The EU-NATO Relationship

A Legal and Political Perspective

Martin Reichard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Law
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317033363
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

The EU-NATO relationship continues to develop at a time of significant change for both organizations. Post 9/11, NATO embarked on a fundamental transformation, recasting itself as an organization with global strategic reach and interest, focused less on Europe than ever before. At the same time, the EU is also becoming a more global political actor. Consequently, there is growing evidence that over time the EU will take the primary place in providing military security in Europe. This volume combines political and legal methods to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current and likely future relationship between the EU and NATO. The work will be of interest to all those interested in the development of these two major organizations and international security more generally, whether from a political or legal perspective.

Chapter 1
The Wider Picture: Transatlantic Relations and the EU–NATO Relationship

The Alliance embodies the transatlantic link by which the security of North America is permanently tied to the security of Europe.... The fundamental guiding principle by which the Alliance works is that of ... the indivisibility of security for all of its members.1

No matter how many solemn reaffirmations emerge from the endless parade of NATO summits, the high-water mark of transatlantic security cooperation is past.... a powerful set of domestic and international forces is pulling the transatlantic alliance apart. The process may be delayed by adroit statesmanship and bureaucratic inertia, but a gradual parting of the ways is virtually inevitable.2

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS FOR THE EU–NATO RELATIONSHIP

The link between the transatlantic relationship and the EU–NATO relationship is close, but not too close. Fundamental developments which take place in the grand transatlantic arena may not always and immediately affect the cloister of EU–NATO cooperation down to its technical details.3 Often, parallel debates take place,4 as in the case of EU and NATO enlargements. For the central message of this book, however, namely that the balance of European security is shifting from NATO to the EU, the link is very direct. This development cannot be explained without recognising that, in the wider arena of transatlantic relations, a similar tectonic shift is taking place. Already before the Cold War, the economic interests of the United States became more and more focused on emerging Asian markets. The rise of China as an international actor adds a security dimension to this American reorientation. Europe, as the centre of the East-West conflict, and later, during the 1990s, primarily for reason of the Balkan Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, enjoyed prime security attention from Washington. After 2000, however, Europe is ‘whole and free’, and also at peace. Today, America’s current security concerns are with rogue states,5 international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. At a time when Baghdad counts most, places like Berlin and Belfast have lost importance in Washington. Naturally, the transatlantic relationship is still and will likely remain, the strongest economic, political and cultural inter-state community on the globe. Some of the existing ties may fray,6 but on the whole the ship is still sailing. Our interest here, however, is with a tendency rather than with absolutes: what happens in transatlantic relations impacts on the EU–NATO relationship in the long term. The most visible example for this functional connection between those two arenas was the handover of SFOR from NATO to the EU at the end of 2004 (subsequently renamed EUFOR):7 the hand-over was in the obvious interest of the United States and NATO in order to free up military resources needed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of the fundamental transatlantic rift over Iraq in 2002 and 2003, however, the United States put all negotiations on the planned transfer of the mission on ice for about a year. When the transatlantic climate slowly improved again towards the end of 2003, one of the first implications was that suddenly preparations of the EU and NATO for the EUFOR transfer began to pick up speed. The delay – as long as it lasted – was in no way connected to the planned mission as such, but rather to the transatlantic Iraq dispute. This case of the Bosnia mission also exemplifies nicely that the connection between the large transatlantic and the small EU–NATO plane reaches only so far: the mission of the EU in Bosnia was only delayed for some time – its eventual handover was never really doubted by policy-makers.8

A great raft of books and articles on the transatlantic relationship has been published over the years9 The object of this chapter is not to repeat them, but simply to introduce the EU–NATO relationship from a wider angle. This should later make it easier to engage in its particular issues in subsequent chapters, without forgetting the larger context.

EU–NATO RELATIONS: PART OF THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP

From a theoretical viewpoint, the transatlantic relationship forms the greater context for a more narrow relationship – that between NATO and the EU.10 The two, in other words, are not identical. The EU–NATO relationship proper only covers a small part of transatlantic relations,11 although a very important one. The link between the two, however, is obvious: The United States, at the cost of thousands of American lives (and dollars),12 has brought peace and prosperity, and in time unity, to Europe as whole. In this way, the transatlantic relationship also acted as a stabiliser and silent nurturer of European political and economic integration.13 Richard Holbrooke’s description in 1995 of ‘America, a European Power’14 is seen by many as the transatlantic relationship in a nutshell.15 Others would go as far as reading into such a description a systematic subordination of the EU to the United States.16 Today, NATO is still today regarded as the core17 and the most important expression18 of the transatlantic relationship which should remain its primary forum19.

Before entering into the heart of the matter, some clarification of terms is useful. By ‘transatlantic relationship’ we understand the sum of relations and cooperation in a wide field of areas (economic, political, cultural, scientific and also military) between Europe and North America. Commonly, this is more simply (and perhaps unjustly) understood as the interface between the EU and the United States.

Such a simplification, that is leaving out the remaining countries would seem justifiable on the European side of the equation for most political analyses, for two reasons. First, most of the remaining countries concerned, even those who do not aspire to EU membership (that is, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland) usually align themselves with the greatest part of the policies the EU holds towards the United States (in such areas where a common positions exists, for example international environmental cooperation, world trade, cooperation in criminal matters and so on). In the military sphere, the core of State sovereignty, the alignment of these countries with the EU is less close, as for example the case of Norway shows.20 Candidate countries to the EU (for example Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia) are more closely aligned to the EU here. Second, after the enlargement of the EU in 2004, the Union indeed does represent the vast majority of peoples and States in Europe.

The equation of Canada with the foreign policy of the United States seems, by comparison, a graver omission on the part of common parlance regarding the transatlantic relationship, and this has been pointed out increasingly.21 It seems odd in this regard especially for Europeans to ignore that Canadian views on a number of issues, such as on the Kyoto Protocol, are almost identical to their own, and very different from those held by the United States.22

As a qualification of the picture of a transatlantic relationship, it is also sometimes pointed out that the most virulent arguments about transatlantic relations are not traded across the Atlantic but within EU member States, concerning the different approaches of the member States with the United States.23 the tendency in the EU to disagree on relations to the US is likely to increase with the accession of ten new Central and Eastern European countries, many of whom are on average much more ‘Atlanticist’ than the old EU members.24 However, it is submitted that, from the point of view of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Wider Picture: Transatlantic Relations and the EU–NATO Relationship
• 2 ESDP Today
• 3 NATO Today
• 4 Institutional Framework for EU–NATO Cooperation
• 5 Is there a ‘NATO Primacy’ in the EU–NATO Relationship?
• 6 Collective Self-Defence
• 7 Military Crisis Management
• 8 Berlin Plus Agreement
• 9 Security of Information
• 10 Conclusion: A Shifting Balance
• Selected Bibliography
• Annex
• Index