France and Britain: Together Again

On July 6, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy met in Evian and issued a joint declaration on defense and security, in some ways similar to the St. Malo declaration after a similar meeting in 1998. What a difference eleven years makes.

On July 6, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy met in Evian and issued a joint declaration on defense and security, in some ways similar to the St. Malo declaration after a similar meeting in 1998. What a difference eleven years makes. In 1998, their statement focused on giving the European Union the structure and forces to allow it to “make its voice heard in world affairs,” while allowing those members to act alongside NATO if, like the UK and France, they are a member of NATO. Since St. Malo, and after the successive expansion in this sphere of the European Union through the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties, as well as in anticipation of what most feel will be the Irish approval of the Lisbon Treaty, the question last week was not whether the EU will act, but how.  This new declaration gave little guidance on the matter. First, it is enormously confusing as a diplomatic matter to have a joint communiqué on huge strategic issues that need to be voted on unanimously by the Union.  Thus, if any of the declaration strongly rings true or false to the reader, it is worth mentioning that none of it is Union policy until the Union itself votes on the matter.  This is true despite the level of Anglo-French solidarity on any particular issue. Even so, the UK and France gave some clues as to how they view their position in the Union firmament as regards security affairs, which may itself explain its lack of detail on EU decision-making.  The preamble of the statement emphasizes their common role as the only permanent members of the UN Security Council in the Union and their common perception of the threats to the two of them, though Union rules nearly require, and will require after Lisbon, that both maintain the Union position if there is one, including their vote on the Security Council. Their leading role in the first EU naval operation, Op Atalanta, is also noted.  Later, they remind the reader that “France and the UK are the two largest European investors in defense.”  And their serial mention of NATO and the Atlantic Alliance, including France’s participation in NATO's military structure, “which provides an opportunity for reforming NATO and strengthening our Alliance,” later defined as a “leaner” NATO. Strangely, little is said about Atalanta’s other member state participants, including Greece and Spain, or EU mechanisms that have allowed such joint task forces to be formed and operate effectively, or about the Lisbon Treaty, which promises to significantly help this process from the top down.  Perhaps this hesitation stems from France’s “no” vote on the European Constitution or Brown’s own forgotten promise to himself arrange a referendum on the constitution, most all of which, incidentally, made it into Lisbon.  Either way, the Union, seen as a collection of its member states, got very short shrift in the declaration. Some things the two did address also bear mention.  First, they point to goals of “a strong trans-Atlantic relationship and improved relations with Russia,” as though the former is as much in peril as the latter, and that both are perfectly compatible.  These goals are laudable, but largely separate and, to the extent improved relations with Russia mean prejudicing certain Eastern European NATO allies or prospective ones, inversely related from a Western perspective.  And, to the extent NATO/EU relations actually need to be “improve[d]” as declared, no outreach to non-Union NATO members is explicitly contemplated, nor any details or methods by which to make that happen.  It can be rightly assumed that the Union members of NATO have had significant impact on such relations for years. Next, coming from two of the three members of the “EU three,” which has been at the forefront of Western efforts to convince Iran that it should abandon its nuclear ambitions (Germany is the other), the declaration is at best incomplete.  They state that they are determined not to allow Iran to gain access to nuclear weapons, that they hope Iran will “choose cooperation rather than isolation and engage” with the West on the matter, but do not say how Iran might be isolated if other permanent members, say Russia or China, might be ambivalent to Western desires on the matter.  The two state that they “stand by those in the region who would feel threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran,” but if I were Israel, I would not hold my breath.  My copy of the declaration, from the 10 Downing Street site, offers little hope that such agreement on approach has been reached but kept secret, instead containing the parenthetical “Iran issues:  to be adjusted either here or in press conference.” In all, it may well be that Britain and France have already positioned themselves inside the Union as the leaders in defense and foreign policy action, but it may not be the apex of diplomacy to tout that to its Union brethren.  It is telling, though, that no mention whatever is made of any “European interest” at all in the declaration.  So, given the new decisional arrangements that are likely to occur after the Irish re-vote this fall, it is impossible to tell by the declaration how the Union might come down on any or all of the issues discussed.  For the two that pushed so hard and so successfully for mechanisms to facilitate a European Security and Defense Policy in 1998, they maintain a studied ambivalence to its limitations, if there are any, on the formulations and expressions of their own interests.  After Lisbon, they may fondly remember the days of St. Malo, when their own joint opinions seemed to matter inside Europe, if not also the Union, a good deal more clearly.