Europe's Next Big Idea: Strategy and Economics Point to a European Military

Richard Medley

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 1999

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Summary:  After unifying its currencies, Europe is trying to build its own army. The idea is good strategy and better economics.

Richard Medley is Chairman and CEO of Medley Global Advisors, a New York-based research and intelligence consultancy specializing in political analysis for international investors and corporations.

European military union is fast becoming the successor to monetary union as the next big idea for Europe. The dynamic new European Commission president, Romano Prodi, has declared that establishing a unified European military will define his tenure in office, just as his predecessor, Jacques Delors, made creating a European economic and monetary union (EMU) his hallmark. Building a European military capacity is also the first item on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "to do" list as he tries to make Britain irreversibly a full European partner. Prodi and Blair's center-left counterparts -- Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, Lionel Jospin of France, and Massimo D'Alema of Italy -- are all on board, for both economic and political reasons. American officials have signaled that they, too, are now comfortable with the European military push, having already signed a general agreement to support a European military union at NATO's 50th anniversary summit this April in Washington.

Within weeks of this gathering, Europe's new leaders followed up with a historic decision at their Cologne summit to create an autonomous defense force with the political and military muscle to fight its own battles. They were goaded by the war in Kosovo, which highlighted in vivid and embarrassing detail Europe's dependence on the U.S. military. Far from fostering internal dissension on the continent, Kosovo actually brought the common foreign and security objectives of the European Union (EU) member states into focus. Honing the West's war machine allowed senior European policymakers to score a series of important victories that had eluded their predecessors for decades.

Structurally and symbolically, the most important decision taken at Cologne was to appoint NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana as the first EU foreign policy representative. Finally there will be someone to answer the phone in Europe when Henry Kissinger calls.

The EU leaders also committed themselves at Cologne to creating a fully operational European military, and their concluding communique asserted their intention "to take the necessary decisions by the end of the year 2000" to make European military union a reality. Together, these steps provide a solid foundation for translating the EU's financial muscle into geopolitical clout. And the dynamic works both ways: wealth will breed armed might, and might will breed wealth. Ultimately, moving this military venture forward will yield important long-term economic gains for an increasingly unified Europe.

To see why, consider the three goals that European military union achieves that make it irresistible to the new crop of leaders. First, it assures them of the kind of personal historical legacy that European heads of state still crave. With EMU firmly on track, constructing an EU defense pillar would put them at the center of history in a way that tucking in the corners of monetary union never could. Second, military union moves Europe one giant step closer to political parallelism with the United States. This alone is certain to keep the French fully engaged, come what may. Third, building a military union means building European-based weapons, aircraft, ships, and ...

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