Civitas Blog

Now obviously such a pithy view of European commitment to intervention in the DRC is not doing full justice to the situation. There are 16,000 UN peacekeeping troops already stationed in Congo and failing to quell the unrest that comes with the staging of free elections against the backdrop of 300 rival factions. Eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed in January during the botched hunt for a Ugandan warlord (which for the mathematically minded of you would amount to 80% of the European combat force currently allocated…) In the Ituri district alone 60,000 people have died in militia violence since 1999. One would have to wonder – and people are – what impact even the full 1500 combat personnel of a complete European battlegroup would have on the situation. Now that’s what the UN have asked for but equally that’s all that’s on offer since the revamped European defence policy that accompanied the 2010 Headline Goal (HG2010) has been put in place.

There are basically two problems that the proposed DRC operation has revealed. The first is that a 1500-strong battlegroup is a pretty poor proposition to deal with the deployments that are being asked of it. The second is that even those 1500 troops seem a bit difficult to muster.

What is lacking, in this particular case, is a ‘framework nation’, that is to say a nation that will provide the command structure for European action. The usual suspects are unavailable. The UK is committed in Iraq and other theatres, France was the framework nation last time (Operation Artemis in 2003) and Holland has just committed a major deployment to Afghanistan with NATO. Angela Merkel has signalled a willingness to provide 400 German troops to the operation (a move that would likely stimulate the remainder being provided by the Spanish, Portugese, French and Swedes, all of whom have made non-binding offers to assist). However they are reluctant to assume a leading role on their own and no one else seems interested in helping them. One can only guess that the command complexities are intensified as well when you need to speak an entirely different language in order to get your dinner from the Belgian Army Catering Corps (not their official title!)

So what exactly is going on? Well it’s an interesting question and this serves to highlight the current weakness of European Defence policy. The EU has already run two ESDP operations in the DRC; Operation Artemis (French-led military operation in 2003) and EUPOL Kinshasa (EU police mission in 2005). MONUC (The UN Mission in DRC) has been operating since 1997. My point is that whilst the DRC is complicated and challenging, it is not a theatre that we are unfamiliar with.

In addition, HG2010 was designed with Africa openly in mind (Operation Artemis was a template for the type of operations that were proposed). One of the EUs goals in HG2010 was to be able to deploy flexible bodies of troops at short notice in response to UN requests (similar to Artemis). These groups could be deployed either as a bridging force for a larger follow-up operation or as a reserve force in support of existing troops. The UN request came through in January: if it wasn’t for the fact that the polls in the DRC look likely to be rescheduled for June, one would assume that the EU would struggle to provide the requisite force (the original election date was April) – excluding our ten intrepid Austrians, of course. Geoff Hoon is quoted on EurActiv, the EU news website, as taking a position on battlegroups that refers directly to Africa: “Recent examples in Africa…have not only illustrated the need for such a [battelgroup] capability but demonstrated how a relatively small number of forces can have a significant effect in a short period of time, provided they can be deployed rapidly with appropriate support”. However, EU reluctance to trust the Headline Goal’s assessments (or Mr. Hoon’s) seems to point towards a nervousness on the part of EU leaders about the wisdom of committing small forces to something as potentially devastating as an African warzone…which in turn is leading to a failure to provide either the speed or the flexibility that underlies the Headline Goal.

Several factors lie beneath the current problems and they are all endemic flaws of European Defence Policy in its current form. Firstly, Europe is still castrated by the legacy of its own history and as a result many nations are unwilling to commit troops, particularly in Africa – some are even constitutionally restricted from doing so. Secondly, nations are unwilling to take the lead (and responsibility) in an operation that is being committed not in the name of their own nation but in the name of the EU. Thirdly and most critically though, the nature of European defence and HG2010 is flawed. When HG2010 scaled-down the Rapid Reaction Force to it’s component battlegroups, it also scaled-down member state confidence that deployments could succeed in their missions. Peacekeeping operations carry with them huge risks if the missions fail; the Dutch still bear the shame of their powerlessness at Srebenica in 1995, the French face accusations of being complicit in genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and needless to mention the 8 unfortunate Guatemalans that died earlier this year in Congo itself.

The rapid reaction force was unrealistic in terms of deployment capability and force composition but at least the objective commitment of 60,000 provided a sense of actual force that is lacking in the 1,500 strong battlegroups. The lack of confidence has further undermined the credibility of European defence as the subsequent confusion and buck-passing that it has created has utterly destroyed the stated capacity for rapid force deployment. In the end I have no ideological views as to whether or not the EU should be the body to put troops into the DRC. If the UN has asked for assistance then it doesn’t matter if the troops come from Europe, China, Indonesia or Antarctica as long as the Congolese get the chance of stable elections. This isn’t a criticism of the EUs mandate to deploy troops – that is an argument for another time – but it is a criticism of a commitment to the UN that we appear to be abjectly failing to live up to.

If Europe wants to take upon itself a charge of operating a security force, then it is obliged to do so in a manner that the UN and other bodies can rely on. Instead, like many EU institutions, the rhetorical goals are laudable and the execution is laughable. It is all very well the advocates of European Defence preening over the planned EU defence R&T budget, but in the end a much greater problem needs examining if the EU wishes to have a credible defence position. Military decisions require quick and clear thinking and unanimity of purpose, which aren’t descriptions commonly associated with the European legislative apparatus. The stated goal of the battlegroup plan is rapid deployment. If the best that Europe can produce in response to a direct UN request is ten Austrians and thirty non-combatant Belgians, serious ground-level re-examination is required.