Written by Cordula Schnuer
Published on 06.05.2022
Defence minister François Bausch (c.) is aiming to make the army greener and more sustainable Photo: Armée luxembourgeoise
With a green minister in charge, Luxembourg is rethinking its defence policy for a climate-friendlier approach.
Cordula Schnuer: Historically, green parties are pacifist. Luxembourg has a green defence minister, François Bausch. Can defence policy ever be truly green?
Stéphanie Empain: The Greens are still pacifist. But if you have ideas and strong positions, you also have to take responsibility. It’s not a typical green topic, like the environment, but of course a green party can add sustainable elements to defence policy.
Nathalie Oberweis: Green defence policy is a contradiction. It’s a kind of greenwashing. The army is trying to reduce its carbon footprint, but the whole rearmament that we are a part of isn’t sustainable. We’re managing the consequences of climate change with the army. That’s admitting failure in our fight against climate change. And it’s a dangerous mingling of cooperation and defence policy.
SE: You need defence–you need capacity and strategy. The armies of this world have a carbon footprint equivalent of a country the size of Denmark. We must reduce this. Water scarcity, desertification and loss of biodiversity will lead to additional conflicts. These considerations must be a part of strategy. That’s the aim of green defence policy. It doesn’t mean that we fight climate change with tanks.
NO: But part of green defence is saying that the effects of climate change are managed militarily. Defence is important but we want to leave it at defence, defending our countries–the EU–and not going into other countries. And that’s a risk here, also within the EU’s Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, which has interventionist aspects of protecting strategic resources.
Déi Lénk has long demanded that Luxembourg exit Nato. The country can hardly defend itself. What are its international obligations?
NO: Ideally, Nato should be dissolved. Historically, it was in opposition to the USSR and should have disbanded back then. We could imagine Luxembourg neutrality, as is the case for other countries. There is an EU mutual assistance clause where you are in an alliance even as a neutral country.
We’re not against an army. We’re against a spiral of rearmament. Yes, we have a role, we have a responsibility. We could imagine being part of an EU army but that should be limited to defence. The EU doesn’t have a purely defensive orientation.
SE: Nobody is investing in offensive capacity. But we must speak about burden sharing. Neutral countries benefit from this system, and we cannot afford to be a free rider and to say we don’t want an army, stay out of everything and let others do the work.
NO: It’s true that we’re not buying offensive systems, but the Luxeosys observation satellite, for example, will take pictures around the world, and you must assume that these images can be used for offensive purposes.
SE: But the Luxembourg government has control over the images.
Assuming that Luxembourg will stay in Nato, it has pledged–like all members–to work towards spending 2% of GDP on defence. It’s a challenge for the country with its high GDP and small army. What makes sense for Luxembourg?
SE: The 2% target for Luxembourg is completely illusory. Even 1% isn’t doable. You’d have to invest billions every year in projects that we couldn’t manage. Luxembourg must focus on areas where we can offer added value, that we need less staff for, which is why cybersecurity, space and surveillance are interesting.
It’s important that we work with European partners. If we blindly follow the 2% goal, we run the risk that everyone will try and spend a lot of money in their corner and, in the end, if we had cooperated, we would have been able to save money. It makes no sense for everyone to do everything themselves.
NO: It’s not doable and not desirable. I’m happy that [Bausch] is reasonable about this. We see this spending more critically, but I was reassured. It’s still going up, from 0.6% to 0.72%. There is an increase but with a certain limit.
Luxembourg is trying at Nato level to lobby for climate prevention spending to be recognised as part of the pledge. How could this be a game changer?
SE: Neither within Nato nor the EU has a point been reached to seriously discuss prevention to be counted as defence spending. I’m not sure that we will ever reach this point. But generally there must be more recognition that we must do more on prevention, whether that’s defence spending or not.
NO: I acknowledge that Bausch is trying to increase the budget through other ways, because he must meet those obligations. He’s spoken about integrating green expenses. But, as I said, we think there’s a dangerous amalgamation and we should do civilian not military cooperation to fight climate change.
Looking at the current context, the war in Ukraine has given rise to closer EU defence cooperation. What is the role of green policy in all this?
SE: Of course, some things become more acute, but the conclusion remains that we must think defence policy much more broadly. Hybrid threats, cyber, space, the humanitarian aspect, supply security, food security. From our green perspective, these are all things that we must think together.
NO: Luxembourg plays a relatively cautious role. But we are still part of the rearmament spiral that we think is very dangerous. The discourse of the EU’s strategic compass is to react to threats in the world. But we are part of the world, and the threats are partly made by us. We’re not innocent. We’re not just reacting. We’re a player.
SE: We are a player in all this. But very concretely, Russia is a threat to Europe and we’re not capable of reacting appropriately. We have a huge military budget in the EU for, given the amount, not much return, because our systems aren’t interoperable. We don’t talk to each other. If there was a green defence minister in every country, then they would talk, because everyone would see this as a priority. If there was a green defence minister in every country, the world would be a better place.
This article first appeared in the May 2022 edition of Delano magazine.