Andrzej Szustak is a Polish student, who interned with the Welsh Liberal Democrats during the summer before going on to study in Strasbourg. This is the first in a series of ‘letters from Strasbourg’ expressing personal views of the UK and the EU from the European mainland.
Last week, President Obama announced that the US is to scrap its plans for a missile defence system based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Some commentators have claimed that this demonstrates the recklessness of the young and inexperienced President; others welcome enthusiastically the decision not to provoke Russia or to protect the US from a virtual threat. For me however, the whole discussion misses the main point: the state of European defence structures.
There were two reasons why Poles and Czechs reacted so positively to the original American proposal: firstly, it was the need to be part of an operational defence system; and secondly, it was the lack of any operational defence system at a European level.
Undoubtedly, Central European nations are proud to be members of NATO, the strongest military alliance in the modern, but at the same time at the back of their minds there is still the bitter memory of the 1930s and 1940s when they were sacrificed by their Western allies in the name of building a new international order.
I believe that the Central European governments acted hastily in accepting the American offer of locating the missile defence system, receiving in return only a ridiculous guarantee of periodical air defence (which is similar to showing a burglar when the alarm is on or off, allowing them to break in more easily). I also agree that placing the system so close to Russia was an unnecessary provocation. It is true that, like the UK, Central European states are not directly threatened by Russia or by any other state (apart from possible terrorist attacks). But, as the UK still keeps – for example – their nuclear arsenal (‘just in case’), the Central European states want to have a decent defence system (‘just in case’). The only way of creating such a decent system in Europe is to develop the forces of the European side of NATO.
It seems that the governments of all the major European states have accepted the EU’s drowsiness in term of developing a common European military structure. On top of this, any attempt to develop such a system has been sidelined by the present economic crisis. However, as the war in former Yugoslavia showed, the EU needs an integrated system of modern military structures so as not be fully dependent on US forces. The gap between the American military potential and the potential of all other members of NATO is still great. Nevertheless, it should not be an excuse to take initiatives to make the European NATO structures more operational (e.g. by creating a fleet of EU cargo planes). Shifting some of the military burden from the national shoulders would be beneficial to all European NATO members and at the same time it could make the whole system functional… at last!
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