Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has concentrated on regional peace, while the United States has focused on high-tech, long-range capabilities to meet evolving global security threats. As a result, the immense difference between U.S. warfighting capabilities and those of Britain and the other European allies is widening. Although the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 reinvigorated the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States, on the battlefield the United Kingdom can do little to help. This raises important questions: Is NATO becoming more of a political alliance than a military one? Will the European members be relegated to peacekeeping operations?
The Kosovo campaign illustrated the ability of the United States to network a constant flow of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and thereby manage a 24-hour, all-weather battlefield, attacking emerging targets with precision-guided munitions. The European allies are still confined to a joint-combined targeting board process that delegates aerial targets 72 hours from the time of the sortie and requires U.S. inflight control for coordination. The Afghanistan campaign has added an exclamation point to this capabilities gap. U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance abilities allow for a continuous flow of information to weapon systems in the air, in space, and on the ground, providing nearly instantaneous attack capability. Since the Kosovo conflict, the improvement in real-time flow of intelligence to tactical units has enabled the United States to realize a sensor-to-shooter capability. The United States took the lessons of the Gulf War and Kosovo and invested in the development of command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology. Admiral Gregory Johnson, U.S. Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces, Southern Europe, stated that in the Afghanistan campaign the United States has demonstrated how successful and effective the current technology can be. The combination of joint direct attack munitions delivered by attack aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles guided by global positioning systems and special operations forces has proved to be the desired capability. "If it moves, it will be struck," said Admiral Johnson, "and neither movement under cover of night nor inclement weather can save them."
European leaders realize that if they do not invest funds to match U.S. military capabilities, they will become irrelevant in high-intensity combat operations. British, German, and French political leaders appear consumed with the goal of an autonomous European Defense Force—which, as currently designed, will not have a capability beyond peacekeeping nor the military airlift to act outside Europe. U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Technology Security Policy and Counterproliferation Lisa Bronson highlighted this point when she commented on interoperability: "If some troops are immunized and protected against biological, chemical, and radiological weapons and others are not, how long do you think a coalition will last?" As the United States readies itself to deal with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and terrorism continues to evolve, the European Union's (EU) military capability must catch up. "Solutions are commercially available," stated Bronson: "Buy them." Significant changes likely will not happen until EU countries take a long-term view of their research-and-development practices and defense security investment policies.
In September in Prague, Czech Republic, NATO made decisions about enlargement and addressed its future as a military alliance and how to meet the challenge of terrorism and other asymmetric threats. NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson recognizes that Europe must invest more in military capabilities while also promoting Europeans' contributions as significant. "NATO has not led in the fight in Afghanistan," said Robertson, "because, as with Desert Storm in the Gulf, a larger, more diverse coalition was needed. But NATO's political, military, and logistic support has been essential. The European members of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul can work so effectively together and with the United States only because of decades of practical cooperation in NATO." He also recognized, however, that NATO's European allies must focus on three very important things: "capabilities, capabilities, capabilities."
EU nations are realizing that if they do not decrease the capabilities gap with the United States, they will be limited to supporting roles and peacekeeping operations, as was the case in the Balkans. As a result, the European governments agreed on a flexible EU military during the April 1999 Defense Capabilities Initiative in NATO and later that year in the Helsinki Headline Goals. Yet after three years, the European Union has made little progress.
Although some European officials are satisfied with the idea that the United States take the burden of the war fighting while Europe follows with the peacekeeping operations, the majority is not satisfied with that role. Therefore, in the interests of national pride, political relevance, and military interoperability, Europe and the United States must mitigate the transatlantic military capabilities gap. The process involves considerable reforms in policy that must resolve three significant problems: funding, European duplication of effort, and technology transfer from the United States.
The gross domestic product of the United States is equal roughly to that of the European Union. If the European Union is to function as designed, it must address defense investment as a cooperative venture. In fiscal year 2003, the United States will spend $30 billion more on defense than in fiscal 2002; this is almost twice the total security investment of all 15 nations of the European Union. The European Union was established to act in part as a multinational business, combining efforts to compete with the United States as an economic power. For this to occur, the governing bodies of the 15 EU nations must streamline the bureaucratic process for security investment, coordinate research-and-development efforts to avoid duplication, and pool resources to acquire state-of-the-art, commercial off-the-shelf technology.
Defense industrial trade between the United States and Europe must flow both ways to satisfy the politicians and have some semblance of an equitable balance of trade. Regardless of how open the Pentagon acquisition process is to our European partners, the United States outspends the 15 EU nations on research and development by as much as 20 to 1. The United States and the European Union waste valuable resources as a result of short-sighted and parochial politics. Both the United States and our allies can benefit significantly from further cooperation in this area.
U.S. technology is far ahead of anything the EU defense industry is developing. Here the United States can help manage the gap by reforming technology transfer policies for some of our allies to enable them to purchase these advanced command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. stated, "In the realm of defense trade licensing, I support NATO's Defense Capabilities Initiative and recognize that there are some critical priorities for military modernization and interoperability that merit a coordinated effort among allied governments. I will support my colleagues in the Pentagon as they encourage defense-industry cooperation with Europe on key weapons programs for future use by allied forces." This reform will make the technology available only; it would not provide money for Europeans to develop, build, and provide associated training tactics and procedures.
If the capability inequity continues at the current rate, Europe will fall further behind and become powerless to participate in the kind of combat operations in which the United States will engage. The implications lead to a natural division of labor: the United States engages in the high-tech, high- or low-intensity power projection and combat operations, while the rest of NATO handles the post-conflict rebuilding and peacekeeping operations. This will not reduce the security investment the Europeans have to this point avoided. On the contrary, peacekeeping is often open-ended and quite expensive over the duration. If the military alliance comes under even more strain, it may have a strong impact on cross-Atlantic political and economic cooperation. To avoid this, the United States must be patient-but it cannot delay in prosecuting the global war on terrorism. The United States and its NATO allies must invest in the available international technology, avoid duplication of research-and-development effort, and look for more cooperative defense industry projects.
Commander Liddy is a Navy SEAL with 18 years of military service. He currently is Naval Special Warfare representative to the Commander-in-Chief, Special Operations Command, in the Washington, DC office.