It’s time for Europe to rebuild its defences

When did a UK general election last turn on competing views of defence policy? Probably never. The trouble with defence spending is that it is serious, but not important – not until the enemy is at the gate, which in Britain’s case (if we exclude Northern Ireland and the Falklands) was May, 1940. 

We all want to feel safe and to know that we have the capacity both to project power when required and to defend ourselves against aggression. But Britain’s time as a free-standing Great Power is long past. The United States Marine Corps, on its own, is more than twice the size of the entire British Army, and much better equipped for combat. We tell ourselves that we can still punch above our weight, but the reality is that even if this were true, we would, if up against either Russia or – God help us! – China, be sent crashing to the canvas well before the end of Round Two. 

We used to be a big country that could throw our weight around. But that was before America took over a century ago and more. As things are, the UK has a population of 67 million. The US has 332 million; India and China are each home to 1.4 billion. Even Russia, in seemingly unstoppable demographic decline, can still call on the resources of a population of 145 million. 

But not only are these countries – and others – many times larger and more populous than Britain, they also take their war-making capability more seriously than we do. 

The truth is that Britain’s armed forces, in their present depleted state, couldn’t engage in any large-scale military adventure unaided. We couldn’t have so much as contemplated invading Iraq or Afghanistan without America. Global Britain is the East India Company without its 200,000-stong private army. We may take pride in HMS Queen Elizabeth taunting Beijing in the South China Sea, but we are cocking a snook without having the necessary gunboats. 

We need allies. We need a post-Brexit rapprochement with Europe. We are not the only ones to feel the draft caused by America stepping down as the world’s policeman. The whole of Europe has been exposed. France – the only EU member state with the capacity to wage war away from its borders – is equally shivering, along with Italy and Spain. Germany – unwilling to take up arms lest it be accused of following the example of Hitler – is wondering for how much longer US troops will remain stationed on its soil. The Dutch, the Danes, the Austrians, the Portuguese, the Baltic states, the Poles, the Czechs, the Croats, the Swedes (in the EU but not in Nato), the Norwegians (in Nato but not in the EU), even the nominally neutral Republic of Ireland are surveying the wreckage of the Atlantic Alliance and asking themselves, what next? – where do we go from here? 

It is true, of course, that Europe is in no immediate danger of being invaded by anyone other than immigrants. America might be circling the wagons, but in the not completely implausible event that Vladimir Putin decides to re-annex Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (having first, perhaps, “reintegrated” Belarus), Nato would surely swing into action, with the US in the lead. 

Or so we tell ourselves. 

But the old certainties are gone, at least until a new, old-style president is elected in Washington who rejects the America First doctrine of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And how likely is that? Americans could quickly become comfortable with isolationism, as they did in the 1920s and ‘30s. It should not be forgotten that America only entered the Second World War after Pearl Harbour. If General Tojo had stayed his hand in 1941, the real Forever War could have been that between Germany and the Axis powers on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Britain and its Empire on the other – with the Empire’s long-term reliability far from assured. 

What is needed today, or at the very latest the day after tomorrow, is a properly-functioning European alliance – one that works with Nato on the big stuff while providing state-of-the-art cover and deterrence in the event that our common enemies come at us here, there and everywhere, either as terrorists or as rogue states. 

There used to be an organisation called the Western European Union. It wasn’t very grand. It was mostly talk, and it was eventually subsumed into Nato. But it wasn’t stupid. It presumed that Europe had a shared vulnerability and that its composite nations had to be ready to stand shoulder to shoulder in the event of attack. 

A quarter of a century ago, with the Cold War ended and a new millennium beckoning, it was thought in Brussels that the EU was ready to take on some more of the attributes of a sovereign state, including defence. In 1999, the European Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was proclaimed, later to form part of the Treaty of Lisbon. There was much talk and some strutting, but nothing that made any difference on the ground. 

This week, Josep Borrell, the 74-year-old Spaniard who currently occupies the role of the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, talked up a 5,000-strong rapid reaction force that could intervene in emergencies either on Europe’s frontiers or overseas when its interests were directly threatened. 

In the light of the Afghan debacle, Borrell told EU defence ministers, the need for a more structured European defence had never been more evident, and the time had come to prepare for the challenges ahead. 

Well, it was a start. From a British perspective, the trick will be to wrest the initiative away from the narrow confines of the EU – a body best suited to bureaucracy and administration – and towards inter-operational capacity between the armed services of as many European nations as are willing to commit their forces in common cause. 

It would be naïve to suppose the formation of a European Army, Navy and Air Force, with its high command in Brussels answerable only to a situation room made up of heads of government. The unwieldy nature of such a setup can only be imagined. What is much more feasible is an organisation, operating separately but in parallel to Nato, that features not only a rapid reaction force, perhaps some 10,000-strong, but shared intelligence and analysis, overseen by defence and foreign ministers ready and able to deploy larger forces when required, with or without the Americans. 

Such a body would oversee large-scale exercises and common procurement. There would be an emphasis on European equipment and munitions. In the event, say, that Libya or Syria went rogue, Europe could respond. If mass-immigration overwhelmed the resources of a single state, the others would pitch in. An attack on one would be seen as an attack on all. The EU would have to give ground, as would Global Britain. But the result could have the effect not only of reassuring the 500 million people of Europe, including the UK, that they could depend on their own resources if threatened, but at the same time bring Britain in from the diplomatic cold. 

The British government could kick-start the process by seeking observer status at EU gatherings at which shared defence was under discussion. It could even go so far as to propose a European Intelligence Agency, based in London, staffed by experts from across the Continent that, via Europe’s embassies, would gather and assess information on a truly global basis. 

The right men and women in the right place and the right job is imperative. Boris Johnson should straight away ditch Dominic Raab as foreign secretary and then send his successor, most obviously Tom Tugendhat, along with the estimable defence secretary Ben Wallace, on a three-month mission to the chancelleries of Europe, starting with France and Germany, aimed at providing as many as possible of the continent’s 44 nation states (Switzerland always excepted) with a sense that, in an uncertain and dangerous world, they really are all in it together. 

We are at the start of a new age in Europe in which the United States of America may only have a limited role. If appointed, Tugendhat’s first obstacle to overcome would be the French, especially if Emmanuel Macron is elected to a second term as President. Macron – possibly with a view to himself as the next-but-one head of the European Commission or Council – currently sees everything through the prism of the EU. But in my view he is persuadable. On national defence and European security, he is a realist, much concerned with his country’s status in the world, and the right proposal, struck while the iron is hot, could just bring results. Germany is another matter. The successor to Angela Merkel won’t be known for another four weeks and is likely to be preoccupied with climate change, Covid and economic recovery. But, again, Berlin knows that it cannot any longer depend on Washington for its defence and that solidarity with Britain and France may well be the way forward. 

At home, the UK needs to renew its commitment to defence. Actual spending on defence has to catch up with the rhetoric. The Army needs another 10,000 recruits; the SAS needs to be doubled in size, the Navy needs more and better escorts as well as more planes and improved defences for its carriers. The RAF should be given the aircraft it was promised and the assurance that future purchases will be at least as much European as American. Only when we can show that we are building a force to be reckoned with will our neighbours on the other side of the Channel join with us in a far-reaching programme of reconstruction. And only then will our friends and allies in America begin to take us seriously again and join with us once more to build a safer world.