Military

Governments across Europe are about to slash their defense budgets -- but they need to ensure they cut correctly.

By Tomas Valasek

The economic crisis has wracked government budgets across Europe, as revenues have fallen and spending on stimulus and bailouts has soared. Already, there are signs that defense spending across the continent will suffer. Finance ministers will be looking for ways to reduce deficit and debt, and military budgets are a tempting target.

Such budget cuts will have some salutary effects: Defense establishments, with their resistance to civilian oversight and emphasis on continuity, tend to get bloated in times of relative plenty. It often takes a crisis to force meaningful reforms. But cuts also threaten to sap the effectiveness of European fighting forces and leave parts of the world exposed to insecurity.

The easiest portion of the budget to cut is operations. But it's also the most important portion. Withdrawing soldiers from faraway places plays well at home and requires no layoffs, but it means fewer troops in some of the world's most imperiled regions. Poland announced in April that it would withdraw from all U.N. peacekeeping operations. While the Poles may be no less safe, fragile countries such as Chad and Lebanon still need foreign troops to keep the peace.

Rather than withdrawing from conflict zones, European countries and agencies should stop sending overlapping missions to the same trouble spots. Both the EU and NATO sent missions to Sudan in 2007, and three different forces are currently fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. Better to roll those operations into one; the current duplication wastes taxpayer money.

As defense ministries slash their budgets, their instinct will be to cut multinational weapons programs and make any purchases domestically so as to protect jobs at home. But that carries risks. Many truly necessary systems, such as transport airplanes, are so expensive and complex that they are best funded and shared between countries.

Granted, many past collaborative programs have been disastrous, such as the seven-nation plan to develop the A400M military transport aircraft. A modern-day Spruce Goose, the plane cannot fly because its engines, made by a four-nation European consortium, lack the proper certification; the plane is also said to be too heavy.

But the trouble with the A400M lies not in the collaborative nature of the program. The plane is a failure because its designers have been more concerned with securing production jobs than with obtaining a good product. In return for investing in the aircraft, they have demanded that a commensurate number of production jobs go to their country. As a result, bits of the plane are being built all over Europe -- and not necessarily in the countries most qualified to do the job.

European governments must be smarter. They should accept that it makes more sense to order the needed parts from the plant with the most relevant technical expertise. The governments also need to be more ready to buy off-the-shelf components, rather than try to generate jobs by manufacturing parts from scratch.

The impact of the budget cuts -- particularly the reductions in personnel and equipment -- also threaten to turn some European militaries into showcase forces, incapable of deploying abroad and thus irrelevant to most EU and NATO operations. It makes little sense, for example, for all but very few allies to keep tanks unless they are upgraded to be able to operate in faraway places such as Afghanistan and unless the governments have access to aircraft big enough to transport the tanks. As an excellent new study commissioned by the Nordic governments concluded, "small and medium-sized countries lose their ability to maintain a credible defence" when certain units shrink too much.

There are two ways to avoid such outcomes while cutting budgets. Some of the key equipment that makes modern warfare possible -- such as planes providing air-to-ground surveillance or military transport -- needs to be jointly owned. NATO operates a common fleet of aircraft that coordinates air traffic, and the alliance plans to buy transport airplanes for its members to use. This arrangement allows militaries of smaller and poorer European states, like the new allies in Eastern Europe, to take part in complex operations in distant places.

But that alone will not generate enough savings. Indeed, the time has come for European governments to consider abandoning parts of their national forces and infrastructure and to form joint units with their neighbors. Modern militaries do virtually all their fighting abroad and in coalition with others. If they lack the money to equip and deploy their soldiers overseas, they need to consider radical cost-saving measures. More governments should do as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg did -- they merged parts of their air forces -- or emulate the Nordic countries, which are considering joining their amphibious units.

Most European governments have, in the past, found it too difficult to part with the cherished symbol of national sovereignty that is a proper army or an air force. But the practical value of such military services in Europe is often negligible. As the recession deepens, defense ministers across Europe should see the crisis as an opportunity to combine certain units and programs across countries. This will save money, which could be put to use properly training and equipping forces for EU and NATO operations.

Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defense at the Centre for European Reform in London. A version of this article first appeared as a post on the Centre for European Reform blog.

Photo: Flickr user Jerome K

As violence escalates again in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the world must recognize the need for sustained attention and intervention.

By Colin Thomas-Jensen and Rebecca Feeley

This winter, the militaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda -- much to our surprise, given their historical antipathy -- joined forces in an offensive against a rebel group based in eastern Congo: the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or the FDLR. Led by the architects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the FDLR has terrorized Congolese civilians for nearly 15 years. The group's presence has also served as a pretext for Rwandan intervention that has frequently worsened an already grim humanitarian situation in eastern Congo.

We and many other observers predicted at the time that the joint offensive would lead FDLR rebels to conduct reprisal attacks upon civilians. So, we weren't surprised to hear that atrocities against civilians have escalated dramatically in recent weeks. In one instance, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo, MONUC, reported that the FDLR had massacred more than 60 people in the village of Busurungi. Local officials tell us that the FDLR killed nearly twice that number, after clashes with the notoriously inept Congolese Army.

While human rights groups catalog atrocities and advocacy groups sound the alarm, U.N. officials tell us that the situation in eastern Congo is "tense but under control." The gap between the rosy assessments we frequently hear from MONUC and the grim accounts we hear from Congolese affected by the conflict is outrageous and infuriating. And as the Congolese government launches a new offensive this summer, we think the worst is ahead.

Doing research and advocacy to help end the crisis in the Great Lakes region around Congo can feel like screaming into an empty room. The region has been so violent for so long that the United Nations, donor governments, and the press have become numb. But there is a cure to even the worst cases of "conflict fatigue": an understanding that solutions are within reach if we just have the will to pursue them -- solutions that can prevent thousands of senseless deaths.

With greater operational capacity, firmer direction from the U.N. Security Council, and decisive leadership on the ground, MONUC could provide greater protection for civilians.

With high-level multilateral diplomacy led by the United States and the European Union, the Congolese and Rwandan governments could go beyond their current uneasy military cooperation and achieve lasting political solutions to the regional conflict. With bigger incentives for disarming, an emphasis on civilian protection, and tactical support from Western militaries, a regional counterinsurgency strategy could succeed against the FDLR.

With greater coordination among donors, conditioned support to the Congolese government could begin to end impunity, professionalize the Army, and improve governance. And with corporate due diligence in the mining sector, the Congolese could begin to benefit from their country's immense natural resources while drying up the trade in conflict minerals that remain a lifeblood for predatory militias.

That's a laundry list of "coulds," but in a place like Congo -- a desperately poor country where nearly 6 million people have died from 13 years of chronic conflict -- the world has a lot of work to do. Anyone advocating for an end to the conflict must be content with slow and steady progress and not expect a quick fix. In fact, this is true of most conflicts. Conflict fatigue only takes root when we forget that.

Colin Thomas-Jensen is policy advisor to Enough, the Center for American Progress's project to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Rebecca Feeley is Enough's former field researcher based in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.  

UN Photo/Marie Frechon

U.S. drones have executed dozens of alleged al Qaeda members along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But is silence on this counterterrorism tactic the best strategy?

By Stuart Gottlieb 

If you were under the impression that U.S. President Barack Obama's promise to craft new counterterrorism policies "in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals" could be accomplished without exposing dangerous contradictions, consider this:

Since Obama's swearing-in, the United States has executed dozens of suspected al Qaeda leaders and operatives without court hearings, the presentation of evidence, or the involvement of defense lawyers. These executions, typically carried out by missile strikes from unmanned CIA drone aircraft, have taken place in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scores of civilians, including many women and children, have reportedly been killed or maimed in the strikes.

Calls for granting habeas corpus rights to Guantánamo detainees and outrage over the Bush administration's harsh treatment of enemy combatants have dominated the headlines. Yet this side of the U.S. war against al Qaeda and its affiliates is little discussed and even less deliberated.

But with tensions rising in Pakistan and around the Muslim world over the brutality and high civilian death toll from these targeted assassination attacks, the United States' day of reckoning regarding this policy may soon arrive as well. As we learned from the Bush administration, there are tremendous costs to aggressive counterterrorism policies, especially when their purposes are not clearly understood. Unless Obama candidly explains how targeted killings fit within his overall counterterrorism approach, he faces similar difficulties and the possible exhaustion of goodwill toward his new administration.

Indeed, although targeted killings can be justified on national security grounds -- to weaken the capability of Taliban and al Qaeda forces to carry out attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere -- they run counter to Obama's espoused counterterrorism ethos. Assuring the world in one breath that "America does not torture" suspected terrorists, while in another ordering Hellfire missile strikes that can burn victims alive, is unsustainable from both policy and diplomatic perspectives. How does the U.S. president explain why one suspected terrorist leader held in Guantánamo gets a team of lawyers fighting for his day in court, while another is killed in his car along with his family?

To justify these targeted killings, the Obama team needs to acknowledge two things. First, that the threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates remains so dire that the United States needs to engage in practices that in some contexts would be war crimes. Second, that some of the former Bush administration's most aggressive and controversial policies remain necessary in the conflict against al Qaeda, including targeted killings (admittedly a preferable alternative to a ground operation, which could leave scores of U.S. troops and Pakistani and Afghan civilians dead as well).

Obama has taken great care to level with the American people about the current financial crisis. He has made clear that there are no silver-bullet solutions and that returning to sustained economic growth will require difficult trade-offs.

This same candor is needed in the fight against global terrorism, whether on the frontiers of Pakistan or elsewhere. Although this might not mesh well with Obama's overall message on the terrorist threat and his administration's response, in the case of targeted killings, actions are already speaking more loudly than words.

Stuart Gottlieb, a former Senate foreign policy adviser, directs the Policy Studies Program at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images 

The battle of ideas behind China's naval agression.

By James Kraska and Brian Wilson

China’s bold and dangerous maneuvers against the USNS Impeccable, a U.S. Navy military survey vessel that was operating about 120 km from the island of Hainan in the East China Sea, is the latest salvo in China's ongoing campaign to upset traditional notions of freedom of navigation in order to deny access to its coastal waters, or littorals, by foreign warships and aircraft. The event marks the first test of the Obama administration regarding China’s efforts to reshape the international law of the sea.

Following the Cold War, the littorals have emerged as the primary maritime battleground for peace and stability. International law, as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, recognizes that all states enjoy the right to conduct military activities throughout the near shore environment -- generally beyond the 12 nautical mile (nm) territorial sea and extending out to 200 nm (one nm = 1.85 km). This coastal zone is the primary operating area for “Seabasing,” amphibious, expeditionary, and littoral operations, and generally encompasses the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of a coastal state, a special resource zone created by the Law of the Sea. Although coastal states have exclusive rights to exploit natural resources in the zone, they cannot claim a  security interest in the area, agreed Shen Dingli, director of the Center of American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University. Regardless, China wants to exert control that extends beyond its economic interests, creating the potential for conflict with the U.S. Navy. Dingli stated, “China considers that international law only allows innocent passage for military vessels [in the EEZ], not activities that could be considered to have a military purpose.”

Chinese sailors getting drenched by fire hoses while harassing a U.S. Navy ship might make a great headline,, but the real fight is going on much more quietly on land. China has recently begun to engage in a resourceful legal warfare, or “lawfare” strategy to deny access to its coastal seas to warships and aircraft of the United States, Japan, and other countries in the region. This strategy, which was set forth in a recent Chinese defense white paper, proposed the“gradual extension of strategic depth for offshore defensive operations,” and for “enhancing [Chinese] capabilities in integrated maritime operations and nuclear counterattacks.”

A 2007 Department of Defense report to Congress on China’s military power explains that Chinese strategists have taken an increasing interest in international law as an instrument to deter adversaries prior to combat. Through an orchestrated program of scholarly articles and symposia, China is working to shape international opinion in favor of a distorted interpretation of the Law of the Sea by shifting scholarly views and national perspectives away from long-accepted norms of freedom of navigation and toward interpretations of increased coastal state sovereign authority. By doing so, China is misreading the law of the sea.

The United States should ensure navigational freedom and littoral access as a cornerstone of world maritime security. The U.S. Navy has spent hundreds of millions on building a new generation of high-tech Littoral Combat Ships and implementing “Seabasing” amphibious warfare tactics to effectively operate in the coastal zone—capability that is undermined by restrictive interpretations of the law. But all this planning will be for naught if China continues to advance on the battlefield of international law. The United States would be on a far stronger footing at diplomatic summits and military-to-military meetings if it joined the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. To ensure the right of U.S. vessels to enjoy unhindered global mobility, the United States should continue resisting excessive coastal state maritime claims through diplomacy and operational challenges.

James Kraska  is a professor of International Law at the Naval War College, a guest investigator at the Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and previously served as the oceans policy adviser for the Director of Strategic Plans & Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brian Wilson leads a Navy region legal office in Washington, D.C. is an MIT Seminar XXI fellow, and previously served as oceans policy adviser for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The views are those of the authors and do not represent the official policy or position of the Department of Defense.