NATO and ESDP: Institutional Complexities and Political Realities
With 50 years’ seniority over the ESDP, and despite its austere origins, NATO transformed itself during the 20th century into a political-bureaucratic machine in search of a more appropriate international role.
All too frequently, when analysts focus on the relations between the two main security actors in the Euro-Atlantic area, they refer to ‘the EU and NATO’. They should of course refer to ‘the ESDP and NATO.’ This may seem like a minor point but it is a crucial one. The European Union (EU) per se does not have a relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), nor indeed should it. The two entities are different in their membership, their essence, their raison d’être , their overall objectives, structures, functioning, activities and history. Any direct bilateral agenda is difficult to imagine. There does exist a ‘relationship’ between, on the one hand, the EU’s security and defense activities, since 1999 subsumed under the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and managed by the EU’s Political and Security Committee (PSC), and, on the other hand, NATO, represented by the North Atlantic Council (NAC). Other interactions also take place, within this general ESDP-NATO framework, between political and military officials from both sides – at all levels. It is usually this interaction between ESDP and NATO that is, in effect, analysed in the literature on ‘the EU and NATO.’ There is a widely shared consensus among analysts and politicians that this relationship is unsatisfactory if not actually dysfunctional. Most agree that there is an urgent need to ensure that ESDP and NATO should cooperate to the maximum wherever and whenever they are involved together in operations; that they should avoid competition and rivalry; that greater coherence and synergy are both logical and possible.
Berlin Plus
The functional relationship between NATO and ESDP is governed by the Berlin Plus arrangements of 2003. In reality, these arrangements work reasonably well, on the ground, wherever they apply. At present, that means only in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). With respect to BiH, for example, NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Command Europe (DSACEUR), as operational commander of the European Union Force Althea in BiH (EUFOR-Althea), interacts regularly with the EU’s Political and Security Committee and facilitates liaison between it and the NAC. The Secretaries General of both the EU and NATO meet at least monthly to talk through issues of complementarity between the two entities and missions. There are liaison teams on the ground to smooth relations between staff members from both entities and there are daily contacts between representatives in BiH from both sides. […]
OUTLINE
- Berlin Plus
- Political, functional and institutional confusion
- Different historical origins and trajectories
- The politics of collective security and defense
Jolyon Howorth is Professor Emeritus of European Politics at the University of Bath and Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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NATO and ESDP: Institutional Complexities and Political Realities
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