Britain orders two massive new aircraft carriers

Today, the British government announced a twenty percent increase in military spending over the next three years. This amounts to an extra £7.7 billion (€11.5 billion) in funding, which will take the national defence budget up from £33 billion (€49 billion) in 2007 to £36.9 billion (€55 billion) in 2011. Not only will this additional funding sustain Britain’s position as the world’s second biggest military spender, but it will also pay for two massive new aircraft carriers, the first of which was ordered today by the Ministry of Defence for the Royal Navy. Costing nearly £2 billion (€2.98 billion) apiece, these vessels will be by far the largest and most powerful ever operated by the United Kingdom—or any other part of the European Union.

Set to be named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the new aircraft carriers will greatly improve Britain’s ability to mount expeditionary warfare in foreign lands and seas. As Des Browne, the defence secretary, said:

The carriers represent a step change in our capability, enabling us to deliver increased strategic effect and influence around the world at a time and place of our choosing.

Each carrier will displace 65,000 tonnes, making them the second largest warships in the world after the Nimitz carriers of the United States Navy, which weigh 90,000 tonnes each. Nearly four times bigger than any one of the Royal Navy’s Invincible class aircraft carriers, which weigh only 22,000 tonnes each, the new British carriers will provide 13,000 square metres of deck space, equivalent to three football pitches or forty-nine tennis courts. The vessels’ hangers will be larger than twelve Olympic swimming pools, and the radar system will be comparable in size to a large mobile home. The electrical generators for either ship will produce 108 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a large town the size of Swindon. And with a high level of automation, the new warships will only need twenty percent more crew than Britain’s current aircraft carriers.

The power projection capabilities of either ship will be formidable. Both carriers are to be equipped with thirty-five to forty Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft, the latest innovation from an Anglo-American programme to build sophisticated stealth jets to replace the Sea Harrier. With a speed of Mach 1.8 and a combat radius of 1,100 kilometres, seventy percent of the world’s population centres and industrial infrastructure will be within their reach—a sobering thought for any potential opponent foolish enough to resist British power and authority. Capable of firing a plethora of advanced ordnance, the Lighting II will be able to mount tactical bombardment of land and sea targets, as well as aerial interdiction missions. A small sample of weaponry to be carried by the warplanes includes a twenty-five millimetre cannon, cruise missiles, precision bombs, anti-air rockets and, further ahead in the future, perhaps even directed energy weaponry like lasers. It is fair to say that these warplanes, costing £10 billion (€14.9 billion) for a squadron of 150, will be the best in the world, capable of subduing any rival aircraft or land- or sea-based unit.

The British aircraft carrier programme also provides great potential for Anglo-French naval collaboration, for France has decided to build a vessel to complement its current aircraft carrier, the nuclear powered Charles de Gaulle, which weighs approximately 45,000 tonnes. France has already purchased the designs for the British warships from London, with plans to modify them more in line with the requirements of the Marine Nationale. The interoperability between the two designs will allow for greater economies of scale, and considerable potential for both future European Union foreign military operations and defence industrial cooperation. Aircraft carriers are the backbone of any modern ‘blue water’ fleet, and are the prerequisite of global power status. Only the United States and the European Union hold these elite vessels in large numbers; America has twelve and Britain, France, Italy and Spain have six between them. But in comparison to the huge American vessels, Europe’s are currently dwarfed. Here, the new warships on order in France and Britain will reduce the mismatch, which will be further compounded by new larger aircraft carriers being brought into operation by the Spanish Armada and Italy’s Marina Militare. What is clear is that the European Union’s military capabilities are being gradually enhanced, and in many cases, quite dramatically.

We should welcome today’s announcements in Britain, and also the programmes underway in France, Spain and Italy. Defending ourselves from external enemies both existing and potential is the first duty of our governments—and is also now a role for the European Union. With the growth of chaos and extremism in the Middle East and Africa, an ever more wild and truculent Russia, and an expansionist China, Europeans need their armed forces to be strong, ready and capable. But more than that, armed forces are symbols of determination and strength; weak militaries on our part can lead enemies into miscalculation, inadvertently enhancing the likelihood of conflict and war. That is to say, armed forces are needed as much for the strategic operation of foreign policy than defending our homeland from attack. We must therefore be willing to support and fund our armed forces, meaning that the progressive boosting of European defence budgets is needed—particularly those of France and Britain, but also Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Bastille Day with a European twist?

On Saturday, France celebrated Bastille Day, the day when people from the ‘third-estate’—that is, the peasantry—stormed the royal prison and fortress in central Paris in 1789. Akin to Guy Fawkes night in the United Kingdom or the Fourth July in the United States, the day normally passes with the normal outpourings of tradition and nationalist sentiment.

One of the central components of Bastille Day has traditionally been a parade of France’s armed forces through the middle of the French capital, particularly with a march down the famous Champs-Élyées, the wide boulevard from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc dé Triomphe. On Saturday, like on many Bastille Days of the past, the French military was out in full force and style, a vivid reminder of the world’s third strongest military power—with a defence budget third only to the United States and United Kingdom. Only Britain’s ‘Trooping of the Colour’, which celebrates the British Monarch’s birthday, comes close to rivalling the whole affair.

But Bastille Day in 2007 was different from those of the past. The new president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, invited military contingents from every Member State in the European Union to participate in the pageant, in order to remind all Europeans of the importance of military power. Our armed forces keep us safe, lock the world under some semblance of order, and extend our values and interests throughout the globe. They are also a distinct emblem of European cultural influence and normative power. The thronging crowds during the Trooping of the Colour or Bastille Day, often tourists from foreign countries, look on in awe at the parades before them, while many nations’ armed forces have copied European militaries, particularly those in the Americas, Africa and Oceania. As such, European military displays are not just moments of glory for our soldiers, sailors and airmen—they are for all of us: Citizens, after all, sustain their armed forces, by providing the money, armaments and support to keep them vigorous, deployed and strong.

More than that, however, Bastille Day in 2007 raised again the prospect of an integrated European Union security and defence policy. The European Union’s quasi-foreign minister, Javier Solana, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the current president of the Council of the European Union, Jose Socrates, attended the parade, showing a clear political presence on the part of the European Union. And that seems to be exactly what the French president had in mind by inviting the other European contingents along. Speaking on the eve of the parade, he told a delegation of the French general staff: ‘The basis for a European defence exists. We must make it grow...I want Europe to be capable of ensuring its security autonomously.’ The European Union, once a weak ‘civilian power’—unable, even, to prevent outbreaks of chaos and murder in the Balkans—is now finally getting itself some combat boots.

The French president is correct. Without integrated armed forces sustained by the economies of scale the European Union can produce, European militaries will fade away, even those of Britain and France. We are confronted by raised defence spending in Russia, China, India and Japan. We are threatened by chaos and disorder throughout the European Neighbourhood. And we are challenged by what might be called a loss of the ‘will to power’ by many people throughout Europe, not least in the political elite. A people unwilling to defend themselves, or who come to believe that the application of armed force is ‘old fashioned’, ‘immoral’ or ‘unethical’ will soon be swept away by those that do. And it is likely that those who do will not hold the same moral and ethical principles now held by many throughout our continental homeland. This is why in an increasingly insecure and dangerous age, it is imperative that we maintain the ability to defend our homeland and project outwards an image to the rest of the world of indefatigable determination and military strength. As Robert Cooper, the Director-General of Politico-Military Affairs at the Council of the European Union, says: ‘Soft power is the velvet glove, but behind it there is always the iron fist.’

European Union battlegroups to Sudan?

The killing in Darfur has gone on for too long. There, more than two-hundred thousand ethnic Africans have been slaughtered by brutal Islamist Janjaweed bandits, who have driven a further two million people from their homes. Ghastly tales of torture and mutilation have steadily filtered out of Africa’s latest genocide; villages have been burned, women and children have been raped, and innocents have been hacked to death. The Islamist regime in Khartoum, which is reported to have supported the Janjaweed militia with helicopter gunships and Chinese-supplied bombers, is drenched in African blood. And behind this noxious regime sits China—with its vested oil interests in Sudan’s southern provinces, from where approximately eighty percent of the country’s African oil comes.

Today, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the European Union high representative, Javier Solana, met to discuss the savagery in Darfur. For too long we in the European Union have turned a blind eye to the suffering of the Darfur people, offering only limited help in the form of €400 million in support of the African Union’s police mission. We are still waiting for sanctions to be placed on the members of the regime whom are implicated in the carnage. In the meantime, the mass killing has spread to Chad, as terrified refugees have fled for their lives. Janjaweed bandits have even followed them over the borders, harassing them all the way. So Mr. Sarkozy and Dr. Solana today threatened to send European Union armed forces to the Chad-Sudan boundary, so as to protect the refugees and re-assert order and some semblance of civilisation again.

We need more than threats though: A European Union battlegroup needs to be sent to Chad at once. Killing and chaos in Darfur is spreading and is a direct affront to our security, interests and values. Sanctions must be applied to the Islamist regime in Khartoum, and we need to assert authority over a geopolitical region within the wider European Neighbourhood. United Nations peacekeepers will soon be deployed in Darfur alongside the African Union forces. But should these measures fail, we should send further European armed forces not to Chad but directly to Darfur, with or without Khartoum’s consent. The European Union could then demonstrate three things: First, that we will not tolerate genocide in any country in the wider European Neighbourhood, thereby laying down a marker for potential ‘ethnic cleansers’ in the future; second, that we are willing and able to deploy military force in service of our interests and values; and finally, that we consider our interests to take precedence over those of countries like China.

The European Union in part emerged as a peace project to end the possibility of genocide and war on our continent. Now it must carry forward its mission abroad. The time for talking is over. Now we must see some firm and robust European action.

The birth of a new Rome?

One of the founders of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, once announced: ‘I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self government.’ Indeed, far from being the anti-imperialists the Americans often proclaim themselves to be, the entire history of the United States has been one of almost constant and relentless expansion. Andrew Bacevich, an academic at the University of Boston, has described this expansion as Washington’s ‘Strategy of Openness’—designed to extend American law, American commerce and American order firstly over the North American continent, and secondly, over the whole world. Whether it is through ‘Manifest Destiny’, ‘Arsenal of Democracy’, ‘New World Order’ or ‘Balance of Power that Favours Freedom’, American foreign policy has held considerable normative power, and Americans have often been willing to impose their values of pluralism and democracy through the application of armed force. Likewise, the two great democracies of the Old World—France and Britain—have also aggressively spread themselves across the globe, colonising and disseminating their shared civilisation as they went.

But what about the European Union? Is it, or should it be, a missionary power? Well, today, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, provided his assessment of Europe’s place in the world in a session at the European Parliament. On being asked by a parliamentarian: ‘What will the European Union be once this new treaty [the Reform Treaty] is concluded?’, the president responded:

That is a good subject…We are not the United States of Europe in the way as we have the United States of America. We are not at the same time…an international organisation like NATO, OSCE or Council of Europe, or whatever. We are in fact a very special construction, unique, unique in the history of mankind. We never had that kind of organisation—or if you want institutional creation—where we have free countries that are united and that they’ve decided to work together with some degree of cooperation, or even integration. That is what we are. And in fact I don’t know why we should be all the time with existential doubts about it.

We need the European dimension...And the more globalisation goes—and it’s quite obvious that it is there to stay—we will need that dimension more. But at the same time we are not doing it in a way that we are creating a superstate that is diluting the national identities, not at all...

Sometimes I like to compare the European Union as a creation to the organisation of empire...We have the dimension of empire. But there is a great difference: The empires were usually made through force, with a centre that was imposing a diktat, a will, on the others, and now we have what some authors call “the first non-imperial empire”. We have by dimension twenty-seven countries that freely decided to work together to pool their sovereignty, if you want to use that concept of sovereignty and work together to add value. I believe it’s a great construction and we should be proud of it.

So it is official: The European Union is now an ‘empire’. Internally, Mr. Barroso is correct: Europe does have the characteristics of an empire, but one that is universal. Its Member States, from the biggest to the smallest, are all treated equally. There is no ‘emperor’ or ‘imperial court’ imposing rules and regulations on the ‘provinces’, as with past empires. And nor are there any grand fleets or great armies ready to quell regional insurrections. But there is a vast and sprawling landmass of numerous cultures and differences, all bound together with European values of liberal or social democracy, rule of law, tolerance, freedom and solidarity. There is some form of central administration in Brussels where the Member States agree common strategies, policies and frameworks for future action. And there are emerging ‘battlegroups’ to protect the European Union by intervening in foreign lands in order to manage, arrest or put down challenges and hostile threats to European security.

Where, then, does this lead us? First, the European Union is rapidly becoming a major power on the world stage. The articles of the ‘Reform Treaty’ will start to enable Mr. Barroso’s ‘empire’ to project the power of its five-hundred million people and a third of the world’s wealth far beyond our common external border. Second, such a level of aggregated strength should make foreign governments not only afford the European Union the respect we deserve, but also—when necessary—fear our wrath. Third, while we may be as unique and exceptional as the United States, the European Union must also operate in a dangerous and complex world. Much of the world is like a hostile jungle, and we must be ready and willing to use power to confront those who wish to usurp our security, interests and values. Fourth, we have to ensure that the balance between Brussels and the Member States does not become itself ‘imperial’, for this will only alienate Europe’s people. Finally, the European homeland must remain a beacon of tolerance, liberty, solidarity and hope. No one will respect our authority if we become more authoritarian domestically—civil liberties, for example, must be upheld and vigorously protected, even and when we are under attack. The remaining scourges of poverty and injustice must be driven away. And the environment is in need of greater protection.

If we can pull it off, the ‘Reform Treaty’, like the Constitution of the United States, may pave the way for a European version of Jefferson’s ‘extensive empire’ and ‘self-government’. This will constitute an empire of hope in a troubled age. We may even be able to build a new Rome—a continental union projecting light onto the world.

• Is the European Union an ‘empire’? Add your vote to our poll!

• A video of Mr. Barroso’s ‘Europe as “empire”’ speech can be found on YouTube.

We need a European Security Council

A Security Council is now needed for the European Union, comprised of civil servants, military officers, development experts, policy advisors and academic strategists from both the level of the twenty-seven Member States and the European Union. The Security Council should be under the double custodianship of the new permanent president of the European Council and the new high representative, perhaps absorbing or working alongside Directorate-General E, which is in charge of business related to foreign and security policy.

Officials from other countries under the European Union’s strategic, political and economic sway might also be invited to participate, if only in an advisory role. Such representatives could come from Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, or from the Western Balkans, Turkey and Israel. It might also be propitious to invite an official from the United States as a liaison officer, and for a European to hold a similar position within the National Security Council of the United States.

The European Security Council’s role could be to provide a unified institutionalised setting at the European level for the relentless assessment of security threats and strategic challenges. It could give advice to the president of the Council of the European Union, the high representative and the Member States. It could be a centralised agency for Member States to exchange and assess global and domestic intelligence. The Security Council would provide a platform for input from the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the European Defence Agency, as well as from foreign offices and defence ministries in the respective Member States. Finally, it could bestow a podium for the formal exchange of ideas about foreign, security and defence policies between academics and think tank personnel with European practitioners and officials.

The considerable inflow of information and expertise, allied to its political setting within the Council of the European Union, would grant the European Security Council the capacity and proficiency to update the European Security Strategy, either annually or indeed, every two years. This would provide a regular, authoritative and institutionalised process for composing and revising European Union security and defence doctrine.

The Security Council could also be called to meet after a disaster or attack, in order to provide advice to the Council of Foreign Ministers and the High Representative. Further, the European Security Council would afford European citizens a clearer understanding of the foreign, security and defence policies of their homeland.

A European Security Council is something worthy of greater consideration, especially in a world of shifting threats, and where a plethora of new actors and rising powers are emerging. Should one be created, it should probably wait until after the Reform Treaty is implemented across the continent.

What is clear, however, is that a distinct institution, sending out a signal of European determination to be a major global power, would allow the EU to engage with other like-minded countries in countering shared security challenges.

• An extended version of this article was published by the International Relations and Security Network on 3rd July 2007.

Mr. Socrates needs to learn the Melian Dialogue again

We have all seen Russia’s recent wild and unruly behaviour under the iron leadership of Vladimir Putin. A quick rundown of the Kremlin’s activities includes: (1) Meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics, and cutting off the country’s energy supply; (2) threatening to ‘punish’ Estonia for removing a Soviet war memorial; (3) brutality in Chechnya; (4) crackdowns on democracy within Russia; (5) murky poisonings in London; and (6) threatening to re-target European cities with nuclear missiles from the Russian army’s rocket regiments. With actions like these, the new Russia can hardly be described as a friend of the European Union.

Indeed, Poland, the Baltic States and the Czech Republic have grown more and more worried about Russia’s recent behaviour. Having lived under Moscow’s lash—either as part of Imperial Russia, or the old Soviet empire—it is not difficult to understand their approach to Moscow. They have learned that when the Kremlin tries to bully, the only strategy is to look Russia straight in the eye until it blinks.

Relations between the European Union and Russia have grown increasingly strained in recent months, partly due to Russia’s embargo on Polish meat, but also because of European concerns over the supply of energy, and Moscow’s interference in countries in the European Neighbourhood.

Portugal, the incoming president of the Council of the European Union, is keen to increase our—that is, Europe’s—weight in the world. Such a strategy is much needed, and formed the basis of much of the new ‘Reform Treaty’. However, we cannot project our power with an approach as limp as Portugal’s proposed strategy. Not only has Portugal failed to rule out the extension of an invitation to the dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe (currently under a general European travel ban for his brutality), but it has also taken a very soft line towards Russia.

As Mark Mardell reports in his BBC Euroblog, on being asked by a journalist from Eastern Europe how he saw European relations with Russia, Mr. Socrates, the Portuguese prime minister, responded with the statement: The disagreement with Russia ‘started with rotten meat and now we are talking about weapons. Weapons!’ He then went on to say just how much Russia had supposedly contributed to European civilisation with works of literature, but was interrupted by an angry Lithuanian radio presenter. He told the Portuguese prime minister how he was forced to read many works of Russian literature by the education system of Soviet Russia. The Lithuanian said that when Russia pushes Europe, we should push back, but even harder.

Mr. Socrates then got ‘extremely animated and rather steely’, stating: ‘I don't agree. I don’t accept that. International relations don’t work like that. Push the Russians! It’s irresponsible! I’m not a guy who will contribute to increasing tensions, I want to lower the tensions.’ Such statements are a display of profound weakness; the Kremlin must be rubbing its hands with glee. Neville Chamberlain tried to ‘reduce tensions’ with the Nazis in the late 1930s by trying to appease Adolf Hitler. This merely made him think the Western democracies were unwilling to fight to defend their interests. This kind of foreign policy just won’t work, and it will most certainly not increase the European Union’s political power and authority in the wider world.

We are engaged in an increasingly zero-sum game with Russia, and the European Union must be willing to stand up and counter the Kremlin’s geopolitical designs. If this means raised tensions, then that is a price we must be willing to pay. Besides, Russia is dwarfed by the new Europe. The European Union’s population is five times bigger than Russia’s, and its economy is fifteen times larger. It is time for Russia to realise that far from being a ‘strategic partner’ of the European Union, it is little more than another country within the European Neighbourhood.

As for Mr. Socrates, he needs to re-read the Melian Dialogue. As the Athenians told the Melians during the Peloponnesian Wars:

Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that anybody else with the same power ours would be acting in precisely the same way.

There is always a place for reconciliation and idealism in foreign policy, but when other countries favour aggression, it can only be met with the same. Portugal was Europe’s first global power, and has a long history of engaging in power politics. The Portuguese prime minister must realise this fact, and inject a healthy dose of power and realism into the foreign, security and defence policies of the European Union.

The poverty of anti-Americanism

So here we have it: Respondees in the latest attitudes poll undertaken in the five major Member States of the European Union—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—see the United States as the world’s biggest security risk. Thirty-two percent of Europeans see Washington’s foreign, security and defence policies as destabilising, while only nineteen percent see China as a bigger threat. Seventeen percent see Iran as the worst challenge, whereas eleven percent see Iraq as most problematic, and another seven percent highlight Kim Jong Il’s hermit state of North Korea as most dangerous. Even more suprisingly, a mere five percent of Europeans see Vladimir Putin’s increasingly wild and truculent Russia as the primary threat to world peace, even though the Kremlin has threatened to re-target European cities with nuclear missiles.

These results are alarming, and show a profound level of moral and conceptual exhaustion on the part of many Europeans. Imagining that America is a bigger danger than Russia, Iran or China is a self-indulgence of the worst kind. The United States actively works with Europe to constitute a better world. As the European Security Strategy says: ‘Acting together, the European Union and United States can be a formidable force for good in the world. If we build up capabilities and increase coherence, we will be a more credible actor and a more influential partner.’ Quite. We—Europeans—need to understand that threats to our security emphatically do not originate from Washington. It is one thing to dislike the right-wing administration of George W. Bush, but quite another to imply that such an administration is worse, less legitimate or more dangerous than sinister and oppressive autocracies in places like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Each of those countries have threatened or have challenged European values, interests, power and authority in recent years. Washington has threatened to do no such thing, and actively encourages European attempts at building more effective foreign policies, security policies, military capabilities and institutions at the level of the European Union. America is our biggest commercial partner, shares most of our common values, and is entwined with our history. In short, America is a product of European expansion, energy and dynamism—and we should be proud of both.

Two other lines of argument can be put together here: Firstly, it is quite possible that many Europeans, particularly on the political Left, have built up an image of America that is so utopian that they become hyper-critical when the United States fails to meet their exemplary expectations. No country is perfect, especially when that country is the world’s leading power, responsible for the security of large geopolitical spaces and regions. There is nothing wrong with viewing a foreign country in a highly positive light—above all one as powerful and successful as the United States—but when this turns into an obsession, it begins to reveal a certain moral and intellectual fatigue on the part of those who have constructed utopian imaginaries in the first place. Here, we in Europe (and specifically in Britain) must gain far more confidence in ourselves, rather than looking elsewhere for socio-political and cultural inspiration.

Secondly, while the United States has often been somewhat reckless when forced to intervene diplomatically, politically and militarily in non-Western societies—for example, the failure to create adequate post-invasion planning in Iraq—it is often reacting to a threat, rather than deliberately provoking one. American interventions in Afghanistan came as a reaction to Islamist terror attacks on New York and Washington; there was no alternative to terminating al-Qaeda terror bases or the heinous and illegal Taleban regime supporting them. We cannot negotiate with Islamists whose strategy is to overturn the normative foundations of Western civilisation with their dark and twisted worldviews, predicated as they are on a perverted and politicised Islam. Such people can only be killed and repressed, often with the application of massive armed force. Likewise, American action against Saddam Hussein’s cruel regime in Iraq was an attempt to ‘drain the swamps’ of oppression, stagnation and hopelessness in Mesopotamia, as well as reducing the threat from weapons of mass destruction. We need to understand that the world beyond our continent is not always the same as Europe. In many places, it is brutal, chaotic and jungle-like. We must be prepared to inject a dose of realism in our foreign and security policies and be ready and willing to apply power in the service not only of our own security, but also for the betterment of humanity.

Criticising our greatest friend on the other side of the North Atlantic is not a viable strategy, but is divisive and dangerous. Anti-Americanism is an impoverished worldview, and has no place in a confident Europe during the twenty-first century.