Shoulder to Shoulder : Forging a Strategic U.S.- EU Partnership (2)

... / .. (cf. Shoulder to Shoulder : Forging a Strategic U.S.- EU Partnership (1) )

6. Address conflicts more effectively.

NATO is and should remain the primary transatlantic mechanism when North Americans and Europeans decide to use military force to address security challenges together. Should North Americans or Europeans choose to act on their own, each should have the capacity to do so.

The U.S. and EU should also be able to act jointly, or in complementary ways in situations that require rapid civilian deployments, either to prevent a crisis escalating into a conflict or to respond in a post-conflict situation. And where Europeans and American act together in situations that require both civilian and military capabilities, a trilateral arrangement in which EU and U.S. civilian assets complement NATO’s military efforts may make sense. But these two situations are not yet reality. 

Continued U.S. scepticism of the utility of U.S.-EU security collaboration can only be overcome by improving EU capacity and effectiveness. Unless the EU can offer support in the areas that the U.S. cares about or can spend money and send experts in greater numbers to the world’s hotspots, working with the EU is unlikely to be a priority for the Obama administration in its own right. The situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is likely to remain a U.S. national security priority for the next decade. Greater European commitment there will be crucial to advance broader U.S.-EU cooperation.

Improving coordination between civilian forces is an area of great promise and great need. The priority focus should be on successful conduct of operations and development of capacity.

•        * The U.S. and EU should establish a standing common task force on civilian crisis management and eventually a joint planning center.
•        * Once joint civilian planning is well established, the U.S., EU, and NATO should create a “Transatlantic Fusion Center” to bring together planning for civil-military missions.

Develop a joint focus on conflict prevention.

•        * Share intelligence-based “watch lists” of countries-at-risk.
•        * Work to develop civilian capacities in third states and in relevant multilateral organizations.
•        * Focus on a few key countries, including Somalia and Yemen. 
  Develop a common framework, including doctrine and training, for civilian/military state-building missions. To date, U.S.-EU cooperation has relied on ad hoc coordination. It is past time to develop shared doctrine to provide a framework for cooperation, establish agreed objectives, and provide more standardized structures and procedures.

•        * Reinforce this shared doctrine by establishing a U.S.-EU school for conflict prevention, management, and post-conflict stabilization. 

The U.S. and NATO should facilitate having European constabulary forces participate in the post-combat phase of multinational military operations. The U.S. should develop a similar capacity.

Support a truly strategic partnership between NATO and the EU, including capabilities to enable rapid coordinated response to crisis; joint planning of operations; and a joint operations command.

7. Redouble efforts to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Biosecurity is a unique challenge that requires its own set of responses, not approaches grafted from the nuclear world.
* Advance a bold initiative in bio-resilience through improved global biosurveillance capabilities; better early warning and detection systems; robust information-sharing, investigative and preparedness mechanisms; harmonized standards; and medical countermeasures and stockpiles.

•        * Our ultimate goal should be to remove bioagents from the commonly accepted definition of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Continue efforts to stop Iranian nuclear proliferation.

Strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

•        * Provide enhanced resources and other support.
•        * Establish an international nuclear fuel cycle bank supervised by the IAEA. 
•        * Assist third countries in complying with IAEA requirements.

Develop a joint approach to the 2010 NPT review conference that will address major concerns of non-nuclear countries. 

Work to secure the adoption of multilateral arms control agreements.

8. Improve the effectiveness of development policies and humanitarian assistance.

Development policies

Focus on food security and agricultural development. Advance country-led action, broadening from an initial Africa focus to Latin America, developing Asia, and other regions. The U.S. and EU should significantly reduce their own domestic agricultural and biofuel subsidies.

Support regional integration in Africa.

Complement in-country efforts with stronger policy dialogue, coordination and consistency.

Promote partnerships with key private and public-private institutions that are frequently more efficient, better funded and more focused than governments.

Increase multilateral aid.

Work on aid effectiveness.

Focus. Diversification has brought a lack of a clear strategy in tackling poverty and an inability to determine the core competencies of the different multilateral institutions and donors. Reduce the areas of work in which the U.S. and the EU, as well as the multilateral institutions, are active.

Choose target countries more selectively. Development assistance should largely focus on low-income countries. For middle-income countries other means of support -- such as the direct promotion of trade and investment, or funds for social and territorial cohesion -- can prove more effective.

Humanitarian assistance

Strengthen en­abling conditions for cooperation between U.S.- EU and with other humanitarian actors.

Address the challenge of linking relief, rehabilitation, and development.

Maximize business contributions to humanitarian assistance, while minimizing their risks.

Address normative problems of civil-military interaction and improve operational approaches.

Continue to strengthen humanitarian mechanisms, while engaging non-Western donors.

Energize growing donor interest in extending the definition of humanitarian action.

Strengthen operational security for humanitarian response.

9. Forge an open and competitive transatlantic defense market. Complex and interrelated market access barriers serve as a drag on transatlantic defense markets. Yet transatlantic defense markets are in transition to more competitive markets and “better value” buying habits. Given economic realities and common challenges, the U.S. and EU share an interest in more open and competitive defense markets.

Focus U.S.-EU cooperation on low-intensity capabilities.

Boost armaments cooperation to support coalition operations and transatlantic market development.

The U.S. should review ITAR; adopt needed defense export control reforms; consider merging export control and national disclosure regimes; and accept the EU’s emerging role as regulator and buyer.

The EU should avoid the development of a European Procurement Preference in the implementation of its new Defense Procurement Directive.

Create a Transatlantic Defense Industrial Dialogue to catalyze change.

10. Explore an Atlantic Basin Initiative. Globalization is not confined to one region of the world. For all the talk of the Pacific, the Atlantic Basin is a central arena of globalization. More trade and investment flow across the Atlantic than any other part of the world. The well-being of people across this vast region is increasingly influenced by interrelated flows of people, money and weapons, goods and services, energy and technology, toxins and terror, drugs and disease. Issues that are particular to the nations of the Atlantic Basin deserve concerted attention. This new dynamic should prompt leaders to erase the line between the North and South Atlantic, considering ways to work more effectively together.

Explore this initiative initially in a modest way through creation of an Eminent Persons Group. Encourage foundations and policy-oriented research institutes to examine the notion and its possibilities.

Conclusion: Harness Process to Purpose. A strategic U.S.-EU partnership is urgent and calls for a new politics, not just a new process. But there are implications for process.

No relationship is as complete as that among the U.S., the EU and its member states. The ties that bind are a web of networks across the full range of our endeavor. The more united, integrated, interconnected and dynamic these bonds, the greater the likelihood that rising powers with rise within the international rules-based order. The looser or weaker those bonds, the greater the likelihood that rising powers will challenge that order.

The key to greater U.S.-EU effectiveness lies in encouraging and orchestrating our networks, rather than seeking new formalistic structures to direct and control. Yet networks alone are insufficient.  They also must have access to senior political leadership.

U.S.-EU mechanisms urgently need updating and upgrading. Cannibalize the current framework, the New Transatlantic Agenda of 1995, taking what works and leaving the rest.

Abolish the Senior Level Group and appoint two Sherpas to prepare summits and lead a Standing Joint Task Force, co-located in Washington and Brussels, comprised of officers seconded from across the U.S. interagency and EU institutions.

Refocus Political Directors on foreign policy challenges rather than summit preparations.

Upgrade the ministerial councils and U.S. dialogues that work. Create a Transatlantic Resilience Council. Revamp the Transatlantic Economic Council.

Establish a regular system of joint long term assessment.

Convert Troika working groups into new functional networks of U.S. and EU officials with easy access to one another, focused on common or complementary approaches to common challenges, elimination of duplication, and addressing differences. These networks should be actively encouraged by senior political leadership, and be fluid, informal, continuous and action-oriented.

Establish a NATO-EU “Troika” network. NATO and the EU need a breakthrough process to enable them to be able to conduct business at multiple levels nearly simultaneously across a wide spectrum of issues. An EU-NATO Troika process could cover a range of issues; the agreed framework allows staffs to exchange and to discuss classified information to do their collective work, and each side, respecting autonomy of decision making in both, could separately submit their negotiated EU-NATO ideas to their respective memberships for separate approvals.

Consider a Euro-Atlantic forum of 34 countries that would include the 21 EU/NATO members, plus the 13 states that belong to one but not both of these institutions, as a convenient forum for the discussion, and implementation, of common efforts.  

On a case-by-case basis, create plurilateral initiatives of countries and institutions with the most relevant capacity, resources and interest to address foreign and security policy crises.

Upgrade Congressional and parliamentary participation. Congress should open an office in Brussels.

* U.S. Members of a reinvigorated Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue (TLD) should be drawn from both House and Senate. U.S. House members should be appointed by the Speaker of the House; the lead U.S. Senator should be the Chair of the European Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

* European Members of a reinvigorated TLD should be comprised of Members of both the European Parliament and leaders of COSAC, an EU body composed of European affairs committees from national parliaments of EU member states.

* The TLD should convene a joint consultative committee on the extraterritorial implications of domestic legislation, and focus regular exchanges on upstream regulatory legislation.

* TLD members should join the Transatlantic Economic, Energy and Resilience Councils.

* The United States Congress and the European Parliament should spearhead a new generation of exchanges and internships across the Atlantic space.