Final exercise: first sample

Charlemagne: On target

This article reports on the misgivings of America’s outgoing defence secretary, Robert Gates, concerning Europe’s recent military failings and its overdependence on America as a NATO ally.  It then outlines the path to be taken to tackle these problems.

Throughout the war in Libya, presently under NATO control, the Europeans have had to ask America for help in identifying targets, providing air-to-air refuelling, reinforcing the NATO command centre in Naples and supplying munitions.

This shows that the military strength of the NATO is determined mainly by what America is ready to put in. Without America, the military strength of even the most powerful NATO members is limited.

However, as Gates and the author claim, the Europeans should not take America’s commitment for granted. America may eventually see NATO as a burden, as it has been insisting on a more balanced burden sharing with the Europeans ever since the alliance was established. Furthermore, America’s interests have shifted from Europe to the Middle East, South Asia and China. This leads to the conclusion that Europe should take care of its own security, with the southern Mediterranean being of vital importance.

Yet, European countries are cutting defence spending as a result of the debt crisis, and they are only spending a maximum of around 2% of their GDPs compared to 5% in America. As such, Europe should at least refrain from cutting its defence budget further. It should also co-ordinate better and try to find greater economies of scale; the budgets of the European countries are currently fragmented among not only lots of armies, navies and air forces, but also different kinds of military equipment. 

In this respect, the author does not favour the creation of a European army. The Europeans need to specialise and pool equipment instead of doing similar things separately. An example to follow is the Franco-British defence pact on nuclear test, aircraft carrier operations and a joint expeditionary force.  The following lesson is yet to be learnt by the Europeans: ‘pool it or lose it.’