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Cracks emerging in European defence as NATO faces ‘brain death’, Macron warns
MICHELLE ZILIO
ADRIAN MORROWU.S. CORRESPONDENT
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that NATO faces “brain death” because the United States can no longer be counted on to co-operate with the other members of the military and political alliance.
In an interview published on Thursday, Mr. Macron said what “we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” citing concerns about the lack of co-ordinated strategic decision-making between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Speaking more generally about the future of Europe, Mr. Macron said the continent needs to “wake up” to the shift in U.S. foreign policy toward isolationism and the global balance of power, with the rise of China and re-emergence of authoritarian powers such as Russia and Turkey. Mr. Macron said Europe is at risk of disappearing geopolitically and losing “control of our destiny” if it fails to face this reality.
U.S. President Donald Trump has condemned NATO as outdated, and complained publicly that the United States contributes the most to its defence operations, while other allies, including Canada, fail to boost their military spending.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Germany on Thursday for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, hailed NATO's importance in uniting democratic countries to win the Cold War.
But at a press conference with his German counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Maas, he repeated Mr. Trump's demand that other members contribute more to the alliance. He said he was glad to see German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's commitment earlier in the day to bring German defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2031.
“It is an absolute imperative that every country participate and join in and contribute appropriately to achieving that shared security mission,” Mr. Pompeo said.
NATO is an alliance of 29 countries from Europe and North America for mutual defence, fighting terrorism and helping manage crises around the world. Its members contribute to its operations mainly by participating in its missions. Members pledged in 2014 to increase their military spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2024.
U.S. military spending was 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2018, according to the World Bank.
Canada has no clear plan to reach 2 per cent in the next decade. In a statement, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's office said Canada's total defence spending is expected to reach 1.48 per cent of GDP by 2024. However, spokesperson Todd Lane said the government plans to exceed another NATO target, 20 per cent of defence spending on major equipment.
Mr. Maas, the German foreign affairs minister, dismissed Mr. Macron's comments.
“I do not believe NATO is brain-dead,” he said. “The challenges should not be downplayed in their importance, those that we are facing, but we have an interest in the unity of NATO and its ability to take action.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday in Berlin, also rejected Mr. Macron's “drastic words.”
“That is not my view of co-operation in NATO,” she said at a news conference. “I don't think that such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday that NATO continues to play an important role on the world stage. He pointed to Canada's leadership of the NATO training mission in Iraq and its involvement in a mission in Latvia as examples of where the alliance is still valuable.
“I think NATO continues to hold an extremely important role, not just in the North Atlantic, but in the world as a group of countries that come together to share values, that share a commitment to shared security,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.
Fen Hampson, an international affairs expert at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, said Mr. Macron made a fair point about NATO's problems, but said use of the term “brain death" was a bit hyperbolic.
“This [NATO] is a corpse that perhaps has a beating heart in terms of the intergovernmental machinery, but in terms of its political leadership and political commitment ... I think he is on the mark there,” Prof. Hampson said.
In the wide-ranging foreign policy interview with The Economist, Mr. Macron also questioned the effectiveness of NATO's Article Five, which says that if one member is attacked, all others will come to its aid. The collective defence article is meant as a deterrent. Mr. Macron said NATO “only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such,” adding that there is reason to reassess the alliance in light of the U.S. actions.
He pointed to the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria last month, abandoning Kurdish allies. The move made way for Turkey to invade and attack the Kurds, whom Turkey has long seen as terrorists. Mr. Macron expressed concern about whether NATO would respect Article Five and back Turkey, a member, if Syria launched a retaliatory attack.
“If the [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad regime decides to retaliate against Turkey, will we commit ourselves under it? It's a crucial question,” Mr. Macron said.
David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said that while Mr. Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria sent a troubling signal to allies, it would be much more difficult for him to bypass the U.S. national security community, which widely supports NATO, to make drastic changes to his county's involvement in the alliance.
“NATO is different in the order of importance than the American relationship was with the Kurds. Because of that there's enough of the national security establishment built in and around Trump that would safeguard the U.S. role in the alliance to prevent anything catastrophic from happening," Mr. Perry said.
Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau, said Mr. Macron is right about the need for Europeans to work together more effectively, but said calling NATO's Article Five into question is a “dangerous and irresponsible way to do so.”
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“We're gonna have to brave the storm together, especially some of the smaller suppliers,” said Lucas Hicks, vice president of new construction aircraft carrier programs. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The Navy is rushing to award several major shipbuilding contracts several months early to keep shipbuilders on the job and save smaller suppliers in danger of going out of business amid the wider manufacturing halt cause by the coronavirus crisis. The biggest is a contract to build the next San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, (LPD 31) which serves as a jumping-off point for Marines heading ashore. The push to accelerate work is part of a wide-ranging effort to buttress the shipbuilding industry and the thousands of small suppliers that make parts for the Navy. The Navy's top acquisition official, James Geurts, told reporters Wednesday morning the Navy is worried about the effect the state and local shutdowns could have on its shipbuilding and repair efforts. “It's a national emergency and this is critical national infrastructure,” so the issue is, “how do we orient quickly to get at this aggressively and try not to be reactive in nature.” Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi is currently building the USS Richard M. McCool (LPD 29) and Harrisburg (LPD 30), and would be in line to start work on the next ship in the class. The Navy is also pushing to move forward the award for a landing craft program that was slated to kick off later this year. Funding for the new LPD was approved in the 2020 NDAA defense policy bill which authorized $525 million for the LPD Flight II program. Any breaks in the build and repair schedule would throw the Navy's planned deployments out of whack but also could be devastating to the thousands of small businesses across the country that literally provide the nuts and bolts that make the complex machinery that powers the fleet. “Nobody right now is in the position to float gaps,” Geurts said. His staff has done a detailed analysis of the Navy's industrial base. They are looking for ways to help the smaller companies not only through moving forward orders, but also finding money for research and development that would help small, innovative companies. “I hear stories of second-, third- and fourth-tier suppliers that were worried about going out of business, worried about how they would keep paying their salaries, and our ability to move and accelerate work into the defense base and then have that be pushed out to the suppliers is absolutely critical, because if they're not there it won't matter when we're ready to recover,” Geurts said. Geurts is gathering all of the large shipbuilders and shipyard owners several times a week to check on the status of the workforce and what problems they see coming if the current crisis continues. At the center of these worries is the nation's largest shipbuilder, Huntington Ingalls, which is the only company that builds both Nimitz and Ford-class aircraft carriers, in addition to sharing work on Virginia-class submarines with Electric Boat. The company has taken steps to attempt to apply social distancing at its shipyards, and has staggered shifts to accommodate workers who might now need to work different hours, company officials say. In an interview earlier this week, several Huntington executives told me they've reached out to over 2,000 suppliers in 48 of the 50 US states, and are working to speed up and push contracts as far down the supply chain as possible to keep these small businesses running. “We're gonna have to brave the storm together and especially some of the smaller suppliers,” said Lucas Hicks, vice president of new construction aircraft carrier programs. “We need their products today, but we also need them in 90 days, so we want to help them brave the storm,” he added. “We've actually changed some payment terms on some of our supplier contracts to try to make sure that we can front them what they need to stay afloat. We're doing some creative stuff to try and help them be able to weather the storm.” The company hasn't seen any reduction in parts received yet, but acknowledges that the situation changes on a daily basis, as different parts of the country feel the pain of local shutdowns in different ways. Lucas said Huntington does not anticipate it will stop work, but is allowing employees the option of working from home and providing liberal leave to others. Eventually all of this “will have an impact,” especially if the shutdowns are prolonged. “At some point, if it extends for months and months at the rate we're on, it would have an impact but it's too early to tell.” Geurts appears to see things the same way. The crisis and its downstream effects is “going to have both a time dimension and geography dimension, and so it will remain a fluid situation,” when it comes to how much the defense industry, and the navy, are affected, Geurts said. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-rushes-shipbuilding-deals-to-keep-yards-going-in-panddemic