Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
In his speech on the sidelines of the Europe Forum, European Foreign and Security Policy Coordinator Josep Borrell said: “When I began my term, I said that ‘the European Union needs to learn to speak the language of power.’ Several years later, when I presented the Strategic Compass, I said another sentence that will be part of my legacy: “Europe is in danger.” At that time, people smiled and said that I was trying to sell my product. But now, everyone agrees that Europe is in danger, and everyone is talking about security and defense. It has become the European issue. Borrell explained in his statement, which came in a statement issued by His office in Brussels “There are two wars in our neighborhood and everyone is talking about the next steps to build European defence, which, by the way, I am responsible for because my job is to be the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. . Security and defense go hand in hand. When I came to Brussels, everyone looked at the first part of my job because there was no war or security at that stage. Now, I devote more and more of my time to security and defence. Security is something more than defence. We are now also talking about economic security. Everything has a security dimension because everything is armed. But defense has the hard meaning of the word. Defence, which means possessing military capabilities, will be at the heart of EU policies. Perhaps this will be the third chapter of the European Union project. We must avoid the development of an international dynamic based on the principle of "the West against the rest" or "the rest against the West." What is happening in Gaza portrays Europe in a way that the rest of the world does not understand. Also when it comes to the war against Ukraine, many people around the world have had some difficulties understanding what is going on.
We have to prove that when we say something is a war crime somewhere, it is a war crime everywhere. We must try to avoid double standards, to avoid that the rest of the world does not understand what we are doing, or what others are trying to do to us, and to offer a values-based union. This is ultimately what the European Union should be: a values-based union. The most important values are peace and solidarity, because our union was based on that: building peace between Europeans and solidarity and cohesion between us. We have to be a force pushing for peace and solidarity around the world.
For this reason, we thought that trading was a good tool. There is a German expression: transformation through trade, “Wandel durch Handel”. My German is very bad. It was based on the assumption that commodity trade and dialogue would lead to political and social change. It has proven to be a mistake to deal with the dictator. Instead of achieving the effect of making Russia more liberal and democratic, this policy has become a threat to us because we have become more dependent on Russian energy. We've learned that interdependence goes both ways, and in the end, dependencies can become a challenge or a weakness. But at the same time, interdependence is the core of the EU project. We started with coal and steel to make our peace. We have done a lot and we should be proud of what the European Union represents in the world today. But again, I would like to emphasize the fact that we are a union based on principles that we consider universal and that we must defend everywhere.
Today Europe truly feels a sense of challenge. We challenge you. That is why I say that in the next step, the European project will be closely linked to building common security and defense. This does not mean saying that war is imminent and will begin tomorrow. But we must make EU citizens realize that the American umbrella that protected us during the Cold War and beyond may not remain open all the time. Perhaps, depending on who rules in Washington, we cannot rely on American support and American capacity to protect us. We must build our joint defense capacity. We have to take our responsibility. Strategic responsibility is perhaps a better formulation than strategic independence, but it essentially means the same thing: the ability to act, the ability to defend ourselves, and the ability to meet the challenges that are most important to us. NATO will remain completely irreplaceable. But within NATO we must build a strong European pillar. The war against us will not start tomorrow. But we cannot deny the truth: growing competition between major powers, high-intensity conflicts between states, the weaponization of economic interdependence, cyberwarfare, and disinformation are part of our reality.
Two days ago, German Defense Minister [Boris Pistorius] said that he had to prepare the German army to be able to fight a war. They created another branch of the military — not just the Air, Navy, and Land Forces — but also a new branch of cybersecurity and disinformation. They created this new branch of the military to confront a new dimension of war, a new dimension of ensuring security. At the same time we see that the traditional sources of conflict - territoriality, sovereignty, national identity - are returning with violent conflicts. What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Gaza is a very old conflict over land, where people say: “This is my land, it belongs to me.”
We are told that geography does not matter because globalization has erased borders and abolished geography. Well, that's not true. Geography is here and people are still fighting for the land. We imagined that we were surrounded by a circle of friends after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This world is replaced by a ring of fire around us. From instability from the Sahel to the Middle East to the Caucasus, to the Baltic states. Don't look anywhere else in Africa. There really is a ring of fire around us. I believe we are living in a very important moment in the European construction process, because war is certainly looming on the horizon. This is no small matter. This is no small thing. The year was 1956, the last colonial adventure Around the Suez Canal, it was the last moment when European armies tried to wage war outside their borders. Since then, we have expelled war from our mentality. We have been too busy building peace between European countries. But today the war returns to us. We have to look at this, while continuing to build peace in the rest of the world because that remains our goal as well. But to achieve this, we need something more than just nice words. We need more than that to protect ourselves from the world's turmoil. We must cooperate with the rest of the world to try to reduce these disruptions. This means building a stronger foreign policy and defense capacity. Trade is not enough. When we look at the institutional structure of the European Union, foreign and defense policy remain national competences. It will be a battleground between institutions during the next legislative session. You will see that the intergovernmental branch and the community branch will fight to occupy this political space.
But today foreign affairs and defense are in the hands of member states. They wanted to keep this instrument of sovereignty in their hands because they collectively believed that NATO should be the guarantor of European collective security. Europe was built on division. Economic integration was left to the institutions of the European Union, and security was left in the hands of NATO. The end of the Cold War increased this division. Some European countries have made this division of labor very clear. I have visited some of them. They placed three flags on their public buildings: the national flag, the European flag and the NATO flag. This is not the case for all members of the European Union: in France, Spain or Italy, you do not find these three flags. They only use two. But if you go to the east of the continent, you will find the three flags behind the offices of government officials. The fundamental question we have to answer today is whether we can continue to rely on this division of labor. And my answer is no. The war in Ukraine has brutally revealed the world as it is, not as we wanted it to be. It is a world characterized by the Russian threat to the European Union as a whole. Although Ukraine is not yet a member of the European Union, the war against Ukraine poses a threat to the European Union as a whole. We cannot separate the fate of the Ukrainian people from the fate of the people of the European Union, especially since Putin is determined to expand the scope of his destabilizing activities to include the entire Union. Destabilizing societies is not done only by bombing. You will see in the upcoming European elections how Russian destabilization will threaten our democracy. But the possibility of a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy.
It is clear that we must do everything to avoid this. But you know that to deter this threat, we need to have the means to do so. It's nothing new. I was reading Robert Schuman's Declaration, and this Declaration began by saying, and I quote: "World peace cannot be maintained without creative efforts proportionate to the risks to which we are exposed." Have you heard Robert Schumann? Peace in the world cannot be maintained without our efforts being proportionate to the dangers that threaten us. It's nothing new, but it feels new because we're used to a different world.
I believe that the European Union is entering today into a third moment of its construction: the third moment, the third phase. The first was in 1957: a common market with a limited number of European public policies. The second is to accelerate economic integration through the single market and single currency. The third began with the war in Ukraine, which will lead to the birth of a strong European security and defense pillar.
The question is: What should we do to achieve this new and ambitious goal? Until now, when we talked about wars, we would have said: “Ask NATO.” Now, it is no longer enough. First, we have to fulfill our obligations, our moral and political obligations to Ukraine. There the situation is very difficult. The Russian military machine is running at full speed. At great cost, but at full speed. There is a complete asymmetry between Russia and Ukraine. Russia can continue a protracted war of attrition and give the impression that it is winning, when in fact it is losing. They came within eight kilometers of the Ukrainian parliament - the Russian tanks were eight kilometers from the Ukrainian parliament - the Rada - and they were repelled. It is enough for Russia not to lose until it proves that it is winning. Ukraine, on the contrary, must win in order not to lose. So I'm making a call here and I'll be making the same call with the EU foreign and defense ministers in two weeks, when we'll all come together, to increase air defense capabilities so that Ukraine can stop Russian missiles and their glide bombs destroying urban infrastructure.
We talk about rebuilding Ukraine, but we should talk more about avoiding destruction. The best way to spend less on reconstruction is to spend more on avoiding destruction. The Ukrainians do not have the ability to avoid destruction, because in fact, we must do more, more quickly, to allow them to get the capabilities they need. I spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba a few days ago and he is strongly requesting seven Patriot batteries to protect his country. It is inconceivable that we could not provide them, given that Western armies possess about 100 Patriot batteries. We are still unable to provide the seven they so desperately request. The second thing that is certain is the talk about ammunition, that is, the talk about our industrial capacity to produce more. Then comes the big question: What kind of institutional framework do we need to reach the level of our security and defense ambitions? I believe that a defensive Europe will not emerge from a grand, supranational, top-down plan. Europe was not built on This way before.
We have to face the two problems we have. One is the problem of spending, money, resources, and financing. Then we have the problem of teamwork: how do we manage, how do we organize our teamwork? We face a spending problem because we have neglected defense and security issues since the euro crisis. At the end of the Cold War, the German army, which Defense Minister Boris Pistorius says must be prepared for war, had 500,000 soldiers. Today they are about 150,000. Numbers don't explain everything, because the people you needed during the Cold War had very different skills than the kind of skills you would need today. With conscription, you could have hundreds of thousands of unqualified infantrymen. This is not the answer because you need very specific skills, maybe fewer people but more prepared for modern warfare.
But it is certain that Europe has gone through a silent process of disarmament since at least 2008. Now we must work to increase our financial capacity. I do not know how. Is there an issue of public debt when we have an existential threat? The pandemic was an existential threat, and we were able to get around treaties in order to have the possibility to do something that was theoretically prohibited: go to the financial markets and ask for money, because it was a matter of life and death. During the euro crisis we did the same thing. The European Stability Mechanism was created to circumvent treaties – or create new treaties – in order to circumvent consensus, because the euro crisis was an existential threat. Does defense pose an existential threat today? Is the support provided to Ukraine existential? If so, we must think broadly. We must think more deeply, as we have done in the past, whenever something happens that we consider an existential threat. But I will not delve into this matter because I am not the Minister of Finance. I'm just saying we lack resources. What is important, and this is the core of my job, is how we take our defense ambitions seriously and change the EU's institutional framework to reach them.
There are four different levels: states, interstate cooperation, societal action, and strategic alliances, the most important of which is NATO. We have to play on these four fields. The state is the first level. At the beginning and at the end there are the member states. Countries have armies. We do not have an army in Brussels and we will not have a European army tomorrow. Member States are the masters of defense policy. I heard heads of state and government telling the Committee: “We do not want to transfer defense powers to the societal side.” Defense is a sign of national sovereignty, and they do not want any further transfer of sovereignty in this area. But we have to get every member state to act and commit to the defense target of 2% GDP. We are far from that. But this goal does not say everything. You can spend more on defense tomorrow by increasing military employee pensions. In fact, you spend more on defense, but this does not increase your defense capacity. You can also spend more on defense by doing more research and development or by building industrial capabilities. Let me give you just one number. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 80% of arms purchases and investments in Europe have been made outside the EU. 80% of it is purchased by people who produce outside our borders, and 80% of it comes from the United States. Good. This is a strong dependency. We cannot bear this dependency if we really want to be responsible. In terms of R&D, we are well below our expectations.
Regarding defense spending, the trend is positive, but we need to reach the second level, which is cooperation between governments. We need more intergovernmental cooperation. We have done something, like the European Peace Facility for example, which has created very positive dynamics in favor of Ukraine. There is huge potential to increase defense cooperation between member states. But I must say that there is still a reluctance to share technology between countries or a tendency to favor national arms manufacturers - “I want to be able to build my own weapons because you never know.” This is a fragmentation of capabilities that the United States does not possess. Because the Pentagon is a big buyer and we don't have the Pentagon here. And the United States is not in doubt when it comes to where to place capabilities: Nevada, Ohio, or Miami, it doesn't matter. Here, it is not the same. We should create a new intergovernmental financing mechanism – call it the European Defense Mechanism – similar to the one we created during the financial crisis to support some member states suffering from it. Member states have already established the European Defense Agency, but have not funded it. They said: "Do!". But they were never able to present a budget for the European Defense Agency.
Then there is the Commission, which does not have the authority to defend but does have the budget. We have a certain duality. There are those with knowledge in the military field who for years produced reports that went unnoticed until the war in Ukraine, but they did not have the budget to influence the development of industrial capacity. The Commission has a budget and we are now using it to promote the development of the defense industry. But the heads of the industrial sector say to me: “Send me orders, do not build long-term strategies. Give me orders and I will produce. If I have the possibility of demand, I will increase my production capacity to meet this demand.
This is something we have to learn when we talk about the third level, which is the community level. The community level may do a lot to create a new corporate ecosystem that fosters collaboration between different companies. It will take a long time, but we have to do it. Otherwise we would never be able to produce at home what we buy abroad today.
I have and I have finally reached the fourth level of action: our alliances and NATO first and foremost. NATO is at the heart of our collective security. But NATO must also adapt to new realities in a changing world. You know, some people have long feared that the development of European strategic responsibility - and I say strategic responsibility, not autonomy - would come at the expense of NATO. This would encourage, directly or indirectly, a separation between the United States and Europe. However, the danger of this disconnect does not come from the development of strategic responsibility on the European side: it comes from the United States. It was very interesting to see, during my recent visit to Washington, that the Americans themselves were praising the development of the Europeans' strategic responsibility: “Yes. Please do it. Do it. Go ahead. Create your own capability. This European pillar of NATO is very welcome.
So, separation is no longer seen as a risk, because that risk does not come from us. The decision to increase our capacity is due to a lack of will on the other side of the Atlantic to maintain its commitment to the defense of all NATO members, in all circumstances. I believe that European strategic responsibility is the best way to strengthen NATO, because NATO cannot remain credible unless its members increase its military credibility, and unless we strengthen our own. This is the main lesson we can draw from the war against Ukraine.
Second, we must acknowledge that the priorities of its coalition members may change over time. In fact, they are changing. The United States is moving toward the Pacific. Now the Americans have been forced to return to Europe because of the war in Ukraine, but their main focus remains the Pacific. It requires a more balanced partnership between the United States and Europe so that each side can strengthen the unity of the alliance. I believe that the United States is interested in this, because European security is part of American security.
Don't forget one thing: Pax Americana was made possible by Pax Americana. There will be no peace on the European continent without NATO preventing another war in Europe. This combination is something we should be very proud of. It has ensured a joint defense capability that has been able to avoid war, thanks to a deterrence capacity that must now be increased and adapted to the new challenges facing the world. My successor will have to work a lot on defence. I am sure that the institutional status of defense and security in Europe will be one of the most important political discussions between Member States and with the European Parliament, in order to decide who does what. I think everyone should do more. Member States, each of them, in its own country, cooperate among themselves and at the intergovernmental level. Developing society in accordance with the terms of reference of the treaty. And build a stronger partnership with our allies in the world in order to defend our values and be recognized as a person with true values. True values mean value in any circumstance. Today, there is strong criticism against Europeans because we are not seen that way. So we have a lot of work ahead of us. The next High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy will have a lot of work to do. Let's start today