truth' - that 'America cannot confront the challenges of this century
alone' and that 'Europe cannot confront them without America.'"139
There are also questions
remaining about the future of the emerging powers. Will Brazil and
India develop into "poles"
or will they be important "prizes" for each bloc in a New
Cold War?140
The most relevant – and disputed – aspect in this context is the
future of Russia. Indeed, there seems to be major disagreement –
albeit almost the only one – between the assessment of the American
and the German intelligence community. While "Global Trends
2025" treats Russia primarily as a potential rival, the
Bundesnachrichtendienst
sees the country as a potential "prize" which could be
integrated into a Western bloc directed against China.141
But the German assessment seems to be highly doubtful because even
those Russians, who are pleading for an alignment with the West, are
arguing that this would necessitate respecting Russian interests to a
much greater extent in the future than has been the case up to now.142
Yet, not only have the
United States as well as the European Union for years pursued
distinctly anti-Russian policies in virtually every area143,
moreover, there are absolutely no signs that this will change in the
foreseeable future: "In a remarkably candid interview recently,
well-known Russia scholar Professor Stephen Cohen at New York
University […] assesses that despite the Obama administration's
call to 'reset' ties with Russia, the 'old thinking' prevails in
Washington – 'that Russia is a defeated power, it's not a
legitimate great power with equal rights to the US, that Russia
should make concessions [...] that the US can go back on its promises
because Russia is imperialistic and evil.'"144
The Russian proposal for a "Euro Atlantic Security Treaty",
published in November 2009, is a case in point.145
Although - or better: because – the treaty would address Moscow's
most pressing concerns regarding NATO's aggressive policies on the
Eurasian continent, it was unmistakably rejected by the
NATO-officials attending the Munich Security conference in February
2010: "For the most part, the speakers tried to tell Russia why
its initiative is bad."146
This blatantly underlined the notion that NATO's leaders do not have
the slightest intentions to grant Russia the least say over their
policies.
With
this short sighted policy, the West is literally pushing Moscow into
the emerging Sino-Russian axis which is currently taking shape. In a
highly informative piece, Sergei Karaganow sums up the Russian view
as follows: "It is quite obvious, at least to me, that the
Euro-Atlantic civilization, which seemed to have finally won, in the
new world is lagging somewhat behind China and other Asian countries
which have turned out to be the true winners of the Cold War. […]
Against the background of these changes, America's geopolitical
positions and its claims to sole leadership have sharply deteriorated
– thanks to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the economic crisis.
These positions can and will be restored only partially. Faced with
the impossibility of its advantageous and equal accession to the
Euro-Atlantic space, Russia is drifting fast towards prioritizing
cooperation with China – even if as a 'younger brother,' although a
respected one. In addition, China quite pragmatically does not focus
on differences in values, although these differences are great. The
'Asian choice' of today is not the same as the Eurasian choice of the
past. It looks like a choice in favor of a rapidly rising
civilization."147
Not unlike Russia, China also wants its voice to be heard and its
interests to be respected, as was
articulated by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the Munich
Security Conference in February 2010: "Yang Jiechi's subtle and
diplomatic language should mislead no one. In a nutshell, his message
was: China will constructively cooperate on the major international
security issues – provided that China's core interests are fully
taken into account. On international security, there is no way to
circumvene China."148
Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean diplomat, poses
the crucial question in this matter: "The rise of Asia therefore
creates a real dilemma for Western states: Should they be guided by
their material interests and cling to this power, or should they be
guided by their values and begin to cede and share power?"149
Unfortunately, at the moment, all signs are that the West will try to
uphold its supremacy, no matter what the costs, thereby making a New
Cold War a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Now almost 55% of those
questioned [in China] for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree
that 'a cold war will break out between the US and China'. An
independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has
found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and
political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s
foes."150
Regarding
these developments, there
is indeed an urgent need for closer transatlantic cooperation, but
not in the way it is currently envisioned. Instead, the European
Union and the United States could avoid an era of "Global
Rivalries" (Kees van der Pijl) by "working cooperatively
together in defining a new economic and geopolitical agenda for the
coming era - valuing fairness, greater social equality and mutual
respect."151
Unfortunately, there seems to be little interest in doing so. Yet, we
should not leave the question of war and peace to be decided by those
Western militarists currently reigning in the United States and the
European Union: "[It is an open question] whether there will be
a confrontation between the transatlantic status-quo powers and the
contenders from the semi periphery. The outcome of such a scenario
will be decided over the next decades in the Western states through
social struggles and elections."152
So large scale, peaceful protests in the European Union and the
United States will be necessary, in order prevent the world from
being sent up in flames by the New Cold Warriors on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Footnotes
1
See for example Layne,
Christopher: It's over. Over there: The Coming Crack-up in
Transatlantic Relations, in: International Politics, May 2008, pp.
325-347; Kupchan,
Charles A.: The End of the West, in: The Atlantic Monthly (November
2002); Calleo, David P.: Balancing America: Europe’s International
Duties, in: Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, 1/2003, pp.
43-60.
2
Vasconcelos, Álvaro
de: Introduction – Responding to the Obama moment: the EU and the
US in a multipolar world,
in:
Vasconcelos,
Álvaro de/Zaborowski, Marcin (eds.): The Obama Moment.
European and
American perspectives, Institute for Security Studies, Paris,
November 2009, pp.
11-24, p. 11.
3
In fact, the relations between the United States and the European
Union already improved during the second term of Bush’s
presidency. This further underscores the claim that the changing
distribution of power and not changing personalities is the main
driver behind the transatlantic rapprochement: See for example
Brose, Christian: The Making of George Obama, Foreign Policy,
January/February 2009; Janning, Josef: Welcome Back, America? Die
USA und Europa im Aufbruch, Bertelsmann Stiftung, spotlight europe,
November 2008.
4
Hamilton, Daniel
S./Burwell, Frances G. (lead authors): Shoulder to Shoulder: Forging
a Strategic U.S.-EU Partnership (Atlantic Council of the United
States/ Center for European Policy Studies/ Center for Strategic and
International Studies/ Center for Transatlantic Relations/ Fundacion
Alternativas/ Prague Security Studies Institute/Real Instituto
Elcano/ Swedish Institute of International Affairs), December 2009,
p. ii.
5
See for example Ferguson, Niall: The decade the world tilted east,
Financial Times, 27.12.2009; Kishore
Mahbubani: The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of
Global Power to the East, New York 2009; Zakaria,
Fareed: The Rise of the Rest, Newsweek, 12.05.2008; Haass,
Richard N.: The Age of Nonpolarity. What
Will Follow US Dominance, in: Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008; Boris,
Dieter/Schmalz, Stefan: Eine Krise des Übergangs:
Machtverschiebungen in der Weltwirtschaft, in: Prokla, 4/2009, pp.
625-643; Steingart,
Gabor: Weltkrieg um Wohlstand: Wie Macht und Reichtum neu verteilt
werden, München 20082;
Flemes, Daniel/Nolte, Detlef:
Zukünftige globale Machtverschiebungen, Giga Focus 5/2008.
See
for an opposing view Delpech, Thérèse: The Decline of the West,
New York Times, 21.12.2009.
7
Grevi, Giovanni: Scanning
the future.
American
and European perspectives, ISS
Policy Brief, December 2008; see also Grevi, Giovanni: The
interpolar world: a new scenario, ISS Occasional Paper, June 2009.
8
Current Crisis Shows Uncanny Parallels to Great Depression, Der
Spiegel, 29.04.2009, URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,621979,00.html
(accessed 28.01.2010); see also Rinke, Andreas: Metamorphose
der Geopolitik, in:
Internationale Politik, Juni 2009, pp. 38-43.
9
For a truly comprehensive study, it would also be necessary to
analyse the role of at least two more states, Brazil and India, but
this unfortunately goes beyond the scope of this paper.
10
Vasconcelos
2009, p. 14.
As British Foreign Minister David
Miliband pointed out: "European and North American interests -
political, economic and military - are very closely aligned. […]
This is the moment for us to renew the alliance. Because as global
power becomes more diffuse we will need each other more. […] We
need to invest in the alliance, and not just support from the
sidelines. That means practising what we preach. It means taking the
difficult decisions not just the easy ones. And it means being
willing and able to combine hard and soft power in a credible way."
See Miliband, David: Speech
at the 45th Munich Security
Conference, 07.02.2009, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/David-Miliband.215.0.html?&L=1
(accessed 02.01.2010); see also Guttenberg,
Karl Theodor zu: Die Zukunft der transatlantischen Beziehungen, in:
Politische Studien, Heft 423, 60 Jg., Januar/Februar 2009, pp.
15-19; Rühle, Michael: Keine
Alternative zur globalen Rolle der USA, Neue Züricher Zeitung,
24.02.2009.
11
The Washington NATO Project (Atlantic Council of the United
States/Center for Strategic and International Studies/Center for
Technology and National Security Policy/Center for Transatlantic
Relations): Alliance Reborn: An Atlantic Compact for the 21st
Century, February 2009, p. 8.
12
Gerrard, Quille: Global Power of Global Player? Framing CFSP and
ESDP in 2019, in:
Forward-Looking
Policy Papers on "Europe 2009-2019",
EXPO/B/PolDep/ST/2009_109, July 2009, pp. 13-20, p. 14.
13
Brzezinski,
Zbigniew: Major foreign policy challenges for the next US president,
in: International Affairs 85: 1 (2009), pp. 53-60, p. 54.
14
Stromseth, Jane/Wippman, David/Brooks, Rosa: Can
Might make Rights? Building the Rule of Law after Military
Interventions, New York 2006, p. 1f.
15
Robertson, George/Ashdown, Paddy: We must beef up the UN and the EU,
The Times, 12.02.2008.
16
Pape,
Robert A.: Empire Falls, in: The National Interest, January/February
2009; see also Layne,
Christopher: The Waning of U.S. Hegemony – Myth or Reality?, in:
International Security, Summer 2009, pp. 147-172; Khanna, Parag:
Waving Goodbye to Hegemony, The
New York Times Magazine, 27.01.2009; Orlov,
Dmitry: Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American
Prospects, Gabriola Island 2008. For some of the few opposing views,
claiming that US supremacy will last well into the future see
Brooks, Stephen/Wohlforth, William:
World Out of Balance,
Princeton 2008; Lieber, Robert J.: Falling Upwards: Declinism, The
Box Set, in: World Affairs, Summer 2008; Joffe, Josef: Der
Kassandra-Komplex, in: Internationale Politik, September/Oktober
2009, pp. 99-109.
18
See Gowan, Richard/Brantner, Franziska: A Global Force for Human
Rights?, ECFR Policy Paper, September 2008; Grevie 2009.
21
Altman, Roger C.: The great Crash, 2008: A Geopolitical Setback for
the West, in: Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009.
23
Liebig, Michael: The 2010 Munich Security Conference: China Enters
the Scene, solon-line, 12.02.2010, URL:
http://www.solon-line.de/the-2010-munich-security-conference.html
(accessed 15.02.2010).
24
See Wagner, Jürgen: Gas-OPEC und Afrikanische Nabucco. Der Neue
Kalte (Gas-)Krieg zwischen EU und Russland geht in die nächste
Runde, in: AUSDRUCK – Das IMI-Magazin (Februar 2009), pp. 17-23.
25
Drezner, Daniel: Bad Debts. Assessing China’s Influence in Great
Power Politics, in: International Security, Fall 2009, pp. 7-45, p.
7.
27
Con, Tony: Clausewitz in Wonderland, in: Policy Review, September
2006, URL:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4268401.html
(accessed 15.02.2010). On the growing military tensions between the
United States and China see Rozoff, Rick: U.S.-China
Military Tensions Grow, Globalresearch.ca,
20.01.2010.
28
Wijk,Rob de: The consequences for Europe of the global crisis, in:
Europe's World, Autumn 2009.
29
See Busse,
Nikolaus: Entmachtung
des
Westens:
die neue Ordnung der Welt, Berlin 2009; Lucas, Edward: The New Cold
War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West, Basingstoke
2008; Gat, Azar: The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers, in:
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007. The director of the highly
influential European
Council on Foreign Relations obviously
also shares this view: "Francis Fukuyama’s famous thesis was
not that power struggles or even wars would end (in fact, he thought
they would continue), but that the great ideological battles of the
20th century would end with ‘the universalisation of western
liberal-democracy’. However, although the differences between
major powers are less stark today than during the Cold War, the big
story in international relations seems to be history’s dramatic
return." See Leonard, Mark: Divided world: the struggle for
primacy in 2020, Centre for European Reform, Policy Brief, January
2007, p. 2.
30
Ikenberry, John/Slaughter, Anne-Marie: Forging a World of Liberty
under Law, The Princeton Project on National Security, Final Report,
September 2006, p. 29f.
32
Obama, Barack: Renewing American Leadership, in: Foreign
Affairs,
July/August 2007. See also Michael McFaul, Obama's most important
adviser on Russian affairs: "But how a country defines
'strategic interest' depends on its regime; democracies have one set
of definitions, autocracies another. The bad news emanating from
Russia just over the past month proves that Moscow's increasingly
autocratic leadership will clash often with Washington in world
affairs." See Goldgeier, James/McFaul, Michael: Russia's No
Democracy. So What?, Washington Post, 09.04.2006.
33
Gates, Robert: A Balanced Strategy. Reprogramming the Pentagon for a
New Age, in: Foreign
Affairs,
January/February 2009.
34
For example, a study which had been prepared for the European
Council. Its findings had been presented to the European
Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defence as well as to the
Council Presidency: James Rogers/Luis Simón: The Status and
Location of the Military Installations of the Member States of the
European Union and their Potential Role for the European Security
and Defence Policy (ESDP), Policy Department External Policies,
Briefing Paper, February 2009.
35
Moratinos, Miguel: Speech
at the 46th Munich
Security Conference,
06.02.2010, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/Moratinos-Miguel.455.0.html
(accessed 06.02.2010).
36
European Security & Information Forum: Final Report, December
2009, URL: http://www.esrif.eu/documents/esrif_final_report.pdf
(accessed 18.12.2009), p. 126.
37
Ries, Thomas: The
globalising security environment and the EU, in: Vasconcelos, Álvaro
de (ed.): What
ambitions for European defence in 2020?, Institute for Security
Studies, Paris 20092,
pp. 61-74, p. 69.
38
See Grant, Charles: How
should Europe respond to China's strident rise?, CER Bulletin,
February/March 2010.
40
Koalitionsvertrag „Wachstum. Bildung. Zusammenhalt." zwischen
CDU, CSU und FDP für die 17. Legislaturperiode,
p. 118 (own translation).
41
See for example Lindley-French, Julian: Enhancing Stabilization and
Reconstruction operations. A Report of the Global Dialogue between
the European Union and the United States, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, January 2009; Shapiro, Jeremy/Witney, Nick:
Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of EU-US Relations,
ECFR Report, October 2009; Toje, Asle: The EU,
NATO
and European Defence – A slow
train
coming, ISS Occasional Paper, December 2008.
42
Ambassador Ivo H. Daalder, Permanent
Representative of the United States to NATO, Transatlantic Forum,
Berlin, July 1, 2009, URL:
http://nato.usmission.gov/Speeches/Daalder_FA_Berlin070109.asp
(accessed 20.01.2010).
43
Scheffer, Jaap de Hoop: Speech
at the 45th Munich
Security Conference,
07.02.2009, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/Jaap-de-Hoop-Scheffer.227.0.html
(accessed 25.01.2010).
44
Although the Europeans haven't – yet – delivered military
support to the enormous extend, the United States wishes, this has
more to do with the huge scepticism within their own population than
with an unwillingness to support the United States.
46
European Parliament resolution of 19 February 2009 on the role of
NATO in the security architecture of the EU (2008/2197(INI)), para.
34; see also The
Washington NATO Project 2009, p.
37: "If they [the Europeans]
want Washington to support ESDP, they must produce real capabilities
and assume real peacekeeping responsibilities, as they have for
instance in Bosnia. […] If the U.S. wants European support for
U.S. initiatives, it must be willing to allow allies to develop the
capacity to offer that support, even if at times they employ that
capacity autonomously."
47
Joseph Biden: Speech
at the 45th Munich
Security Conference,
07.02.2009, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/Joseph-R-Biden.234.0.html
(25.01.2010).
52
Council Conclusions
on the ESDP, 10./11.11.2008. Up to
that point, the training took place in European countries.
53
Vgl. Korski, Daniel/Gowan, Richard: Now the EU should get serious in
Iraq, in: Europe's World, Autumn 2009; Vaisse, Justin/Gräfe,
Sebastian: What Europe Can Do for Iraq: A Blueprint for Action,
Brookings Institution, 23.04.2009; Burke, Edward: The Case for a New
European Engagement in Iraq, FRIDE Working Paper, January 2009.
54
Final communiqué of The Meeting of the North Atlantic Council at
the level of Foreign Ministers, NATO Press release, 03.12.2008.
56
Riecke, Henning: Mehr Einsatz in Afghanistan, in: Internationale
Politik, Januar 2009, pp. 39-44, p. 42.
59
On the poverty caused by neoliberal globalisation see Nel, Philip:
The Return of Inequality, in: Third World Quarterly, No. 4/2006, pp.
689-706; Stiglitz,
Joseph: Die Schatten der Globalisierung, Berlin 2002; Goldberg,
Jörg: Globalisierung und Armut, in: Blätter für deutsche und
internationale Politik 7/2004, S. 884-886; and Chang, Ha-Joon:
Kicking Away the Ladder: The "Real" History of Free Trade,
Foreign Policy in Focus, Special Report, December 2003. On the
growing resistance against neoliberalism see for example Pieterse,
Nederveen: Globalization or empire, New York 2004, p.14.
60
For example, EU-Commissioner José Manuel Barroso unmistakably
preaches the gospel of neoliberalism in his "Political
guidelines for the next Commission" of September 2009, p. 30:
"Openness is critical to
Europe's future competitiveness. […] Reaching a deal in the Doha
round remains the priority. But FTAs and trade arrangements will
also have to be pursued. Trade negotiations have to be at the
service of EU interest. […] We need to join up the different
strands of our external policy much better to use our 'soft power'
leverage to deliver solid results for EU businesses and for
citizens. The European interest has to be promoted in a coherent and
determined way."
61
The concept of the failed state is highly problematic, as it is not
adequately defined and used as a one-size-fits-all description for
every country presumably being in "need" for an external
intervention. See Call, Charles: The Fallacy of the „Failed
State“, in: Third World Quarterly, No. 8, 2008, pp. 1491-1507.
62
Barnett, Thomas P.M./Gaffney, Henry H.: Globalization Gets a
Bodyguard, in: U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings,
November 2001, pp. 50–53.
64
This view is also present within the German intelligence community.
See Rinke 2009, p. 43. See also the
anonymous quote on a high-level meeting by a member of the think
tank community: "I believe we will
witness an increasingly tough competition about who sets the rules
of politics in the 21st century and what should be the founding
principles for the rules of international politics. The OECD world,
which had more or less a monopoly in this game in the past, will be
challenged in
particular by authoritarian regimes that have enough economic,
financial and thus also political power to go their own way."
Kortweg, Rem/Podkolinski, Richard: New Horizons. Finding a path away
from NATO’s de-solidarisation, The Hague Centre for Strategic
Studies, March 2009, p. 25.
65
This is viewed as a direct threat to US interests. See for example
Naim, Moses: Rogue Aid, in: Foreign Policy, March/April 2007.
66
УТВЕРЖДЕНА Указом
Президента Российской
Федерации от
12 мая 2009 г.
№ 537. Unofficial translation on
http://trueslant.com/joshuakucera/2009/05/14/russias-national-security-strategy-in-plan-english/
(accessed 20.01.2010).
67
Karaganov, Sergei: A
New Epoch of Confrontation, in: Russia
in Global Affairs,
Nr. 4, October-December 2007.
69
Roberts, Susan/Secor, Anna/Sparke, Matthew: Neoliberal Geopolitics,
in: Antipode, Vol. 35, No. 5 (2003), pp. 886-897, p. 887.
70
Collier, Paul:
Breaking the conflict trap (World Bank Policy Research Report),
2003, p. 53. See also Congressional Budget Office: Enhancing
US Security Through Foreign Aid,
Washington, DC, April 1994, p. 5. UN Millennium Project: Investing
in Development, New York 2005, p. 8; Nafziger, Wayne: Development,
inequality, and war in Africa, in: The Economics of Peace and
Security Journal, No. 1/2006, pp. 13-19; Rice, Susan E./Graff,
Corinne, Lewis, Janet: Poverty and Civil War: What Policymakers Need
to Know, Brookings Working Paper, December 2006.
71
Korski,
Daniel/Gowan, Richard:
Can
the EU rebuild
failing
states?
ECFR Policy Paper, October 2009, p. 39; see
also Fergusson, Niall: The Axis of Upheaval, in: Foreign Policy,
March/April 2009.
72
2008 Army Posture Statement: Strategic Context, URL:
http://www.army.mil/aps/08/strategic_context/strategic_context.html
(accessed 26.01.2010).
73
Keller, Patrick: Barack
Obama’s foreign policy. What can NATO expect from the next U.S.
President?, NATO Defense College, Research Paper No. 43 (November
2008), p. 4.
75
Zanotti, Laura: Taming Chaos: A Foucouldian View of UN Peacekeeping,
Democracy and Normalization, in: International Peacekeeping, June
2006, pp. 150-167, p. 150.
76
Barbara, Julien: Rethinking neo-liberal state building, in:
Development in Practice, June 2008, pp. 307-318, p. 308; on
neoliberal nation building see also Richmond,
Oliver P./Franks, Jason:
Liberal peace transitions: between statebuilding and peacebuilding,
Edinburgh 2009; Chandler, David (ed): Statebuilding
and Intervention: Policies, Practices and Paradigms,
London 2009; Newman, Edward/Paris, Roland/Richmond, Oliver P.
(eds.): New Perspectives on Liberal Peacebuilding, Tokyo 2009;
Paris, Robert/Sisk, Timothy D. (eds.): The Dilemmas of
Statebuilding: Confronting the contradictions of postwar peace
operations, London 2009; Pugh, Michael/Cooper,
Neil/Turner, Mandy (eds.): Whose
peace? critical perspectives on the political economy of
peacebuilding, Basingstoke 2008; Castillo,
Graciana del: Rebuilding
war-torn states: the challenge of post-conflict economic
reconstruction, Oxford 2008; Lacher, Wolfram: Iraq: Exception to, or
Epitome of Contemporary Post-Conflict Reconstruction?, in:
International Peacekeeping, April 2007, pp. 237-250, p. 241;
Chandler,
David: Empire in Denial:
The Politics of State-building, London 2006.
77
Herring, Eric:
Neoliberalism versus Peacebuilding in Iraq, in: Pugh et. al. 2008,
pp. 47-64, p. 47. For the distinctly colonial way, Peacebuilding is
conducted, see also Paris,
Ronald: International Peacekeeping and the "mission
civilastrice", in: Review of International Studies 28/2002, pp.
637-656. For an overview of how neoliberal structural adjustment has
been imposed under direct Western occupation, see Wagner, Jürgen:
Neue Kriege und
Neoliberaler Kolonialismus: Systemadministration im Zeitalter des
totalen Marktes, in: ÖSFK (Hg.): Söldner, Schurken, Seepiraten.
Von der Privatisierung der Sicherheit und
dem Chaos der "neuen" Kriege, Berlin/Wien 2010, pp.
180-200 .
78
Hamilton,
Daniel/Foster, Nikolas: The
Obama administration and Europe, in: Vasconcelos
2009, pp. 39-57, p. 47.
79
Preble, Christopher /Logan, Justin: Failed States and Flawed Logic:
The Case against a Standing Nation-Building Office, CATO Policy
Analysis no. 560, January 11, 2006, p. 18.
80
Defense
Science Board: 2004 Summer Study on Transition To and From
Hostilities. Supporting Papers, Washington 2005, p. 53: "For
countries where U.S. interests are very important and the risk of
U.S. intervention is high (termed here as "ripe and
important"), the president or National Security Council (NSC)
would direct the initiation of a robust planning process—to
resolve issues without use of military forces, or, if the United
States intervenes, for the stabilization and reconstruction (S&R)
period."
81
The other relevant option currently being promoted is "Security
Sector Reform", which essentially boils down to – for example
in Afghanistan – to enable "friendly" regimes to do the
job largely on their own by massively building up their police and
military forces. Thereby, the Western powers hope to avoid direct
occupation as often as possible.
82
Quoted in Paul
Wolfowitz: Thinking About the Imperatives of Defense Transformation,
Heritage Lectures, 30.04.2004.
83
Capabilities Development in Support of EU Rapid Response, "The
Battlegroups Concept", FR/DE/UK Food for Thought Paper, URL:
http://www.geopowers.com/Allianzen/EU/akt_eu/RRF_BGConcept.pdf
(accessed 20.01.2010).
84
"They should be flexible enough to promptly undertake
operations in distant crises areas (i.e. failing states), under, but
not exclusively, a UN mandate, and to conduct combat missions in an
extremely hostile environment (mountains, desert, jungle, etc). As
such, they should prepare the ground for larger, more traditional
peacekeeping forces, ideally provided by the UN or the Member
States." See The
EU Battlegroups, DGExPo/B/PolDep/Note/2006_ 145, 12 September 2006,
URL:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/09s1006eubattlegroups_/091006eubattlegroups_en.pdf
(accessed 20.01.2010).
85
The Rapid Deployable Corps, NATO.int, URL:
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_50088.htm
(accessed 20.01.2010).
87
See Ringsmose, Jens: Taking Stock of NATO’s Response Force, NATO
Defence College, Research Paper, January 2010.
88
Quoted in Barone,
Michael: Thomas
Barnett's Blueprint
for Action,
15.11.2005, URL:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/columns/barone_051115.htm
(accessed 15.02.2008).
89
European Defence Agency: An Initial
Long-Term Visionfor European Defence Capability and
Capacity Needs, Endorsed by the
Steering Board on 3 October 2006, p. 6.
90
Secretary
Condoleezza Rice, Remarks at
Georgetown
School
of
Foreign Service, January
18, 2006, URL: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm
(20.10.2010).
91
See Krasner, Stephen
D.: Sharing
Sovereignty: New
Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States, in: International
Security, Fall 2004,
pp. 85–120, p. 85. On the New Colonialism see Wilde, Ralph:
International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the
Civilizing Mission Never Went Away, Oxford 2008.
92
On the role and influence of Robert Cooper see Foley,
Frank: Between
Force and Legitimacy: the Worldview of Robert Cooper, EUI-RSCAS
Working Paper 2007/09.
93
Cooper, Robert: The
Post-Modern State, in: Leonard, Mark (ed.): Re-Ordering the World,
London 2002, pp. 11-20.
94
Naumann, Klaus et
al.: Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing
Transatlantic Partnership, 21 January 2008, URL:
http://tinyurl.com/7bewtj
(accessed 28.01.2010), p. 131.
97
Kaplan, Fred: Do As I Say, Not As I DoD: Will the Pentagon ever
value nation-building as much as war-fighting?, Slate, 02.12.2005.
98
See Report to Congress on the Implementation of DoD Directive
3000.05: Military
Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction
(SSTR) Operations, Washington, 1. April
2007.
100
Lindley-French 2009, p. 4. For a critical view see Harris, Jerry: US
imperialism after Iraq, in: Race & Class, No. 1 (2008), pp.
37-58.
102
Bacevich,
Andrew
J.: The Petraeus Doctrine, The Atlantic, October 2008. See
also Zelik, Raul: Aufstandsbekämpfung und Besatzungskrieg: Die
Entwicklung asymmetrischer Kriegführung durch den Westen, in:
Peripherie, Nr. 116/2009, pp. 425-477.
104
Brune, Sophie-Charlotte: Der Reformhaushalt
des Pentagon. Prioritäten
der Militär- und Rüstungspolitik unter Präsident Obama.
SWP-Aktuell,
Mai 2009.
106
Thomas P. Barnett, The new DOD SysAdmin directive, URL:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/002754.html
(accessed 20.01.2010).
107
EPLO Statement on Civilian-Military Integration in European Security
and Defence Policy, URL:
http://www.eplo.org/documents/EPLO_Statement.pdf
(20.01.2010).
108
Ashton, Catherine: Speech
at the 46th Munich
Security Conference,
06.02.2010, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/Ashton-Catherine.450.0.html
(18.02.2010).
109
See Milkoreit, Manjana: Die zivile
Dimension der Sicherheit ernst nehmen: die NATO als die Organisation
für den Wiederaufbau nach einem Konflikt, in: NATO Review (Herbst
2007); Bertram, Christoph: Abschied vom Krieg, in: NATO Review
(Frühjahr 2006); Dobbins, James: Die Rolle der NATO beim Aufbau von
Staatswesen, in: NATO Review (Sommer 2005).
110
The Washington Project 2009, p. ix; see also Binnendijk,
Hans/Kugler, Richard: Needed - A NATO Stabilization and
Reconstruction Force, Defense Horizons No. 45 (September 2004).
111
For example, then German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Jung stated in
early 2009: "The
comprehensive approach, our concept of networked security, must
become a core element of the new Strategic Concept." See
Jung,
Franz-Josef: Speech
at the 45th Munich
Security
Conference,
08.02.2009.
112
Valasek,
Tomas/Korski, Daniel: Closer NATO-EU Ties: Ideas for the Strategic
Concept, Center for Transatlantic Relations, December 2009, URL:
http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/bin/w/s/Closer_NATO-EU_Ties_Valasek_Korski.pdf
(accessed 18.02.2010).
113
Noetzel, Timo/Zapfe, Martin:
Aufstandsbekämpfung als Auftrag: Instrumente und Planungsstrukturen
für den ISAF-Einsatz , SWP-Studie 2008/S 13, May 2008, p. 24 (own
translation).
116
Münkler, Herfried: Empires: The Logic of
World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, Cambridge
2007, p. 5.
119
For example, that's why Poland was so heavily opposed to the
Consitutional Treaty and subsequently to its successor, the Lisbon
Treaty. Only with massive pressure, could the country be "convinced"
to subscribe to its marginalization.
120
See Schneider, Jörg: Die Neufassung der Art.
28a und 28e EUV durch den Vertrag von Lissabon und ihre Auswirkung
auf den deutschen Verteidigungshaushalt, Wissenschaftlicher Dienst
des Bundestages, WD 11 - 333/07, p. 4.
121
Bentégeat, Henri: What
aspirations for European defence?, in: Vasconcelos
2009, pp. 97-106, p. 98.
122
Dagand, Sophie: The impact of the Lisbon Treaty on CFSP and ESDP,
in: European Security Review, No. 37, March 2008, pp. 5-9, p. 8.
123
Silvestri, Stefano: The gradual path to a European defence identity,
in: Vasconcelos 2009, pp. 75-84, p. 83. The most detailed
"benchmarks" have been formulated by the former chief of
the European
Defence Agency.
See Witney, Nick: Re-energising Europe’s Security and Defence
Policy, ECRF Policy Paper, July 2008.
125
For an analysis of the other dimensions of the European Empire see
Wagner, Jürgen: Brüssel,
das neue Rom? Ostexpansion,
Nachbarschaftspolitik und das Empire Europa, Studien zur
Militarisierung EUropas 36/2008, URL:
http://www.imi-online.de/download/EU-Studien-36-2008.pdf
(20.01.2010).
129
Guttenberg plädiert für große Reform der Nato, Welt Online,
07.02.2010.
130
For example, one very important caveat is that Germany forbids its
troops to take part in the heavy fightings in the south of
Afghanistan.
131
Naumann et al. 2008, p. 126. In
"Alliance Reborn", the abolishment of the caveats is not
openly demanded, but they are frequently mentioned as a heavy
problem (on pp. 14, 47, and 50).
132
Naumann et al. 2008, p. 125. See also The
Washington NATO Project 2009,
p. 43: " Another important reform worth considering is allowing
nations to opt out of participating in an operation (even after
joining consensus in the NAC to approve an operation). In such a
case, the opt-out nation […] would not participate in
decision-making on how that operation is executed."
133
Naumann et al. 2008, p. 128. See also The
Washington NATO Project 2009, p. 45f.:
"The 'costs lie where they fall' principle, which places the
costs of participating in Alliance operations on the nations
actually taking part, has been under attack for many years. Still,
that principle is largely followed, making it not only onerous to
take part in deployments, but providing nations an excuse not to
participate because they cannot afford to. The financial crisis
makes it imperative for NATO to develop a new approach to funding
operations and common equipment."
134
Fear of Demotion (II), German-Foreign-Policy.com, 29.01.2010 citing
Thimm, Johannes: Ein Jahr Außenpolitik unter Obama. Rückkehr
zum Multilateralismus? SWP-Arbeitspapier, Januar 2010.
136
Joint
European army of tomorrow: a new perspective, RIA Novosti,
17.11.2009. For an in-depth and more cautious analysis see NO Rush
into Marriage: China’s Response to the G2, ECFR China Analyses
22/2009.
137
This is particularly obvious regarding the war in Afghanistan: 55%
in France, 66% in Great Britain, and 69% in Germany are against the
war and their countries contributions to it. See Der gute
Willen im Westen lässt nach, Neue Züricher Zeitung, 13.09.2009.
139
Jones, James: Speech
at the 46th Munich
Security Conference,
06.02.2010, URL:
http://www.securityconference.de/Jones-James-L.449.0.html
(accessed 10.02.2010).
140
For a proponent of the latter position see Khanna,
Parag: The second world: empires and
influence in the new global order, London 2008.
142
See for example Inozemtsev, Vladislav: The Post-Crisis World:
Searching for a New Framework, in: Russia in Global Affairs,
July/September 2009, pp. 150-160, p. 157f. See also Kotkin, Stephen:
The Unbalanced Triangle. What Chinese-Russian Relations Mean for the
United States, in: Foreign/Affairs, September/October 2009: "In
the end, there can be no resetting of U.S.-Russian relations without
a transcending of NATO and the establishment of a new security
architecture in Europe. And without such a genuine reset, China will
retain the upper hand, not only in its bilateral relationship with
Russia but also in the strategic triangle comprising China, Russia,
and the United States."
143
Rahr, Alexander: Putin nach Putin – das kapitalistische Russland
am Beginn einer neuen Weltordnung, Tübingen 2008, S. 10f.
145
See European Security Treaty, November 29, 2009 (unofficial
translation), URL:
http://eng.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2009/11/223072.shtml
(accessed 08.02.2010)
146
Munich: West and non-West speaking about secure partnership, RIA Novosti,
08.02.2010.
147
Karaganov, Sergei: Russia
in Euro-Atlantic Space, solon-line, 11.12.2009, URL:
http://www.solon-line.de/russias-place-in-euro-atlantic-space.html
(accessed 08.02.2010)
151
Newman, Otto/Zoysa, Richard de: Crisis and resurgence: redefining
the United States and European Union relationship in the face of
global challenges, in: Twenty-First Century Society, November 2009,
pp. 297-318.
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