B. ... DESPITE INCREASINGLY DEMANDING AND COMPLEX COORDINATION WITH NATO
Now fully recovered from its "brain death", NATO is showing renewed ambitions and a high profile, as embodied in particular by the NATO 2030 agenda, 83 ( * ) approved on 14 June 2021 by the Allies in Brussels. This does not smooth over the difficulties in terms of coordination that could be identified with EU policy.
1. Potentially different geostrategic aims
The United States, which leads NATO , has adopted a very tough policy towards China because it fears that China will take away its global leadership. They will be all the more tenacious in trying to bring Europe along in a 'crusade against China' that is one of the rare political positions in the American political landscape that receives cross-party support. The NATO 2030 agenda states that ' China's stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order ' and heavily develops this assertion (the word 'China' is used 20 times).
With regard to Russia , where their economic interests remain weak, they are conducting a traditionally intransigent policy , of which the rather complacent Trump presidency was not representative. However, the Biden Administration recently expressed his wish to reach a better quality of dialogue with Russia--confirmed by the Biden-Putin summit on 16 June 2022--which it does not want to drive into the arms of China.
In any case, while the EU's humanist values may also lead it to condemn the acts of these regimes, its perspectives are different: China is not an ultimate threat for the European Union. Its economic and strategic interests could lead it to choose to cooperate with China as well as Russia, which the United States would not approve of . From this perspective, the Biden-Putin summit should not be seen as the start of a Russian-Western dialogue with the US as spokesperson - in this respect, it is regrettable that the subsequent Franco-German initiative to jumpstart the EU-Russia dialogue was not ultimately endorsed by the member states.
Furthermore, the different approach towards Turkey, which is part of NATO, remains guided by the United States' strategic interests, which has significant military bases there, and by the desire of its Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, to avoid weakening the Alliance by marginalising one of its members . In fact, he did not take up the part recommending a "code of good conduct between Allies" in the report he had commissioned from a group of experts (of which Hubert Védrine was a member) to help him draw up the NATO 2030 agenda. 84 ( * )
Finally, we can add that the United States' disengagement from the Middle East is not called into question.
2. The intangible 'NATO umbrella'
Joe Biden has a very slim majority in Congress, especially the Senate. This narrow victory adds uncertainty to his international policy, and we cannot assume an easy victory in upcoming elections. Given that the midterms will take place in little over a year and the presidential elections in a little over three, the renewed Pax Americana via NATO could be shorter than hoped .
Donald Trump called into question the United States' security guarantee to other Allies under the terms of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Should his political stance find itself in power once again, the next step could consist in working to condition this guarantee on respecting the 2% defence spending threshold. Of course, the United States is a democracy where there are many checks and balances to disruptive decisions from the head of the executive branch as well as resistance from the 'Deep State' that Donald Trump loved to point out. But no one can definitively state that the United States will never apply the slogan 'America First' to the letter and, consequently, that the EU can always count on its American Ally in a major crisis.
Logically, the EU should consider the upcoming period as an opportunity to buy the time it needs to organise its security in a more complete way . In no way would this call into question NATO's primordial role in its current operations: to the contrary, its potential would be even stronger.
Joe Biden, for his part, did not discuss the 2% objective during his European tour in June 2021. But, without any question of conditionality, some observers believe that stricter enforcement of this financial obligation under his presidency cannot be ruled out if, for example, the EU decided to assume a policy openly separate from that of the United States, in particular vis-à-vis China.
3. A trend towards expanding NATO's remit in the short term
A NATO summit took place in June 2021, a second is planned for 2022, each including significant issues, whereas this type of summit is usually held every two years. Everything is happening as if the NATO Secretary General wanted to mark the end of his term with major initiatives, given that his ambitions seem to largely overlap with American concerns and that the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the Allies' main decision-making body, willingly endorses his initiatives. Additionally, NATO's only true 85 ( * ) ongoing mission, in Afghanistan, is currently coming to an end, which creates a vacuum.
Let's remember that NATO's primary mission is dissuasion and the territorial defence of its members, occasionally extending to crisis management. However, in the past few months, NATO's work has been on developing a 360° defence strategy, condensed in the NATO 2030 agenda.
The 'NATO 2030' working group highlighted cybersecurity and resilience , topics the EU has identified since the 2016 Global Strategy and which the Strategic Compass will promote in the "resilience" basket and for which the Member States have the main levers for action.
The NATO 2030 agenda goes so far as to envisage the use of Article 5 in the event of a cyberattack , which will require further clarification since such acts may be carried out by countries where the EU and the US do not have the same risks and goals. Care must also be taken in trying to assign responsibility for these acts. For example, if NATO wanted to be more active on issues like 5G, which in reality touches on China, we should then remember that the EU has a power over standards that does not need to be reinvented elsewhere. In general, to handle hybrid threats, the European Union seems the best forum given the variety of its competences and instruments in its possession.
The agenda promotes 'resilience' at length , using the word 26 times, making it an objective second only to collective defence. Certainly, NATO is justified in dealing with resilience in military matters --the command and control (C2) apparatus must be robust to continue to work in times of crisis, and the provision of strategic supplies such as ammunition or oil must be ensured--and even in handling specific difficulties such as a breakdown in mass transport or saturation of health capabilities in order to rescue a country threatened by collapse.
But the NATO 2030 agenda looks at resilience in its broadest sense - while recognising that it is a "national responsibility" - and even anticipates that Allies will be subject to resilience target monitoring : ' Allies will develop a proposal to establish, assess, review and monitor resilience objectives to guide nationally-developed resilience goals and implementation plans. ' Compatibility with the EU agenda is secondary and left to the discretion of the Member States : 'It will be up to each individual Ally to determine how to establish and meet national resilience goals and implementation plans, allowing them to do so in a manner that is compatible with respective national competences, structures, processes and obligations, and where applicable those of the EU. ' 86 ( * )
If these prospects come to pass, the resilience that the EU seeks to orchestrate could be overshadowed by a NATO-led resilience, just as the CSDP barely survives alongside the Alliance today. While the immense power of the American army may explain this, here, nothing would justify it.
The working group also proposed that the fight against terrorism should be included among the Alliance's core tasks, which is now mentioned in the NATO 2030 agenda (18 occurrences), and that NATO should develop a ' strategy to foster and protect emerging and disruptive technologies ', which the agenda also confirms, posing a problem of how it interacts with the EDF (see below). The agenda also discusses climate change , a 'threat multiplier', the Allies inviting the Secretary General to ' formulate a realistic, ambitious and concrete target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the NATO political and military structures and facilities and assess the feasibility of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. '
Of course, the NATO 2030 agenda confirms that NATO's core missions include crisis management , without any particular limits. It also approves cooperation to accompany the rise in power of certain partners and, finally, takes on new ambitions in terms of capabilities (see below).
At the same time as this ' great leap forward ' inspired and allowed by the United States' return to Europe and multilateralism, the activity of 'transatlanticist' think tanks--German Marshall Fund, Carnegie, etc.-- has never been so intense, with a flurry of symposia on the transatlantic relationship.
However, the NATO 2030 agenda warns that the resources must follow : ' When we meet in 2022, we will agree, alongside the Strategic Concept, the specific requirements for additional funding up to 2030 and the resource implications across the NATO Military Budget, the NATO Security Investment Programme and the Civil Budget, as well as identify potential efficiency measures '. In Europe, this movement could receive the unconditional support of the United Kingdom, the Alliance's second largest contributor and Europe's largest, which regularly exceeds the objective to spend 2% of GDP on defence (2.2%).
4. NATO's capability advantage
• As part of its NDDP (for NATO Defence Planning Process), NATO makes an inventory of required capabilities , 87 ( * ) encourages Allies to develop and acquire them by distributing needs as capability objectives , facilitates their achievement and periodically assesses progress. In this framework, Allies are intended to harmonise their national defence plans with those of NATO but without infringing on their national sovereignty. This is a top-down process on a four-year cycle .
As the backbone of the Alliance, the NDPP is considered the crucible of the West's military identity and the model for interoperability of European forces with each other and with American forces. But it is also seen as a vector of the US's military thinking , whereas its prescriptive aspects create opportunities for the American military-industrial complex (particularly among Member States who are net beneficiaries of EU policies, which sometimes elicits remarks). Indeed, the new technologies and interoperable equipment valued here are often American . In the future, there is a non-negligible risk that the 'Russian threat' will justify the development of increased top-of-the-spectrum capabilities --F35 fighter planes, anti-missile defence-- that will soak up the Allies' budget to the detriment of other European targets , particularly in the mid-spectrum.
• At the European level, capability planning relies on several instruments, which leaves a lot of room for Member State initiatives . Remember that the CDP, the Capability Development Plan (to which the NDPP is sometimes directly compared) established by the EDA, sets the EU's defence capability priorities by integrating the specific needs expressed by Member States. The CARD (same comment) identifies existing capabilities on this basis and facilitates cooperation to reach the CDP's objectives. Then, PESCO intervenes as a framework for cooperation where projects that seek to increase Europe's defence capabilities are implemented, if possible with EDF support, given that other cooperation projects can be initiated within the EDA (or in other bilateral or multinational frameworks). In contrast to NATO's NDPP, the capability development organised by the EU appears to be bottom-up and readily 88 ( * ) described as agile and flexible .
This was to be expected: less directive, less incentivised, less long-standing and serving a CSDP that has always been less credible and vital than NATO, European capability planning is not as closely followed. This is especially clear for Member States who, without a military programme act, defend their military budgets solely on the basis of the NDPP.
• This raises the issue of the coherence among the commitments of countries in both the EU and in NATO. 38 of the 47 ongoing PESCO projects are already broadly in line with NATO priorities . 89 ( * ) This is rather good news in that this correspondence allows for economies of scale in a spirit of non-duplication.
However, the CSDP is not NATO. Consequently, nothing can justify that NATO, through the NDPP, has a say on the commitments taken within the European Union . In the same vein, systematically modelling Europe's norms and standards developed through PESCO on NATO norms and standards would hinder the establishment of an EDTIB . In this regard, reserving EDF funding to European projects is a partial safeguard.
After the momentum provided by the NATO 2030 agenda , in which Allies agreed to " foster technological cooperation among Allies in NATO, promote interoperability and encourage the development and adoption of technological solutions to address [their] military needs ', can this approach succeed?
The rest of the document raises doubts : ' For this purpose we will launch a civil-military Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic. We also agree to establish a NATO Innovation Fund , where Allies who so wish can support start-ups working on dual-use emerging and disruptive technologies in areas key to Allied security. ' If we look at the EDF or the Commission's initiatives, it seems that EU-member Allies have understood the non-duplication principle as a one-way street.
5. The concurrence of strategic reflections
The review of NATO's Strategic Concept is planned for its next summit in 2022. In the NATO 2030 agenda, the Allies ' invite the Secretary General to lead the process to develop the next Strategic Concept. The Concept will be negotiated and agreed by the Council in Permanent Session and endorsed by NATO Leaders at the next Summit. ' As the last Strategic Concept dates from 2010, this review was greatly expected given the great changes in perceptions of cyber activities, space and China.
The Strategic Compass is a separate strategic document that arises from a new approach that concerns the EU and its members. It envisages a partnership approach to NATO and is not intended to be a local version of the "Strategic Concept" . Obviously, it is desirable that the two exercises remain compatible, but there is no question of establishing a hierarchy between them.
The upcoming sessions, as organised, seem to avoid the feared scenario of NATO-ising the Compass from the start : the EU and NATO, while working in parallel, are completing their work at different times: the European Union will have defined its priorities in the Strategic Compass in March 2022, and NATO will have defined its priorities in its Strategic Concept a bit later, probably in summer 2022. According to the European and Foreign Affairs Ministry, the schedules were designed so that European thinking could flow into NATO thinking, without allowing NATO to influence the Strategic Compass.
But the reality is quite different: NATO, which is under great pressure from its Secretary General and the NATO 2030 strategy, is taking a serious conceptual advance through the thinking that it promotes and the works it produces. According to certain observers, everything is happening as if NATO had entered a race... The options it prefers could highly influence those of the European Union within the Strategic Compass . Of course, this would not shock countries such as Poland or certain Baltic States, who have felt that the Strategic Compass should serve NATO from the start.
In any case, it would be good if there were a political dialogue between the HR/VP and the NATO Secretary to avoid the Strategic Compass being co-opted in this way. Ideally, this dialogue would give the two exercises the coherence they need while reaffirming the exclusivity of the Strategic Compass , which must not be a sub-product of the NATO 2030 strategy. But nothing indicates that such a dialogue can take place.
* 83 In the framework of the NATO Secretary General's ' NATO 2030 initiative ', various contributions (including the report 'NATO 2030: United for a new era. Analysis and recommendations of the Reflection Group appointed by the NATO Secretary General' published on 25 November 2020) were intended to inform him so that he could issue recommendations for leaders of NATO countries. This process led to the adoption of the 'NATO 2030 agenda' at the Brussels summit with the objective that the 'Alliance remains ready today to face tomorrow's challenges'.
* 84 See note above. The NATO 2030 agenda only mentions Turkey to send it messages of reassurance, even gratitude: 'We reiterate our appreciation to our Ally Turkey for hosting millions of Syrian refugees.'
* 85 Operation Sea Guardian, in the Mediterranean, is not a true combat mission.
* 86 As a sign of things to come, the NATO Secretary General had issued a paper a few months earlier - without consulting the Allies - suggesting that each Ally should appoint a 'minister responsible for resilience' and that the NDPP should set binding capability targets (see below), the scope of which would be extended to resilience...
* 87 All of the NDPP's 14 planning domains include a capability aspect.
* 88 Depending on how one looks at it, this process could also be described as complex and disorganised with many loopholes (see above).
* 89 Fifth progress report on the follow-up to the joint proposals endorsed on 6 December 2016 and 5 December 2017 by the North Atlantic Council and the Council of the European Union on 16 June 2020