Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for this invitation.
It's really a pleasure to be here today and to have a chance to to share some some views on the intervention in Libya.
I have had a career both in government and outside government.
And and some of the lessons I will try to draw today come from that sort of mixed experience of the civilian government with or variations,
EU operation needed operations and but also from my recent involvement in more European security affairs,
I was last here especially as an advisor to the group on a group of experts on the NATO's strategic concept.
And I had no rights. And so some of this will be reflected in this presentation.
Obviously, it's very early to draw lessons from Libya.
The operation has only begun a couple of months ago. And it's it's the final outcome of the operation remains pretty unpredictable.
So it would be somehow difficult to say whether it's a it's such a tremendous
success that we can draw fantastic lessons or is such a dramatic failure that it's.
So my my look at it will be more to say at this stage.
What does it tell us about military capabilities in Europe,
about the transatlantic relations and about the Europeans and EU in that context and doing that?
My first one would probably be to emphasise the fact that there are some unique features that are
associated with the Libyan operation that we should we should keep in mind when discussing that.
The first one is that the operation was decided in the context of what was perceived that the humanitarian emergency,
when the decision was taken to start the air campaign, and two,
to first to get the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted and then to start the air campaign.
There was this sense that has been maybe a bit lost since, because obviously some of the civilian casualties have not stopped,
but to prevent a massacre in Benghazi and to limit further civilian casualties, that was the whole purpose of the resolution.
And that was the main political driver, I believe, behind the operation when it started this.
And there there is something that we might probably discuss in the Q&A is how this was connected to the responsibility
to protect and these are two dimension is is interesting especially since it got a bit lost as the operation evolved.
So so I mean this justification for for going to the use of force was was then somehow
wondering and I leave that open for the moment whether it's a good case for law to be,
it's whether it's a good case study or not.
But I probably lean towards the later the latter in in thinking that all of this might also explain a certain sense of unpreparedness.
I think we discussed and interviewed some of the military planners for the operation.
They emphasise the point that everything was pretty much planned in a rush, meaning that they had limited time to plan for the operation,
that the standard practice, which would have been to use a dedicated headquarters to that did not take place.
And somehow it was a sort of emergency contingency planning with very limited time to do that, with a lot of unknowns for the military plan.
As they were planning, they didn't know what would be the exact scope of the resolution mandate.
As you remember, this all started with the no fly zone debates and ended up with something a bit broader.
So obviously, the planning, military planning changed as as the resolution mandate became more known.
Secondly, the number of participants and the nature of the coalition were not known either.
When the planning started, it wasn't clear whether it was going to be a NATO operation or the EU operation in ad hoc coalition,
a sort of coalition of the willing operation. And this was obviously and.
Would take part in the operation. And again, as you remember the at the outset of the operation,
there was a big idea on the part of the French and the Brits in particular that this should involve a significant Arab input,
which turned out to be extremely limited.
So it's very much a Western operation at this stage.
And finally and I'll come back to that in detail is the US contribution itself was known only at the very latest,
the latest stage of the planning process as the US was pretty reluctant to get involved.
I'll come back to that in a second. So on the U.S. involvement.
Second and second, a unique feature. It's quite clear that the US involvement was decided pretty late in the process.
What I mean by that is that there was a very important debate in Washington that we're all familiar with,
with the fact that for different reasons there were serious doubts raised in Washington on the feasibility,
the opportunity of of of of launching a military operation, both for the political reason yet another war in an Arab states,
in a muslim state, which obviously played a role in the reluctance of the Obama administration to get involved in this one.
And secondly, a sense of military overstretch, which was very clear in the Pentagon,
where Secretary Gates made clear that from the outset of the I mean, in the very first days of the crisis, that it was a test for the Europeans.
And that's basically that the U.S. military had very little capabilities to offer to and was itself focussed
on Afghanistan and didn't want to be to lose its focus by getting involved in Libya in a significant fashion.
And similarly, my reading of the internal debate, of course, we will have to wait for the next Woodward book to get to the insights of that.
But was that and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sort of made the decision to move forward under the pressure of the French and British allies,
both for purely military reasons, there were some capabilities that would only the US could provide,
so the operation would have been far more difficult without US involvement.
And secondly, it was sense that in the context of the Arab Spring,
it was a sort of opportunity to demonstrate that the West was siding with the right guys to to put it in in simple terms.
And that somehow could not be accepted to see the see the sort of massacre of of unarmed civilians take place without acting.
One interesting element of this is I think a lot of this has to do with not so much the memories of Afghanistan or Iraq,
but a lot to do with the Balkans.
And it's not I think it's worth noticing that some of the people that were involved in the policy discussions, in the planning of this,
I'm thinking on the French side, but probably also in London and Washington,
where people that had the personal, political, institutional memory of the Balkans.
And that I think it gives a sense.
You know, for me, the an interesting comparison is the decisions of the Senate of 95 about Bosnia when when the French and the Brits
established the rapid reaction force and decided to sort of move out of the strictly blue helmets into peacekeeping forces,
into something more that had been pushing the Americans into a NATO led operation.
I think we have we have pretty much an interesting parallel to be drawn there.
A second thing about the US involvement and again fairly unique is the fact that the US
military commitment ended of being fairly limited and going to a few more details in a minute.
But and the choice which was very much pushed by.
The British government to use a need to commend assets,
which was a way to make the point that using need to secure the US involvement
proved somehow wrong in the sense that it didn't secure that U.S. involvement.
And in fact the US involvement was much more significant in the non-NATO phase of the operation than in the NATO phase,
and that's when stated was in charge. The US contribution to the campaign declined, although it stayed.
It remained quite important in pure military capability terms.
Finally, a third.
The third feature for this introduction that I would highlight is the fact that the West was divided in its efforts to resolve the Libyan crisis
over a wide spectrum of positions Berlin abstaining in the U.N. Security Council and opposing quite publicly the use of force as an option,
that was not a reasonable one.
Paris and London taking the lead in the military campaign and willing some other countries like Italy in that direction and Washington engaging,
as they said, reluctantly, before withdrawing most of its forces.
So we have a fairly wide spectrum that that contrasts very much with, whether it's in the situation in Afghanistan, where, at least in theory,
the Western alliance, NATO, is very much united behind a common goal in spite of the huge differences in terms of of military input into the campaign.
So for that, I'm not sure I would pull the comparison too far, but there is a sort of a new divide,
a bit like the Iraq divide between those who intervene and those who don't and amongst those who don't, those who oppose the idea,
the idea of an intervention and criticise it, and that in spite of efforts on the part of diplomats to agree on some of these differences,
they still remain in informal discussions with German officials.
They still question whether the use of force was a wise choice.
And even those who are a bit critical about the German vote in the UN Security Council,
they still make the point that the air campaign will not solve anything, which is, after all, a point that is worth making.
And that obviously because of the time constraints I was mentioning, was not discussed thoroughly before the operation started.
So, you know, and they were there was no clear alternative offered by those who were reluctant to use force to that.
So to come to the more military part of of of the lessons.
I would I would put the emphasis on one element,
which is which are the limits of European military capabilities that were very severely highlighted from my perspective during this campaign.
All in all, it is a very limited air campaign.
The it averaged 200 assaults a day, which is the fairly small amount of of of flights.
And amongst those, the number of offensive sorties that those who strike are currently to above 60 and never peaked far above 100 per day.
If you want and and this is after the America the withdrawal of American offensive of most of the American offensive capabilities.
So in if you compare to that with another air interdiction air strike campaign, which is Kosovo, Kosovo,
for over a period of three months, averaged 700 to 1000 sorties a day, including 300 strikes a day.
So if we have something which is very much about one fifth of Kosovo in terms of
of the air power engaged in the operation and the number of of strikes performed.
So it's a very limited campaign from a military perspective.
And in spite of that, the Europeans have been very, I think, a very hard time to perform the mission.
Obviously, France and Britain said the national.
And being a gospel Ahmet Ahmet don't follow the French.
And the Persian element for the Brits alone provide about two thirds of the capabilities engaged and and and most of the offensive missions.
Not only that, but the US assets are critical to making this mission possible without the US support,
in spite of what I was saying in terms of withdrawing of offensive capabilities.
The US support is critical in several fields. You have air in your air to air refuelling.
The did or do European capabilities would not allow on their own the mission to go
on at its at its current pace limited base in absence of U.S. tankers available,
air tankers available. You have the same problem with the you.
That is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, where US capabilities are critically needed for NATO to be able to perform the mission.
And there was is is a request to the U.S. to provide the long range UAV so the drones for the mission,
which again, the Europeans didn't have available for that.
So so there were significant military shortcomings.
And and many Europeans, even those who contribute to the mission.
So they are only provided have only provided very, very limited capabilities,
handful of planes and with and many of them already feel a bit overstretched with that.
So it's something that is, I think, very telling about the status of of European military assets at the moment.
And I think it's interesting and it makes good points and, you know,
connects to the concern expressed by Secretary Gates in 2010 about what he calls the denuded demilitarisation of Europe from a capability perspective.
I think it is quite clear. So ultimately, in this context, NATO's appears pretty much as a shallow military alliance.
And it's, you know, alleged overwhelming conventional superiority ends up being an American contention and security.
It's not a need to so little without the Americans or with a limited American involvement,
doesn't have that sort of overwhelming conventional capability that that enables the European side of NATO's,
even with the support of of Canada, to to run a a very limited air campaign again.
So there are and the fact that many in Europe are making the point after a couple of months
that maybe this has gone on for too long and maybe we've spent too much money on this,
and do we have the ammunition necessary to continue and things like that?
And for the moment, completely putting aside the political dimension of this debate, are sort of making that point.
So it's I think it's a very, very important point to to have in mind, which is that all together, when there is this even a NATO operation,
short of a significant American involvement, only France and Britain are in a position to commit significant military contributions.
And even those military contributions, we have a sense of overstretch in Paris or London on that.
And that's not much to say about where the others stand in this.
So that has implications is it will be my second point on the the transatlantic partnership
and need to I would suggest in 2010 when NATO's strategic concept was adopted,
it was seen by many as a sort of a renewal of force, as Madeleine Albright put it,
to, you know, the alliance getting together for 60 years and and sort of making the.
Behind it. We were all very much committed to this transatlantic dimension.
But I believe that one year after not even one year after, the alliance appears in fairly poor shape politically, as I would saying,
Europe was divided between the US, depending on where you sit to, you know, interventionist hawks and peace minded doves.
But and it's it's not a good sign.
It did struggle together a rather conditional and limited U.S. support for an operation in its backyard.
And many of those who advocated the fact that NATO's should be in charge within the alliance amongst the 28 allies.
In fact, one senator was in charge, did just that as a way to get political oversight over the operation, but didn't commit any force if they had any.
Since many countries just don't have an Air Force for that kind of mission within the alliance.
So that leaves us with a new that is more and more a sort of virtual alliance which politically lasts a
united view of strategic affairs and military and lacks militarily the capabilities to shape events.
If the US is not in the driver's seat. So I think it's it's interesting in,
in the sort of post-Lisbon context where supposedly a new was given a fresh start to see that
in this Libyan context this situation if we were to do a genuine post-crisis assessment,
I think that there are several issues that would need to be tackled in the transatlantic context.
I think first and foremost, and I'll come back to that in a second for the Europeans, especially.
And they really need to think seriously about security challenges and defence.
And where do they stand in that debate?
Are they ready to make the sort of minimal budgetary effort in order to not to completely vanish from the security landscape?
Or are they entirely subcontracted defence and security matters to the Americans,
even if the would be the US is less and less interested in European security.
So we are in this situation and again,
I wouldn't at this stage tell if if going into Libya was the best option and the use of force was the best option.
But I tend to believe that one point is clear is that if the downfall of European military budgets and military readiness to use force continues,
the use of force will just no longer be an option.
So the sort of spectrum of option will very, very rapidly diminish on the US side of the transatlantic debate.
I think the United States has not yet made clear what it did expect from its European allies, and I think this is a problem.
What are the expectations in the security realm in particular?
Is the the the military role to sort of contribute in a modest fashion to the US led operation in Afghanistan
and be a sort of second rank or third rank or fourth round contributor to two such operations being,
you know, offering some of the footsoldiers for US led operations.
Or is the European role to manage some of the security environment and especially
sort of take over responsibility in what one can consider its backyard,
the Mediterranean and so on? So do the message from Washington on.
This has been unclear and some of the hesitation that was perceived in Libya is, I think,
quite telling for that, because somehow the Americans both wanted to be seen as taking the lead.
You might remember President Obama's speech in the first days of the crisis where he forgot to mention his European
allies as as the because he was making a domestic point for for is Republican opposition saying we still need that,
don't worry.
Well, at the same time, I think Secretary Gates calling for the Europeans to take their responsibility and take the lead on this operation.
So I don't think they've made up their mind on that yet.
So ultimately, the Europeans do have to to to clarify how they perceive themselves.
I mean. I'll be a security provider and a strategic player.
Or are there more and more? And that's my perception increasingly as a back to a security consumer situation and a
sort of free rider relying on the idea that America will be there if things go wrong.
And why should we spend any money or is I'll take any strategic risks by intervening, obviously,
and this is my last point that I explain to them that in a minute the Europeans are quite divided on this themselves,
but part of it being the fact that Washington hasn't sent yet some clear signals about that, I think we better think through that in advance,
because in the current budgetary context in the US, it is likely that the burden sharing debate will start again.
I don't see how a US Congress will accept indefinitely when there are cuts in the budget to pay for European security,
while the Europeans continue to downsize the military budgets in military capabilities.
There's going to be an increasing pressure on the US side and we better think about it on this side of the Atlantic.
So finally, what are the lessons for Europe? Both the CFSP and CSDP.
In that context, I mean see, the EU as such did not perform much better than need to and probably did worse.
From my perspective, and I see the events related to the Libyan crisis as a series of missed opportunity,
there was a complete lack of political leadership at all stages of the crisis coming from the EU institutions.
We did not take the lead in trying to bring together the Europeans in a unified position
which did not offer a sort of alternative option to the sort of use of force that
the French and the Brits were advocating did not offer even a sort of complementary
approach which would have been more political and would have sort of come into play.
We haven't seen the European EU leaders on the stage on this Libyan thing.
There was not even an early reaction in the first days of the Libyan crisis, for instance.
The one criticism I do very strongly about this is that I believe Europe should have, and that was really a core competence.
The task immediately set up an operation to evacuate its own citizens.
I mean, the Chinese evacuated their citizens, but the EU, which is not that far away,
was not able to put itself it put its act together to do a joint operation.
It ended up being a series of national operations, which, of course, made sense.
There are no Italians and Danes in Libya, but one could have imagine an evacuation operation,
the Italian and EU evacuation of the operation under the Petersburg task and the Italian lead.
That would have made perfect sense. That was not just not even in the cards.
I understand. So I find it quite, quite problematic.
Of course, there was a complete lack of unity throughout the crisis. We didn't manage to have a serious twelfths and and to do that,
I'm not blaming it only on those who disagreed with the French and the British blame it also on the French and the Brits,
which at a certain point should sort of focus their efforts in securing a UNESCO resolution
and not necessarily making sure they had the support of European partners in this operation.
And the various EU summits where were throughout this Libyan crisis were were quite telling
in the sense that the German felt bullied but and didn't but didn't offer an alternative path
either you know this or complain without offering an alternative path ultimately to this very
strange decision of voting and of having a different vote pattern than the rest of the West.
If I may put it this way, this came as quite a shock.
India is getting a sentence, by the way, so it's going to be interesting.
I'll come back to that in my final questions.
Some of the other Europeans just hide did hide behind the Germans and most of the central and Eastern
Europeans were quite happy to not to to see the Germans somehow taking the blame for the division of the EU.
Anita But they did surely did not commit any planes or troops or effort to this operation and they were quite happy to not be asked to do so.
So so we have this a very divided Europe, which makes things worse.
So that leads me to my final remark. Q Question for the future about Europe.
The first issue and then come back to the capability issue is Europe and the EU
altogether capable of managing even a limited military operation in its backyard?
The short answer is hardly. And I think we have to to think about that, because I think we are.
I mean, if we compare that to the Helsinki headline goals to I mean,
all the capability this course of the EU in the last ten, 12 years, we are falling very much short of on this.
And the loopholes in European capabilities have been demonstrated not only on paper in a European Defence Agency reports,
but in practice in running this operation.
The budgetary implications and the effect of the global financial crisis have been only increasing this tendency,
and I think the path is likely to continue.
Your most of your obviously familiar with the numbers,
but I think it's quite telling to say that the EU has about as a GDP that is about
140% of the US GDP and has a defence spending which is about 37% of the US spending.
So so that's this discrepancy is quite telling.
And then just to to avoid the question that I'm not advocating that we should spend as much as the US.
Obviously the US overspends on defence and and has security commitments that are by definition much broader than the European ones.
But I think the previous ratio, which was about 62/3 of US defence spending,
was probably a bit more sustainable in the long term to choose to to do to do this, which was the case, let's say, about ten years ago.
And this sort of discrepancy was more more acceptable,
both in terms of burden sharing and in terms of what it meant for the capabilities of both sides.
Secondly, second question,
do the Europeans share a more or less common assessment of the security environment and a common desire to be involved in crisis management?
For me, this is unclear. We didn't need to.
We just don't have the security and common assessment of the security environment.
It's one thing I believe that the strategic concept is pretty much missed.
And there is if you look at in the documents,
there is a big difference between the old bridge report in the strategic concept itself, in the NATO process.
There is no assessment of the strategic environment. And when I did ask two very senior Nieto officials about that,
saying it's it's a pity we didn't you know, we do a strategic concept once every ten years.
We could probably get a set for for a couple of weeks to try to find this common assessment.
And the answer was, of course not because we disagree, which I find quite telling about where the alliance is.
And I believe it's the same within the EU now because it's not necessarily a transatlantic divide.
And for that, I would, as a sort of policy recommendation, have been urging to review the European Security Strategy,
which was, as you know, issued in 2003 and vaguely reviewed in 2008.
Somehow, we really need to think through what the Arab Spring means for security.
Where does the EU stand in the Asian security landscape?
How do we tackle these issues?
Because otherwise we might face more Libyans and more divisions and have not thought through how we would approach that.
Thirdly, one of the crucial. Students raised by Libya.
Is there is an area of responsibility for the Europeans.
You know, and this connects with the U.S. approach on the division of labour.
And this connects to also what perception we have of a strategic role for the EU.
And they are not talking only in the military sense, but also in the diplomatic involvement in managing crisis.
So in saying, is there a source of what could be named a European backyard where the Europeans are more or less in charge?
There is the continent itself, too, including the Balkans and some of the or near abroad to use a Russian concept.
So whether it's the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, how do we have special responsibilities there?
If you look at the past of the yes, the options, if there is a clear message, most of those.
Yes. Deep operation have taken place in Africa from the Horn of Africa to Central Africa, out to Western Africa.
So and in the Balkans. So maybe it's a message.
The one of the successes of the CFSP has been the involvement in Georgia.
So it's a bit telling. So should we focus on that region and are the capabilities that go with that and design the policies that go with that?
I think it's worth discussing that amongst European and that connects with the debates on the European security strategy.
Fourthly, a question to which I have no answer, which is to ask whether the European divisions were more the exception or the rule.
What I mean by that is, was the fact that the Europeans and especially the three big Europeans were divided.
Was this a very exceptional setting? Based on the domestic political issues in the three countries?
Or was it something which is likely to become more normal with a reshuffling of cards where we see France and Britain
siding together in the countries in the aftermath of the Treaty of November 2010 or and Germany being more isolated,
more focussed on on non hard security challenges and these the least interested in crisis management and in deploying forces abroad.
To put it bluntly with regard to Germany,
my question would be how we address Libya and signal the end of a parenthesis in German foreign and security policy,
which I would call as a matter of simplification, the Fischer moment of of a Germany ready to commit itself in Kosovo,
even in the absence of a UN security mandate of a Germany that is sending troops in Afghanistan, of a Germany that is providing forces to the mission,
to a Germany that is very an increasingly reluctant to use force for a variety of domestic reasons,
and probably because of more broadly of a security perception that for the first time maybe in German history,
Germany is no longer facing any security,
direct security challenges being in the heart of Europe with only friendly neighbouring countries,
having resolved its historical competition with all its past adversaries, whether it's France, Russia, Poland, whomever.
And if this is the case, what does it tell us about the future of the EU, given the normal and very important weight of Germany in the EU system?
Do we see a division between sort of interventionist part of the EU by opposition to to to another part?
And where do the others sit in that debate? And I think it's very we have to look very carefully into the so-called small countries in that debate.
I think they are very important, some of them, and they don't come as as a group.
Some of them have been engaged in the operations in Libya and have also committed lots of forces in Afghanistan in the past,
typically Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. Some of them are complete free riders.
The. They don't spend anything on defence and they you know, if you look at the Austrian decision to just abandon the concept of an air force,
it's it's a very, very easy choice to make when you're Australia.
And I mean the most hostile neighbour is Liechtenstein.
So you're not completely in a system where you run any serious risks.
I mean, thought that the Eastern Europeans themselves are still in this process of wondering whether they are more focussed on that,
which was very clear and the need to debate more focussed on territorial defence.
And, and somehow when you you discuss or interview senior officials in Eastern Europe,
basically their commitment to NATO operations, to EU operations is really a token to say when you ask we were there.
So when we asked, will you be the type of relationship?
But they they don't really buy the argument about crisis management and expeditionary need to our EU.
They're not really interested in that. Beyond that, the very, very close region, region for them.
The fifth and last question that is connected to the previous one is the is
the issue of whether some Europeans have become allergic to the use of force,
which is, I think, a big challenge. And I see that very much in the EU debates as some of you,
I go to Brussels quite often and discuss with the people in the U.S. and in the various European institutions,
and I'm quite struck at the fact that they feel so posed this Italian in a way.
You know, they they they are truly convinced, which is a good news.
That's, you know, some sort of war has disappeared from the landscape, which is true for the European continent, for most of it.
And that's a very good news, but somehow not necessarily true for the rest of the world.
And this sense that because we have such a great model that is post-conflict,
because of its value and of all the and all about smart power and cooperation and make it short and doesn't
necessarily mean that the rest of the world we will leave us in peace and we might face those crisis.
And if we you know, the fact that we we are willing to use a force doesn't necessarily mean that we will never be confronted with that.
And somehow I tend to believe that Libya is is a should serve as a reminder that near Europe
we might be faced with political challenge that that might imply the use of force for that.
And my last question is, which is connected to this one, is that what kind of narrative do we really offer?
If we are not, then, you know, if we we take the view that the the the hard security narrative is something of the past.
And I think the Europeans, and it's very clear in the context of the Arab Spring, have not come up with something as some sort of alternative to that.
I wish the EU had come up with some sort of Marshall Plan with the new emerging democracies in the Arab world,
because it is not only about our values but also about our interests.
And I don't see that truly happening.
So somehow what strikes me is that we are in this sort of many Europeans know no longer interested in in the use of force,
but at the same time, not necessarily developing a significant or a truly attractive alternative to that.
I've spoken for way too long, so I'm really looking forward to your questions.
Thank you very much. Thank you.