COVID-19 and the European defence dilemma

COVID-19 will change all the assumptions upon which Europe’s defence has been established since 1949. This pandemic will accelerate the shift of power from West to East and has already revealed and worsened many critical vulnerabilities in Europe’s defence. Far from cohering to combat the crisis, national distancing between allies and partners has become the norm. What is needed in Europe is a comprehensive security and national defence in the face of 5D warfare—disinformation, deception, destabilization, disruption, and implied coercion via implied or actual destruction. COVID-19 will also exacerbate and accelerate existing adverse military megatrends as improved health security comes at the expense of national and European defence.

Could NATO (still) defend Europe?

NATO has been ‘adapting’ for a decade and has made significant progress in meeting the coming challenges to Europe defence. However, power is relative and the nature of future war across the multi-domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge, allied to the accelerating speed of war, also reveals profound Allied weaknesses. Whilst the Americans are increasingly overstretched trying to cover the expanding space and technology of warfare, Europeans are decidedly under-stretched, unable, or unwilling to meet the demands of defence, too often seeing defence as a budget to be raided for domestic political concerns. Ultimately, NATO is in the business of deterrence, for if it fails defence seems unlikely, short of a rapid descent into all-out nuclear war. Europeans must thus understand that NATO is essentially a European institution, and it can only fulfil its mission as a defensive Alliance if they give the Alliance the means and tools to maintain a minimum but credible conventional force and nuclear force deterrent.

Introduction

The Introduction establishes the challenge the book addresses: how to defend Europe in the post-COVID-19 world in which all the assumptions about power, strategy, alliance, technology, and what constitutes military capability are changing fast. The chapter postulates that Europe is at another hinge of history and that the possibility of another major European war can no longer be excluded. The chapter considers the state of the literature and the debate and structure of the book, before laying out the scope of the challenge Europe’s future war, future defence must confront if peace is to be maintained through credible deterrence and defence. It also establishes the central theme of the book: European defence will require a dual-track approach of constant dialogue between allies and adversaries and a minimum level of relevant military capability and capacity to ensure credible deterrence.

Demons and dragons

What threat does instability and insecurity across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) pose to European defence? NATO makes much of being a 360-degree alliance. In fact, there often seems little link between the threat faced by Europe’s Eastern, Northern, and Southern states. The nature of the threat is very different. Across MENA social and political instability has worsened with the emergence of state versus anti-state Salafist Jihadism. The West’s humiliation during the Syrian war has enabled Russia to exploit Europe’s loss of already limited influence, whilst the flows of desperate people towards Europe have weakened the political and strategic cohesion of the Allies, as tensions with Turkey grow. The prospect of a major regional-strategic war is ever present but transatlantic cohesion has been undermined by conflict over what to do with Iran and its nuclear programme. Russian and Turkish interference in Libya threatens not only to cut off vital oil supplies to Europe but to further exacerbate the suffering of refugees and migrants. The impact COVID-19 will have on the many fragile states across MENA is unclear but the sheer scale of potential risk, challenges, and threat to European security and defence must end the bonfire of European illusions.

Russia and Europe’s northern and eastern flanks

What threat does Russia actually pose to Europe’s defence? Russia has become more aggressive since President Putin came to power in 2000. It is modernizing its armed forces and has forged a new strategy of complex strategic coercion. Many Russians see this as necessary because of the enlargement of NATO and the EU and that a critical Russian national interest is to have strong Russian armed forces. However, Russia is also a relatively poor and politically unstable state and the cost of maintaining such an effort in the wake of COVID-19 could prove crippling, which makes Russia potentially dangerous, particularly to its immediate neighbours. There are also many technical and materiel road-bumps on the way to developing the Russian future force Putin likes to imply already exists. Consequently, it is Russian economic weakness and political instability allied to the overbearing cost of the Russian security state that poses the greatest danger to European defence and the prospect of more adventurism, such as the 2014 seizure of Crimea and Donbass from Ukraine.

Scenario 1

Scenario 1 describes an imagined situation in 2030 where dialogue fails together with a weakened European defence, and war breaks out in Europe across air, sea, land, space, and cyber and information domains. A woefully unprepared Europe is defeated and a hopelessly overstretched America is unable to prevent this. The Allies lack sufficient cohesion, coordination, and civilian and military capability, capacity, resiliency, and shared political will, and are quickly defeated by war conducted at the seams of society and at the margins of Alliance and union. NATO is defeated, European defence collapses and the world teeters on the brink of World War Three.

China

What threat does China pose to Europe’s future defence? The US has long been a ‘European’ actor; China is fast becoming one. The impact of the irresistible rise of China on Europe’s future defence will be profound post-COVID-19. Most notably, China is imposing a form of ‘imperial overstretch’ on the US, forcing it to make choices of weakness. China is also a Jekyll and Hyde—both constructive and invasive. COVID-19 has revealed the extent to which China seeks to exploit globalization/Chinaization to impose its will. The Belt and Road Initiative and the indebtedness of many European states already enables China to exert its influence through those states on the EU, NATO, and the transatlantic relationship. As such, the rise of China is the biggest single geopolitical change factor to impact Europe’s defence since 1939. It also implies a nightmare in which China and Russia join forces to weaken the Americans by creating simultaneous chaos the world over, rendering European defence incapable at a time and place of Beijing and Moscow’s choosing.

Scenario 2

Scenario 2 describes an imagined situation in 2030 where Europe is defended. Dialogue and defence are maintained by a transatlantic alliance in which Europeans have sufficiently mastered the balance between military capability and societal and security resiliency—in which Europeans are sufficiently militarily capable and politically cohesive to ease pressure on the Americans and act coherently as first responders in an emergency in and around Europe. At the core of Europe’s future defence is a European future force able to operate to effect across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge, which can both face down a high-end military threat to the European peace and support European Allies facing chaos: a European defence built on a new transatlantic relationship in which burdens are equitably shared and Europeans are responsibly autonomous.

The end of the beginning?

What are the specific lessons of Europe’s contemporary history for its future defence and how does history illuminate the challenges of such a defence? From D-Day to the creation and development of NATO, the importance of sufficient and legitimate military power has been at the heart of credible defence and deterrence. Innovation and technology allied to strategic responsibility have been key to maintaining the unity of effort and purpose vital to upholding and expanding Europe’s freedoms. Ultimately, for Europe’s defence to be credible to its citizens as well as adversaries and allies, there must be a tight bond between defence, power, and leadership allied to structures that magnify security and defence, such as NATO and the EU. There must also be a demonstrable sharing of equitable burdens without which any defence effort withers and dies over time.

Hyperwar

Europe could be facing a digital Dreadnought moment when strategy, capability, and technology combine to create a decisive breakthrough in the technology and character of warfare. The future of peace in Europe could well depend on the ability of Europeans and Americans to mount a credible defence and deterrence across the mosaic of hybrid, cyber, and hyper-warfare. Critical to such a posture will be the closing of the growing gap between Europe’s conventional and nuclear deterrents. Rather than match Russia’s burgeoning short and intermediate offensive nuclear systems, the Allies should consider a new concept of deterrence across the conventional, digital, nuclear spectrum. If not, Europeans will remain vulnerable to digital decapitation and the imposed use of disruptive technologies. Only a strategic ‘alliance’ between public policy and private technology will enable the Allies to harness the revolution in (applied) military technology to assure European defence in the face of the gathering (tech-)storm.