Defence now: Europe learns intentions require capabilities

The spectacular raid on Fordow nuclear complex showed Europe the limits of multilateral diplomacy when confronted with irreconcilable demands. Almost a quarter century of negotiations failed to find a compromise between Iran’s determination to enrich uranium far beyond the needs of a civilian nuclear power programme and the desire of the EU-3 — France, Germany and the UK — to halt such enrichment. Continued negotiations only served to suspend the prospect of military action against Iran, with the added bonus of regular infusions of cash and sanctions relief. Deals announced in 2004, 2009, 2012 and 2015 never substantially interfered with Iranian objectives, but did unlock billions of dollars in relief, including the notorious $400 million in used notes airlifted on pallets to the Islamic Republic. There weren’t many good reasons to give the mullahs $400 million in cash, but there were plenty of bad ones, Hezbollah and Hamas being two. 

Europe vested its hopes in what might be termed the “debutante party” school of diplomacy: that bringing a rogue state into the club of respectable nations and showering it with all the benefits of trade and aid could fundamentally change the nature of the regime. After all, didn’t all the luscious material goods of post-war prosperity and economic integration banish the demons of European militarism? Why yes they did, but only because of the unspoken capacity of an American occupation army to remove the possibility of military aggression between its subordinate allies. The debutante party approach works only if there is the live prospect of a devastating “cooperate or else” solution looming over the proceedings.

Intentions require capabilities if they are to be animated in a useful way. The mullahs knew full well that the EU-3 had no military capacity to thwart their nuclear ambitions, and that therefore their circumvention of the successive agreements brokered by the Europeans would result only in frosty diplomatic communiques. Those B-2 stealth bombers sitting quietly at Whiteman Air Force Base in rural Missouri represented a latent capacity to end Teheran’s enrichment objectives, but one that the mullahs wagered would never be used. Hadn’t they watched successive American presidents shy away from military action? Hadn’t they managed to snooker Obama into an agreement that barred inspectors from military sites and placed no limits on their ballistic missile program? Why yes they had, and so betting that even a bombastic second term Trump would decline to use awesome means at his disposal seemed reasonable. Ayatollah Khamenei can now contemplate his bad bet amid the smoking rubble of Fordow and Nantanz.

What lesson might Europe draw from this dramatic solution to the enrichment crisis? One that reinforces the slow transformation of European strategic thinking since the Russian invasion of Ukraine two and a half years ago. Europe concluded that Russia’s great power phantasms are incompatible with peaceful coexistence and unlocked a massive programme of rearmament, led by German Chancellor Merz who announced that Germany will once again have “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” One can imagine that this statement sent a quiet frisson of fear up the backside of his Polish, French and Dutch counterparts. Which unease explains the desperate need for a triumph at this week’s NATO summit. Performative deference to the widely loathed American president may cost European leaders some personal humiliation, but in the service of an important cause: continued American leadership of the Atlantic alliance. A revived German military under the ultimate command of an American four star general poses no threat to the neighbours but will be firmly integrated into NATO defences. An American president content with the increased contributions of his allies will continue to provide the critical capacities Europe could replicate only very slowly and at great expense. Putin fears NATO because of America’s terrifying military capabilities, and her willingness to use them. A Europe without American protection lacks both military capacity and the demonstrated intent to use it.

Appeasing Trump and increasing defence spending are the easiest parts of Europe’s strategic transformation. The harder task will be coupling these new capabilities with the renewal of a patriotic compact between European soldiers and citizens. The rational materialism that dominates the social contract in Europe offers little incentive for the personal sacrifice intrinsic to military service. After all, a social welfare state offers a comfortable life, not the sacrifice of it. Germany will need to reclaim the positive attributes of patriotism which have been ceded to the AfD, the only party that talks unapologetically about national pride and Germany’s historic achievements before the blight of the Nazi years. Polls show that the young Germans most willing to defend their country are those AfD voters quarantined behind the political firewall imposed on them by the “responsible” parties. One may well ask the comfortable centrists in western Germany what society has survived without the need for rough young men willing to do violence on its behalf. Isolating those young men with an open conspiracy against their political preferences alienates them from a nation that will need them, if the “most powerful conventional army in Europe” is to be manned as well as armed.