“Every significant war,” says Jean-Marie Guéhenno, “would probably now begin with an internet attack.” A former UN under-secretary general, Guéhenno is now president of the International Crisis Group and in 2012 he was asked by the French government to coordinate a new defence white paper. That he considers cyberspace to be a battlefield speaks volumes about the changing nature of European security in the 21st century.

Twenty-five years after the cold war the continent is confronted by an array of new threats. Cyber-attacks; Vladimir Putin’s perplexing military strategy; Islamist terror. And the threats to Europe are forming on unstable terrain east and south of its borders, where state structures are either weak or disintegrating. There, the boundary between war and peace is blurred; “frozen conflicts” is a synonym for wars without end.

The new threats do not mean the EU is necessarily reacting with a greater sense of closeness. This is hardly surprising. Its Lisbon treaty leaves security matters to member states and it is still particularly hard for EU countries to relinquish sovereignty over defence and security. National quirks, historical practices, varying constitutional norms, the influence of parliaments: war and peace seem ultimately unsuited to a joint European document.

Although war between EU member states has become almost unthinkable, among these countries there seems to be minimal willingness to confront external threats collectively. To boot there are serious financial constraints. In times of empty coffers, most EU states have cut their defence budgets behind the shield of Nato. Power, in the globalised world of the 21st century, is clearly played out through trade relations – the rise of China, for example, or the success of Germany. The EU exists above all for prosperity and soft power, not the cry of war.

The trend is clear: Europe is spending less and less on its security, while in Asia and Russia the bill is going up. Since 2008 Nato has been openly sounding the alarm about plunging defence expenditure, and in his 2012 report the then secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned of “an ever greater military reliance on the United States, and growing asymmetries in capability in European allies. This has the potential to undermine alliance solidarity and puts at risk the ability of the European allies to act without the involvement of the United States.”

Despite all this, some EU members are upholding their traditions of military might, and are prepared to deploy armed forces abroad. This is especially true of France and the UK who, with a 2010 agreement on defence cooperation, took on something of a dual leadership in the area of European defence and then in 2011 proved their ambitions by leading the military intervention against the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An RAF Typhoon pilot entering his cockpit as the sun sets over Gioia del Colle, south Italy. Nato launched a rare daytime attack on Tripoli on 6 June 2011, hitting Libya’s state broadcaster. Photograph: Sgt Pete Mobbs/MoD/EPA

Since then, however, the interventionist ambitions of David Cameron have been stymied by domestic politics. The wounds of the Iraq debacle have not yet healed in Britain, with parliamentary resistance forcing the prime minister into a U-turn on Syria in 2013. A YouGov survey for the Royal Institute of International Affairs last week found that, while more than 60% of Britons believe their country should remain a “great power”, they were less keen on footing the bill.

Nearly 70% of those surveyed think the UK should take responsibility for international security. But with whom? Britons are sceptical about the EU, to which they feel they are giving too much money. But at the same time the distance is lengthening between them and the Americans, only 25% of whom see themselves in a special relationship with the UK.

France, then, would seem to be the remaining European security leader. Within the EU it is the only country that meets all the requirements for a foreign military intervention: its armed forces are large enough, they have the necessary experience – and above all there is political will for deployment. Today 20,000 French troops are deployed worldwide, 8,000 of whom are on combat missions, predominantly in Africa, in the Sahel and the Middle East. Since last month’s atrocities in Paris there have been an extra 10,000 troops serving on French streets.

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The massacre of 17 people in the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks were a reminder of the threat of terrorism. And, since the bloodshed, support for France’s robust defence strategy appears to have grown: according to an Ipsos poll in Le Monde last week, more than 50% of French people support foreign deployment, and 65% agree with active engagement in Syria against jihadism. Asked if they felt they were engaged in a war, 53% said yes.



Speaking in Davos, President François Hollande said France wanted to be “useful to the world” – its troops deployed not only for its own good but for the good of Europe as a whole. But it has not convinced its European partners to co-finance these missions or even to participate to a significant degree. There is a lack of strategic vision, an answer to the simple question: what then?

This could be said for the whole of Europe. In 2013 the European Council on Foreign Relations compared the strategy documents of EU member states. Its findings: “a strategic cacophony” marked by a lack of common targets and shared ambition.

Not so fast, say Brussels experts. They point, not entirely without good reason, to the EU’s common foreign policy, which after all enabled it to play a key role in the Iran discussions. A large apparatus, however, always faces the same battle – over national visions, sovereignty, money, positions. PSC, DGE, CFSP, EUMS, CIVCOM – an endless stream of acronyms, drafts and position papers feeds the inner circle of the Brussels security apparatus.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic drive a tank on the outskirts of Donetsk late last month. Photograph: Reuters

What, then, of Germany? The government in Berlin is an institutionalised dilemma and its foreign policy discrepancy is particularly stark in the EU. Germany’s political weight has grown enormously with the euro crisis and the chancellor and the foreign minister played a mediator role in the Ukraine crisis. Analysts talk of “Germany’s moment”. In Syria, however, it has a few weapons and trainers and otherwise has acted with restraint. In Mali ditto. In the Central African Republic, four transport planes but no troops.

On the one hand, Germany’s special military role is viewed with suspicion by its neighbours. On the other hand, as a German Nato official drily observed: if Germany really were to spend 2% of its GDP on defence, as the alliance wishes, it would be by some way the leader on such spending in Europe. Military dominance on top of economic dominance? That could be asking too much.

However, Germany is slowly witnessing a change in sentiment. Last month Angela Merkel made the first, cautious signals in the direction of a higher defence budget at the inaugural visit of the new Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg. There are also increasing signs Berlin could play a special role in Nato actions in central Europe. Nato’s new rapid reaction force has been pushed by Germany and the Netherlands.

Berlin has made transnational cooperation its trademark. Cooperation in logistics is being tried out and bilateral structures are growing with the Poles and the French. German Nato planners have dubbed it the “Framework Nations Concept” – a strategy for the most important invention in the time of tight budgets: pooling and sharing.

Not all nations, of course, can afford the full catalogue of equipment. Small states such as Austria worry about the condition of their armed forces. Italy has grave concerns about financing its air force. Sweden and Norway have clubbed together to ensure they still have at least some artillery.

But Europe’s greatest problem is political pace. Compared with the early years of the common foreign and security policy 15 years ago, a lot has happened. But the cogs of the machine are turning slowly. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has given a perfect demonstration of how a former geopolitical force can forget the importance of its own power. The strength of laws and the attractiveness of the economic area were enough to let it grow as a peace project deep into eastern Europe. Today, however, the onslaught of crises is picking up pace, and the EU is under pressure.

In his most recent book, World Order, Henry Kissinger writes on Europe with his usual farsightedness. The continent, says the former US secretary of state, no longer functions according to the principle of Westphalian sovereignty or the centuries-old concept of balanced power. But how, then, does Europe function? “The result is a hybrid, something between a state and a confederation, operating through ministerial meetings and a common bureaucracy,”, decides Kissinger. “In foreign policy it embraces universal ideals without the means to enforce them, and cosmopolitan identity in contention with national loyalties.”

Is this enough in times of crisis? Europe will soon know the answer.

Le Monde’s Sylvie Kauffmann and Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Stefan Kornelius wrote this as part of the Europa partnership of newspapers which includes the Guardian, El País, La Stampa and Gazeta Wyborcza