29th June 2012 Paris, France
Franco-British Cooperation on Defence
Franco-British Cooperation on Defence is very much in the news at the moment, with visit and speech by Minister for Europe David Lidington. The ambassador reflects on the CSDP and the key advantages of Europe, in particular France and the United Kingdom, in the domain of international security.
The ambassador speaks of David Lidington’s video message and visit to Paris. You may also wish to read the full text of his speech on the CSDP.
Transcript
I wanted to say a word this week about defence and security cooperation between Britain and France.
It’s in my mind for two reasons. First of all the commemorations in the Normandy battlefields on the 6th of June, where the President of the French Republic and the British Minister of Defence were together in the cemetery of Rainville to mark the sacrifices made nearly 70 yrs ago. It was also an occasion to remember all the other occasions on which Britain and France have been together, most recently during the conflict over Libya.
I’ve also been thinking about this because today in the Embassy we have had David Lidington, minister for Europe, who has given a speech on European security and defence policy – in fact there is a clip from Mr Lidington on the website now and a link to his speech.
Britain and France have been allies in Nato for many years and took the leadership of the initiative for greater European defence capacity at the St Malo summit in 1998. Ever since then we’ve been working together to develop a real European capacity to act in the world, to be able to deploy military forces but also civilians, and we’ve discovered, I think, that the key niche for Europe to occupy is in circumstances where we need to bring together diplomatic, economic, political and also military pressure, and Britain contributes to a whole range of missions under EU structure, for example we are in command of the mission against piracy of the coast of Somalia, and there are a number of new CSDP missions established recently, including one in the Sahel which is of great interest to France.
So this is an area where Britain and France are working closely together. I shall have an opportunity next week to visit the French Rapid reaction corps, outside Lille, which is a newly developing structure working very closely with the British armed forces.
It is amazing that NATO has managed to get away with maintaining its meretricious narrative of unbroken success for so long, but anyway although nobody really cares what happens in Kosovo or Bosnia, Afghanistan is a different story, as it represents a key American foreign policy adventure – in a way THE key American foreign policy adventure since the end of the Cold War. NATO is already committed to explaining its involvement in Afghanistan as yet another brilliant success, but I can’t see how they are going to get away with it this time. Even in terms of the Washington Treaty, NATO is already past its sell-by date. Would a border incident between Syria and Turkey really allow Turkey to invoke Article 5? I doubt it. The world has changed, and we are stuck with these outdated institutions. Is the EU a credible alternative? The WEU idea just curled up and died, and attempts to create European command structures will also founder on the fact that there is no senior partner to take charge in an emergency. I am glad to see a comment from Ambassador Arnason, as Iceland clearly has the most rational and progressive defence policy in Europe, with no armed forces at all. But we are apparently no longer interested in defence, anyway: it is offensive, expeditionary operations we seem to require. I think we will have to wait a long time to hear Iceland calling for bombing campaigns in far-off countries.
Bilateral defence agrmeents between NATO members. Are they an option?