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McNair Paper 60, April 1999, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Allied Perspectives

7.

Conclusions 

The RMA has emerged as a key concept in the restructuring of U.S. military power within the post-Cold War system.  As such, key allies of the United States need to come to terms with American approaches and programs in shaping their own responses to the post-Cold War security system.

For Western Europeans, the end of the Cold War has carried with it a new phase in the building of Europe.  At the same time, the Western European model of development is challenged by the American economy and by broader globalization processes.  The RMA is part of a much broader American challenge to Europe; a European variant of the RMA will be a subset of a broader process of economic, cultural, and organizational change in the decade ahead.

The consensus within Western Europe upon the need to build more flexible, mobile, power-projection forces has not been carried forward to date into a clear force structure model.  Indeed, the RMA process and the American approach, or rather the military services' various responses to the RMA, are key influences upon any European RMA model(s).

For the French, the model of an autonomous European defense identity guiding a future European force structure is undercut by the continuing influence and power of the United States.  Indeed, as Europe responds to globalization, a purely European defense identity seems further rather than closer to realization.

A European RMA built around a European defense identity would be the classic French response to the American challenge.  Rather than clearly rejecting this aspiration, the French may see a more flexible approach emerge in practice-some European defense consolidation, some transatlantic defense consolidation, new approaches to NATO power projection, new operational approaches among key member states of NATO toward power projection, and the blending of the new professional French Army with allied approaches to operations and force structure development.

A mixed model of European consolidation and participation in American innovations in the military sector will drive Europe toward a variant of the RMA.  A European RMA will emphasize regional power projection in close proximity to EU territory-the Baltic for the Germans, the Western Mediterranean for the French.  Innovations in specific technologies-notably information, precision strike, and sensor technologies-can be drawn upon in the process of innovation. 

But the need to put together a bargain between Europe and the United States in approaches toward regional security will remain important to shaping the future; here, Germany, like Britain, plays a key role.  The Germans wish to work within an interallied setting with the United States.  NATO remains pivotal for Germany. 

Nonetheless, for Germany to focus more attention upon its military contributions to European security, more consideration for German definitions and approaches toward security interests will be necessary.  The dilemma for the French rests on Germans de-emphasizing Atlantic leadership on security policy only to emphasize their own and not the French definitions for European security policy.

The Baltic zone of security could become a priority area of interest for German defense around which forces could be redesigned to provide defensive protection of this core zone for NATO in the years ahead.  An emphasis upon defensive weapons rather than deep- strike weapons could form a particular German approach toward this region.

The growing shift of emphasis toward British rather than French industry to cooperate in building modern weapons may presage a shift in German interests toward a European approach led more by German and Anglo-Saxon interests than French.  German forces are following closely their bilateral relations with key U.S. forces (notably the Air Force and the Army) in seeking to define a German piece of the RMA puzzle.  As such, the European approach to the RMA might follow more a liberal than a corporatist model of European security.  Timothy Garton Ash has argued that Europe should be concerned more with the consolidation of Europe's liberal order than a "vain pursuit" of unification.  He noted that "a degree of power projection, including the coordinated use of military power, will be needed to realize the objectives of liberal order even within the continent of Europe and in adjacent areas of vital interest to us, such as North Africa and the Middle East."¹  A European RMA (drawing as it will upon Europe's relationship with the United States and the ability to redefine the scope and nature of interallied operations) can make an important contribution to the consolidation and projection of Europe's liberal order.  

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