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ARMS TRADE RESOURCE CENTER Buying Into Militarism: NATO and the New Europe President George W. Bush traveled to Prague for the NATO conference with a high minded message of U.S. support for a “strong, confident Europe” – through enlarging the body to include seven more states and developing a NATO ‘rapid reaction unit’ that could be mustered quickly and sent to hot spots around the world. The ‘rapid reaction unit’ is U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s brainchild. In September he warned that if NATO does not have a “force that is quick and agile… then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century.” How does NATO acquire such a force? By increasing military spending and purchasing U.S. equipment. All the countries of the European Union (EU) collectively spend about $150 billion on defense each year. The United States alone will spend upwards of $380 billion next year. Kent Kresa, the CEO of Northrop Grumman, the 5th largest defense contractor in the US, echoed concerns about NATO’s relevance in October, warning that if European countries don’t start spending more on the military, “they will become less relevant in the world… there will be atrophy.” Currently NATO is dependent on the United States defense industry for the vast bulk of its military equipment. The United States provides NATO with all its communications jamming equipment, 90% of it air-to-ground surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, and 80% of its air refueling tankers. U.S. defense contractors build almost all of NATO’s intercontinental bombers. When Bush mentioned “adding tools and technologies to fight and win a new kind of war,” in his speech to NATO on November 20th, the U.S. defense industry must have been delighted because most of that equipment will come from their factories. Furthermore, the influence of that industry on U.S. policy is incalculable: anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott, with reference to the most powerful of the corporations concerned, appositely describes the Bush administration as ‘the Lockheed Martin Presidency’. It should come as no surprise that the most energetic supporters of NATO expansion have been weapons manufacturers, who are hoping to cash in on increases in defense spending in East and Central Europe. The top two U.S. defense contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, both served on the NATO Host Committee, along with European defense firms BAE Systems and European Aeronautic Defense and Space (EADS) Company. In 1999, weapons makers put up $250,000 each to serve on the host committee for NATO’s 50th anniversary activities. But underlying this push to increase European defense spending is the larger question of NATO’s role, and that of the EU. When Rumsfeld floated the idea for a NATO ‘rapid reaction unit’ the European Union was already working to establish a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) of its own. Is Washington concerned that an EU military force represents a potential alternative to the U.S. and NATO approach to international security? Is Washington concerned that the emergence of an independent European military capacity might challenge U.S. hegemony? If so, they should not be so worried. NATO and the EU’s emergent military force are so closely linked that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. All European Union countries that are also members of NATO, with the exception of France, send the same representatives to the EU Military Committee (co-ordinating body for the EU’s RRF) as they do to the NATO Military Committee. During the crisis in Macedonia in 2001, the EU and NATO worked together hand in glove. Cooperation between NATO and the EU seems set to remain the order of the day – Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has stated that “troops or equipment earmarked by European nations for the NATO rapid reaction unit could also be used for EU Missions.” Which begs the question: is there a distinctive European approach to international security issues, as opposed to that of the United States? There are grounds for scepticism about whether there really is any such distinctive approach, at least at the level of EU leaders. The EU unanimously endorsed the 1999 Kosovo-related bombing campaign by NATO, a campaign that only accelerated the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Kosovar Albanians at the same time as it itself killed up to 2,000 civilians, and for which NATO was condemned by Amnesty International for committing war crimes. The EU also unanimously endorsed the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan. And, for all the fuss made about the German Chancellor’s alleged ‘anti-Americanism’ during his recent election campaign, Schroeder is effectively lending support to U.S. plans for an attack on Iraq by relieving U.S. troops of burdens elsewhere – Germany is to assume co-command of the international force in Afghanistan next year. When it comes to military intervention in the outside world, the EU and U.S. leaderships have more that unites them than divides them. Where differences do exist, they tend to center on commercial concerns: which countries’ weapons manufacturers will reap gains from increased military spending, and which countries’ oil companies will gain access to Iraqi oil? The emergence of a European military capacity does not, in itself, offer hope of a less militaristic and dangerous approach to international affairs. The lesson of the U.S. ‘military-industrial complex’ is that, once developed, an arms industry and a high-powered military machine feed off each other to drive conflict in pursuit of profit and institutional self-interest. That is not the route Europe needs to take now. On the contrary, the last thing the world needs now is further commercially driven militarization on the part of either NATO or the EU. Many European people, if not their leaders, recognize that. During referendum campaigns in Ireland in 2001 and 2002 on an EU treaty, opposition to the militarization of the EU emerged as a major concern on the part of the electorate. More recently, over half a million marched in Florence, Italy, in protest at plans for a war against Iraq and any European participation in it. Movements for peace in the U.S. can make common cause with those movements in Europe, but they should not rely on European leaders to offer meaningful alternatives to the status quo. Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute. Andy Storey is a lecturer in development studies, and a director of the advocacy group Action from Ireland.
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