Europe faced a wave of ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks last year, from Brussels to Nice to Berlin. As ISIS-occupied territories in Iraq and Syria continue to shrink under the bombardment of U.S. and coalition forces, former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin told The Cipher Brief, “I would anticipate the greatest post-caliphate danger is likely to be in Europe.”
Europe also faces threats from Russia, not the least of which is potential cyber hacking in planned elections. The Netherlands, France, and Germany will hold national elections this year, and all of them have expressed concern over Russian intervention, particularly because of the determination by the U.S. Intelligence Community that Russia was behind the hacking operation intended to influence last year’s U.S. presidential election. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, Hans-Georg Maassen, warned in December of “growing evidence for attempts to influence the federal election.”
Then there’s the persistent issue of mass migration to Europe, which has roiled many Europeans and widened internal political divisions, culminating in the United Kingdom’s decision to withdraw from the European Union.
To make matters worse for European unity, President Donald Trump “doesn’t seem to think Europe integration is all that valuable,” Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, tells The Cipher Brief – although Trump recently told Reuters the European Union is “wonderful” and that he is “totally in favor of it.”
At this month’s Munich Security Conference, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence both expressed the U.S. commitment to the transatlantic security alliance. Nevertheless, “many folks in the audience were skeptical that that message truly came from the President himself,” Julianne Smith, who is Director of the Strategy and Statecraft Program at the Center for a New American Security and who attended the conference, tells The Cipher Brief.
The U.S. team in Munich also reiterated that all NATO members must pay their fair share to the alliance – 2 percent of GDP on defense spending, and 20 percent of that on equipment procurement and upgrading.
This was a consistent call from the United States under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Yet Trump seems ready to enforce this demand, implying on the campaign trail that the U.S. does not have to abide by NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause if members do not meet the defense spending target.
This has somewhat spurred Europeans to take more responsibility for their own defense and increase spending.
Lithuanian Ambassador to the U.S. Rolandas Kriščiūnas told The Cipher Brief, “as the new American President steps into office and I imagine demands that we all need to contribute 2 percent, I could not agree more. If everyone contributes 2 percent, it will make NATO stronger.”
Lithuania is on track to hit 2 percent by 2018.
Latvian State Secretary for Defense Jānis Garisons told The Cipher Brief Latvia will also meet the 2 percent mark by next year.
Even Germany, one of Europe’s largest economies but a country that spent only 1.19 percent of GDP on defense last year, is stepping up to the plate. “German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke and the Defense Minister from Germany spoke [at the Munich Security Conference], and they both talked about how important it is for Germany to move toward that [2 percent] target,” Smith says. But she notes that “their Foreign Minister, who’s from a different political party, seemed more skeptical.”
Of the 26 European NATO members, four spent at least 2 percent of GDP on defense in 2015 and were expected to maintain that spending through 2016. Seven European NATO states, including Turkey, spent at least 20 percent of defense spending on equipment, and nine were expected to reach that mark last year.
In addition to more defense spending, there is talk of either creating a European pillar of integrated command within NATO – which is already in the beginning stages with NATO’s Framework Nations Concept, in which one country leads a multinational unit – or developing a stronger EU defense apparatus, beyond the European Defence Agency.
German Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Wittig told a press briefing the Framework Nations Concept has a “good future” and will probably be enlarged.
At the same time, he said, Europe can do a lot more to beef up its defense, which would complement NATO.
Germany and France recently wrote a joint letter to the European Commission, calling for greater EU security cooperation, including better border control and increased efforts to prevent radicalization in Europe.
Vershbow, now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, says more EU cooperation means the EU could lead a peacekeeping mission in North Africa, for example, or work on defense capacity building in Tunisia – anywhere the EU has capacity, “where you don’t necessarily need to use big robust NATO.”
The EU has recently made moves toward advancing joint defense procurement, which Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations Nick Witney notes is “easier to develop” within the EU than within NATO.
The European Commission revealed a plan in November for a €5 billion-per-year European Defence Fund to “support investment in joint research and the joint development of defence equipment and technologies.”
Europeans also have some bilateral integrated command structures, such as one between Germany and the Netherlands.
An overarching EU command structure, however, the so-called “EU Army” idea, is a long way off and, according to The Cipher Brief sources, more of a political idea than a military proposal.
While the EU works on unifying and strengthening its defense system, NATO also has restructuring to do to sufficiently face 21st century external and internal threats. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis told The Cipher Brief NATO must concentrate on cyber and cybersecurity, partnerships with non-NATO nations in coalition-type activities, and the Arctic in coming years.
The Arctic, he said, is an area where Russia will continue to push. “Across the Arctic Ocean we see Russia, which is conducting a military buildup in the region,” said Stavridis.
“Just as we deter Russia on our eastern border … we need to think a bit more about the High North,” he said. Deterring Russian aggression was thrown into the spotlight as a NATO priority after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Moscow’s continued support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Arguably the most pressing security concern for Europe is combatting violent extremism, though, which is Trump’s top national security objective, and one area in which Vershbow believes NATO can play an even more significant role now than it has in the past.
As NATO and the EU work on strengthening European security in the near future, Vershbow says that the role of the United States in transatlantic defense is “indispensable.” NATO is “a unique organization, where the U.S. is the first among equals and accepted as the leader but at the same time, respected because it listens,” he says.
Kaitlin Lavinder is a reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @KaitLavinder.
