THE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN NATO AND EU

960 | P a g e D e c e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 THE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN NATO AND EU Mohamed Chami MKOUBOI Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Chami63@hotmail.com ABSTRACT The study tends to identify the strategic partnership of both EU and NATO. As result, the research found that EU has many responsibilities based on its normative power‟s ambition than NATO which is militarily oriented organization. EU deals with mainly economic and social affairs without neglecting its security necessities, while NATO is very much concerned about the security perspectives. Furthermore, examining the historical background of both institutions in this particular study, the author found that the strategic partnership and their future plans are based on their mutual understanding during their meetings. So, having consensus before any decision is the strategic approach that is strengthening the cooperation between both institutions. Another angle that the author found out is that EU might be replaced by NATO for military operation in any time of need, due to the EU normative power‟s economic and social activities‟ ambition in the international arena. In this paper, we describe the formatting guidelines for CIR Journal Submission. The entire paper must be in A4 size and “Moderate” margin Indexing terms/


INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this study is to examine the strategic relationship between the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To approach this purpose, a recent historical background of both institutions has been highlighted; as it provides informative data essential to the nature of the relationship of both EU and NATO. Furthermore, a discussion of the challenges already experienced and the future challenges of both institutions have been covered in the last part of the study before the conclusion.

BACKGROUND
The study considers examining the strategic relationship between NATO and EU significant because a comprehensive critique 1 of the partnership may help both institutions as well as the author to analyze and predict their future strategic cooperation. For example, arguing on future strategic relations, after the war in Libya, EU leadership started to step backward from military actions to more soft power policy; while NATO with its intensive military building may prefer to use its military capabilities to stop wars, not only within the member states, but also on the globe. Interestingly, since the beginning of the Arab Uprising, both soft and hard interventions have been experienced in Syria and Libya respectively. However, both approaches in Syria and Libya ended up by huge casualties in lives lost and in destructing both countries` infrastructures.
To narrow down the aim of the research, the author tried to get answers of the following question: In which aspects, background, conditions and interest NATO and EU are strategically interrelated? To approach this research question, a focused literature (Primary and Secondary sources) on the actual strategic cooperation was mainly served for the study.

I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF NATO AND EU
Since twenty one member states are belonging to both NATO and EU, the author would like to study the history of EU and NATO altogether. In this regard, having a historical background of the functioning of both institutions is considerably one of the priorities of the study, as it seems to be connected to the current cooperative strategy adopted by both institutions; and also it helps to predict the nature of the strategic partnership in the future. At the start, the author briefly highlighted a historical background of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), followed by the historical background of the European Union (EU) separately.

Historical Background of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), named also as the North Atlantic Alliance 2 , is an "intergovernmental military alliance originated from the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed in April 1949" ( Gutersloh 2005). NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium; and the organization functions according to a system of collective defense, whereby the member states have come for an agreement of mutual defense in response to any attack by or any external party. However, "the War in Korea incited its members, and an interconnected military structure was built up under the direction of the United States (U.S)" supreme commanders" (Gutersloh 2005). Moreover, in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, "the institution became drawn into the Breakup of Yugoslavia in which caused NATO's first military operations in Bosnia from 1991 to 1995; and also Serbia in 1999" (Gutersloh 2005). As a result of NATO` success to stop the war in Bosnia and Serbia, the organization sought better relations with the previous potential enemies to the East, which ended several former Warsaw Pact 3 states linking the alliance in the end of 1998 and 2004.
In addition to NATO`s influence, its need of social and economic assistance towards its member states has been gradually increasing, and consequently, NATO found EU the most reliable institution to respond its need. As example, the economic and military spending of Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy are approximately 15% of the total military spending of the World. Accordingly, NATO started to consider EU not just as a partner for economic reasons, but as an essential partner to achieve its fundamental mission.

Historical Background of EU
The European Union (EU) is established with the purpose of ending the frequent and bloody wars between neighboring countries, which finished in the World War II. "In 1950s, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 4 start to join D e c e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 European countries economically and politically, only in order to secure permanent peace" (Gutersloh 2005). The six founders of EU are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. "In 1957, the Treaty of Rome forms the European Economic Community (EEC), or Common Market" (Gutersloh 2005). The 1960s was characterized by a good period for the economy, helped by the fact that EU countries stop charging custom duties when they trade with each other. Members also agree joint control over food production, so that everybody has enough food to eat, and in a short period there is even surplus agricultural production. "In 1968 students` riots become famous in Paris and many changes in society and behavior becomes associated with the so-called 68 generation" (Gutersloh 2005). From 1970 to 1979, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the European Union, raising the number of member states to nine. "The short, yet brutal, Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 caused in an energy crisis and economic problems in Europe" (History of the European Union 213). "The last right wing dictatorships in Europe came to an end with the overthrow of the Salazar regime in Portugal in 1974, and the death of General Franco of Spain in 1975" (Javier 2005). These changes made the European Union to think more about economic prosperity; as result of the economic ambition, the institution started to transfer huge sums to create jobs and infrastructure in poorer areas. In order, to pay much attention on the EU citizens, the European Parliament (EP) increased its influences in EU affairs, and in 1979 all citizens can for the first tim e elect their members directly.
Another angle to observe the power of the EU citizens is the influence of specialized unions within the EU member states. As examples, Polish trade union, Solidarność, and its leader Lech Walesa was influential in the 1980s. "The latter become household name across Europe and the world following the Gdansk shipyard strikes in the summer of 1980" (Cornish 2005). In 1981, Greece becomes the 10th member of the EU and Spain and Portugal follow five years later. In 1987, the Single European Act is signed. "This is a treaty which provides the basis for a vast six year program aimed at sorting out the problems with the free flow of trade across EU borders and thus creates the "Single Market Another important event happened was the collapse of communism across central and Eastern Europe. Consequently, Europeans become closer neighbors. "In 1993, the Single Market is completed with the "four freedoms" of: movement of goods, services, people and money" (Williams 2007). The 1990s is also the decade of two treaties, the "Maastricht" Treaty on European Union in 1993 and the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. These rapid developments made EU members to be more concerned on how to protect the environment, and also how Europeans can act together when it comes to security and defense matters. Furthermore, EU citizens got accessibility to move easily from one country to another. A small village in Luxembourg gives its name to the "Schengen" agreements that gradually allow people to travel without having their passports checked at the borders. Millions of young people study in other countries just with EU support.
The following step was about introducing Euro in 2002 as the new currency for many Europeans. Nevertheless, the incidence of 11 September 2001 made EU to become more focused on security issues under the "War on Terror". EU countries begin to work much more closer together to fight crime and terrorism. Based on this new focus on security issues, the strategic partnership between NATO and EU become influential among decision makers of both institutions.

II. NATO-EU STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
NATO and EU share mostly common values and strategic interests. Both are working side by side in crisis management operations. As result of the Lisbon Summit 6 , the "Allies underlined their determination to improve the NATO-EU strategic partnership, as agreed by the two organizations" (NATO official site 2010). At Lisbon, the Allies welcomed recent initiatives from several Allies and ideas proposed by the Secretary General to improve NATO-EU cooperation. Building on these initiatives and on the guidance provided by the new Strategic Concept, "they encouraged the Secretary General to continue working with the EU High Representative and to report to the Council on the ongoing efforts in time for the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin" (NATO official site 2010). NATO"s new Strategic Concept, adopted at Lisbon, commits the Alliance to prevent crisis, manage conflicts and stabilize post conflicting situations, including by working more closely with NATO"s international partners and most importantly the European Union and the United Nations. Moreover, the active involvement of the United States was thought indispensable to booth the military capability of the Soviet Union, and also to discuss for a new military alliance initiated almost instantly due to the Chinese and Russian intensive military building.
Few years later after Lisbon summit has been protracted, attempting to agree and then to complete a durable strategic partnership between EU and NATO. There are compelling reasons to expect close collaboration between the two organizations: there is considerable overlap in membership; members of both organizations, new and old are constrained in their defense spending and cannot maintain commitments to support two entirely separate multilateral military structures. Therefore, members of both organizations decided to institutionalize relations in 2001. Accordingly, that occur across traditional national and state boundaries. 5 "The single market (sometimes called the internal market) describes the EU project to create free trade within the EU and to Mould Europe into a single economy. It is one of the most wide-ranging and significant symbols of European integration, encompassing many of the policy areas where the EU is most influential" (European Single Market 2012). 6 "The Lisbon Summit was designed to mark a turning point for EU enterprise and innovation policy: it saw the high-level integration of social and economic policy with practical initiatives to strengthen the EU's research capacity, promote entrepreneurship and facilitate take-up of information society technologies" ( Istanbul 2005). D e c e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 collaboration between NATO and EU has become an enduring theme in speeches, statements and comments concerning transatlantic security. For that reason, , US President George W. Bush stated that "When Europe and America are united, no problem and no enemy can stand against us" (President Conference 2003), similarly, the Netherlands` Minister of Defense, Henk Kamp insists that "We need to further develop a fully transparent and mutually reinforcing relationship between NATO and the European Union" (Kamp 2003). At the institutional level, NATO has declared that "The NATO Response Force and the related work of the European Union Headline Goal should be mutually reinforcing while respecting the autonomy of both organizations. Moreover, the EU"s December 2003 European Security Strategy is almost gushing in its admiration of NATO" (Kausch 2011).
The following step was the decision made by the NATO member nations at the Prague Summit to fundamentally transform the Alliance and its functioning. A new NATO military command structure (NCS) 7 is being fashioned. Although the NCS retains the main features of the previous structure (one overall military authority and two strategic commands). "It is a leaner, more efficient and effective, and highly deployable one. A key feature of the NCS is the regrouping of all operational forces and operations under one Structure commend, leaving the responsibility for all NATO transformation and interoperability activities to the other Straight Commend (SC)" (DIIS 2005).

"The Strategic Command
Operations, which is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) is supported by two joint force commands able to generate a land-based combined Joint Force (CJTF) headquarters at regional operational level and a robust but more limited standing joint headquarters from which a sea based CJTF headquarters capability can be drawn to support the regional operational level, there is a third level called the component/tactical level" (DIIS 2005). It consists of six joint force component commands, which provide service-specific (land, maritime or air) expertise to the operational level. For maritime operations, "CC MAR HQ 8 Northwood, which is located in Northwood (UK) and is one of the two maritime component commands that provides the necessary maritime expertise and support to joint NATO operations" ((DIIS 2005).

III. CHALLENGES OF NATO AND EU's COOPERATION
This part of the study reflects the common determination to tackle the challenges of the new century. Militarily, the Director General of the EU"s Military Staff has commented saying that the strategic partnership that EU and NATO have established a crisis management strategy, insisting that both organizations are complementary and have committed themselves to a transparent and mutually reinforcing development of the military capability requirements. Military Committee has also argued that the evolving defense and security role of the European Union is an element that can only strengthen the Alliance and add to its effectiveness (OTAN site 2006). Both organizations tend to strengthen and have closer collaboration in matters of security and defense. The European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are two different institutions with different tasks, goals and interests in many aspects. As an example, EU works for member states` citizens` prosperity in economic, social and defense dimensions, while NATO considers the security and defense issues as the main goal of its member states. Subsequently, in order to understand the challenges and prosperity of the partnership, the author has mainly chosen five areas to demonstrate the challenges both institutions experienced in the past, and may face them in the future as follow: 1. Geopolitical Burden-Sharing.

Geopolitical Burden-Sharing
The Geopolitical Burden-Share (GBS) has exercised NATO and the EU for many years. Both organizations have a global outlook, and both have aspirations to act in a wide variety of circumstances. The prospects appear slim, therefore, of D e c e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 finding a straightforward division of labor between NATO and the EU, whether geographical or functional. "There could be a possibility of establishing a modus vivendi 9 over Africa" (Wolf 2000). Functional co-operation will be harder to achieve. Without agreement, at the highest political levels, NATO and the EU should not and cannot be in competition. The trend is towards functional competition, rather than cooperation. Yet the reality is that while NATO can offer high-level force projection capability, it cannot compete with EU in many areas of policy. Conversely, EU has neither the ability nor the need to rival NATO on all levels and in all places. What EU requires, instead, is sufficient, fairly low-level military capability to be fully equipped as a complex security actor in certain areas of the world.

Berlin Plus and Beyond
A framework for operational collaboration now exists between NATO and EU: `Berlin Plus`. "The EU has mounted two operations under Berlin Plus Operations Concordia and Althea which have increased the EU"s operational experience considerably" (Wolf 2000). European forces have also undertaken other military missions not under the auspices of NATO or Berlin Plus. Gradually, the EU is acquiring experience which many assumed could never happen in the absence of a transatlantic security consensus. Some now argue that Berlin Plus-style collaboration should flow in both directions, hence the proposal for a "Berlin Plus in reverse" which could see NATO drawing upon EU strengths in policing and complex crisis management. But while military co-operation is good, several differences persist at the political level, threatening to prevent further progress. Once again, it becomes apparent that a "grand bargain" has yet to be struck between NATO and EU whether geographical or functional or "geo-functional". "Without a robust and durable rationale for NATO-EU cooperation, the hard and soft, military and civil assets of each organization, there will be scarcely be exploited to the best effect" (Wolf 2000).

Rapid Reaction Force Planning
In the area of Rapid Force Planning, the efforts of NATO and the EU are strikingly similar, albeit at different levels of capability. There ought to be firm grounds for collaboration between NATO"s Response Force and the EU"s Battle group project. But there are doubts as to the effectiveness of the EUBG project, even when Full Operating Capability is reached in 2007. Even at full capacity, one force will in military terms have an "operational" capability, while the other will be merely tactical. Deconfliction between the two force structures is declared to have been achieved, but much more could be done to generate positive and constructive cooperation, in scenario and contingency planning, training and certification, and in logistics and communications. "The prospects for multi-national collaboration in rapid reaction deployments are in any case uncertain, given the increasing use of "national caveats" and "red cards"" (Wolf 2000). An important area for NATO/EU strategic cooperation would be to devise some way to mitigate this problem, perhaps by a system of mutual force substitution.

Resource and Capability Planning
Neither organization is meeting expectations in resource and capability planning. And it would therefore be prudent not to expect too much in terms of cooperation in this area. The relationship between NATO and the EU in capability development could not be described as healthy and productive. "Cooperation between the Prague Capabilities Commitment on the one hand, and the European Capabilities Action Plan and European Defense Agency on the other, needs to reacquire momentum" (Ojanen 2006). The focus should be on achievable targets such as "the rationalization of airlift and sealift co-ordination centers rather than more ambitious plans to export the defense transformation agenda from PCC to ECAP/EDA" (Ojanen 2006). An incremental, "bottom-up" approach to cooperation is more likely to ensure that "NATO-EU cooperation is expertise-led, rather than institution-focused" (Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, Report No. 2, March 2006).

CONCLUSION
The study tends to identify the strategic partnership of both EU and NATO. However, the way of reaching the mentioned goal might not be achievable without having enough background on both institutions separately and simultaneously. As a result, the research found that EU has many responsibilities based on its normative power"s ambition than NATO which is militarily oriented organization. EU deals with mainly economic and social affairs without neglecting its security necessities, while NATO is very much concerned about the security perspectives. So, acting militarily is the principal profession for NATO, while good governance toward member states is the fundamental goal for EU. Overall, reinforcing and respecting the autonomy of both institutions is considerably a pillar of their strategic partnership.
Furthermore, examining the historical background of both institutions in this particular study, the author found that the strategic partnership and their future plans are based on their mutual understanding during their meetings. So, having consensus before any decision is the strategic approach that is strengthening the cooperation between both institutions. Another angle that the author found out is that EU might be replaced by NATO for military operation in any time of need, due to the EU normative power"s economic and social activities" ambition in the international arena. D e c e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 NATO-EU interests are based on a collective bargaining approach. In this regard; formal and informal meetings and negotiations are frequently taking place. The challenges both are facing is the ability to achieve effectiveness and good governance based on sharing mutual interests with less risk in order to respond member states` dream which are prosperity and security; and more importantly, to be able to compete the new Russian and Chinese military developments.