Cooperation in defence among the European countries is not a luxury but necessity in times of financial restraints. Though it is not an easy process, in which the countries must adopt a number of compromises and face sensitive issues including the sovereignty, the cooperation in defence must be their utmost priority.
Last week, a group of the Visegrad defence experts visited NATO’s Headquarters to hold a series of meetings with senior international staff as well as with defence advisors of the Visegrad countries and of the United States. The main reason was to compare and harmonize the undergoing process of examination of the regional defence cooperation possibilities with the needs of the Alliance.
The main message from Brussels is clear: Defence will remain a significant part of the national influence in the decades to come, in other words, if Europe doesn’t want to become a marginalized player on the international stage, it has to maintain a credible military.
Instead, what we have seen in the last couple of years are major expenditure cuts in most of the NATO countries. Even the biggest European countries find themselves unable to acquire modern systems, which opens a technological gap not only in the comparison with the United States.
Alarmingly, the attention which the European countries pay to this issue seems to be constantly low, with negative prospects. The end of the out of the area operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the non-existence of the imminent military threat could further decrease not only our vigilance and preparedness for the possible security challenges, but our global power status as well.
Though it should not be misinterpreted as an excuse for the defence budget cuts, the NATO’s concept of Smart Security indeed is one of the possible remedies for this dangerous situation. The pervading idea of defence cooperation among the countries is not anything new, but its urgency is unparalleled with the past. The creation of regional groupings might be one of the possible solutions.
Therefore, a joint defence expert group, run by the Slovak Atlantic Commission and financed by the International Visegrad Fund (official intergovernmental body aimed at promoting the cooperation among the four countries) was set up last year to develop a series of recommendations for the Visegrad governments in the field of regional cooperation.
After undertaking a trip to Norway and Sweden to discuss Nordic Defence Cooperation with senior defence officials including the Norwegian minister of defence, the group visited the Alliance’s Headquarters. As resulted from the discussion there, NATO welcomes the emerging Visegrad cooperation and is ready to provide it with necessary expertise in various aspects of collaboration.
However, the countries of the region need to get prepared for compromises. Specialization, which is an intrinsic component of cooperation, requires trust, since it opens the question of availability in the case of need. The collaborating countries will also have to overcome differences in their equirements on technical specifications or delivery time schemes to make the whole project feasible from the financial point of view.
Finally, these countries will need a strong leadership of their political elites, which will have to be able to appraise the critical importance of collaboration, negotiate the specific projects on the international level and enforce the national legislation. Howsoever difficult the process might look like, the good news paradoxically is that there is no other option.
Milan Šuplata
Central European Policy Institute
