The Nordic Battlegroup, Ready and Willing
17 April 2015
This is transnational solidarity in action: Since the beginning of this year, more than 2,400 soldiers and officers from seven European countries—Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ireland—have been on standby, ready to deploy to any conflict zone. They form the Nordic Battlegroup (NBG), a rapid deployment force initiated and managed by the seven countries with the task of intervening on behalf of the EU.
A joint rapid-reaction military force is exactly what the army-less EU needs. That’s why, back in 2004, France and the UK lobbied their fellow EU members to implement EU battlegroups. No squabbling over which member states should contribute when a crisis occurs, no scrambling to have the soldiers quickly train together. Indeed, the EU introduced its own union-wide battlegroup in 2007. As a recent report by the think tank Carnegie Europe points out, however, the EU-wide battlegroup has been a failure. When an intervention was needed in Mali, France ended up having to send its own force, as EU member states couldn’t agree on whether to send the EU battlegroup.
The Nordic Battlegroup, run by a subset of smaller and like-minded EU member states (joined by Norway) on behalf of the whole union, seems a more clever way forward for the EU. In deploying the NBG, the union’s larger member states don’t risk losing face or influence vis-à-vis other large member states. Even so, the NBG has yet to be deployed. There hasn’t even been a credible call for such a deployment. On its website, the Swedish Armed Forces gamely announce that the NBG is “on standby, ready to be deployed.” In the meantime, its soldiers keep honing their skills. Recently they practiced carrying a load hanging underneath a helicopter.
“We need constant training to maintain our capabilities, so we are ready if a decision to deploy is made,” explains the NBG’s core battalion commander, Jonas Nilsson, on the Swedish Armed Forces website. If a decision is made. Armed forces all over the world, of course, practice for potential conflicts day in and day out. But a rapid reaction force’s mission is to be ready for short notice deployment. There are plenty of crises where the EU could take joint military action of the kind that a 2,400-member force constitutes. Yet the NBG’s soldiers are left to practice, waiting for Brussels the way Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot in Samuel Beckett’s play. Their home governments deserve credit for creating the battlegroup and keeping it ready.
More about:
Europe and Central Asia,
European Union,
Sweden,
Ireland,
Norway,
Finland,
Estonia,
Latvia,
Lithuania,
Russia,
Ukraine,
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/elisabeth-braw/nordic-battlegroup-ready-and-willing
