How the upgrade of the Luxembourg army can really succeed

Prime Minister Luc Frieden has announced « a fundamental re -evaluation of our security expenses ». In the future we would have to spend a « reasonable part of our national wealth » for defense spending. He thus refrains from the failed efforts to provide defense spending with an absolute upper limit.

How could Luxembourg be useful in building an independent European security policy as part of the reassessment, would I have three wishes?

The capping of defense spending has failed

My first would be a comprehensive cultural change, as defense policy was intended and implemented by the armed forces, our army.

At the end of the political dead end, we have mainly considered defense policy as a compulsory solidarity, which needs to be met as cost -effective as possible. Together with the failed capping of defense spending, she has led to an investment policy that is constantly increasing budgetary targets instead of promoting a sustainable and progressive national ability to build up. It slowed down ambitious, new approaches.

Despite clear improvements in the existence, the lines have not been fundamentally shifted in the end result. The volume of immediately available skills for direct protection of the country and its population has hardly been changed. With the structure and size of our army as well as their interlinking with international partners, there were only evolutionary adjustments. Apart from the establishment of the Belgian-Luxemburg Enlightenment Battalion, major technological projects of the Defense Department in the Foreign Ministry are characterized by the investment picture.

Consider defense in their entirety

The historical approach of the defense contribution as a solidarity gesture was convenient, since it used a latent penchant for self -dwelling that made it easier to avoid questions about the meaning and purpose of military means, since one was only in the order of symbolic contributions.

As a result of the reassessment, the defense spending in the direction of the no symbolic dimension of five percent of the state budget could develop. This alone calls for a different, efficient and sustainable approach, which assumes the desired security policy added value and the desired effect of military means.

Armed Forces primarily serve to maintain or restore the factual foundations on which our societies can develop with their values ​​- in the simplest case, to keep or regain the reason, whereby « reason » is also understood in view of the diversity of modern threats.

To this end, armed forces must be able to damage an opponent, and to expose themselves to the risk of opposing strokes. Ultimately, this is the consequence of their ability to exercise legitimate violence on behalf of the sovereign democratic constitutional state.

In practice, this means that defense investments should be made more systematic in the future from an overall security policy view of national interests. In order to maximize the security policy benefits of additional financial resources, the prioritization and weighing up is required to what extent certain security policy goals must also be pursued by defense, the benefits of which are based on military effect.

It takes new legal foundations

My second wish concerns the legal foundations and structures it takes to translate cultural change into concrete military skills in practice. In the course of the reassessment, an overhaul of the legal basis for tasks and structures of defense will impose itself. The army law of 2023 describes the army as a pure land struggle, since other areas are only indicated but not further executed, with the exception of the bi-national A400m unit.

So for today’s extent of these areas there is no sufficient basis for me in accordance with Article 115 of our constitution: « L’In Organization et les Attributions de la Force Publique Sont Réglées Par la Loi. » According to his own self -expression, the defense minister is mainly The structural development of the defense has therefore decoupled from the legal basis and may already move in a constitutional gray area.

Furthermore, Article 8 of the army law has the « boss d’état-Major »: « Il Commande Les Moyens Militaires. Il Peut déléguer ce commandement ou une game de ce commandement. » Which powers a command force contains is precisely regulated in military language use, just as the modalities for partial or complete assignment of this command are also regulated.

Among other things, it is about preventing blurring in the chain of responsibility. If « Moyen’s militaires » mean all the military skills of the defense, which should be no doubt, it forces itself to conclude any legal gaps and to delimit political management more clearly from the military command structure.

As a result of the re -evaluation, the pressure will increase to structural adjustments and will probably go beyond the limits of the current business model of the army, especially on the question of staffing. New ways will impose themselves. A possible approach would be a division into the own responsibility that could be able to act more, which could face more flexible and efficiently new challenges.

Defense industry made in Europe

My third wish concerns the establishment of a procurement structure with a strategic view of the potential of national actors in industry and research. Here a circle could close, from the participation in European projects, the stronger integration of our armed forces with our partners in the context of joint procurement and the achievement of an economic added value thanks to industrial cooperation.

The European defense industry is fragmented and is based on networks from many small and medium-sized companies that are organized with specialized product pallets in complex supply chains. It is important to open doors to these supply chains.

The re -evaluation announced by Prime Minister Frieden could bring about a cultural change that breaks with numerical games and relies on effect. It is in the power of politics to move the field from the familiar four walls of the training hall outdoors and move the goal posts.