Europe's armed forces are underperforming, inadequate, disorganised, and will need Franco-British impetus in order to play an effective role in addressing international crises, according to a new report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Entitled 'European Military Capabilities', it said the 27 European countries spent EUR204 billion (USD325 billion) on defence in 2006 and have deployed and sustained between 55,000 and 79,000 troops abroad each year since 1999. However, in 2007 this represented only 2.7 per cent of around two million active service personnel.
"The requirement for more deployable forces is unlikely to be temporary," said the co-author of the report Alexander Nicholl. "Both NATO and the European Union are planning on the basis that in the future there will be an even greater number of limited but demanding operations", he said. Yet, "most European forces are unable to live up to their own targets for availability.
15 July 2008: Jane's Defence Weekly
By Denise Hammick JDW Europe Editor
Organisational inefficiency is affecting the ability of European countries to deploy, says an IISS report
Europe must use or lose its rapid-response forces
Europe's armed forces are underperforming, inadequate, disorganised, and will need Franco-British impetus in order to play an effective role in addressing international crises, according to a new report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Entitled 'European Military Capabilities', it said the 27 European countries spent EUR204 billion (USD325 billion) on defence in 2006 and have deployed and sustained between 55,000 and 79,000 troops abroad each year since 1999. However, in 2007 this represented only 2.7 per cent of around two million active service personnel.
"The requirement for more deployable forces is unlikely to be temporary," said the co-author of the report Alexander Nicholl. "Both NATO and the European Union are planning on the basis that in the future there will be an even greater number of limited but demanding operations", he said. Yet, "most European forces are unable to live up to their own targets for availability.
"The NATO goal - that 40 per cent of land forces should be deployable - seems much too low. We don't see why it should be acceptable that any part of a nation's armed forces cannot be put to use ... targets for deployability should be much higher," he said.
The shortcomings are largely due to organisational inefficiency, he argued. If clear targets were set for the number and types of forces a country wishes to be able to deploy, together with the desired concurrency and sustainability of operations, this would give clarity and guide decisions on defence budgets, force structure, equipment programmes and training. This would in turn, "help to decide what's needed and what's not needed", he said.
Inefficiencies also arose from decisions on how to reduce capability gaps, how to be better equipped and which niche capabilities were best to focus on. "A more practical approach may be for countries to have more bilateral or small-group arrangements to develop specific capabilities," said Nicholl.
This applied to procurement decisions too. "Money is wasted by the sheer slowness of acquisition programmes and this slowness also inhibits the transition to newer technologies. Also countries that need similar equipment often fail to co-ordinate their requirements," he said, which created a fragmented supplier base.
However, added Nicholl, "perhaps the most important determinant of a country's military capabilities is its willingness to use them," referring to national government restrictions on military activities, which have undermined multinational cohesion and effectiveness in Afghanistan. "Sometimes, caveats may be the price that has to be paid in order to obtain commitments of forces," noted Nicholl. "The best means to overcome this problem will be to develop, to the greatest extent possible, a common vision of challenges and solutions and the building of greater mutual trust."
Another inefficiency of European armies is their inability to deploy the forces that are at their fingertips, particularly rapid-reaction capabilities designed to prevent a minor problem becoming a larger, long-term crisis. "If the NATO Response Force and EU battlegroups are not used, the pledges that countries have made to them will be increasingly open to question. These forces promise to increase Europe's strategic influence - but only if they are demonstrated to be real," said Nicholl.
It is up to France and the UK to determine Europe's ability to have strong and coherent capabilities in the future, he said, since "they have it within their power to strongly influence Europe's future choices.
"With Franco-British impetus, European countries could develop capabilities that would enable Europe to play an effective role in addressing international crises, at good value to the taxpayer," he said.
