Criticising the Macron doctrine Pt.II

There was no plan to follow up the first blog considering Macron's ideas but given the debate around his positions has once again heated up, it seemed only logical to briefly return.

In this case though, the focus will be more narrow, considering mainly Macron's ideas on reforming and reimagining European defence and security. Once again, however, the main issue is the same: while the objectives are laudable, the means are lacking and even confusing in some cases.

First, what are these objectives? Macron seems to have two main pillars that guide his thinking:

• Europe is too dependent on US capacity and so has no ability to operate an independent strategy.

This point bears explaining. The Macron worldview is not that the US directly makes decisions on Europe's behalf. Indeed France is as aware as anyone (as the most vocally opposed to the Iraq war) that Europe is perfectly capable of refusing to follow the US lead in security and defence matters. Equally well, Macron is not arguing that dependence on the US prevents Europe from developing greater capacity - that is a political choice we make for ourselves. However, he does believe that because Europe does not have great capacity, in practice it has very limited strategic possibilities. In other words, all your plans are dependent on the resources you can bring to bear. If your resources are mostly provided by the US (through structures like NATO) then your plans will always be restricted and probably inadequate. 

• To solve this, Europe must develop capacity and learn to develop strategy as a European bloc.

By developing and funding its own resources, Europe will be able, in theory at least, to act independently of the US if Europe chooses to do so. This is the logic that underlies France's decision to heavily promote initiatives focused on creating next-generation military technology through the PESCO framework. Indeed, in the latest round of projects, France is far ahead of any other country in leading on projects and maintains a commanding lead when even just participation is taken into account. And if that deals with capacity, then to deal with strategy, Macron has proposed the development of the European Intervention Initiative (EI2) and the European Security Council (ESC).

And this is where we need to start addressing the problems with this thinking. For a start, it remains essentially unclear why Europe would need both the EI2 and an ESC. Both these ideas seem designed to achieve the same objective: fostering a shared strategic culture by carrying out missions together and learning to harmonise different perspectives and best practices. With a shared strategic culture, participating countries would then be more likely to act together and more likely to share their capacity. This would, over time, develop a more truly European military force (even if the national governments would retain ultimate control). European defence would therefore be brought to life more in practice than in law. But why any of this requires two separate institutions is unclear. Is the ESC supposed to act as a command centre for the EI2? If not then what capacity is the ESC even supposed to draw on? If the ESC will inevitably be making use of the EI2 countries' capacity then why is there even a debate on membership of the ESC, why not just make it match membership of the EI2? Or if the ESC is supposed to be a more restricted group then how are you planning on getting anyone to sign up to handing over their military capacity when they didn't have a vote in the decision in the first place?

Inevitably all of this runs up against a much bigger problem: where are these shared missions supposed to come from? While the theory of building up strategic culture through repeated interactions makes a lot of sense, the problem is that European publics are hardly enthusiastic about military intervention. And in general there is often great difference over where they are mostly willing to tolerate or accept military action. The French and Italians might seen the importance of action in North Africa but the Brits and Germans would be much harder to convince. And if you can't get Europea public opinion on a similar page then you won't get the repeated interactions that can build up steady integration between your military strategies. 

This also relates to the issue of building up capacity. The current projects being pushed under PESCO are for the most part uncertain and untested. This remains a new ambition and so we have little idea of how many of these projects will even come to light or be widely adopted. Some may even be very successful for what they are but remain relatively minor upgrades in existing technology rather than revolutions in the way that we carry out conflict and so will only have a small impact on Europe's military strength. The basic problem remains public opinion. In Europe willingness among citizens to invest heavily in defence spending is not high. Germany for one could do infinitely more for European capacity by simply properly funding the military it has, not by being a willing participant or leader in more PESCO projects. While France may be willing to step up its defence capacity, Macron does not really have any plan to substantially increase Europe's capacity and it remains difficult to see how this situation could change without a big reversal in public opinion (which not even Russia's annexation of Crimea was sufficient to trigger). 

Which is not to say the money isn't there. The EU's total military spending is higher than Russia's by some margin. But Russia is inevitably ahead because it operates a single army with little duplication in administration. If Europe wants to reverse its structural disadvantage then we will need to embrace total military integration and the formation of a European army. In practice there is no way this can happen or work without political integration. And it is this final thought that largely informs my view that most of the current ideas Macron is promoting are distractions that won't really change the military landscape for Europe. We will remain dependent on the US because we don't have an answer to the US army. This is the difficult conversation we are not having and nothing will change until we do. The European Intervention Initiative, PESCO and anything else don't hurt but there's little reason to hope they will substantially improve our current state of dependence and vulnerability. 

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