On the occasion of the NATO industrial summit, Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist openly expressed concern about European initiatives around Permanent Structured European Defense Cooperation, PESCO, do not respect “NATO standards”, because they do not allow companies not belonging to the European Union the possibility of participating in calls for tenders. He added that this lack of cooperation could lead to the duplication of development efforts within NATO. These comments were certainly qualified by Ellen Lord, the head of acquisitions at the Pentagon, who prefers to speak of complementarity between the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. He added that, on the other hand, the level of investment by European countries in defense matters still remains far too low, pointing the finger, as always, and not without reason, at Germany on this subject.
However, we are entitled to wonder about the “NATO Standards” to which David Norquist referred. Indeed, it seems that the latter assimilates American defense standards with those of the Atlantic alliance. Certainly, as we have seen recently, the United States today represents 80% of NATO's overall military power, in numerical terms. But this figure assumes that the latter can devote all of their military forces to the Defense of Europe, which is more than unlikely with the Chinese threat in the Pacific. If, on the other hand, we consider that the United States is today forced to concentrate 50% of its forces on the Indo-Pacific theater to counter the Chinese, North Korean and Iranian threat, and keeping a reserve of 30% forces for the ultimate defense of the territory, there remains barely more than 20% of the American forces potentially attributable to European Defense, bringing the representativeness of the United States in NATO to 16%, i.e. at the same level as France and Germany combined. The over-representativeness of the United States is in fact a very debatable question, as is the supposed prerogative to define the technological standards of the alliance itself.
Furthermore, the Deputy Secretary of Defense seems to forget, or pretend to do so, that PESCO is precisely designed to reduce the dependence of European states on American technologies, and therefore to regain a certain form of strategic autonomy, which would allow Europeans to be able, if necessary, to dissociate themselves from American positions, to act in total autonomy, without risking being deprived of part of their forces. In other words, David Norquist seems to be alarmed today by the constitutive reason for PESCO, even though it had clearly been established as such since its launch.
Finally, let us recall that in recent years, the United States has not hesitated to use ITAR legislation, making it possible to prohibit the export of American technologies embedded in equipment designed abroad, to take a favorable position on certain international Defense markets. It was, for example, the case in Egypt to hinder a new order of planes Rafale French, by preventing the export of SCALP airborne cruise missiles which used some American components.
The harsh criticism and repeated threats from American officials concerning PESCO seems to attest, today, to the growing effectiveness of this European initiative, with, in sight, the possibility of rebalancing within NATO the mastery of technological standards between Europeans and Americans. Regardless, it appears that David Norquist's statement said a lot more about the American perception of technological mastery in NATO, than he actually wanted to say….