In November 2020 ECFR published the proposal for a EU Security Compact suggesting the EU to mend security ties with selected Eastern Partnership countries.[46] The proposal was quite unusual, and for EU diplomats and bureaucrats very uncomfortable: it deliberately included issues of defence and hard security to the basket and blurred the line between security and defence. As the Common Security and Defence (CSDP) is almost abandoned and carries little to no defence component, dragging the EU into this field contradicts the EU’s non-military operational culture. It could be argued that NATO is much more accustomed to defence matters and has the respective institutional culture and structures in place. So, why not bother NATO with this endeavour? As Donald Trump is out of the White house, why not let Washington do the hard-security support once more, and garnish the US effort with some symbolic gestures of EU solidarity? This paper argues that compartmentalisation and outsourcing of security and defence support efforts across a wide variety of actors will complicate matters rather than facilitate it when it comes to shaping support measures into political leverage. There may be other actors out there who, from a purely bureaucratic perspective, may be better suited to deliver the kind of aid that was suggested in the Security Compact, but this in turn would not create any influence and leverage for the EU.

In the military field there is a principle called ‘unity of command’: all assets necessary to fulfil a certain objective must be united under the realm of the commander who is responsible for achieving this task. If the final responsibility for a task is split among different commands, then squabbles or disunity between them on procedures, timing, etc may soon derail the entire effort, even if in sum enough means were allocated to the effort. Hence, in military affairs, final responsibility for one specific task needs to rest with one commander. This short article argues that this principle is also relevant in foreign policy and ignoring it has substantially weakened the EU’s power and foreign policy success so far.

What is at stake?

As 2020 has been dominated by the fight against Covid-19, many in the EU and in member states are preoccupied with domestic affairs where policy is concerned. Literally, most of the Union is in self-isolation. While this is definitely advisable for public health, in terms of foreign policy it is counterproductive. The year 2020 saw an unprecedented and alarming rollback of key achievements of the EU Eastern Partnership that could throw back the entire effort to the status of 2012.

Taking a closer look at some of the EaP countries, Ukraine faces a constitutional crisis after a controversial constitutional court verdict that toppled key anti-corruption reforms and institutions, and was poised to stop land reform as well.[47] The verdict jeopardises all reforms that served as preconditions for closer ties with the EU, obviously for political reasons targeting Western integration of Ukraine. But this is not the first time in Ukraine’s history that courts act in the name of certain political interest groups rather than an established opinion of the law. The crisis is just one aspect of the total failure of judicial reform in Ukraine, a process that received primary attention in the EU, and the European political establishment kept telling their interlocutors in Kyiv they need to address.[48] ‘Progress’, however, was always either cosmetic or only partial, and, given its lack of influence, the EU had to settle for partial success.

In Georgia, accusations of fraud in the 2020 parliamentary elections have led to another political crisis, with opposition parties refusing to join the new parliament and demonstrations ongoing.[49] After the 2018 presidential election was found to be fraudulent, the EU tried to push for election law reform that would make the regular electoral process less vulnerable.[50] The compromise brokered by the EU and the US proved to be less effective than was hoped for.[51]

These rollbacks happen in states associated with the EU and in key portfolios the EU considers as the core of its own mission and values: democracy and rule of law. In the wider neighbourhood, the loss of EU influence is even more dramatic. In Belarus, Russia used military manoeuvres as a signal to the West not to intervene.[52] The EU was left to watch a brutal crackdown of a peaceful protest movement demanding representative elections and the advent of a Kremlin-managed leadership transition meant to tighten and institutionalise Moscow’s control over Minsk.[53]

In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the Caucasus, Russia and Turkey agreed to implement the Lavrov plan by military force.[54] European observers have chosen to ignore early voices from the Russian entourage claiming that Moscow agreed on a limited Azeri offensive if it would weaken Pashinyan, reverse the 2018 decision on a new government, and strengthen military and political control over Armenia. Not surprisingly, this is what Russia got.[55] While most European observers speculated on a Russian-Turkish split, the gentlemen’s agreement between Putin and Erdogan has proved to be durable and lasting.

The Russian-Turkish strategic entente that wilfully applies military force to secure their own strategic goals, co-manage the European periphery and push the West out – or make Western presence conditional to their own demands – in all important strategic questions, is an entirely new challenge for European security that most politicians in Brussels have not yet understood.

Why the EU’s self-restraint is outdated

On paper, the EU was happy to endorse the comprehensive approach, but in reality ‘comprehensiveness’ was a fig-leaf to substitute real defence policy with placebo policies in the civilian soft-security field. The excuses for this were plentiful: first and foremost, the EU had no culture or experience of working on hard security, and Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) remained a paper-tiger at large. Nothing of that relieves Europeans of the need to be more active in the security field – or risk negative repercussions in the neighbourhood.

In addition to that, there are numerous quasi-strategic arguments that suggest that doing nothing is just fine: sooner or later, Chinese-Russian rivalry will drive Russia into Europeans’ arms, sooner or later Russian-Turkish rivalry will escalate, sooner or later the Russian economy will collapse, etc. None of these arguments resembles reality. Europe has also been largely unwilling to adjust its governance structures, legal frameworks, security services’ competences or policy responses when Moscow extended the political confrontation into spheres Europe deemed neutral or in the common interests: cyber-attacks, hostile information campaigns, weaponizing culture, history and other intellectual domains, and using threats or lethal force against dissidents within and abroad. While paying lip service to resilience, few European citizens and politicians regard Russian, Turkish or Iranian hostile operations as a serious cause for concern. This negligence is above all an expression of European self-righteousness: Europe is the wealthiest, most advanced, most civilised part of the world; hence, it is entitled to victory, even without acting to bring victory about. Debunking all these myths is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, if victory had always been unique to the most advanced, progressive and civilised actors, all Europe would speak Latin today and Europeans would be wearing togas.

On the eastern flank, it was feared that any substantial engagement would enrage or insult Russia. However, the Turkish example in particular illustrates that the opposite is true. Turkey is a military actor that has supported warfighting factions opposite to the ones backed by Russia, both in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, as well as in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It has shot down a Russian plane in Syria and its proxies a helicopter in Armenia. Ankara has intervened militarily in Syria counterbalancing Russia. All these difficulties have been managed, and Putin has a very high opinion of Erdogan and Turkey (like he had of George W Bush).[56] Military power is the language the Kremlin knows, speaks and respects. If other powers speak the same language, managing even conflicting interests – as in the case of Turkey – becomes a lot easier. On the other hand, the EU refrains its actions to the economic and civil society sphere – in the Kremlin’s eyes part of an economic warfare and subversion/colour revolution strategy – which is much more difficult for Moscow to understand and to manage. Therefore, if Europe were to seek better relations with Moscow, it would first need to become a military actor.

Now that Joe Biden has won the US presidency, the temptation to sit back and watch the US shouldering security efforts again is strong in Europe. It might work in the short run, but it is self-defeating in the long term. Not only will Biden be preoccupied with domestic politics and rebuilding institutions, but the domestic challenge posed by the populist section of the Republican party will not fade on 20th January. Europeans will face constant pressure to spend more on defence and to do more in the security realm. Ignoring the pressure would be the most effective way to undermine the Biden presidency and its re-commitment to NATO, something Europeans will want to avoid. On the other hand, post-Corvid-19 financial restraints will limit their freedom of action in spending resources. Hence, substituting, to a certain extent, spending with increased actions – like largescale manoeuvres with foreign partners to rehearse the defence of Europe or a partner country, or with military support for Ukraine, etc – will be necessary to show Washington that Europe is serious about defence, although not immediately able to skyrocketing defence budgets. In such a case, it would be advisable to think beforehand how to engage in the most meaningful way with the resources at hand, and where the Europeans could have the best impact with limited resources. Note, all measures described in the EU Security Compact are relatively cheap. And financial contributions to foreign military aid programmes may be a way for die-hard pacifist states to increase military spending without enlarging their own military apparatus and capabilities.

The other temptation will be to shift all security efforts to NATO. This was done in the past in Ukraine and Georgia, resulting in the US performing all the meaningful tasks and European allies standing by. While NATO definitely has the culture and organisational skills to handle security assistance programmes, there are risks attached to this division of labour. First, NATO has its own organisational and bureaucratic inertia. If programmes are conditionalized, the criteria will reflect NATO’s own agenda, which focuses on civilian control of the armed forces, efficient defence management, implementation of NATO standards in administration and armed forces, etc. This agenda is not wrong in itself, but falls short of the wider vision of the democratic transformation the EU wants to bring about in the Eastern Neighbourhood. And because the EU is failing in its core policies in the Eastern Neighbourhood it urgently needs leverage to reinforce its own goals (notably election security, democracy, rule of law, separation of power, judicial reform, etc). Programmes managed and evaluated by NATO cannot be conditionalized to wider EU-defined goals. Second, these programmes would be subject to political dynamics stemming from different memberships in EU and NATO. Efforts to link any EU and NATO policies have been killed so far by Turkey and Greece, who are trying to take such links hostage to their own demands. As Turkey has become more assertive and transactional in recent years, it will hardly miss this opportunity to spoil the efforts if it does not get concessions in other fields – and it is questionable whether the Europeans are willing to pay. While close cooperation with corresponding NATO programmes is advisable for the EU as such, as well as EU member states providing individual support measures, Europeans need to steer clear of these political stumbling blocks.

Hence, for the sake of ‘unity of command’, it would be advisable to keep as much as possible under the EU umbrella. Additionally, for the sake of political impact and influence, it would be highly advisable not to water down initiatives to ‘civilian’ security programmes only. They will not yield results in terms of leverage, and will not create wider influence and diplomatic weight for Europe.

In conclusion, the EU framework is sufficiently flexible to allow opt-out clauses or confine participation in a PESCO initiative to few members. Member states interested in the Eastern flank for their own security will most likely be the key providers for practical cooperation – on cyber, intelligence, military, and defence industries. However, having at least a coordinating framework in Brussels that allows for the coupling of security assistance with the ample EU resources in the economic and civil society realm would amplify and reinforce existing EU policies and give Europe a voice that is heard again on issues regarding its own neighbourhood.

While this paper advocates a broader role for the EU, at least in a coordinating role, there are of course traps to fall into as well. For example, due to unanimity, CFSP missions and programmes are set on bureaucratic autopilot once created. Any re-adjustment or evaluation is very much avoided in order not to question the programme/mission and open the Pandora’s box of council decisions again. However, programmes on autopilot are ill suited to be used as leverage, because the recipient state knows that the programme concerned will continue, no matter what. The same, unfortunately, was true for some conditionalities set up within the Eastern Partnership: the EU-Ukraine summit in October 2020 remained largely silent on the rapid rollback against reforms taking place in Kyiv since spring 2020.[57] One of the main reasons for this was that the EU bureaucracy feared budgetary cuts in the post-Brexit era, hence was very eager to report ‘successes’ to justify the Eastern Partnership. This, as events in Kyiv in October and November have shown, proved to be a grave mistake.

The paper argues that security partnerships and support measures should be part of the Eastern Partnership’s ‘more for more’ portfolio. Linking security cooperation measures to specific targets on reform, democratic transformation, and rule of law, would in fact be the best way forward for Europe in the direction it wants to go. Implementing the programmes would then rest with a PESCO, CFSP or coalition-of-the-willing format; bureaucratic ‘boxology’ is not the main issue.

That said, no organisational, diplomatic or bureaucratic setup will relieve Europeans of the burden of political leadership and open, sometimes difficult, confrontation of reform spoilers and vested interests in partnership countries. If the EU and its member states fail on this, they will fail also in their overall goal for the Eastern Neighbourhood, as well as in decades-long policies put in place to support their EaP partners.

While at operational level, implementation of the EU security compact will need to be decentralised in many fields – particularly in those fields where the Union in a narrow sense has no capacity on its own, e.g. intelligence or military cooperation, etc – a European umbrella and coordination would increase effectiveness and political impact and contribute to the achievement of a unified chain of command. In such a role, the EU would also be in a better position to closely coordinate support measures with the United States – where both military and civilian capabilities are in one hand. Both actors will have to link security and non-security assistance measures to emphasise the agenda of democratic transition for the Eastern Neighbourhood. If the EU wants to be a valuable partner for the new Biden administration – and this should be a goal shared across Europe – it will also have to find ways to streamline its command and control structures and – including on defence support matters – be faster and more flexible than a cacophony of 27 member states.

Implementing the Security Compact will be uncharted territory for the EU and its member states for many reasons. It will be uncomfortable, and demanding. It will break with current bureaucratic routines and political traditions. But the EU has little choice on the matter: either it will further watch its slide into political irrelevance, or it will have to act beyond the current programmes and policies. Both will be uncomfortable paths, but only one provides the chance for happy endings.