Abstract
The premise of Anthony King’s book, The Transformation of Europe’s Armed Forces, is that Europe’s armed forces “are being turned into deployable reaction forces, capable of rapid intervention” (p. 7). By providing “a historically specific interpretation of European military innovation through the analysis of the practices, interrelations and hierarchies of the armed forces,” the book traces “the realities of military development today” and describes the fundamental features of Europe’s new military, including how Europe’s armed forces “conceptualise, plan, command and train for military operations” (pp. 6, 12–13). To this end, the book maps the organizational geography associated with the transnationalization and concentration of the British, French, and German armies, the strategic and institutional context of transformation, and the frictions it has engendered at the domestic levels within the armed forces and internationally between European militaries. It also describes the strategic and budgetary pressures these militaries face while insisting that the performance of naval and air forces apparently “is not decisive to the outcome of current missions” (p. 8).
For ten years, King used the participant observation method to study military training, exercises, and operations and cultivate so intimate a relationship with senior UK military brass that it culminated in King coauthoring part of Britain’s new stabilization doctrine and working for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s Regional Command South Headquarters in Kandahar. In support of the thesis that the mass army is being superseded by “smaller, professional forces” (pp. 6–7), King marshals evidence documenting a simultaneous process of concentration and cross-national cooperation and interaction. Chapters 4–6 expound how NATO’s armed divisions have been supplanted tactically and strategically by lightly armored forces. These European brigades (chapter 7) consist “of expert professionals capable of mobile warfare across the spectrum of conflict and assumes the form of a hybrid joint structure, linked horizontally into other formations and forces in order to exploit available assets in any particular situation” (p. 272). Digital communications are enhancing vertical interaction within the same forces as much as horizontal interaction across forces from different countries (chapter 10). The command structure consists of “an intricate transnational operational network in which national interests predominate:” joint operation commands “try to co-ordinate a unified campaign, while the national operational headquarters [ … ] ensure that national caveats and preferences are enacted in-theatre” (p. 272).
King seems to posit the Afghan expedition as definitive. But that experience could just as well turn out to be an anomaly. Confronted with the bill and death toll, politicians and electorates alike are showing little enthusiasm for a repeat of an Afghanistan-like mission anytime soon. Fiscal austerity and recruiting challenges are imposing long-term political and institutional constraints that would make an analogous deployment difficult to sustain. Chapter 2 documents the dynamic of fiscal constraint and consequent concentration of force projection in rapid reaction forces. But does that make them the force of choice; or, rather, an instrument of last resort?
The allies continue to bank on air and blue-water naval assets to deliver their international stability interests. Future missions, insofar as they materialize at all, appear more likely to be modeled on Mali or Libya, than Afghanistan: short term, with limited objectives, a clear exit strategy, little risk of mission creep, and an aversion to deploying “boots on the ground.” Tepid uptake of the Libya mission among many allies (let alone Russia and China!) intimates that even for clearly delimited, United Nations Security Council-sanctioned missions, a coalition may be proving increasingly difficult to motivate.
Chapters 9–10 purport that their elite status and treatment along with their “warrior ethos” make rapid reaction forces the spearhead of future interventions, possibly even in a limited confrontation with China or Russia. But does the greatest systemic threat to international stability in the twenty-first century not emanate from reverberations of domestic instability driven by violent extremism, climate change, resource scarcity, crony capitalism, and democratic authoritarianism? Having European “major powers” deploy “elite warriors” may only exacerbate an already volatile situation. The Bundeswehr’s “warriors” get a bad rap in King’s book for their reticence to exercise their trade. But might the elusion of “strategic success” in Afghanistan to which King refers repeatedly perhaps offer some vindication of the more reserved German approach to the conduct and operations of foreign “warriors” on other countries’ sovereign territory?
Implicitly positing Britain’s armed forces and modus operandi as the benchmark, the reader cannot fail but notice a touch of British hubris longing for the grandeur of the Pax Britannica of a long-gone Victorian era. Somehow the rest of Europe is supposedly looking for direction from the two countries that have long hindered greater defense integration across Europe: Britain and France? King observes a nationalist retrenchment in reaction to greater cooperation that prevails in the form of significant differences among the transformations of the armed forces of these three countries as well as in their transatlantic orientation.
King’s evidence suggests that Europe’s armed forces are well on their way to harnessing synergies to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Europe and its armed forces are figuring out how to turn diversity of approaches and ideas from a liability into an asset that harnesses synergies and economies of scale. Europe is modeling to the rest of the world how collective security interests can help countries overcome centuries of discord and strife. That bodes well for Europe—and for the rest of the world.