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THE TREATY OF NICE, NATO AND A EUROPEAN
ARMY:
IMPLICATIONS FOR IRELAND
Andy Storey (Afri), April 2001
New Military Structures
The EU has established structures for defence and security
co-ordination. Javier Solana has been appointed to the position
of EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) High Representative.
A representative of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs
sits on an EU Political and Security Committee, responsible
for day-to-day co-ordination of the CFSP; this committee is
given advice by an EU Military Committee, on which an Irish
army officer sits as the representative of the Irish chief
of staff. Both these committees began meetings in March 2000.
The Military Committee works with a permanent EU military
advisory staff attached to Solana's office. These structures
were foreshadowed in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, despite
assurances to the contrary by Irish politicians at that time.
Article J.7 of the Amsterdam Treaty stated:
"The common foreign and security policy shall
include all questions relating to the security of the Union,
including the progressive framing of a common defence policy...
Questions referred to in this Article shall include humanitarian
and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks, and tasks of combat
forces in crisis management, including peacemaking" [the
so-called Petersberg Tasks].
EU leaders have also agreed that by 2003, they will be in
a position to deploy a 60,000 strong EU military force drawn
from member state armies, capable of being deployed within
60 days and maintained in the field for at least a year. It
would have an operational radius of 4,000 kilometres from
EU borders. In November 2000, the EU member states pledged
66,000 troops to that force - the so-called European Rapid
Reaction Force (ERRF) - with Ireland pledging 850 troops,
and with other non-EU states (such as Turkey) weighing in
with further troop pledges also. The ERRF will not be a standing
army with a HQ and barracks - forces will be brought together
under an EU flag for specific operations and returned to their
'homes' afterwards. And it also will be confined to participating
in the so-called Petersberg Tasks. EU Commission President
Romano Prodi has stated that he sees this as, in effect, a
European army. The Presidency report on security and defence
issues from the EU Nice Summit of December 2000 (discussed
further below) states that the ERRF "does not involve the
establishment of a European army", but this position is supportable
only so long as an army is defined in the 'standing' sense.
Ireland will have to train troops for participation in this
force and will have to alter its equipment and communication
systems to ensure 'inter-operability' with other countries'
forces, thus building on the involvement already set out under
NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) initiative to which Ireland
subscribed in 1999.
The new committees and the ERRF are claimed to be intended
to deal only with the Petersberg Tasks. A distinction may
be drawn here between the Petersberg Tasks and a mutual defence
pact - the latter would oblige Ireland to come to the military
defence of any other EU state, and would therefore constitute
a break from traditional conceptions of Irish neutrality.
Instead, the activities currently envisaged leave Ireland
(and all other states) with the ability to, in theory, opt
out of any proposed action on a case-by-case basis. These
would, strictly speaking, be operations of choice rather than
obligation. In practice, the level of choice is likely to
be limited. Defence analyst Jonathan Eyal has pointed out
that any ERRF operation will have to be planned well in advance
and troops committed accordingly. Once that is done, it will
be very difficult for an individual state (such as Ireland)
to backtrack on its commitment, whatever reservations might
subsequently emerge, assuming that Irish representatives would
be willing to entertain and express such reservations. (The
same is true of the military spending now being undertaken
to prepare for the ERRF: Eyal notes that "Once governments
are tied to joint projects, it will be almost impossible for
any single country to withdraw from such procurement decisions").
Nonetheless, while the degree of national choice concerning
participation in ERRF operations will be curtailed in practice,
a narrow definition of Irish neutrality (seen as equivalent
to non-participation in a mutual defence pact) is not, perhaps,
being altered. But this is, in the first place, a narrow definition
of neutrality: in fact, it is so narrow that Javier Solana
has argued that, because simple non-participation in a collective
defence pact cannot be seen as equivalent to neutrality, therefore
neutrality is a "concept of the past". In any event, even
if we maintain that Irish neutrality is intact (questionable
in itself) that in itself tells us little or nothing about
the probable content and significance of the developments
now occurring. The Petersberg Tasks may sound soothing, but
they actually constitute a very wide agenda for action. The
definition of a humanitarian task, or of peacemaking, is by
no means clear-cut: Michael MccGwire has correctly described
as "grotesque" the description of an eleven week bombing campaign
vis-ŕ-vis Kosovo (discussed further below) as a humanitarian
intervention, but that is exactly how it was described. This
illustrates the elasticity of the concepts under consideration,
a point acknowledged by former Fine Gael leader John Bruton
in the Dáil in October 1999: "Peacemaking means imposing,
by the use of force, peaceful conditions under the terms laid
down by the peacemaker. It is very difficult to distinguish
that from war making…" As has been pointed out by others,
'peacemaking' could cover operations up to and including the
Gulf War.
Any domestic legislation coming before the Oireachtas starts
with a detailed definitional section to make absolutely clear
what it is that the legislation refers to. The Petersberg
Tasks allow for no such precise definition, and therefore
people are being asked to sign up to an essentially open agenda.
Perhaps in recognition of this issue, we are assured by government
representatives that Irish troops will only be deployed when
the ERRF operates under a UN mandate. But a UN mandate has
itself become an elastic concept. The sanctions imposed on
the Iraqi people, and which cause the death of 5,000 children
a month, are mandated by the UN, manipulated as it is by the
United States in particular. The contested nature of UN mandates
has also been recognised by the Institute of European Affairs:
"In the former Yugoslavia and in Kuwait, some considerable
controversy arose over the meaning of UN Security Council
resolutions and how certain UN Members were interpreting the
resulting 'mandate'". To say that Irish troops will only participate
in ERRF operations under a UN mandate does not, therefore,
substantially pin down what exactly it is that they might
be doing, nor does it guarantee that such operations will
contribute to international peace and security.
What does the Treaty arising out of the December 2000 EU Summit
at Nice contribute to these developments? Like all such recent
Treaties, the Nice Treaty constitutes a set of amendments
to the already existing Treaty on European Union. Article
1.5 of the Treaty of Nice states that the Political and Security
Committee referred to earlier is charged, under an amendment
to Article 25 of the Treaty on European Union, with advising
on, and monitoring the implementation of, agreed defence and
security policies: this Committee "shall exercise, under the
responsibility of the Council, political control and strategic
direction of crisis management operations". The Irish government's
White Paper on the Treaty of Nice emphasises the originality
of this development: "A new standing Political and
Security Committee will be established."
Article 1.2 of the Treaty of Nice (amending Article 17 of
the Treaty on European Union) deletes most references to the
Western European Union (the WEU, the grouping of ten EU member
states that are also members of NATO, except for Denmark).
The WEU was previously charged with EU defence policy, and
deletion of references to it reflects the fact that the EU
itself is now taking on the military aspects of co-ordination
through the structures described above, especially the Political
and Security Committee. The Treaty therefore formally confirms,
for the first time, the assumption of EU responsibility for
military entanglement between the member states, and for prospective
military action to be undertaken by them. The Taoiseach's
claim that "the security and defence aspects of the treaty
are minor technical details" is not sustainable.
A Treaty Declaration on the European Security and Defence
Policy states that the objective is for "that policy to become
operational quickly" (during 2001, in fact). This progress
is to be based on existing (i.e., pre-Nice) Treaty provisions
- thus, according to the Declaration, "the entry into force
of the Treaty of Nice does not constitute a precondition".
However, the Declaration also states that the policy to become
operational is "In accordance with the texts approved by the
European Council in Nice… (Presidency report and Annexes)".
That Presidency report on European Security and Defence Policy
and its annexes - on ERRF military capabilities, on the roles
of the different committees described above, on relationships
with NATO, and other matters - constitute a significant codification
of current trends and initiatives. They are "the nitty-gritty
of the implementation of the defence initiative" and constitute
a crucial outcome of the Nice Summit even if they are not
contained within the text of the Treaty itself.
And, most importantly, as described above, the Treaty itself,
though its deletion of references to the Western European
Union and its establishment of the Political and Security
Committee, for the first time formally establishes EU competence
in the military sphere. Therefore, the vote on the Treaty
represents an opportunity for people to pass judgement on
EU defence and security developments - a vote against the
Treaty can reasonably be argued to be a vote against the trends
codified within the Declaration, the Presidency report and
its annexes, and the formal assumption within the text of
the Treaty itself of EU competence in the area of defence.
But before we go further on this issue, we must explain why
Afri considers the defence and security developments to be
deeply problematic.
Introduction
New Military Structures
The Link with NATO
Could Ireland Help Change
NATO and the ERRF?
Conclusion
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