Ari is a professor of international politics for the University of Oxford and at the Norwegian National Defence University College.
And one of them was Norwegian one, which is still up for. I'm having serious.
I want to show some of your work on European foreign policy and international security policy,
as well as the human rights implications, aspects all but your state secretary.
That is Deputy Foreign Minister for Foreign Affairs of Norway. Often we get a minister to speak.
I'm representing the Christian Democratic Party in public government from 97 to 2000.
And you should be aware of the dangers. I know you were probably just woken up.
Yes. You know what this is?
Here it is. They said European countries capability of this willingness and of course,
is also built on European Union security dynamics and national interest to promote recovery.
I would say 100. But yeah, I've heard a few of these people.
Really? Thank you very much.
It's a great pleasure to be here.
And I have sabbatical this term, so I'm here as the changing character.
What program? Trying to work on a new book which has the working title Strategic Effect Europe and the Use of Force.
And that will try to delve into what strategy means today and the effects of strategy that that we ought to have.
And then look at the empirical examples from European use of force.
So it allows me to indulge in my interest for strategic, should one say, rigour,
and then look at the reality of messy politics, which is in the end, what decides.
Perhaps I have led a NATO research program in Oslo and we are now working on a new program on NAITO with Johns Hopkins University,
hopefully also with the Change in Character World Program,
where we will try to tease out what topics for NAITO politics should be and how to go about developing policy ideas and perhaps consensus on that.
I'm hoping the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will fund it.
They have the first chance and if they want to fund it, the most certainly will.
So there's a chance for foreign policy. Now, what we try to do is in this book, because my co-editor I have a co-editor who is the Swede,
which is always recommendable, because they do all the work on the footnotes.
They are very, very meticulous and very structured.
So I can do the sort of high flying thinking, and they do all the details which are very necessary for an academic work among the Pentagon.
And he is with the Norwegian Defence University as well.
And we asked experts from eight NATO countries to write chapters, not all native countries from Britain, the leading ones,
Spain, Poland, the not so leading ones, but still have great power countries that want to be counted too small.
Western states, Denmark, Norway to another Central European small state, Hungary.
We asked the authors from these states to analyse whether their states have both military capability and political will to use it.
Now, this is very imprecise in a way. It's difficult to herd cats.
Difficult to get academics to to address the same kinds of issues rigorously.
But we have tried and we have a generic part here written where we have a very interesting chapter by Christopher Coker,
pessimistic chapter on the lack of a culture for war, so to speak, in Europe, the peace culture.
Soft power. This enormous cultural change that probably matters a lot.
And the former chief of defence of Norway, general set of business written on the sort of move race to the bottom of tech,
technology or military equipment that many states are now approaching the level of critical mass for their equipment.
So it doesn't do you any good to have two tanks, if that's all you can afford, or two submarines, you have to have at least six or ten or whatever.
So when you get to this point of critical mass,
then there's now a threat that small and medium sized European states will then stand without real military capacity almost all of a sudden,
because this is not a linear program, it's a it's a sort of state which you reach and which politicians are not interested in discussing that much.
So the generic part of this book is perhaps even more interesting than the country chapters.
So I will hand it around for you to just kind of glance at.
I saw that it's in this library. So library use only, unfortunately.
And now let me try to analyse both the findings and the assumptions that we have for this analysis.
And this is just what Americans would say, a first cut, so to speak.
It's a first attempt to be systematic in the analysis of will and capability,
because there are many, many variables that are important to to discuss in much greater detail.
If we look at Europe and we say, what are the assumptions of the use of force today?
What are they essentially? They are that we deal with limited war or the limited use of force for national interest,
or rather for most European states to stop something that is getting too bad to stop something from happening.
A typical Kosovo. Maybe Libya situation.
Some things are too intolerable. So we have immediately a connection to humanitarian intervention, human rights, human security.
So European states do not use force. To.
To promote the national interest aggressively, which is also forbidden in the U.N. pact.
But in a way they have a realistic view at the same time.
There is a growing realism in the use of force realism understood as traditional security policy geopolitics in Europe.
I was just perusing the level of law, the defence security, which came out now the 29th of April.
And the French clearly state that they will secure, stabilise the remains of Europe,
particularly the Maghreb, the Sahel area, and that they will deter, etc.
So it's a geopolitical strategic analysis at the beginning of that which broke.
So. But the use of force is limited and may be used in extreme cases ultimate sale for humanitarian reasons.
But mostly today we don't speak about state to state war.
So it is not Churchillian times no place for Churchillian rhetoric, difficult to engage publics about the use of force.
They have no experience anymore, usually no conscription.
We have retained it. We conscript 10% of the young people.
About. So there's more of a link.
But we study your British Covenant for clues to how to deal with this problem of people not supporting Afghanistan or Libya as a political cause,
but the need to support the soldier or the military profession and the risks of the profession.
So that's why we say that military cultures, the fact that you have an understanding of in society,
general understanding that the military man or woman is in a very different profession, which entails risks of giving one's own life and taking life.
That war and peace are different in so many ways.
But there are that there's a sphere of war or military sphere which is very, very different from civilian life.
States that have this are much more able to use force today than states that lack it, and many states lack it.
So this is and there are interesting empirical examples of this.
Norway has had, I should say, peacekeeping has been the sort of label for the use of force since World War Two.
I mean, the Cold War was on an abstract, systemic level.
The use of force was UN operations.
When they became sharp operations Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, Afghanistan and so on, the politicians were very slow to recognise this and very unwilling.
So they would label this peacekeeping Afghanistan as sort of kind of peacekeeping, doing good for the people in Afghanistan.
The same you would find in in the German discourse, national discourse to an extreme extent.
Germany is the sort of the big but the example we could always point to and see the most extreme kind of peace rhetoric.
And then one looks to Britain and there is defending the national interest in Helmand and so on.
So you talk about war, the Americans talk about war.
Germans talked about peace in Afghanistan, peacekeeping, keeping, the Norwegians transited from doing good,
developing Afghanistan and so on, to acknowledging war, fighting going on.
Never calling it a war because of the legal implications, but saying there is war fighting.
And I was very active in this debate in Norway from the academic standpoint, the free standpoint of criticising the government.
And at one point I wrote in the paper that the Minister of Defence does not laud the sharpshooter.
He aims on behalf of the Government. He shoots on behalf of the government and he hits successfully on behalf of the government.
And the government is not pleased because she, the Minister,
refused to acknowledge this activity at all and said that we are not we don't celebrate military victory.
We have no military tradition. So we find a change.
Afghanistan has been a great lesson for some countries in Europe in this regard.
Also, I should mention that Denmark is a country that turned from having a pacifistic
footnote quality to its major policy in the eighties into becoming a very sort of,
say, forward leaning country in NATO from 1990 onwards.
It has switched or changed its peace culture into a military culture very
consciously by the help or the instigation of two government ministers at the time.
So this is an example that military or teaching cultures are not constant features of the country.
They changed and they may be changed by ultra events or by domestic politicians.
And now, of course, on this focus, the Danish section of nature, something you would never have become,
hadn't Denmark, we being in Helmand and everywhere where the Americans wanted to go.
So this is the background and then we have the nature.
Of course, this is all about the US, almost all about the US, very much about the US pays 77%, 77% of total NATO's cost.
The budget today is American. So Europe as a total is 23%.
Very, very sure. Let's say unacceptable burden sharing.
And burden sharing today, unlike in the Cold War, is not about spending on defence,
it's not the magical percentage of the GDP, but it is about risk winning relevant military capability.
So if you have large mobilisation armies, they do not really count.
They are rather useless because they are maybe useless in a total war against the Soviet Union.
But that was times gone by. So who has the willingness to take risk?
Who has relevant capacity? Meaning expeditionary forces that are professional in every sense.
And you know that European defence structures have undergone a tremendous change,
but slow change after the Cold War from mobilised forces, large standing armies, reservists to expeditionary.
And some countries have changed little Finland.
They have the latest, the bicycle model for the infantry.
But the French are good fighters, of course, but they wait for the Russians.
Still, the Germans are very slow.
They are unwilling to become too expeditionary. The latest policy is to have 10,000 soldiers, only out of 170,000 that can be deployed.
In expeditionary operations. So what counts as relevant combat capabilities today?
Special Forces. Intelligence. Advanced equipment.
The professionalisation for going anywhere on the globe within five days to bring all your support with you.
And of course, there's a strong relationship between the political willingness to use force and having it.
So if you only are politically willing, it doesn't do you very good.
You know, you can't be politically willing without delivering for a very long chapter
in Hungary shows this that Hungarians are more than willing to go anywhere.
The Americans are demanding, but they don't have much to offer.
So the chapter on military capability here by General Dyson points out that budgets determine the real sort of nuts and bolts of security and defence.
And Julian in the French has a wonderful quotation where he says States only recognise as much threat as they can afford.
And this is typically in the official white papers and so on.
You get a wonderful chapter on security risks, security threats and risk.
Then you get a chapter on the budget which has nothing to do with the security and risk chapter.
And then you get to the sort of meat of the paper.
So budgets are decreasing. I checked that the military balance 2013 and some European states are decreasing by 16 17% in in nominal terms Slovak,
Spain, Slovenia, Italy, but also countries like Britain and France are cutting their budgets.
Norway has continued its nominal budget because of the oil.
So we are not cutting back. But in real terms, of course we are.
We are losing spending capability because of the cost nature of procurement.
But during the night of shooting in Chicago, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show interviewed Ivo Daalder, the American ambassador.
And the delivery is very, very correct diplomat.
And and Jon Stewart said, so who is who is cutting back on the need to budget?
And I said, well, Norway is, you know, is in fact, increasing slightly.
And then Jon Stewart said, oh, so that's the new big powers.
This is where we're going to talk next. But anyway, we do, which is also few in the world.
We have to say something about ourselves. We have a chance.
So as Christopher Kolker writes so much about in his various books, there is a cultural factor here which is very deep.
And to him, for him, this is the main explanation why Europe is so uninterested in security independence,
ducking it, avoiding it, not wanting to talk about strategy.
It's a cultural factor of soft power, of the European model of the EU and of not having a national patriotism,
not having a nation to defend, not being proud to defend your nation.
And of course, there's a direct link between what you defend officially.
You defend the king and country, queen and country.
You don't defend an abstract EU or U.N. and so on,
although you could make the point that to the noblest thing is to defend the weak and the and the threatened and so on,
so that humanitarian interventions should be, in a way, giving the legitimacy that is perfect for Europeans.
But I think this cultural factor, which is very fascinating to to deal with,
because when you look at when you speak with German politicians or German intellectuals and so on,
they are in a way shocked at the idea of using force.
It is something that is immoral to them to a very deep extent that they they don't they want to avoid the topic altogether.
Whereas when you speak with Brits or French and so on, this is a fact of normal international politics.
So clearly there are significant differences within Europe.
So I don't think we have explored this. Sort of the peace assumption.
But all strategic insight suggests that if you ignore the possibility of war,
of being put under pressure, of being attacked, then you will invite attack.
So see this parcham parabellum. The old adage is very, very true, that if you have some red lines and if you you signal that these are my red lines,
if you show ability to to you stick not only carrot in diplomacy,
having coercive diplomacy as part of your tool, then certainly you will you will be respected, recognised by the Russians, Chinese and so on.
And of course, Home Alone. This is the film.
You know why this little boy is Home Alone?
And he lives in a very tough neighbourhood. He has some tough people trying to break into his house and he deters them.
And he manages the situation. And Europe being now home alone in Naito more and more is in this kind of tough neighbourhood the Caucasus,
the Middle East, Maghreb, Arab Winter, and, of course, perhaps Russian interest in testing.
Well, we are always thinking about this for the Arctic. Will the Russians at some point test our will to resist in a conflict and again, limited war,
meaning the use of force to gain the upper hand in a conflict of interest and a conflict of interest is normal because interests differ among states.
So we have these scenarios of what happens at sea with air power, sea power, not on land, probably in a quick in and quick out.
And we have potential conflicts with Russia.
I found a very interesting look yesterday in in the bookstore here, just published by an Oxford man called Russia the West, the Military Intervention.
Right. Alison from St Anthony's. And his conclusion is that Russia Russia remains wedded to the idea of a concept of great powers.
So the notion of international law in Russia is the old notion of great power, not take conciliation, ordering the world among the great powers.
It is not human rights, humanitarian interventions and so on.
And he notes that there is no congruence with the West at all regarding the view of international law.
As we saw, Russia use international law very instrumentally in the intervention in Georgia 2008.
And he says there is a positive view of law, which is very, very clear.
There's no recognition of human rights trumping sovereignty.
And the same is true, of course, for China, which has punished Norway quite a lot and still does over the Nobel Peace Prize.
Do you suppose just to make the point that there is no human rights that overrides that is valid for Chinese citizens?
If you break Chinese law, then you are a lawbreaker and a criminal.
And China Going Global is another title just published.
David Campbell also oxygenos the success and he says by 2020, China is the number two for the US in military spending.
In the end, he says quote, All of China's involvement in global security will be shaped by its own calculations of national interest.
So we are in a world now that is economically multipolar already, but which is rapidly becoming also multiple, not rapidly,
perhaps becoming multipolar gradually, at least because the US is really in a class by itself militarily and will be so for a long time.
But we see that China increases its military budget by about 11% yearly.
Russia is now again flying bombers, sorties in Northern not see the same level of exercises as in the Cold War and also modernising.
So I'm not suggesting that China and Russia will be in a par with us, with the U.S. or NATO's anytime soon.
But we see that the use of force is very much a function of the view of international law,
human rights, the view of sovereignty and national interest.
So we have a model of realpolitik, which is the old, centuries old model of international curse,
which is now cropping up again, which is now making itself visible in the South China Sea, but also in Georgia.
This was the need to expansion to Georgia, as was suggested by the native council,
as was promised almost to Georgia, was seen in Russia as being an invasion into their sphere of interest.
So this term sphere of interest, this is now again relevant and this is where we should be concerned.
These are the things that we are in a way what security and defence is about.
It's the it's the system. It's the rules of the system.
Now, given this, what do the Europeans do?
The US is turning to Asia. The US is cutting its budget.
The US expects the burden sharing to become more equal and that the Europeans will lead.
And we take our point of departure from this. Robert Gates.
Politicians are, of course, more interesting when they leave office, when they have left office, than when they are in office and upon leaving.
Gates said at the NATO last ministerial meeting NATO in June 2011.
He said NATO's is becoming a two tiered alliance between members who specialise in the soft humanitarian development,
peacekeeping and talking tasks and those conducting the hard combat missions
between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burden of alliance,
commitment, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership,
be they security guarantees or headquarter visits, but don't want to share the risks and the costs.
This is an old criticism, but this time it's much more vocal.
It's much more real. There is a real impatience in the US and also a lack of interest in nature.
Frankly, for the Europeans, this is very bad news because we need a US interest.
As Lord is my said. The point of NATO is to keep the Russians out, keep the Germans down.
Which they do themselves. Keep the Americans in.
So this is still the, the, uh, the task of Europeans is to keep the Americans in, to keep them interested.
And they are. I was just in Washington some weeks ago and talked about these topics and the lack of interest in NAITO is miserable in Washington.
One can look at the topics for research, which is very much about nuclear South East Asia.
One can look at meetings about NATO and the ambassadors told me that, yes, frankly, it's very hard to get an American interest in NATO.
And for the best measure of this, according to Barry Posen at MIT here,
is that American officers want to have a real career, do not want to go to NATO job.
So I think that's a good indicator.
Now. What do the Americans do then?
If we look at the literature of why why Europeans contribute to operations, we look at what is called alliance dependence.
Snider In 1984 classical article,
but also other empirical studies that the thesis is that we contribute because the
U.S. asks us to do so and the US will naturally go around with a collection box.
What can you contribute and do some arm twisting.
And I've been in such meetings where our diplomats say point taken and we always contribute, almost always contribute because we always fear Russia.
So we have this geopolitical calculus at the bottom of this sensible calculus.
And I think others contribute because they get a sort of red carpet treatment in Washington.
They get close relations with the president and with Britain and so on.
There are many, many advantages to contribute contributions that are not related just to security.
Denmark is a good example. No natural enemies, nothing to fear.
Denmark has abolished its submarine fleet because it's very costly.
They don't need it. But Denmark has gone expeditionary.
And they do. They they are always in the forefront.
They are almost in the mission field.
Before the mission has started,
they were on the way to Libya before the Sarkozy's planes because they reckon that this is sensible international affairs.
So large dependence. When the U.S. beckons.
And then the great or the most disturbing question of the book is what happens when the U.S. does not beckon, when France does it,
or Britain or French British leadership or perhaps nobody will Europe, European Microstates then contribute to any operations?
Now the empirical research is survey what we know about why about this question.
Prestige is important also in a mission where the UK is.
France will come if France should be in a mission without the UK, the UK will be there.
Both countries want a close relationship with Washington.
France has increasingly developed its relationship, so these reasons are very important.
But then also, of course, national interest. France in in Africa has its own security policy in Africa.
So does Britain. Britain and the Falcons, national interests, Norway and the high north.
We we have a sort of way of saying we wonder what the gap is.
The gap is not this sort of of clothing, summer clothing.
But the gap is Article five. And own operations.
What must we take care of in terms of of threats and risks on our own?
What will become an Article five situation?
This question we have debated for 40 years in the Cold War, really wondering what Article five would would be like, what kind of situation.
And then we got the answer, ten, 12, 11, 2001 that it was the attack on Manhattan was Article five.
So it's the only Article five definition in NATO's history, one that the US said.
Thank you. But no, but it's interesting that the since limited war is the thing, not Article five, but skirmishes,
small incidents planned or unplanned or signalled beforehand or not since this is where the action will be.
It is below Article five, in a way. So this is the interesting thing that Europeans may have to deal with risk and threat on their own.
Much, much more than before, because of the nature of of this that Article five is up there,
and it would take a major situation to diagnose it as Article five.
Turkey, Turkey's relations or problems with Syria now and form and in 2003 with Iraq the same question is it Article four?
Can we have consultations under Article four of the Washington treaty, or is it something that almost involves the others?
And the others are not interested in being involved right now in Washington.
Cameron is talking with press conference from yesterday where Cameron came to Washington with some interest in arming the opposition in Syria.
Now it is considerably toned down to having a peace conference, which is what Obama would like not to get involved.
And Turkey is very disappointed. So you see this, this is the fascinating thing that we don't speak about.
Article five. You speak about Article four. Then there is the factor domestic factors.
This is sort of the most illegitimate factor in determining security and defence policy, because if your public opinion,
if your pressure groups, if your coalition concerns determine whether you contribute or not.
It is bad from the point of view of security and defence policy, certainly.
So the question, does domestic politics trump strategic concerns?
And in a way, when you speak about Article four limited situations.
Yes, they do. Is there a way out of this?
In a way, if there something substantial, we shall fight on the beaches situation.
Then there's no question about what's most important. But if it is, we may go to Syria or Libya or so on.
We don't have to. It's not existentially important to us.
Then, of course, why should this be more important than the Coalition keeping the coalition together?
I cite Sarah Kreps, who has written about ISIS,
saying that the old deal in nature was that all parties supported NAITO no breaking of
ranks as long as they had a tacit understanding that you wouldn't break out and say,
Now I go for elections, I want to get out of Iraq.
This will bring me the electoral victory.
This is what, in a way, what Schroeder did in Germany in 2003 use this Iraq issue, opposition to Iraq in order to get re-elected.
Krieps research shows that Icesave contributors continue to contribute, despite public opinion being below 50% for the operation.
Yet they do so only when countries do not break ranks.
No parties, I mean. But when parties break ranks to gain the benefit of being becoming popular, then it unravels.
So she asks, for how long will NATO countries be able to keep a party agreement,
a tacit agreement that security and defence policy is above the fray of domestic politics.
And we see in empirically no way we can see that the parties disagree more and more on missions.
And there is less and less agreement on where to go. But there is an agreement on the importance of NATO because of the geopolitics.
But in other countries where there is no geopolitical sort of structural factor, this disagreement is sort of wide open.
Germany is a case. After 1990, the Germans felt very free to disagree completely.
And now they say in a way we don't we're not interested in defence questions at all.
We're not interested in this field of foreign policy, so to speak.
ISAF is the best case of showing how unequal and unjust the burden sharing has been among allies,
because clearly in an alliance you don't accept that some to take the risk all the time and others do not.
And we saw that Germans took very little risk, although there was fighting in the north.
The Danes went to the south. We went partially in the south, but didn't say so publicly.
Special Forces. They defined the area of operation to Kabul and surroundings and surroundings, plus the rest of the country,
because we have a domestic policy political issue where the left socialists who were in the government,
who are still in the government, opposed to being in the South, opposed being offensive and opposed sending special forces.
So ISAF one sees this spelled out by NATO countries.
Canadian politicians say, we don't accept this.
We die and they pay in a way.
And in Libya, we see the other interesting thing that only some very few contribute in the eyes of all NATO members contributed,
plus a number of others. In Libya, only eight countries contributed and only four of them in very forward combat roles.
Denmark, Norway, being with France, Britain and Belgium, in fact, in doing a lot of sorties,
this was a way for us to say, well, we had some problems in ISA, but we are now good guys in Libya.
So one asks this in the questions.
Uh. What can we say about the results or what do we what can we say here?
The Europeans have historically used force for political ends.
Of course, historically, that's very, very true. The old continent, but also after World War Two.
We all remember the Swiss, French, British venture with Israel, to the dismay of Washington, the Falklands,
Maggie Thatcher, Bosnia, where I think Britain was willing to use ground troops much more so than the U.S.
And also the same was true in Kosovo, but it became an air operation, which, of course, had the strategic effect of being very ineffective.
When you can't use see the policies of Milosevic and his ground movement and you can't bomb him either.
So the complementarity of military tools is very often dispensed with for political reasons.
And now we have the French and the British being more interested in doing something in Syria than the US.
It's a very interesting situation that the French Foreign Minister has talked about the need to at least arm the opposition,
whatever the opposition is. And the same goes for Cameron.
And Libya was a case of French for most French initiatives.
Um, for strategic reasons,
I think to get back in there sort of on the right side of the Arab Spring that followed with being a French British cooperation.
And I think the many, many advised against Cameron's commitment to Libya, but he decided to go.
So in a way we could say is it's an interesting and open question this that you have so many European allies
that are not interested in using force and you have some that are clearly almost taking a lead on Washington,
perhaps with Obama under Obama's policies.
Christopher Coke us. And a very interesting chapter is sort of looking into the historical evolution, cultural factors, the zeitgeist in Europe.
So that's a highly recommendable chapter. General Dyson shows how there must be ability via some kind of defence integration.
And here I would just note that France and Britain are the two most.
They their cooperation on integration is the sort of foremost model today in Europe.
Very little happens. It's a scandalously neglected field because politicians do not want to deal with
the loss of sovereignty that is entailed in some in a radical kind of cooperation,
it being cooperation, albeit niche specialisation.
So this is in a way where the, uh, as we say, the dug is buried.
This is the, this is the sort of Achilles heel that nobody wants to really deal with.
The EU had an attempt at and NATO's that many times.
But nature cannot force anybody to cooperate or integrate.
Can only suggest. So we have some AWACS.
We have transport planes, some common nature projects.
But there are so many plane systems, so many tank systems, so many artillery systems and so on in small European states.
So in a way, this will go very badly unless something is radically done about it.
Nature has no common security strategic vision, despite the concepts, the strategic concepts being sort of diplomatic papers these days.
So Naito is a coalition of the willing and able at any one time.
It's a coalition. It is not.
It's a sort of you dip into it and you use the military command structure, which is unique to naito shock American experts.
He says this time it's serious. It's real.
It's a generational thing. American politicians have no particular link to Europe, not nothing to World War Two anymore.
The cover story When I was in Washington in the last two years, it was interesting.
And also during the Libya operation, the press reported on the cost of the cruise missiles.
Today we shot ten cruise missiles. The price tag is this.
I've never seen that before. So the sort of cost consciousness and the, you know, naito the NAITO literature, which is often very poor,
very academic, I mean, analytically, very poor because it's very opinionated, sort of this expert thing stuff and so on.
It talks about crisis. So you have 60 years of literature about crisis.
And Henry Kissinger has the record of predicting crisis every decade of these 60 years.
So, you know, you find crises and crises. But if you look at the variables that are at play now, it's it's different from the usual crisis.
Cry wolf. In Britain, you have the foreign policy prerogative.
That means that the head of state can decide, not the head of state.
She is not doing that. But the Prime Minister Government decides on the use of force without having to get the okay of Parliament.
You have global power status wants to retain.
It must integrate more with France, probably.
Uh, I, I don't have time to go into the details, but, you know, Britain is always about Trumps written in a very Franco English style chapter.
So you might enjoy that.
Uh, France is perhaps the country that has the most consistent strategic thinking, and I would just recommend the level of law for its analysis.
It's, you know, they are really serious about nuclear deterrence.
They say we will shoot first. You know, if you if you misunderstand our national red lines, we will hit a light nuclear doses at you.
I mean, they are they are really extremely serious about nuclear deterrence.
And they say we must be responsible for parts of Africa because it's in our interest.
And in Mali, operation is an example of exactly this policy.
It's a unilateral French with some British NATO there after a while.
So this is interesting because France has been the odd man out.
Of course, after the Gauls 66 withdrawal from the military command, but will now with Hollande stay in the military command.
And the employer here writes that what we will do is to be nice and good, sort of be in NATO's work with the Americans and,
of course, with the British, although we think the British are now sort of on a slippery slope regarding the EU and Europe.
So we are waiting to see what they decide and we will right wait for the right moment to relaunch a European common security policy.
So that's the very consistent thinking. It is the goal.
And there's a continuity because ideology doesn't matter when they have the system they have of installation of the armed forces,
strategic thinking, the ground they call recruitment to the state and defence industry.
They have a sort of walled strategic setup.
So ideology is what people think and so on. Doesn't really get to them, doesn't matter.
And I would say also that the use of force is incredibly popular in France.
76% supported the Mali and supports the Mali mission.
You know, so Hollande discovers that he can get popular by not by cutting, not by taxing the rich as a good socialist,
but by using force like a socialist usually would want to do Germany, Belgium instead, who has now a professorship in Australia.
So he's safely on the Down Under. He can say what he wants.
Very good analysis of Germany, of course, being the cultural factor, being still very, very important part of stroke.
When he was Defence Minister, I asked him about why are you so sort of cowardly there?
Why aren't you doing more in Afghanistan? Why aren't you in combat operations?
And he said, Well, we did World War Two, so, you know, we have to make amends.
He was still using this world war to excuse 70 years after.
And my son, who was a combat soldier in the in the north and the quick reaction force in the north,
he had to they were out saving Germans in Kunduz when they were attacked because they would never get out of the country.
So Germany has sort of from a soldier's point of view,
it's despicable in a way what they offer the soldiers in terms of recognition or lack of recognition.
But it is the economic giant in Europe. So in nitro, it has to you know, something has to happen to make the Germans do more.
If NATO's going to be viable in Europe, that's the one point.
And the other point that Sam makes is that Germany has now come of age and talks about national interest.
But so they are in a way able to say, we're not interested in the national interest of and we're not interested in the security and defence.
Thank you. We are interested in economic policy. So we want to be a great economic power.
We are not going to lead in nature. We don't want to get embroiled in anything in Africa.
We have chosen a different path.
This is really a very interesting post-modern view of foreign and security policy, very consistent with soft power thinking.
And Libya is, you know, a good example of this.
Germany abstained with Russia and China on the resolution, giving all necessary means the power to use force in Libya.
So why would they abstain when they could have just gone with it and not contributed much?
There is some disagreement on the interpretation of this,
but the effect is really that Germany said we we take a completely different course than that of the US, U.K., France and the others in.
We don't care much about NATO's solidarity at all. Spain pacifistic?
Very much so. The legacy of NATO's negative view of the military arsenal was very ideologically
interested in being close to Washington and therefore was in the Iraq war.
And as you know, probably one of the cases where we can trace a terrorist website to a sort of a course
of action was when the Spaniards and the Brits had elections at the same time.
And the Islamist website central in that sort of neck of the woods suggested
that somebody should attack in either one of the countries to get the election,
to get the socialist elections elected in Spain.
And they said you should probably choose Spain because if the socialists get in, they will retreat from Iraq.
And as you know, the Madrid attacks came a week before the elections.
Zapatero was elected and immediately the troops from Spain were drawn back from Iraq.
But nowadays, Spain is an enormous crisis. But it's interesting that this former great power has such a negative view of of the military.
CONAN On the other hand, it's very willing and very proud of its military tradition,
but it follows very much the U.S. So it was not interested in being in Libya
at point that was publicly criticised by Gates then some lesser countries,
perhaps three small ones, Hungary. Uh, all also motivated by the fear of Russia.
Geopolitics like Poland, like Norway, like the Baltics.
Not much to contribute, although they had a party in Ibiza the days I explained.
Very, very eager to be close to the US. Way usually the same.
So it's sort of the old Mateo sort of thinking.
The findings, uh, countries where there is a military culture which makes it much easier to deploy in non-essential war, so to speak.
France, U.K., Denmark. Norway.
Not in Germany, not in Spain. Not in Italy.
Of course, one could study this in much greater detail where there is a lack of such a culture.
Politics matters in terms of ideology. Socialism as a negative to the use of force.
Conservative parties are not. And so on negative to us.
So you can see that governments colours will matter.
And then the key question, what happens when the US is not going to lead and called for contributions?
Will it be this? If you look at the deployments and operations after 99, it's been events driven.
I mean, it's all been events driven. Nobody had planned for Kosovo.
Was now Libya or Libya perhaps is an exception Afghanistan.
So if Europe is going to make sense in security and defence policy, it has to rediscover the logic of strategy.
And that means deterrence, deterring against being put under pressure, being manipulated, being influenced.
That's probably what deterrence means today to say this will not be tolerated.
Also in terms of massacres. So, you know, if you have impunity in civil wars, you can kill 70,000 like in Libya.
Nobody cares if you have this old fashioned realism as the only red line in a way that you have to have a national interest.
Then we are back to a very sort of undesirable world, I think, where European values cannot, cannot have any future.
If you don't want to defend this emphasis on humanitarian law, human rights, human dignity, all of the should one say,
the ideological ideas we have and hold on to very strongly if you don't want to defend them,
then they will be done in by power politics when others are more powerful.
So deterrence, which is I hope to try to do better than right about now, is really important.
And one hasn't really started to think about it. And the same is also coercion, the will to coerce effectively.
And that, as you know, there's a rather good literature on this.
There's an unusable, enormous literature on deterrence from the Cold War,
because nuclear deterrence is not what it's about anymore, at least not in the Western world.
But. Coercion is extremely important.
That's a small attitude. Coercion. Thank God, you know, not many key folks, but it shows the empirical things show that it fails.
Somebody said 36% of cases were successful when Europeans coerced.
And you can just logically deduce that the credibility of the threat is the key to any coercion.
If you if you're threatened and you don't do anything, then you lose face and credibility as that's you.
This is the, by the way,
an American who because this is Obama in the Caribbean and he says this is Syria and this is Assad with nerve gas and says, do not cross.
This is the first red line. Do really not cross this red line.
And the third one is do really, really not cross. This is where we also have not.
So it's interesting economist in the latest issue says that the foreign policy of Obama is really a lot of wishful thinking.
And in light of Syria, Obama looks guilty of overconfidence and of arrogantly believing that by being cleverer than Mr. Bush,
he could avoid traps, the traps that plagued him or the dilemmas that plagued him.
Uh, but in terms of leadership in both thinking and doing practice, uh,
there is only one possibility in Europe, and that's the French British cooperation.
And I mentioned this labour law, which is very promising, and they don't cut as much as feared.
And now, in a way. The paradoxical situation.
That perhaps. France and Britain are the ones that show a sort of willingness to to deal with the unpleasantness of hard power.