Five Reasons France Did Not Invoke NATO Article 5
- By defencematters
The scope of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week – 129 dead, more than 350 injured, the qualification of the French executive about « being at war », opened legitimate questions about whether France would invoke Article 5
Martin Michelot
The scope of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week – 129 dead, more than 350 injured, the qualification of the French executive about « being at war », opened legitimate questions about whether France would invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, in a move reminiscent of the United States activating Allied mutual assistance after the 9/11 attacks.
President François Hollande, in his address to the French Congress on Monday, announced that France would invoke article 42.7 of the EU treaty, a mutual assistance clause similar in scope to NATO’s Article 5, whereby if a member of the European Union is the victim of “armed aggression on its territory” other states have an “obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power”. In a joint press conference on Tuesday, French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian and High Representative Federica Mogherini confirmed that France had moved forward with invoking the EU mutual assistance clause.
Why France did not invoke Article 5 in order to engage the military might of NATO in the fight against Daech, and instead decided to ask its European partners for increased solidarity, can be explained and interpreted in a few different but overlapping points.
Putting pressure on Europe
By making use of binding Treaty mechanisms, France indicates that it expects its partners to join in and lend their capabilities and forces to fight terrorism, on the European territory and abroad. The seeming failure of French and Belgian intelligence services to detect the plans by the attackers symbolizes the extent to which cross-border cooperation needs to be strengthened in Europe; at the same time, the increasing rate of French air strikes on Daech’s strategic positions on the Syrian territory highlights a desire to act fast and decisively, something that France does not have the capacity to do on its own.
As Le Drian made clear on Tuesday, “France cannot do everything on its own any longer”, especially as the country’s military is risking overstretch due to its engagements in the Sahel-Sahara region, Lebanon, the Gulf of Guinea, and Iraq. Therefore, Le Drian added that France expects “capabilities cooperation on French interventions in Syria and Iraq, or relief or support in other operations”, a point that Hollande alluded to in his address by singling out the countries in which France was fighting against terrorism, which also include Nigeria, for example.
This paints a clear picture of how French expectations from Europe to play a concrete and decisive role have significantly risen. France is sending a clear message that it is also European values that are under attack, and that their defense (and by extension, the defense of the EU’s political project) all over the world is a collective affair. This does not mean that France expects military engagement by EU member states in Syria and Iraq against Daech, or even in the Sahel region where 3500 troops are stationed; however, France is putting in place the political conditions to request targeted military support from its European partners. Major military players in Europe, such as first and foremost Germany, but also the UK, Poland and Italy are targeted by this political move. Given the novelty of the use of this clause, it is hard to pinpoint realistic expectations, and to assess whether this move will remain nothing more than political. France is taking a low risk in invoking this clause.
Increasing flexibility and guaranteeing the European leadership role
By not invoking Article 5, the thinking is that France is depriving itself for the superior firepower that the U.S. would provide, and which France needs in order to achieve a decisive effect on the ground. Therefore, it can be imagined that Article 5 has been taken off the table in order to increase the flexibility of the coalition: any action undertaken by the Alliance would require a significant amount of coordination that France is not politically willing to invest in, at a moment when its executive is focused on devising quick responses to the crisis. A more structured NATO effort would also undoubtedly create problems of communication with the Gulf States that are also engaged in the effort.
Secondly, invoking Article 5 would involve higher political and military risks, as the geopolitical situation is vastly different than from 9/11: the tenser security situation in Europe, due not only to the refugee crisis but also and especially the threats on NATO’s Eastern flank significantly complicate the participation of all Allies in any sort of military operation. France could not run the risk, nor could NATO, of invoking Article 5 and seeing any sort of consensus slowly crumble. This would mean disastrous consequences in terms of the viability of Article 5 to defend the Baltic States against an eventual Russian aggression. The calculation is therefore that France can achieve the desired effects with the current level of U.S. engagement, while putting pressure on its European partners to relieve the pressure the French army is under.
Thirdly, the question of the leadership of any Article 5 operation would inevitably have come into play. Given the reluctance of France to engage with Russia on military affairs (even despite Vladimir Putin’s recent order to his military to do so), the former would perhaps not have constituted a strong enough leader. At the same time, it is unlikely that France would have been satisfied, for domestic purposes, to leave the leadership to the U.S., nor would the U.S. have wanted to assume such a position at a time where any sustained military engagement would likely be met at home with little popular support. Therefore, any NATO-led coalition would have suffered from a lack of leadership which would have rendered its use suboptimal, and once again could have diminished the deterrence value of Article 5.
Such a situation allows France to keep the nominal leadership of the European coalition and to work closely and more efficiently with the existing coalition partners, while working with other European partners to support their global efforts against terrorism. The news that the U.S. will share with France Five Eyes-level of intelligence, a fact that is close to historical in the French-U.S. relationship and at NATO’s-meta level, only reinforces the fact that not invoking Article 5 increases the flexibility and makes the coalition more nimble, while leaving France in the driver’s seat of the European collective effort. This allows France to reinforce its role as a leader in the realm of European defense, a position openly assumed by François Hollande in his presidential campaign. Finally, for domestic purposes, it is important for the executive to paint France as a European leader, both as a first responder to the crisis, but also as part of the ongoing tug of war with Germany regarding the leadership of the EU, one point on which Hollande has sorely disappointed his electorate.
How to handle Turkey and Russia?
Turkey seems to be represent a major obstacle to any successful coalition in Syria and Iraq. With Ankara seemingly often playing a different game and trying to achieve different strategic objectives, which to some extent clash with the coalition’s, working with Turkey in the context of an Article 5 operation could prove even more complicated than what the current dynamics of the coalition indicate. With a President Erdogan emboldened by his recent electoral victory, determined not to compromise on the Kurdish situation despite U.S. interceding, Turkey could have acted as a strategic spoiler.
In parallel, the engagement of Russia in the fight against Daech has proven to be a game-changer, also to the extent that it limits transatlantic options on the theater of operations. The tensions between NATO and Russia on the Eastern flank of the Alliance have a direct impact on its ability to act, and a too strong NATO commitment could well be used by Russia to justify irregular actions in the Baltic States or elsewhere on Article 5 territory, a risk few are willing to take. The tensions around Russia’s revisionist agenda and the criticism by the Kremlin of the “West’s unlawful regime change” policies certainly have come into play, especially from Central and Eastern European NATO Allies, in deciding of the opportunity of Article 5. With Russia now nominally willing to cooperate with the coalition members since the downing of the MetroJet aircraft, a NATO engagement could scramble signals and actively harm any sort of productive discussion with Russia.
What do we do now, and next?
Invoking Article 5 would have put pressure on the Alliance to act immediately, and to act decisively. French airstrikes on Raqqa, while representing a major intensification of efforts, are the fruit of weeks of intelligence collecting by coalition intelligence services, and any further effort will be to subject to laborious groundwork. Therefore, it is fair to ask what a major military coalition could have achieved, if there is no desire by the main actors to put boots on the ground and ensure the success of its forces, or to agree on lower hanging fruit such as a no-fly zone (the utility of which is contested, and which would require Russian full cooperation) in order to create humanitarian corridors.
Any discussion of a military cooperation should be done with the weight of the 2011 military intervention (first, France-UK and then NATO) in Libya. While decisive effects were achieved on the ground quickly, the seeming lack of a viable long-term plan for the stability of the country has given the Alliance a severe headache, as Libya has plunged into political instability and the government has lost control over large swaths of its territory to the hands of terrorist groups. With no solution on the map for a negotiated political transition and French inflexibility towards Bachar Al-Assad being part of any negotiation on the future of Syria, and the disastrous precedent of the vetting of moderate opposition groups, a Syria descending into chaos would prove even more challenging for NATO: Daech would revel from this situation, while refugees would continue to flow to Europe.
History
Finally, France’s fraught history with NATO should not be forgotten. Despite reintegrating NATO’s military command in 2009, France’s stance towards the Alliance remains ambivalent. As mentioned above, France is a champion of European defense, a political instrument in which its politicians believe its choices are better reflected, especially to the extent that they are not subject to the whims of the U.S. While France has been a strong actor within NATO since 2009, being a leader of the Unified Protector operation in Libya in 2011, the country’s pragmatic approach to the institutions leads to a case-by-base assessment of the situation, and a judgment of where its interests could be better served. The political calculations, as underlined above, often tip towards the side of the EU, despite the increasing like-mindedness between the U.S. and France, and the gap that seems to have installed itself between certain European allies in terms of use of force. Domestically, selling a NATO intervention to politicians that tend to bear bad memories from U.S. involvement in the Middle East and North Africa would have proven a hard selling point, even if it would have provided a teachable moment – and a necessary one for France – that NATO does not only represent the U.S.
Therefore, the decision not to invoke Article 5 enshrines the French love-hate story with NATO for the foreseeable future, and diminishes the extent to which Hollande can be criticized for having gone against the grain of French established military traditions.
Martin Michelot is Director of the Global Europe program and Head of Research at the Europeum Institute for European Policy in Prague
