The EU's Military Involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Security Culture, Interests and Games

Abstract

The following exploratory case study analyses European Union's military involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the framework of two operations: Artemis (2003) and EUFOR (2006). The European Union in this context is not regarded as a ‘single actor’ but as part of a system, including the member states and the United Nations. In order to bridge the gap between strategic culture and behaviour, it is proposed to broaden the scope of the strategic culture approach by taking specific interests and ‘games’ played by the actors across these levels into consideration. The analysis also suggests that two background features of the multi-level ‘game’ as part of the European Union's strategic culture should be especially recognized: the ‘barrack yard syndrome’ as a principle of behaviour influencing the question who of participates in the operation, and ‘multilateral Caesarism’ as a feature of the ‘multilevel game’ which limits parliamentarian control of decisions and may also have a major impact on decisions to launch a military operation in the framework of the EU.

Notes

Melanie Graham rightly writes in reference to a conference which was held at the American-based Center for Contemporary Conflict in 2006 to address the ongoing debate over a definition of strategic culture: ‘While it is gratifying that consensus was reached at the conference, the agreed upon definition still leaves much to be desired as a tool or analytic process for identifying and comparing specific strategic cultures in any reliable or verifiable manner. What are the common experiences that are relevant? What identifies narratives as valid in terms of shaping a collective identity?’ Melanie Graham, ‘Defining Strategic Culture: A Thesis Prospectus’, University of Northern British Columbia and Royal Roads University, 1 October 2007, p. 6.

Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Options (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1977).

See, for example, Sven Biscop, ‘The ABC of European Union Strategy: Ambition, Benchmark, Culture’, Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels, October 2007, pp. 17–21.

See, for example, Michael Smith, ‘Toward a Theory of EU Foreign Policy-making: Multi-level Governance, Domestic Politics, and National Adaptation to Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 11, No. 4 ( 2004), pp. 740– 758.

Darryl Howlett, ‘The Future of Strategic Culture’, Defence Reduction Agency Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, Comparative Strategic Culture Curriculm Contract No. DTRA01-03-D-0017, Technical Instruction, 18 June 2002.

This study focuses on Germany and France. The reasons: a) France is the major European player in Congo and was the foremost ‘demandeur’ of European operations in RD Congo; b) Germany is the major member state with a skeptical view on military engagements in Africa, despite having taken the lead in EUFOR RD Congo. In this way it is possible to show the major features of the EU's SC without being forced to analyse the approaches of most or all member states.

See Eva Gross, ‘Operation Concordia’, in Giovanni Grevi, Damien Helly and Daniel Keohane (eds), European Security and Defence Policy. The First 10 Years (1999-2009) (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2009), pp. 173–180.

See Paraswchos Lianos, ‘European Strategic Culture: Assessing the ESDP Years (1998-2005)’, PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2008.

See Simon Duke, ‘Consensus Building in ESDP: Lessons of Operation Artemis’, European Institute Working Paper 09-07, Dublin, July 2008, p. 11.

See ibid., pp. 12ff. and Peter Petrov, ‘Early Institutionalization of the ESDP Governance Arrangements: Insights From Operation Concordia and Artemis’, in Vanhoonacker, Sophie Hylke Dijstra and Heide Maurer (eds), ‘Understanding the Role of Bureaucracy in the European Security and Defence Policy’, European Integration online Papers (EloP), Special Issue, Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 10, http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2010-008a.htm (accessed 20 April 2011).

See Duke, ‘Consensus Building’ (note 9), p. 17.

Today France maintains about 230 troops in the CAR capital Bangui. See ‘France Seeks New Military Deal with Africa, Defence Web, 21 June 2010, http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8560:france-seeks-new-military-deal-with-africa-&catid=56:Multi-National & Inter-Agency&Itemid = 111 (accessed 20 April 2011).

See http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/pays-zones-geo_833/republique-democratique-du-congo_376/france-republique-democratique-du-congo_1219/presentation_3672/index.html (accessed 20 April 2011).

See Petrov, ‘Early Institutionalization’ (note 10), p. 8.

See Lianos, ‘European Strategic Culture’ (note 8), p. 212.

See Peter Schmidt, ‘Frankreichs Schwierigkeiten mit den Vereinigten Staaten und der NATO – Entwicklungstrends einer mühsamen Partnerschaft', in Jens van Scherpenberg and Peter Schmidt (eds), Stabilität und Kooperation: Aufgaben internationaler Ordnungspolitik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), pp. 245–246.

See Duke, Consensus Building (note 9), p. 21.

Peter Schmidt, ‘Stability Operation and Alliance Management – The German View’, Paper for the Senior Course on Security Policy in a New Europe, Swedish National Defence College, April 2009; Sebastian Harnisch and Raimund Wolf, ‘Germany – The Continuity of Change’, in Emil Kirchner and James Sperling (eds), Global Security Governance. Competing Perceptions of Security in the 21st Century (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), pp. 43–65; K. Longhurst, Germany and the Use of Force: The Evolution of German Security Policy 1990–2003 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). During the formulation of the ESS, ‘…Germany wanted the EU to focus on particular areas instead of boldly pretending at a global role. Particularly Foreign Minister Fischer insisted on the Middle East, where he had personally been involved, and the European neighbourhood, mainly the Balkans, as key areas for European responsibility’ (Claudia Major, ‘Europe is what Member States Make of it. An Assessment of the Influence of Nation States on the European Security and Defence Policy’, PhD thesis, Uinversity of Birmingham. In the ‘Leitlinien für die Afrika-Politik', Germany's Foreign Office (2009) emphasizes above all the fostering of African capabilities, the German readiness to support the building-up of African capabilities for crisis management, and humanitarian aid, not military deployment –see http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/357282/publicationFile/3715/2009-LeitlinienAfrikapolitik.pdf;jsessionid=D93061A8DEBAC75601D078614D82087B (accessed 28 April 2011).

Duke, ‘Consensus Building’ (note 9), p. 8.

Ibid. p. 4.

Duke's notion of ‘framing’ is here understood as another expression for SC.

Treaty of the European Union (Maastricht Treaty).

Duke, ‘Consensus Building’ (note 9), p. 22.

Ibid.

Only six member states contributed forces or force elements to the operation (see ‘Personnel Contributions Source Fact Sheet on the Artemis, July 2003, Council of the European Union’ (European Council 2003).

Certain problems arise with this argument. It may be that a certain ‘strategic culture’ was not the cause for this behaviour but rather, for example, a free-rider attitude. In the German case, however, it is very plausible to place the responsibility on Germany's strategic culture.

See Tony Chafer, ‘The AU: A New Arena for Anglo–French Cooperation in Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2011), pp. 55–82. See also ‘Franco–British Summit Declaration on Franco-British cooperation in Africa, Le Touquet 4.02.2003’, http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Franco-British-summit-Declaration,4972 (accessed 8 August 2011).

David Chuter, Humanity's Soldier: France and International Security (London: Berghahn Books, 1997). Chuter argues convincingly that France enjoys a solid consensus on defence issues. To this day, the French national strategy explicitly declares ‘intervention’ as one of its basic principles (see Fabio Liberti and Camille Blain, France's National Security Strategy, WP 3/2011 - 17/1/2011). See also Christopher Griffin, ‘French Military Interventions in Africa: French Grand Strategy and Defense Policy since Decolonization’, Paper prepared for the International Studies Association 2007 Annual Convention, Chicago, 28 February–3 March 2007.

See Bagayoko, Niaglé, ‘L'Opération Artémis, un Tournant pour la Politique Européenne de Sécurité et de Défense?’, Afrique Contemporaine, Vol. 209, pp. 101–116.

For a similar argument with regard to the EU's civilian operation in Africa see Reinhardt Rummel's contribution in this collection.

From the EU's viewpoint, this principle is a major tool for integrating the EU's policies with national ones (see Damien Helly, ‘L'UE et l'Afrique: Les Défis de la coherence’, Paris: Institut d'Etudes de Sécurité, Cahiers de Chaillot, Novembre 2010).

See Petrov, ‘Early Institutionalization of the ESDP’ (note 9), p. 13.

See Kees Homan, ‘Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, in Andrea Ricci and Eero Kytömaa (eds) Faster and more United? The Debate on Europe's Crisis Response Capacity (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2007), p. 4, http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2007/20070531_cscp_chapter_homan.pdf (accessed 30 April 2011).

Simon Duke, Consensus Building (note 9), p. 212.

See BBC News, ‘Iraq War Illegal, Says Annan’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3661134.stm; (accessed 30 April 2011).

The overall presence lasted 5–6 months, including pre-deployment and the pulling out of forces.

Letter dated 27 December 2005 from the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The operation made use of 2276 soldiers: Germany and France each contributed about one-third of the troops, with the rest provided by 13 additional member states plus Turkey (see Denis M. Tull, ‘EUFOR DR Congo: ein Erfolg, aber kein Erfolgsmodell’, in Muriel Asseeburg, Ronja Kempin (eds), Die EU als strategischer Akteur in der Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik (Berlin: SWP-Studie, S32, 2009), p. 54).

Claudia Major, ‘EU-UN Cooperation in Military Crisis Management: The Experience of EUFOR RD Congo in 2006’, Occasional Paper No. 72, Institute for Security Studies, Paris, September 2008, p. 18.

Das Parlament, 13 March 2006.

See Harnisch and Wolf, ‘Germany – The Continuity of Change’ (note 18), p. 45.

Joint Declaration on UN-EU Co-operation in Crisis Management (New York), 24/9/2003.

See EU-UN co-operation in Military Crisis Management Operations. Elements of Implementation of the EU-UN Joint Declaration, adopted by the European Council /17–18 June 2004. For a more detailed analysis of the development see Peter Schmidt, ‘La PESD et l'ONU: un couple parfait?’, Politique étrangère, Vol. 70, No. 3, (2005), pp. 613–624.

‘A Secure Europe in a Better World. European Security Strategy’, Brussels, 12 December 2003. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf (accessed 20 April 2011), p. 11.

Council of the European Union, ‘The EU and Africa: Towards a Strategic Partnership’, 15961/05 (Presse 367), Brussels, 19 December 2005, available at http://consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/er/87673.pdf

See Schmidt, ‘Frankreichs Schwierigkeiten’ (note 16), pp. 234–255.

For evidence of this German view see Ludwig Jacob, ‘Im Interesse der EU oder der DR Kongo?', in Heinz-Gerhard Justenhoven and Hans-Georg Erhart (eds), Intervention im Kongo. Eine kritische Analyse der Befriedungspolitik von UN und EU (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), p. 117.

See Tull, ‘EUFOR DR Congo’ (note 38), p. 53.

See Peter Schmidt, “‘Freiwillige vor!” Bundeswehreinsatz im Kongo – zur Dialektik einer Führungsrolle wider Willen', Internationale Politik (November 2006), p. 75.

See Thomas Jäger, ‘EUFOR DR Congo: Defizite eines glücklich verlaufenen Einsatzes’, in Hans J. Gießmann and Armin Wagner (eds), Armee im Einsatz (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), p. 20.

For the following see Schmidt, “Freiwillige vor”, (note 49) pp. 70-75.

Jean Y. Haine's analysis of the Chad operation is an excellent expression of the contradicting strategic cultures in Europe.

Anne-Marie Slaughter regards government networks as a major, positive feature of the new world order in A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). The bargaining on certain formal levels but also, more informally, between the levels, can be regarded such a network.

I choose this notion in consideration of Laurence Whitehead, who used ‘democratic Caesarism’ to describe the political circumstances in Latin America. The gist of this notion was to describe tendencies to constrain liberal democracies (see Laurence Whitehead. The Alterantives to “Liberal Democracy”: a Latin American Perspective, Political Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1992), pp. 146–159.

From a national point of view, multilateral Caesarism is under the current circumstances the downside of EU's pursuit of ‘effective multilateralism’.

Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn 1997), p. 513.

See Antoine Sadoux, ‘La PESD: un moyen d'assurer la position de la France en Afrique?’, Revue Défense Nationale, No. 10 (2005), pp. 70–71. For this ‘multilateral turn’ of French African policy see also Sylvain Touati, ‘French Foreign Policy in Africa: Between Pré Carré and Multilatilateralism. An Africa Programme Briefing Note’ (London: Chatham House, February 2007).

However, there is the widespread argument, that governments like international cooperation not only because it is needed, but also because it provides them more freedom of manoeuver with regard to their national parliaments.