1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:06,630 Turning to our illustrious speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to introduce Dr. Hugo Meyer, 2 00:00:06,630 --> 00:00:13,500 who is the CNRS research fellow at the Centre for International Studies at Cele's Bu in Paris. 3 00:00:13,500 --> 00:00:19,470 He is also the founding director of the European Initiative for Security Studies, which those who haven't come across it. 4 00:00:19,470 --> 00:00:25,430 It's a multidisciplinary network of scholars that share the goal of consolidating security studies in Europe. 5 00:00:25,430 --> 00:00:32,430 It's a really great initiative and I encourage you to check it out. He's also the senior research fellow at the Centre for Security, 6 00:00:32,430 --> 00:00:40,330 Diplomacy and Strategy in Brussels and an honorary researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University. 7 00:00:40,330 --> 00:00:45,280 His research interests lie at the intersection of foreign policy analysis and security studies. 8 00:00:45,280 --> 00:00:49,630 He's currently working on several research projects on first, 9 00:00:49,630 --> 00:00:54,100 the reconfiguration of American hegemony through the prism of US led regional alliance 10 00:00:54,100 --> 00:00:58,210 systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific since the end of the Second World War. 11 00:00:58,210 --> 00:01:01,390 Second, national defence and security policies in Europe. 12 00:01:01,390 --> 00:01:09,850 And third European and foreign and European foreign and security policies in the face of a rising China in the post-Cold War period. 13 00:01:09,850 --> 00:01:13,720 He is the author of three Oxford University Press books. It's quite an achievement. 14 00:01:13,720 --> 00:01:20,830 First in 2016, Trading with the enemy, the making of US export control policy towards the PRC. 15 00:01:20,830 --> 00:01:26,050 Second, in 2018, the Handbook of European Defence Forces and Armed Forces, 16 00:01:26,050 --> 00:01:32,710 which was co-edited with Moscow with the third, which is coming out this year. 17 00:01:32,710 --> 00:01:36,790 I believe in the next couple of months we have awakening to China's rise. 18 00:01:36,790 --> 00:01:40,480 European foreign and security policies towards the PRC. 19 00:01:40,480 --> 00:01:45,370 He has also published in top journals such as International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, 20 00:01:45,370 --> 00:01:52,540 Cooperation and Conflict Survival, the European Journal of International Security, and the Journal of Cold War Studies. 21 00:01:52,540 --> 00:01:58,780 And [INAUDIBLE] be speaking Yesterday Today articles, which was co-authored with Stephen Brooks. 22 00:01:58,780 --> 00:02:04,810 We're pleased to see us joined us on the line from Dartmouth in international security, which is illusions of autonomy, 23 00:02:04,810 --> 00:02:10,150 why Europe cannot provide for its security if the United States pulls back over to you. 24 00:02:10,150 --> 00:02:15,970 Thank you for joining us. OK, thanks, will, and thanks a lot for the invitation. 25 00:02:15,970 --> 00:02:20,860 It's really a great pleasure to be here. I really want to thank the Centre for the invitation. 26 00:02:20,860 --> 00:02:28,390 I'm very happy to have the opportunity to present this article in full, just in front of such a distinguished audience. 27 00:02:28,390 --> 00:02:34,530 So let me share my PowerPoint. There you go. 28 00:02:34,530 --> 00:02:40,340 OK. Can you see it? Yeah. 29 00:02:40,340 --> 00:02:44,320 Awesome. OK. 30 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:54,670 So the article I'm presenting today is titled Illusions of Autonomy, Why Europe cannot provide for its security if the United States pulls back. 31 00:02:54,670 --> 00:03:04,180 This article I co-authored with Steve Bruce, who is in the audience with us and I'm sure Steve might jump in during the Q&A. 32 00:03:04,180 --> 00:03:11,620 We've worked on this article for more than two years or actually two years and a half, so it's been a lot of work. 33 00:03:11,620 --> 00:03:16,570 But in the meantime, we also had fun. We had coffees and writing sessions in fancy Parisian cafes. 34 00:03:16,570 --> 00:03:21,130 We went to Jen's concerts, so it was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. 35 00:03:21,130 --> 00:03:30,790 And actually, the article was published in 2021 in International Security as lead article of the Spring Issue. 36 00:03:30,790 --> 00:03:39,490 And we had before that published an article in Survival, which focussed on the small, discreet aspect of the larger argument. 37 00:03:39,490 --> 00:03:45,820 And that was in the forum in which we critically assess, together with other authors, 38 00:03:45,820 --> 00:03:49,990 very bosun's view on European defence, and I'm sure we'll get back to that. 39 00:03:49,990 --> 00:03:54,730 But so what is the premise of this article in international security? 40 00:03:54,730 --> 00:04:02,800 The premise is that Europe's security landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade because of three main reasons. 41 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:07,840 First of all, you've seen growing concerns vis a vis Russian assertiveness today. 42 00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:15,730 Russia is force strong militarily than it was 10 years ago, and we've seen in 2014, 43 00:04:15,730 --> 00:04:25,630 with the crisis on Crimea and Ukraine and with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the territorial territorial revisionism is back on the continent. 44 00:04:25,630 --> 00:04:34,330 Secondly, you're also seeing growing concerns amongst Europeans over the credibility of U.S. commitments to the continent's 45 00:04:34,330 --> 00:04:40,810 subsequent U.S. administration have recurrently criticised Europeans for not doing enough on defence. 46 00:04:40,810 --> 00:04:45,970 The issue of burden sharing and also the US pivot to Asia raised concerns amongst 47 00:04:45,970 --> 00:04:52,480 Europeans over the long term credibility and robustness of the transatlantic alliance. 48 00:04:52,480 --> 00:05:01,210 And of course, these concerns have been further fuelled under the Trump administration, and it is true that under the Biden administration, 49 00:05:01,210 --> 00:05:07,180 there have been attempts at sort of restoring and reinvesting in U.S. alliance globally and in Europe. 50 00:05:07,180 --> 00:05:16,240 But it's also true that the polarisation of U.S. domestic politics means that these shifts in priority run deeper than a single administration. 51 00:05:16,240 --> 00:05:26,620 And the third trends which is linked to this previous two is that Europeans have called in recent years ever more to for greater strategic autonomy. 52 00:05:26,620 --> 00:05:34,810 You've seen that in 2016 with the EU global strategy and then with subsequent initiatives like PESCO, the European Defence Fund. 53 00:05:34,810 --> 00:05:41,350 This really shows that more than ever, Europeans want to pursue strategic autonomy. 54 00:05:41,350 --> 00:05:49,360 And in light of these three trends, the central question that we raised in the article is could Europeans develop an 55 00:05:49,360 --> 00:05:54,250 autonomous defence capacity if there were a complete US withdrawal from Europe? 56 00:05:54,250 --> 00:06:04,740 This is really our overarching question, and I'll get back to why we focus specifically on the complete U.S. withdrawal in a minute. 57 00:06:04,740 --> 00:06:10,650 The central finding of the article is the following we conclude that any European 58 00:06:10,650 --> 00:06:15,840 efforts to achieve strategic autonomy will be hampered by two major constraints. 59 00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:18,930 The first one is what we call strategic cacophony, 60 00:06:18,930 --> 00:06:27,390 namely profound continent wide divergences across all the domains of national defence policies, most notably threat perception. 61 00:06:27,390 --> 00:06:35,920 And the second one is severe defence capacity shortfalls that will be hard to close because of forced into war themselves. 62 00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:45,510 Of course, the might, which is open to question. Thank you. 63 00:06:45,510 --> 00:06:47,610 Sorry, but I couldn't hear anything. Other words. 64 00:06:47,610 --> 00:06:55,140 So these two constraints, strategic cacophony and severe defence capacity shortfalls mutually reinforce one another. 65 00:06:55,140 --> 00:07:02,910 And together, they impose a rigid limits on the capacity of Europeans to achieve strategic autonomy anytime soon. 66 00:07:02,910 --> 00:07:06,930 I can get back to the definition of strategic autonomy we used in the article. 67 00:07:06,930 --> 00:07:16,110 If somebody is interested in the audience later and so to substantiate this argument, what I'm going to talk about today is, first of all, 68 00:07:16,110 --> 00:07:22,320 the role of Europe in the grand strategy debate in the US and essentially the 69 00:07:22,320 --> 00:07:27,600 debate over whether the US should remain engaged in Europe or should pull out. 70 00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:36,450 Secondly, address these two fundamental constraints to European strategic autonomy again, strategic cacophony and defence capacity shortfalls. 71 00:07:36,450 --> 00:07:40,530 Thirdly, will critically assess the counter argument, 72 00:07:40,530 --> 00:07:51,900 which could be put forward that by restraints colours that actually has been put forward by some scholars and will critically evaluate this arguments. 73 00:07:51,900 --> 00:07:58,440 And I will conclude by briefly discussing what can Europeans do about all that? 74 00:07:58,440 --> 00:08:08,520 OK, so let's look at the evolving US presence in Europe and the role of Europe in the grand strategy debate. 75 00:08:08,520 --> 00:08:16,530 As I'm sure you're all aware, ever since the founding of the US, up until World War Two, 76 00:08:16,530 --> 00:08:24,840 detachments from European security affairs has been eight or was eight, if not the defining feature of U.S. security policies. 77 00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:29,940 It's really was Woolworth two and the early Cold War that you see a major turning point. 78 00:08:29,940 --> 00:08:34,650 The US decides to engage and be present on the European continent, 79 00:08:34,650 --> 00:08:43,470 mostly in order to keep the Soviet Union out and to keep Germany down with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. 80 00:08:43,470 --> 00:08:49,500 The US chose to continue and sustain this relationship, instrumenting Nieto, however, 81 00:08:49,500 --> 00:08:55,350 because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it also cuts its presence in Europe drastically. 82 00:08:55,350 --> 00:09:02,940 And here we go the data from the US Department of Defence and you can see that between 1990 and 2019, 83 00:09:02,940 --> 00:09:09,360 the drastic reduction had been from 350000 troops to 65000 troops today. 84 00:09:09,360 --> 00:09:19,590 So it's a massive decrease. However, U.S. scholars, those in the restraint camp essentially who argue that even this presence no longer 85 00:09:19,590 --> 00:09:24,270 serves U.S. interests and the U.S. should completely withdraw from the continent. 86 00:09:24,270 --> 00:09:30,780 And so one of the two main sides in the grand strategy debate in the US is the restraint camp. 87 00:09:30,780 --> 00:09:37,650 And again, they argue for withdrawal pulled back of the U.S. from the European continent. 88 00:09:37,650 --> 00:09:43,050 On the other side of the spectrum, you have the deep, those advocating us deep engagement, 89 00:09:43,050 --> 00:09:51,360 and they argued that there are security and non-security benefits for us to continue its security presence in Europe. 90 00:09:51,360 --> 00:09:57,900 And this argument has been most fully and in the most sophisticated manner put forward in the book America Abroad, 91 00:09:57,900 --> 00:10:03,810 which was co-authored by Steve Books and together with William Wolfers. 92 00:10:03,810 --> 00:10:11,940 Interestingly, however, the perspective of the restrained scholars is not uniform at all when it comes to different regions. 93 00:10:11,940 --> 00:10:19,110 So, for instance, on the Middle East, some argue for a complete US withdrawal from the region. 94 00:10:19,110 --> 00:10:29,670 Other think that it would be best to have a limited onshore military presence or to reduce U.S. presence, but maintain a limited onshore presence. 95 00:10:29,670 --> 00:10:35,670 And if you look at the Asia-Pacific, the positions in the restrained camp diverge even more so for some, 96 00:10:35,670 --> 00:10:41,490 the US should quickly withdraw and completely. For others, there should be a gradual withdrawal. 97 00:10:41,490 --> 00:10:46,800 But the U.S. maintains some form of extended nuclear deterrence in the Asia-Pacific. 98 00:10:46,800 --> 00:10:54,060 And yet others, like Mearsheimer and Walt, think that the U.S. should continue its ALANG commitments and its U.S. presence across the region, 99 00:10:54,060 --> 00:10:58,530 and therefore here converge with the deep engagement folks. 100 00:10:58,530 --> 00:11:05,570 And therefore you really see that it's Europe, which today is the fulcrum of the grand strategy debate. 101 00:11:05,570 --> 00:11:15,140 All the proponents of deep engagement think that the US should state and all the advocates of restraint think that the US should leave. 102 00:11:15,140 --> 00:11:22,880 But why exactly, you may ask, do the restraint scholars think that the U.S. should leave? 103 00:11:22,880 --> 00:11:30,500 So some of the biggest name in the camp of history, which includes almost 50 or even more scholars in the US? 104 00:11:30,500 --> 00:11:34,970 So Stephen Walt. John Mearsheimer and variables in here. 105 00:11:34,970 --> 00:11:44,180 In the pictures, they argue that European states are big enough and rich enough to autonomously address the military threat from Russia, 106 00:11:44,180 --> 00:11:48,140 which in their view, is the main security problem in Europe today. 107 00:11:48,140 --> 00:11:55,760 And they base this arguments largely on the three main indicators which is combined GDP of these European states, 108 00:11:55,760 --> 00:12:03,570 their population and their defence spending. And therefore, the Stephen Walt, for instance, 109 00:12:03,570 --> 00:12:11,520 argues the notion that the European Union lacks the wherewithal to defend itself against Russia is risible and very. 110 00:12:11,520 --> 00:12:20,520 Posen similarly argues that a coalition of any two of the principal western European powers Germany, France and Britain could easily balance Russia. 111 00:12:20,520 --> 00:12:24,120 So this is really the central argument of the restrained camp. 112 00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:29,910 And I might add, as I mentioned before, was will that we'll have a large conversation on these issues. 113 00:12:29,910 --> 00:12:34,260 Together with very poor was in Steve Walt and John Russia and others at a 114 00:12:34,260 --> 00:12:39,960 roundtable at the Conference of the International Studies Association in March. 115 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:50,620 But so this is also why, in the article, we focus on a specific scenario which is a complete US withdrawal from Europe. 116 00:12:50,620 --> 00:12:55,030 And there are two main reason for focussing on this specific scenario. 117 00:12:55,030 --> 00:13:01,450 The first one is that this is exactly the scenario favoured by the restraints scholars. 118 00:13:01,450 --> 00:13:07,750 And so we start from their policy proposal and this allow us to probe their assumption, 119 00:13:07,750 --> 00:13:13,630 namely that the Europe can quickly and easily create an effective deterrent to Russia if the 120 00:13:13,630 --> 00:13:19,300 US pulls back and thereby the goal is also hopefully to advance a grand strategy debate. 121 00:13:19,300 --> 00:13:26,470 And the second reason is that the complete U.S. withdrawal from Europe would be a shock and therefore 122 00:13:26,470 --> 00:13:31,820 would be the strongest possible incentive that could drive Europeans to pursue strategic autonomy. 123 00:13:31,820 --> 00:13:38,170 In other words, the best way to assess their capacity to develop an autonomous defence and in fact, 124 00:13:38,170 --> 00:13:49,210 if even the major shock of the U.S. complete withdrawal is unlikely to move Europeans away from their strategic cacophony and capability shortfalls. 125 00:13:49,210 --> 00:13:59,970 Well, partial U.S. withdrawal, which of course is more likely scenario, is even less likely to push them in that direction. 126 00:13:59,970 --> 00:14:08,370 OK, so what does this look like in practise? Well, in practise, this means that the US withdraws all of its forces and military units from Europe. 127 00:14:08,370 --> 00:14:13,680 It pulls out all its personnel, which is currently assigned to the NATO command structure. 128 00:14:13,680 --> 00:14:19,320 It pulls out all the conventional forces across the continent, permanent and rotational. 129 00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:23,320 And it also pulls out all its European based nuclear weapons. 130 00:14:23,320 --> 00:14:31,110 So it's a complete withdrawal of the US from the continent. And you may say, well, this is pretty unlikely. 131 00:14:31,110 --> 00:14:36,360 Yes. But so of course, such scenario is unlikely in the short term, 132 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:42,840 but it's hardly implausible in the longer term because of both domestic and international dynamics. 133 00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:48,990 So if you look at the dynamics of the international structural level in the international system, 134 00:14:48,990 --> 00:14:54,360 you see that the rise of China and the growing strategic centrality of the Asia-Pacific 135 00:14:54,360 --> 00:15:00,960 region has led already the US to do that and the importance of Europe in its grand strategy. 136 00:15:00,960 --> 00:15:02,880 And this is likely to continue. 137 00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:09,600 All the more China becomes more powerful and that Asia becomes more central to international politics and at the domestic level, 138 00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:18,000 there are a couple of points. Well, first of all, the U.S., as I mentioned, has pursued an isolationist grand strategy for most of its history. 139 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:26,130 And so leaving Europe would simply be a return to its traditional foreign policy baseline vis-a-vis the region and secondly, shrunk. 140 00:15:26,130 --> 00:15:33,480 In fact, all it tapped in did not create the political momentum for curtailing U.S. presence in the region. 141 00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:42,570 There are polls that's already in the early 2010s showed that there was a majority of Americans in favour of an American withdrawal from Europe. 142 00:15:42,570 --> 00:15:50,670 And you also already had Republicans and Democrats in Congress pushing and advocating for such withdrawal. 143 00:15:50,670 --> 00:15:56,250 And the last point here is keep in mind that you could have an active decision to fully withdraw from the continent. 144 00:15:56,250 --> 00:16:04,290 But you also have the drifting away scenario, which is that the US and Europe would drift gradually further apart over years and years, 145 00:16:04,290 --> 00:16:11,040 and the needle formally still exists, but in fact, this completely hollowed out of any substance. 146 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:16,050 So this also scenario. All right. So this is the initial scenario. 147 00:16:16,050 --> 00:16:22,410 Our argument is that you have these two overarching constraints strategic cacophony and capability shortfalls. 148 00:16:22,410 --> 00:16:27,060 Let's look at the first one. Strategic cacophony, again, 149 00:16:27,060 --> 00:16:37,340 really refers to profound continent wide divergences in the threat assessments of European states and therefore in their strategic priorities. 150 00:16:37,340 --> 00:16:46,680 But a key piece of background to keep in mind here, and that is really important is that the threat environments in Europe has significantly, 151 00:16:46,680 --> 00:16:50,370 significantly diversified since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 152 00:16:50,370 --> 00:16:59,130 So look at the Cold War during the Cold War, you had one overarching common threat to all Europeans, and that was the Soviet Union. 153 00:16:59,130 --> 00:17:03,670 The fear was a land invasion and the risk of escalation to nuclear war. 154 00:17:03,670 --> 00:17:09,300 Of course, there were some differences between Europeans, but they were largely muted by the looming common. 155 00:17:09,300 --> 00:17:13,410 Overarching Soviet threats was the collapse of the Soviet Union. 156 00:17:13,410 --> 00:17:20,940 We enter in an area which basically lost to throw the 1990s up until the late 2000 2000s, 157 00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:27,480 and that's an area of strategic exception in the sense that there's no major conventional security threats on the continent. 158 00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:32,040 And that's pretty rare in European history. And in the meantime, 159 00:17:32,040 --> 00:17:37,290 you have a diversification of the threat environment in the sense that the threat assessment of 160 00:17:37,290 --> 00:17:43,650 governments naturally shift away from conventional states threats to non-conventional threats. 161 00:17:43,650 --> 00:17:49,470 Precisely because in this era of strategic exception, you don't have a major conventional threat on the continent. 162 00:17:49,470 --> 00:17:56,520 And so they focus even more on terrorism instability in the Mediterranean, in the Balkans, 163 00:17:56,520 --> 00:18:01,530 migration, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed states. 164 00:18:01,530 --> 00:18:10,110 And so as these threats assessments diverge, you have more and more discrepancy between the national threat assessments. 165 00:18:10,110 --> 00:18:22,440 And in fact, Russia's resurgence in the 2010s further compounds this state of affairs after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. 166 00:18:22,440 --> 00:18:29,490 So you have some states who become more and more concerned by Russia and this further, but others don't actually. 167 00:18:29,490 --> 00:18:38,190 And so this further deepens the disagreements amongst Europeans about how to prioritise between Russia and other security challenges. 168 00:18:38,190 --> 00:18:43,650 And this is exactly what we've tried to do in the article is really to provide the most 169 00:18:43,650 --> 00:18:50,730 systematic coding of the national threat perception across 29 European countries to date. 170 00:18:50,730 --> 00:18:53,370 To do so, we adopted the nested approach. 171 00:18:53,370 --> 00:19:04,230 First of all, we coded the threat evaluations by 18 experts in a comprehensive examination of European defence policies, 172 00:19:04,230 --> 00:19:11,250 namely the book, which I co-edited with Michael Weiss that was the Handbook of European Defence Policies on Forces. 173 00:19:11,250 --> 00:19:18,840 That's a huge book of 950 pages, 60 chapters, more than 50 authors, and we're building upon that. 174 00:19:18,840 --> 00:19:23,430 We coded threat evaluations of these 18 experts. And of course, we double checked. 175 00:19:23,430 --> 00:19:33,060 It's not. The second step was to gather and analyse all the available national government reports across all of Europe on regional threats, 176 00:19:33,060 --> 00:19:41,940 environments and prioritisation amongst threats. So national security strategies, intelligent threat assessments, et cetera. 177 00:19:41,940 --> 00:19:48,210 For most countries in Europe, these two steps were sufficient to have a robust and reliable coding. 178 00:19:48,210 --> 00:19:52,770 For some, it was slightly more ambiguous, and so we proceeded to a third step, 179 00:19:52,770 --> 00:20:01,770 which was to interview senior foreign and defence policy officials in order to gain further clarity in their national threat assessment. 180 00:20:01,770 --> 00:20:09,810 And here is the results, essentially, we we all the national threat perceptions across Europe along five categories, 181 00:20:09,810 --> 00:20:17,850 and these five categories differ in terms of the threat level, which is given to Russia as compared to other threats. 182 00:20:17,850 --> 00:20:23,400 So the first one is those countries for whom Russia is unimportant or not a threat, 183 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:30,540 and they focus on different security challenges like instability in the Mediterranean or terrorism. 184 00:20:30,540 --> 00:20:33,900 The second category is Russia is perceived as a threat, 185 00:20:33,900 --> 00:20:40,320 but still other threats are more significant in the Mediterranean again or terrorism, for instance. 186 00:20:40,320 --> 00:20:44,850 For some countries Russian, all the threats had roughly equal significance. 187 00:20:44,850 --> 00:20:52,020 The first category is Russia is the highest threat, but still one is concerned by other security challenges nevertheless. 188 00:20:52,020 --> 00:20:58,410 And then you have the extreme of the spectrum, which is those countries for whom Russia is the dominant threat by far. 189 00:20:58,410 --> 00:21:02,280 And other challenges have little, if any, importance. 190 00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:11,760 So let's see a little bit more strategic cacophony for these countries that you see highlighted mostly in southern Europe and south eastern Europe, 191 00:21:11,760 --> 00:21:19,290 but also elsewhere. Like in Ireland, Russia is unimportant and or it's not the threats for these countries. 192 00:21:19,290 --> 00:21:23,160 The central concern is really regional instability in the Middle East, 193 00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:29,460 in northern Africa and the larger Mediterranean region for some also migration and terrorism. 194 00:21:29,460 --> 00:21:33,120 So these are the central security concerns. 195 00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:41,100 Yet another group of states considers that Russia is a threat, but still other threats are more significant here. 196 00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:47,250 The main country is France. But you also have Austria, Croatia and Switzerland in this category. 197 00:21:47,250 --> 00:21:53,550 And so if you take France, but its members is increasingly concerned by Russian behaviour in the East. 198 00:21:53,550 --> 00:22:02,880 But its sense and central region of strategic priority is the Mediterranean and northern Africa and specifically actually sub-Saharan Africa, 199 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:08,900 also because of post-colonial times, of course. For some countries, Russia, as I said, 200 00:22:08,900 --> 00:22:16,070 IS has roughly equal significance as terrorism or as regional instability in the Middle East and northern Africa. 201 00:22:16,070 --> 00:22:25,200 And here the main countries would be the Netherlands, outside Germany and the United Kingdom, but also includes Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands. 202 00:22:25,200 --> 00:22:33,690 And then if you take some of the countries in central eastern Europe and in northern Europe, for them, Russia is the highest threat. 203 00:22:33,690 --> 00:22:37,020 So really their means for you, the concern is Russia. 204 00:22:37,020 --> 00:22:48,390 But still, they have substantial focus and the key strategic priority for them is also all the concerns, like with the Mediterranean or terrorism. 205 00:22:48,390 --> 00:22:54,090 And finally, you have a small group of countries, mostly small countries, 206 00:22:54,090 --> 00:23:00,450 for whom Russia is the dominant threat by far, and this includes the Baltics, but also Finland and Poland. 207 00:23:00,450 --> 00:23:10,140 And so here you go. This is Europe's strategic cacophony. And the key point to keep in mind here is that this is an enduring constraint. 208 00:23:10,140 --> 00:23:14,820 This cacophony of threat perceptions is really shaped by the history of each country, 209 00:23:14,820 --> 00:23:20,670 by the politics, by geography, and also by the local subregional strategic environment. 210 00:23:20,670 --> 00:23:27,290 So this is not something that can change easily is really an enduring constraint. 211 00:23:27,290 --> 00:23:36,140 And this is just to show you the table, actually, which is presented in the article, and I'll get back to this table later on. 212 00:23:36,140 --> 00:23:46,040 The second major constraint to a European strategic autonomy is its profound defence capacity shortfalls and these capacity shortfalls, 213 00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:50,750 in fact or exacerbated by the strategic cacophony. 214 00:23:50,750 --> 00:23:59,870 And just essentially, the larger problem here is that since the end of the Cold War, there has been a sharp decline in European defence capabilities. 215 00:23:59,870 --> 00:24:09,080 Just take one example. In 2000 11, you had the need to intervention in Libya and in that intervention. 216 00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:19,610 Europeans displayed severe shortages of many systems like key neighbours, air to air refuelling, suppression of enemy air defences, intelligence, 217 00:24:19,610 --> 00:24:28,880 target acquisition and reconnaissance capabilities, and all these capabilities, which they lacked had to be provided for by the US. 218 00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:36,020 And so the central argument here on of the article is that Europeans faced four major challenges 219 00:24:36,020 --> 00:24:40,880 that hindered their capacity to develop autonomous conventional defence capabilities. 220 00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:46,820 The first challenge is the lack of weapons systems for conventional deterrence and defence. 221 00:24:46,820 --> 00:24:51,710 The second challenge is the growing complexity of employing modern weapons systems. 222 00:24:51,710 --> 00:24:57,380 Then you have the difficulty of institutionalised military cooperation amongst Europeans. 223 00:24:57,380 --> 00:25:03,080 And finally, the fragmentation of Europe's defence industrial base. Let's look at each one of them briefly. 224 00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:09,380 So if you take the lack of weapons systems for conventional interference in defence during the Cold War, 225 00:25:09,380 --> 00:25:14,360 Europeans really invested heavily in these capabilities for conventional defence. 226 00:25:14,360 --> 00:25:20,720 Why? Because as I said, the Soviet Union was the overarching common threat to all Europeans, 227 00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:26,510 and the fear was an invasion by the Soviet Union, leading potentially to nuclear war. 228 00:25:26,510 --> 00:25:30,650 But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, defence spending plummeted. 229 00:25:30,650 --> 00:25:34,880 In Europe, countries shifted away from territorial defence, 230 00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:43,310 which had been the key focus of attention during the Cold War and the move toward expeditionary warfare out of area operations. 231 00:25:43,310 --> 00:25:47,840 And this problem was magnified by a strategic cacophony because basically some 232 00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:51,980 of the largest countries in Europe are based in western and southern Europe, 233 00:25:51,980 --> 00:25:58,040 and they have all the emphasised territorial defence and they focussed on expeditionary warfare. 234 00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:04,220 By contrast, you have some countries in Europe that have reinvested in territorial defence capabilities, 235 00:26:04,220 --> 00:26:07,910 but these are mostly small countries in northern and eastern Europe. 236 00:26:07,910 --> 00:26:11,060 So strategic often is in full display here, too. 237 00:26:11,060 --> 00:26:18,680 And the result is that today, Europeans like even the most basic conventional deterrence and defence capabilities, 238 00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:23,930 you have some studies already shown this likes studies by the blade of. 239 00:26:23,930 --> 00:26:29,840 But there was no long term analysis of the year to year shifts across the whole of Europe, 240 00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:36,970 of the core capabilities needed for conventional deterrence and defence. 241 00:26:36,970 --> 00:26:39,700 And this is exactly what we tried to do in the article. 242 00:26:39,700 --> 00:26:48,130 So we systematically gathered data from the bolide bless military balance for the whole period 1990 to 2020, 243 00:26:48,130 --> 00:26:56,440 we focussed on three specific systems for conventional warfare, namely main battle things, armoured personnel carriers and artillery. 244 00:26:56,440 --> 00:27:00,610 And you may ask, why did you focus only on conventional land capabilities? 245 00:27:00,610 --> 00:27:09,400 What about air and naval capabilities? That's a fair point, because conventional warfare, of course, more than simply land capabilities, to be sure. 246 00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:16,960 However, the key point here is that Russia's strategy is specifically aimed at compelling naval forces 247 00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:24,190 in case of conflict to operate in an environment of land warfare with contested air supports. 248 00:27:24,190 --> 00:27:29,590 And so here is why land resistance and therefore land capabilities become key. 249 00:27:29,590 --> 00:27:35,290 And that's why we focus on this specific weapon system. And if you look at the detail. 250 00:27:35,290 --> 00:27:39,190 I'll be brief here, but we can discuss the details if you want in the Q&A. 251 00:27:39,190 --> 00:27:45,620 Look at you think main battle tanks and we divided large, medium and small powers for analytical clarity. 252 00:27:45,620 --> 00:27:52,480 We take all these countries. You see you see a decline by 85 percent from 1990 to 2020. 253 00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:57,040 That's huge. You take artillery. 254 00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:04,990 They decline over the same time frame by 56 percent, and armoured personnel carriers similarly declined by 54 percent. 255 00:28:04,990 --> 00:28:11,770 So this is really staggering figures and it's a massive and severe decline in European capabilities. 256 00:28:11,770 --> 00:28:19,780 But in fact, the situation is even worse because Europeans have significant readiness deficiencies. 257 00:28:19,780 --> 00:28:25,960 Just to give you an example, German parliamentary commissioner for the Armed Forces concluded in 2018 that 258 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:30,550 the readiness of the Bundeswehr military weapon system is dramatically low. 259 00:28:30,550 --> 00:28:37,570 Two small examples almost 40 percent of Germany's battle thanks Lilburn tool available for 260 00:28:37,570 --> 00:28:44,230 use and less than 50 percent of his Eurofighter centre need a combat aircraft were available. 261 00:28:44,230 --> 00:28:52,210 So this is the readiness problem. And of course, Europe, you have actually an additional problem, which is the obsolescence of main battle things, 262 00:28:52,210 --> 00:28:57,980 which is projected to become ever more challenging in the decades ahead. 263 00:28:57,980 --> 00:29:04,250 So this is if we look at conventional capabilities, but in fact, 264 00:29:04,250 --> 00:29:13,610 today there is a growing complexity in weapons systems and the employment of modern weapon systems, 265 00:29:13,610 --> 00:29:19,190 effective employment of modern weapon systems is far more challenging today than it was in past errors. 266 00:29:19,190 --> 00:29:26,450 This is at least in part because of the immense premium put on what is called C4 Isaura capabilities. 267 00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:28,730 This essentially refers to the information, 268 00:29:28,730 --> 00:29:37,820 architecture or nervous systems of modern militaries where you have interlinked in a whole system satellites, computer system, armed forces. 269 00:29:37,820 --> 00:29:46,280 It's really a system of systems, essentially, and these capabilities are crucial for gathering information about combatants and for 270 00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:51,380 effectively processing and disseminating that information amongst the armed forces. 271 00:29:51,380 --> 00:29:55,310 And Europeans have profound shortfalls in this domain. 272 00:29:55,310 --> 00:30:06,320 Again, the 2011 intervention in Libya on how reliant Europeans are on the U.S. for a historic capacity and then was in an intervention in Libya. 273 00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:15,590 So if Europeans, whether it's balance Russia autonomy without the U.S., they would require the development of such a separate assault capabilities, 274 00:30:15,590 --> 00:30:23,060 which not only would take a very long time, but would be a very challenging task because Russia is not Libya. 275 00:30:23,060 --> 00:30:25,130 Now what would they have to do? 276 00:30:25,130 --> 00:30:32,150 They would have to develop large amounts of these separate sort of systems, like reconnaissance and communications satellites, 277 00:30:32,150 --> 00:30:38,600 early warning, control, aircraft intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance drones, military satellites. 278 00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:45,800 So the range of systems is very large. Military satellites are pretty crucial because they allow for communication, 279 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,700 navigation, early warning, attack assessment, surveillance, reconnaissance. 280 00:30:49,700 --> 00:30:55,640 So these are very complex and crucial capabilities. And if you look at the data, this is the result. 281 00:30:55,640 --> 00:31:06,470 You see that Russia enjoys a massive preponderance quantitative preponderance in terms of military satellites compared to any other European country. 282 00:31:06,470 --> 00:31:15,410 But in fact, Brexit with two out of the EU a lot of these capabilities. 283 00:31:15,410 --> 00:31:17,900 But this is only if you look at hardware. 284 00:31:17,900 --> 00:31:25,760 Something which is less this cost is that it's not only a matter of hardware is that you need the specialised personnel to operate. 285 00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:30,320 These separates our capabilities. And that's a huge problem for several reasons. 286 00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:36,860 First of all, you had massive decline in the number of military personnel in the past three decades. 287 00:31:36,860 --> 00:31:42,320 Just the total active active militaries declined by almost 60 percent. 288 00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:47,960 So you would have all the costs involved in buying this additional needed personnel. 289 00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:54,380 But you have another problem, which is that it's increasingly hard to attract personnel for skilled position in the military. 290 00:31:54,380 --> 00:32:01,280 There are very solid studies that showed that advanced weapons systems today require skilled 291 00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:07,010 and highly trained military personnel precisely because these are very advanced capabilities. 292 00:32:07,010 --> 00:32:10,940 These information architecture is pretty complex, 293 00:32:10,940 --> 00:32:20,270 and therefore it's very difficult to recruit and retain this skilled and highly trained military personnel in the military. 294 00:32:20,270 --> 00:32:27,020 And of course, you have the challenge in the time required to train these people very poisoned himself at all. 295 00:32:27,020 --> 00:32:31,040 Wrote about the US of the development of new weapon system and tactics depends 296 00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:36,380 on decades of expensively accumulated technological and tactical experience. 297 00:32:36,380 --> 00:32:42,860 So and this for the US, which is one single country that would take even longer for you for Europeans, 298 00:32:42,860 --> 00:32:49,970 because it's a patchwork of countries with different operational cultures, levels of ambitions, different languages, et cetera. 299 00:32:49,970 --> 00:32:59,510 So it's a pretty daunting task. The third challenge is the difficulty of institutionalised military cooperation, strategic cacophony. 300 00:32:59,510 --> 00:33:05,540 So these divergence diverging interests amongst Europeans have prevented them from developing. 301 00:33:05,540 --> 00:33:12,140 And this is a historical fact from developing an autonomous military planning command and control structure. 302 00:33:12,140 --> 00:33:16,280 Today, there is not autonomous operational headquarter in Europe, 303 00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:21,860 autonomous from the U.S. because of strategic divergences between France, the UK and Germany. 304 00:33:21,860 --> 00:33:22,850 But this is history. 305 00:33:22,850 --> 00:33:31,790 You may say well, but if the US withdrew, could Europeans rely on NATO's command and control integrated structure without the U.S.? 306 00:33:31,790 --> 00:33:41,450 There are two problems here. First of all, is that historically the US has been the hegemonic power was in NATO, and as such, 307 00:33:41,450 --> 00:33:50,660 it has helped overcoming coordination problems and collective action problems between Europeans and because of European strategic cacophony. 308 00:33:50,660 --> 00:33:57,550 The U.S. disengagement from NATO would amplify collective action problems and coordination problems within NATO. 309 00:33:57,550 --> 00:33:59,800 Assuming the need to actually survives, 310 00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:06,580 and the second issue is that one thing is to be in an integrated military structure under the command of the hegemon, 311 00:34:06,580 --> 00:34:11,200 the US, and another thing is to be under the command of another European power. 312 00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:16,300 It's actually extremely unlikely that any European country would be willing to be 313 00:34:16,300 --> 00:34:21,670 under the permanent command of another European country for deterrence and defence. 314 00:34:21,670 --> 00:34:26,830 Do you see France being accepting being under the permanent command of Germany, 315 00:34:26,830 --> 00:34:31,870 for instance, is Britain likely and this is true for all European countries? 316 00:34:31,870 --> 00:34:36,460 All right. The final challenge is the fragmentation of Europe's defence industrial base, 317 00:34:36,460 --> 00:34:46,150 which hinders the capacity of Europeans to produce the defence systems that it needs to balance Russia essentially without the US. 318 00:34:46,150 --> 00:34:52,580 You have fragmentation and both the demand side and the supply side on the demand side. 319 00:34:52,580 --> 00:34:55,180 The data showed that in the past three decades, 320 00:34:55,180 --> 00:35:02,710 Europeans have consistently privilege domestically procured defence equipment of European arms co-operation, 321 00:35:02,710 --> 00:35:05,890 and we're talking 80 percent versus 20 percent. 322 00:35:05,890 --> 00:35:14,200 And the reason is mostly national protectionist practises, which remain the dominant driving force in EU defence procurement, 323 00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:21,070 and this was very well shown by many utterly at King's College London in an excellent study. 324 00:35:21,070 --> 00:35:25,810 You see, we have fragmentation on the supply side, so you have very fragmented, 325 00:35:25,810 --> 00:35:33,550 non-competitive European defence and technological industrial base, which partly results actually from strategic cacophony. 326 00:35:33,550 --> 00:35:41,200 Just to give you an example, you have 16 16 major military shipyards in the EU versus two in the US. 327 00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:47,500 And that's because you have a lot of duplication, inefficiencies and endemic overcapacity in Europe. 328 00:35:47,500 --> 00:35:56,110 So the bottom line of all this is that strategic cacophony and defence capacity shortfalls feed and reinforce one another, 329 00:35:56,110 --> 00:36:05,830 and together they impose rigid limits on the capacity of Europeans to achieve strategic autonomy anytime soon. 330 00:36:05,830 --> 00:36:10,960 Restraints scholars may advance that again have advanced some of them. 331 00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:17,380 It comes to arguments, which is basically to say that, of course, yes, fine. 332 00:36:17,380 --> 00:36:22,780 Europe is currently split today by strategic division and severe capacity shortfalls. 333 00:36:22,780 --> 00:36:33,970 OK. But the study, they argue, or they might argue, that a US withdrawal by delivering such a major shock would do two things. 334 00:36:33,970 --> 00:36:38,980 First of all, it would drive European threat perception to heighten. 335 00:36:38,980 --> 00:36:46,270 So you would have an intensification of this threat perception vis-a-vis Russia and all would converge on Russia, essentially. 336 00:36:46,270 --> 00:36:47,390 And therefore, 337 00:36:47,390 --> 00:36:54,820 the second step because of this heightened threat perception that Europeans would increase their defence investment in order to balance Russia, 338 00:36:54,820 --> 00:37:00,140 either in coalition or through the EU. So that would be the counter argument of the restraint. 339 00:37:00,140 --> 00:37:06,670 Yeah, let's evaluate each one of these logical steps in the council arguments. 340 00:37:06,670 --> 00:37:10,120 So let's look at the first logical step in this country argument, 341 00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:19,690 namely that if the US withdraws this because this European threat perception to heighten and converge around Russia and let's go back to the table, 342 00:37:19,690 --> 00:37:23,140 I was showing you on the threat assessments in Europe. 343 00:37:23,140 --> 00:37:31,030 This is the three major powers and then we'll see for the minor, admit the lesser and medium powers France, Germany and the UK. 344 00:37:31,030 --> 00:37:36,070 As we saw, France sees Russia as a threat, but other threats are more important. 345 00:37:36,070 --> 00:37:44,890 And for Germany, the U.K., Russia and other threats have equal significance if the US pulled out. 346 00:37:44,890 --> 00:37:55,840 This is what would likely happen. Germany and the UK would indeed shift one column to the right, meaning that, in their view, was under us. 347 00:37:55,840 --> 00:38:00,190 Nieto would lose complete credibility in terms of conventional deterrence and defence, 348 00:38:00,190 --> 00:38:07,000 and therefore their threat perception heightened and it would become more concerned by Russia. 349 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,990 Nevertheless, it should be stressed that it's not like the other threats will disappear, 350 00:38:10,990 --> 00:38:19,180 so they would still have to grapple with terrorism, with regional instability in the Middle East, with the larger Mediterranean area. 351 00:38:19,180 --> 00:38:25,510 And so they would have trade-offs in the allocation of their resources between southern and eastern Europe, 352 00:38:25,510 --> 00:38:32,080 between territorial defence and border projection. And this is also why they are not in the loss column of this chance. 353 00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:40,090 France, by contrast, is very unlikely to shift column for France really again because of history, 354 00:38:40,090 --> 00:38:46,510 because of the history of France and how it sought to position itself during the Cold War and after the Cold War, 355 00:38:46,510 --> 00:38:53,380 and also because of its post-colonial ties. The centre of gravity for France is really south of Europe. 356 00:38:53,380 --> 00:38:58,090 Its regional stability in Africa and specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. 357 00:38:58,090 --> 00:39:01,720 So it's very unlikely that France would move ramp up. 358 00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:06,040 Russia is the threat assessments, and because of these different threat perceptions, 359 00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:11,080 the big three would be very likely to reach agreement on a common position vis-a-vis Russia. 360 00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:16,510 If the US withdrew, so be sure Germany and the UK might lean toward balancing, 361 00:39:16,510 --> 00:39:21,790 but it would still have to grapple with other threats and face trade-offs in their resources. 362 00:39:21,790 --> 00:39:31,930 France is very unlikely to provide any substantial contribution to a balancing coalition, and in fact, France may even bandwagon with Russia. 363 00:39:31,930 --> 00:39:37,450 And this was highlighted in interviews by with senior French defence official who said 364 00:39:37,450 --> 00:39:41,830 that actually threats to Europe's southern periphery in Africa and the Middle East. 365 00:39:41,830 --> 00:39:46,030 If the US withdrew, they would still be considered much higher priority than Russia. 366 00:39:46,030 --> 00:39:55,090 Our vital interests are not threatened by Russia. This is in the words of a senior official, and the situation is even more sonic. 367 00:39:55,090 --> 00:40:00,760 If you look at the other states, the medium and small state, 368 00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:06,550 they would have profoundly different reactions as a function of geographic location, history, etc. 369 00:40:06,550 --> 00:40:14,950 The one exception would be these countries in the loss column Baltics, Finland, Poland, for whom Russia is already dominant threat. 370 00:40:14,950 --> 00:40:23,200 But if you think most of the countries in column one and two, they're very unlikely to revise the threat assessment of Russia. 371 00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:31,870 For them, Russia is not a threat or a secondary threat, and they could actually even become neutral or bandwagon with Moscow. 372 00:40:31,870 --> 00:40:41,080 And indeed, even if all countries, all the countries in the stable moved Russia up in their threats assessments, 373 00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:45,460 the cacophony of threat perception would remain. So let's see what would happen. 374 00:40:45,460 --> 00:40:49,420 This is what happens if you have all the countries shifting one column to the right. 375 00:40:49,420 --> 00:40:57,460 Well, the cacophony of threat perceptions remains. So the bottom line here is that it's extremely implausible. 376 00:40:57,460 --> 00:41:05,200 Unlike what restrained scholars argue that all European states move Russia up in the ranking of threats. 377 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,320 Even if they did, the cacophony of threat perception would remain. 378 00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:16,720 And a US withdrawal would therefore not mitigate Europe's strategic cacophony, and it could actually exacerbated. 379 00:41:16,720 --> 00:41:22,390 But let's see the second part of this counter arguments. The research scholars could say, Well, yes, OK. 380 00:41:22,390 --> 00:41:26,260 But even if threat perceptions do not converge across Europe, 381 00:41:26,260 --> 00:41:32,830 it's not a big deal because balancing Russia would not require much effort because Russia is so weak. 382 00:41:32,830 --> 00:41:38,950 And again, they always come back to when the three indicators of GDP, population and defence spending. 383 00:41:38,950 --> 00:41:47,350 But in fact, what we tried to show in the article is that Russia is a much tougher adversary to match than what restraints colours seem to believe, 384 00:41:47,350 --> 00:41:56,200 and that's true both in the conventional and the nuclear domain. Let's look at the conventional domain. 385 00:41:56,200 --> 00:42:06,700 There are three key points to bear in mind. First of all, Russia's defence budget is in fact much higher than what is usually assumed. 386 00:42:06,700 --> 00:42:12,310 So Russia pays its soldiers and its weapons systems in rubles and not in dollars, 387 00:42:12,310 --> 00:42:21,730 and therefore estimates of its military spending that are based on market exchange rates are inaccurate. 388 00:42:21,730 --> 00:42:30,310 If you think military spending and use purchasing power parity exchange rate, Russia's effectively their expenditure is much higher. 389 00:42:30,310 --> 00:42:39,730 So that's an important point. The second point is that precisely given this military spending in the past decade, 390 00:42:39,730 --> 00:42:44,330 Russia, it's substantially increased its defence capabilities, including civil. 391 00:42:44,330 --> 00:42:47,360 Right, it's our capabilities in the past decade. 392 00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:56,540 So if you take from 2015 to 19, the size of the Russian Army, just this increased by almost 25 percent. 393 00:42:56,540 --> 00:43:03,230 And so if you go back to the capabilities that we discussed before, this is the result. 394 00:43:03,230 --> 00:43:11,390 This is the preponderance of Russian capabilities vis a vis any type of coalition of potential balancers vis-a-vis Russia. 395 00:43:11,390 --> 00:43:16,250 And these coalition are based on the table of threat perception that we discussed before. 396 00:43:16,250 --> 00:43:25,220 So this is the preponderance of capabilities of a Russian main battle things vis a vis any coalition of European bouncers. 397 00:43:25,220 --> 00:43:32,660 This is for, excuse me, in armoured personnel carriers. 398 00:43:32,660 --> 00:43:42,320 And you also have preponderance if you look at artillery. Likewise, if you look at total active troops, you have this huge preponderance here too. 399 00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:50,960 And this is again for the fundamental capabilities for the conventional deterrence. 400 00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:58,580 But if you go and look at the more complex systems which are key for C4 air strike capabilities like military satellites, 401 00:43:58,580 --> 00:44:04,190 I just wanted to remind you the huge imbalance in capabilities here, too. 402 00:44:04,190 --> 00:44:09,860 And the last point to bear in mind is that Russia and this is often forgotten. 403 00:44:09,860 --> 00:44:17,660 It's a simple but key point. Russia gains efficiency in service of the Europeans because it's a single actor 404 00:44:17,660 --> 00:44:23,570 that would face a collective patchwork of countries with diverging interests. 405 00:44:23,570 --> 00:44:28,310 And so the bottom line here is that if the US pulled back, a single, 406 00:44:28,310 --> 00:44:35,240 centralised Russian actor would confront a group of potential European bouncers who would have diverging threat perceptions. 407 00:44:35,240 --> 00:44:39,950 And because of that, they would have coordination, challenges, collective action problems. 408 00:44:39,950 --> 00:44:47,600 And this would hamper their capacity to do many things to devise a common strategy to share the burdens of defence investment, 409 00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:53,990 to rationalise the highly fragmented industrial base, to build integrated command and control structure, 410 00:44:53,990 --> 00:44:59,810 and also to sustain, develop and deploy supervisory capacity. 411 00:44:59,810 --> 00:45:02,960 And you also need to keep in mind the timescales involved. 412 00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:12,500 Such a build up of capabilities would take a very long time, and this is very clear stated by senior officials in Europe. 413 00:45:12,500 --> 00:45:15,750 Just take the German foreign foreign policy official, 414 00:45:15,750 --> 00:45:22,460 who stresses that the whole defence and capability requirements would be so extreme that the upgrade that would 415 00:45:22,460 --> 00:45:29,750 be needed to fill the gap if the U.S. completely withdrew is totally off limits for the foreseeable future. 416 00:45:29,750 --> 00:45:38,390 It is pretty clear, and I won't go into the detail of nuclear real, but I can get back to it in the Q&A. 417 00:45:38,390 --> 00:45:47,090 But essentially, you face the same constraint. You have a major, a massive Russian numerical preponderance in terms of nuclear capabilities. 418 00:45:47,090 --> 00:45:52,130 Russia is a single actor facing a patchwork of European actors, 419 00:45:52,130 --> 00:45:59,060 and the strategic divergence and capability constraints would hamper the emergence of a European nuclear deterrence. 420 00:45:59,060 --> 00:46:07,400 I'm happy to say more about it in the Q&A. And so what are the implications of all this? 421 00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:14,540 Ultimately, the notion forwarded by restraints callers that European countries can easily and quickly balance Russia. 422 00:46:14,540 --> 00:46:20,750 It's ungrounded, grounded, in fact, is based on unfounded optimism and the striking restraints. 423 00:46:20,750 --> 00:46:25,640 Collars are a self-described realist, but they need to be more realistic. 424 00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:32,390 Europe today is characterised by profound strategic cacophony and fundamental defence capacity shortfalls. 425 00:46:32,390 --> 00:46:39,830 Therefore, it is today not in a position to autonomously mount a credible deterrent and defence against Russia. 426 00:46:39,830 --> 00:46:47,570 This situation is likely to continue for a very long time, even if there were a complete U.S. withdrawal from the continent, 427 00:46:47,570 --> 00:46:56,000 and it would all the more so be the case in the event of a partial U.S. withdrawal, which again is more likely scenario. 428 00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:04,700 And so the US pulled back from the continent would leave Europeans increasingly vulnerable to Russian aggression and meddling. 429 00:47:04,700 --> 00:47:10,700 It would make institutionalised intra European defence cooperation much harder, 430 00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:16,310 and it would therefore have grave consequences for peace and stability on the continent. 431 00:47:16,310 --> 00:47:23,160 And so you may ask, OK, but this is a pretty depressing overview that you are giving us. 432 00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:28,880 So but what can Europeans do about it? And based on facts, we are working together. 433 00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:34,640 Steve Brooks we're working on a follow up article which tries to address exactly this question. 434 00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:43,160 We had a very preliminary stage, so we would really welcome any kind of feedback, comments, suggestion that you may have the. 435 00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:44,510 And here I'll be very brief. 436 00:47:44,510 --> 00:47:53,240 But essentially two things important things that the Europeans should do, first and foremost, is move beyond wishful thinking. 437 00:47:53,240 --> 00:48:01,910 Essentially, wishful thinking has sometimes prevented a sober and empirically grounded analysis of European interests and capabilities. 438 00:48:01,910 --> 00:48:13,100 And it is my belief that European integration benefits from realistic, hard nosed assessment more than it benefits from impractical wishful thinking. 439 00:48:13,100 --> 00:48:18,890 And the second thing that can be done is to halt the proliferation and prioritise initiatives. 440 00:48:18,890 --> 00:48:25,460 You have so many initiatives in the EU with so many acronyms that it's very hard to just keep track of them. 441 00:48:25,460 --> 00:48:31,210 And in fact, this proliferation of initiatives can end up reinforcing rather than deeming strategic. 442 00:48:31,210 --> 00:48:36,130 Cacophony, and it can also have little impact on existing capacity shortfalls. 443 00:48:36,130 --> 00:48:39,220 So what can be done about it? 444 00:48:39,220 --> 00:48:49,450 Well, our suggestion is that Europeans should focus on very few initiative with targeted initiative that's adhered to essentially three criteria. 445 00:48:49,450 --> 00:48:56,440 The first one is that there should be capabilities that can be developed in the short term, say, five years. 446 00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:02,380 These capabilities should address existing gaps, of course, and they should be vulnerable to the US today. 447 00:49:02,380 --> 00:49:07,270 But these capabilities should also be useful in case the US pulls back. 448 00:49:07,270 --> 00:49:12,340 And so based upon these three criteria, we've tried to identify some potential initiatives. 449 00:49:12,340 --> 00:49:17,440 We ask for feedback to 35 European and American scholars and policymakers. 450 00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:27,640 And let me know that some of these initiatives already exist but are scattered through the EU or NATO and other initiatives don't exist yet. 451 00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:31,360 And so just to give you a few examples, 452 00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:38,440 capability development initiatives would include focussing on military mobility, which is a big problem in Europe, 453 00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:42,370 developing a network of special operation forces across Europe, 454 00:49:42,370 --> 00:49:49,450 which is useful across the spectrum of conflict and bolstering cyber and electronic warfare capabilities. 455 00:49:49,450 --> 00:49:58,360 We could also think potentially of some institutional reforms, like creating a new creating a European Security Council, 456 00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:04,630 which is something she has been put forward in the literature and revising the Stability and growth pact, 457 00:50:04,630 --> 00:50:13,000 meaning seeking out defence investments from the rigid fiscal constraints of the civilian world. 458 00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:18,400 These are just initial preliminary ideas, so we really would welcome your feedback. 459 00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:24,580 And before I conclude, I will just make some shameless self-promotion, 460 00:50:24,580 --> 00:50:29,440 which is that I'm I'm the director of this European initiative for security studies, 461 00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:38,800 which is this network of scholars across Europe who want to bolster and consolidate security studies in Europe. 462 00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:41,080 We have a call for panels and four papers. 463 00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:49,150 The deadline is January 30, and so if there's any Ph.D. or postdoc or scholar here that would like to apply, 464 00:50:49,150 --> 00:50:53,260 we really welcome your pencil or paper proposal. 465 00:50:53,260 --> 00:50:58,180 And with that, I'll conclude, and I very much look forward to your questions and comments. 466 00:50:58,180 --> 00:50:59,242 Thank you.