The European Union member states’ Chiefs of Defense meeting on Ukraine Peacekeeping just ended without result.
British and French leaders had hoped it would demonstrate Europe’s ability and willingness to act on Ukraine without American involvement. Unfortunately, they discovered what many Americans have long suspected, there is a vast chasm between what Europe’s elites’ pledge and what they are willing to deliver.
The Ukraine “coalition of the willing,” fell apart because the Anglo-French component, and Canadians if Ottawa were to join, would be deployed along the border and in the areas most likely to suffer deadly ceasefire violations. The other “willing members” were more interested in symbolic rather than substantive involvement. They wanted their troops stationed far from danger.
No one doubts the courage and commitment of British and French troops to enter danger zones and protect the peace but as the world saw in Afghanistan, most Western European nations limit their deployments to staff officers at the headquarters and troops guarding garrisons in low risk areas.
Their rules of engagement (ROE) even precluded their leaving those garrisons to support coalition member forces under attack. Their refusal to aid other NATO forces under attack led many American troops to say that ISAF meant “I Saw Americans Fight,” rather than its official title International Security Force Afghanistan.
American support for NATO peaked when it invoked Article 5 of the Organization’s charter to join the United States in its fight in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But that slowly began to change as Americans began to learn about the restrictive ROE that governed most of the NATO member units’ operations there.
All were willing to deploy staff officers to ISAF Headquarters but once the Norwegians withdrew, only the British, French, Canadians, and Dutch were willing to conduct combat operations in the field.
The others limited their activities to protecting their garrisons. Their ROE precluded their deploying beyond their base perimeters, not even in response to another NATO member’s troops calls for assistance or reinforcement. One NATO member contingent was even accused of paying the Taliban to leave their troops alone.
The French paid a heavy price when one of their units replaced that unnamed NATO member’s forces in a Taliban-dominated area. After years of disproportionate combat and sacrifice, Canadian leaders criticized those members who failed to carry their weight and cut back on their own military operations.
French President Macron is serious about establishing an effective European defense force under French leadership. Supplanting American domination of European security affairs has been a French political goal since De Gaulle evicted U.S. forces and NATO from his country in 1964 and pulled France out of NATO’s military structure.
However, Macron must face the reality that replacing U.S. leadership means acquiring the financial and military burden on which it is based. His European counterparts are adept at making insincere pledges they never intend to fulfill.
Can he convince them to drop that 30-year pattern and deliver on their pledges? If not, then the European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, if it ever stands up at all, will prove as ineffective as the peacekeeping contingents in southern Lebanon. For Ukraine’s and Europe’s sake, all wish him success.
There is more at stake here than Ukraine. The United States no longer has the resources and political will to pay for the bulk of Europe’s defense at a time when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is expanding and modernizing its military forces while escalating its territorial aggression against America’s allies and interests in the Indo-Pacific.
Moreover, the original justification for the United States doing so for Europe ended years ago. Europe has more than recovered from the devastation of World War II. Indeed, the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the European Union members exceeds that of the United States. Yet only the Easternmost European nations have raised their defense spending and commitments. Most others have pledged to do so but invented an array of excuses to justify not fulfilling them. The goal is always years away into the future.
Europe must contribute more to its own defense. The United States is facing challenges elsewhere, in a region far from the Europeans’ homes but where they have critical economic and political interests.
There is little Europe can add to the defense of the Asia-Pacific. But in committing more to defending their own territories, they free American resources to protect their interests in those distance places.
