things will change. we've been here before last year an amnesty was declared for low risk prisoners. that was mentally flood of early releases. how many people go out in the, in and here is tell us less than 50. but at least this new initiative shows that the government has some way to do something in total, there are moving to 1000 cases. being reviewed, said dorothy, the hope is that this new mechanism works rather better than others have in the past. john home and al jazeera mexico city. ah, this is al jazeera, these, your top stories. china has a keys, a u. s and austria colluding to smear its reputation, alter the 2 countries, joined britain in a new military alliance on the agreement. australia will get access to us technology for nuclear power submarines. australia's prime minister is shrugging or

finishing anger. sugar on the south china sea, taiwan and hong kong, china. the position is clear to us unless trailers are colluding with each other and for selfish geopolitical gains are smearing china. they're interfering in china's domestic affairs. really. as packs of proven china, not only a major engine for economic development in the region is also for stability and peace. china development, representative morse for peace in the world and the regions development. john as president gigi and paying is calling for a smooth transition in afghanistan and his edge the new government to follow what he called moderate policies. asian lead is a meeting in tajikistan to discuss the taliban takeover. shanghai corporation organization is the 1st major summit of regional countries since the armed groups these power, last month polls and now open and russia for parliamentary elections and people have 3 days to cast their ballots. for representatives in the duma many opposition

candidates have been excluded from the ballot and it's smith has more. the fears are that russia's voters will take out their frustrations with the poor economy, with corruption, with strong, with struggling, crumbling infrastructure. the take out those frustrations on united russia really comes also down here, 11 percent. so all those frustrations might be lumped on united russia. the kremlin will hope that it, united russia supporters will come out in large numbers to vote. and the opposition with voter apathy will stay at home, this pulling station which has been open for 3 hours as only have $26.00 voters so far. leaders from the west african regional blog eco and have impose sanctions on guineas military rulers, but also demanding elections be held within 6 months. it was suspended guineas membership last week. okay. as the headlines inside story coming up next

me. ah ah, can the european union defend itself if leader says the block should increase its military capabilities and not rely so much on us? lead may serve what's holding it back from achieving that goal. this is insight story ah hello and welcome to the program. i'm the style of the attain now. many european leaders have long pushed for a big military role. one that's independent of the us,

lead nato alliance. the need for this increased military capability was recently made clear during the chaos valuations from couple airport european nations had to rely almost entirely on the united states. now european commission president f lavonne de lion says the block needs the political will to stand on its own. she says the e, you should be able to deploy a military force without relying on the u. busy s alternator, but many in europe have strongly rejected the idea of an active european military force, while others say the time has come for europe to increase its military presence. that are your opinion is a unique security provider. there will be missions where nato, all the united nations will not be present, but where you are should be. you can have the most advanced forces in the world. but if you never prepared to use them of what she was all day, what does has helped us back until now?

is not just a shortfall of capacity. it is the lack of political will. while the naser circuitry general warned earlier this month and your defense force should not stretch nature resources yet installs and bugs as we welcome more e u efforts on defense. but that cannot replace nato. it should not duplicate naser because we have one set of forces and we have scarce resources. on earlier this month, you ministers debated creating a $5000.00 troops force to deploy during emergencies. and that plan faces opposition from some countries that are also members of nato, particularly those bordering russia. in 2007 so called battle groups of 1500 soldiers drawn from each member state were created, but never actually used low defense spending among european countries as seen as a major obstacle to the continent. military independence, european naser members spent 1.64 percent of their g, d,

p on military expenditure last year. that's well below the alliances 2 percent target. now germany and france though, amongst the biggest spend, is they both increase their military budgets. the. well, let's bring in our gas now in brussels. we have theresa fallon, the director of the center for russia, europe, asia studies in washington, d. c. david de roche associate professor at the national defense university and also a former nato operations director of the joint chiefs of staff also in brussels. nicholas, why it's an international affair strategist and senior director for global solutions at a p. c. r. worldwide. thank you for joining us and welcome to the program. i do want to start with the practicalities here. i think they are very important, really just how realistic this all is. so there's obviously isn't a new idea and it's been basis and discussed so much that we get to the point where some member states actually roll their eyes every time it comes up. so david,

what's actually stopped the, you from establishing a military force they fall? well i, i have to disagree with miss franka. it's a lack of capacity. look, you know, i came back from a nato summit in 2006 and my son met me at the airport. he was 4 years old. and in the course of talking he said, i'm going to grow a beard. and i said, good for you kid. it's going to take a lot of time and determination. and then as i drove home, i realized that was kind of like what i had heard about european strategic. i thought him on the trips, people have been talking about it for a very long time. they've never done anything. and when they try to do something, they give it over to their militaries, which proposed headquarters. you know, european battle group is a great idea, but they didn't create infantry battalions. they created a headquarters. that means you know that the staff that does the staff work on this creates a lot of jobs for kernels and majors and generals. those are very expensive. they're pop here because they're jobs for senior officers. but you know,

a general is the equivalent of an infantry squad. and so what you get are you're draining precious resources out of the same shrinking pool of defense things and you're creating duplicates of headquarters that are commanding the same 3 infantry battalions. so, you know, i mean it's a good idea, but if it would have been done, it would have been done already, and it's gonna take a long time. if people decide to do it will show you this is all going to take a huge amount of resources as well as building the existing capacity. i'm curious to know that because i could see you nodding that you, i believe were also part of the strategic advisors group today. so now if you will, the e u, why not just actually contribute more to nato, or if nato is so irrelevant? why does nature exist at all? well, that's another issue that has been long discussed having a strengthened european pillar within nato, so that there wouldn't be duplication. and that's a key issue. and i think right now we had the state of the union address yesterday,

which you had some paper over. so a vendor lines, but she didn't mention in her speech strategic autonomy. so i think that's a really important point to know is what wasn't said. it seems like france is pretty much, very loud about the strategic autonomy debate. and then in addition to that, we see this big inter pacific announcement made today everyone had been waiting for for such a long time. and that was kind of under cut by the u. s. u k, australia, new strategic partnership. so i think that europe is kind of really right now, and they're not sure what they're going to do. they've had a year where breasts that, you know, breast has left the u. k was one of the biggest defense providers and they were trying to think of a way for the e, u and u. k. to continue to work together. but because of what just happened, it's clear that the u. k is working far more closely with the u. s. and australia. so i think that you was kind of reeling from that as well. and today, at the much touted europeans in the pacific

strategy, all of the questions, all of them were about the new strategic outcomes, the u. k. u. s. so it seems that they're pick me that on the international stage when it comes to defense issues. teresa, i do want to dig into some of the pacific stuff in just a moment as plenty to discuss that. but nicholas, i want to bring you in here because we're talking about you political well, not just in terms of finding the money to do all of this, but also in terms of spending it on the right things and also dealing with the whole nature issue. so in your mind, nicholas was actually holding the phone on there are a couple of things. one of them is be mentioned by both my colleagues already, which is the fear of duplication between the resorts. i'm going to go into a show the results to them. i go into the you on a little bit skeptical that has to be honest because actually this is, these are resorts that are going to be used one way or the other anyway. and i'm not sure makes such a big difference which helps people are wearing when they're,

when they're under a particular taking a particular mission. but we must forget that there's another strength within the you as well, which is those countries that are not members of national sweden's in walter, cyprus, these are not big you member states, but at the same time that you is a creature of consensus. and it's quite difficult to build a defense structure, double civil tenuously satisfy those like friends who want to see a strong european defense. and those, his national approach has been a bit more cautious and perhaps been a bit more un focused thus. and then the other issue, and again, you've mentioned that france is very keen on this. germany is less team, i'm germany, of course, has an election very, very soon. the german government does, emerges from that selection is going to have a very important port. germany as has historically been very reluctant to make any moves that are too strong in the military domain. for perfectly understandable

historical reasons. and i think a combination of german reluctance failures convinced neutrals and fear of duplication with nato. have been the reasons that we have not seen this progress since david told us 4 year old son appeared. you're someone 19, by the way it was. i wonder if he's tried and he has a beard and he has a beard. well, we'll see if a manager may get a better. i do want to ask you all about the timing of this, right? because as you just alluded to that, nicholas, they're all, not just one crucial election in germany, but also very crucial elections in france. and so well, both so many in france was promoted and of this idea to begin with. and clearly the french, i'm much more keen on it right now. and i see that micron is the person who is supposed to be chairing this. you defend summit and nice opportunity for him to, to be quite prominent and flex and muscle. so to reason, let me ask you then, is that the political will for this some member states as we've been here, obviously not very keen. well, that's the key question. is there

a political will we saw that france left of canister no 6 years ago. there also preparing to leave the sa hell, which will give an opportunity for russia to come in there. and so they are leaving the stage and the fact that macro intimately called nato brain dead hasn't been missed by many analysts. and after the nato summit, the communicate which every t re i is carefully vetted beforehand, there are no surprises in any of that micro and said, i never and it was the 1st time they really mentioned china several times in a communicate. so we saw that micro afterwards, so they never saw china in the north atlantic, so it was kind of a strange comment to make. and i think that there's questions about the reliability of some of these partners. we saw the munich security conference, joe biden, who has always been attending this actually attended the 1st time as president. it

was done virtually, but his, his speech wasn't really very warmly received, at least that was the impression of many analysts. and both mccrory and merkle said, we do not want to join any sort of counter balancing democratic force against china . so i think that's the newest developments kind of show that well, all right, if you're not with us, that's fine. you've made your choice at the same time, we see china kind of almost punishing germany. germany has under merkel has been very cautious to bounce values and interests. and they 1st time in 20 years, they sense of the buyer and german frigate to the south times c region and trying to ask them to come to the shanghai later. they turn the tables and said, you can't come to shanghai. this was the nuns as well. yesterday, so it was kind of the tightness, seismic shift and brussels, all of these things coming together all at once. and that in many respects it was to humiliate germany and angel merkel has been a huge friend and partner of she,

jim ping. so it was interesting timing and this kind of china narrative, it will be very difficult, i think, for china, for europe to continue down this kind of road of careful, carefully cultivated sitting on the fence and avoid making decisions. because in many respects as china, that's making them make decisions and clearly political will is left well as really interesting, the whole idea of pushing back against trying to. cuz we had a lot more of that than we have in the past from on the line in her speech yesterday. and she talks about pushing back on or banning products produced by force labor. that's obviously a and in relation to what's happening and shinji young, the need for independence when it comes to producing semiconductors and microchips within the e. u. really trying to take a step back from the pacific. david previously seen a us realignment here of the strategic priorities towards the endo pacific. i mean the submarine deal with the you can us a case in point? do you think that the u. s. and you share a common view of the world now?

well, it's converging, i mean, you know, there's always some friction. i mean, you know, in, in a large part of the european b and pins on community, the european union has replaced christianity as the religion of choice. and so there's a lot of decisions made for the european union that quite frankly, don't really comport with a strict definition of national interest. there seems to be this idea that everything nato has the p in union has to have perhaps better. but that being aside, most of what the u. s. wants out of europe in confronting china, is not really military because we recognize there's a lack of capacity and the limited capacity can be best spent in defending against russia. you know, possibly mass migration from the south, things like that. it's simple. what we're concerned about, or things like having chinese infrastructure and backdoors. hard wired into their electric backbone, stuff like that. and the european union can deal with that. so i think that there

will be cordial, helpful, and developing relations with the e u on the security issue, but it won't be hard. security issue of tanks, ships, airplanes, it will be more things like this sort of broadband of chinese communist party capture of economic sectors and kia, restructure sectors in europe. so we are going to be getting more details. i believe this week about the use in the pacific strategy, but it does feel like the temperature is rising there. and i know that you is already planning to launch this so called global gateway initiative to really compete with china's belton road initiative. nicholas in your mind, is there a new cold war brewing here and what does that then means the security and the china is not a hard security threat to the you or to you interest. so i think we should be careful, separate these things out with for america, it's a big difference because american house strong defense commitments. and in that part, the world's teacher pounding more importantly to well. but for your,

there is still a threat from china and that's seen very clearly, i thought on the lines best line in her speech yesterday was that the you should not be trapped into the building wonderful roads that are still from a chinese mine to a chinese own portion in africa or wherever. so i think it's, it's seen as real some in the you would say defensively. there's actually have loads of initiatives already which added up together would make would be equivalent to. ready ready chinese belts and rosena ship, that's not the public reception. i attendance the china eastern europe so much in sophia 3 years ago as which of the chinese prime minister, astonished to everybody by saying that china favors european integration, a strong european single currency. which i guess just shows sometimes you can be nice to your, to the people who are visiting. so i think we, it's

a complex situation. but for your not a hard security question in a way to assist for america. i think one of the things is happening in europe, and you've alluded to a couple of times is a quest for relevance and credibility. and you know, we have your opinion and just picking up something davis says the people won't support and you flag on everything that he was under pressure like all systems, government or to deliver for the systems. and one of the things that it, it feels it should be able to deliver better. all that is doing at the moment is physical, hard security. and that's part of what's driving this conversation. i saw, well, let me bring in teresa here. then i see you're agreeing with us in terms of relevance of the you, right? you, you need to have some kind of common policy. that's the whole idea of the you, especially when it comes to security. and presumably that means that you need to have some common sense of foreign policy interests. and when you're looking at the rest of the outside world, i mean, this seems fairly obvious. i know spain's military official was saying exactly this

just a couple of weeks ago that creating a european army means having common foreign policy. we all share the same interest . i mean, to read is that even vaguely likely given the ease, lack of ability to even put together a single asylum, seek a policy for the you. well, when you have 27 members said with diverging interest, it's usually always, you know, leading from the bottom. and that's where you saw in a tweet issued by a k, k, germany defense minister, yesterday, her hash tag with coalitions of the willing. so i think everyone understands that there will never be unanimity within the you on any of these issues that nato is definitely the organ that they need to work through and that they will work through coalitions of the willing. for example, the you is hamstrung by hungry, which kind of stops everything that, that you wants to do towards china or, or other countries with various interests who will block things. so it's almost impossible to get unanimity. so from that point of view, it's extremely difficult and unrealistic to think of it,

and then the other way. in addition, they brought over 7 of me who originally had worked at nato. so there's an interesting tie there are over 60 discussion groups between you and nato. so i think that this is a rich area that can improve and i think that there are many people work in various levels that want that politically. some in france like to have a different narrative. but i think what is clear is that it's not just burden sharing any longer with the us and its allies, its burden shifting us is focusing more on the indo pacific. and europe is going to have to up their game in order to take care of their own neighborhood and their own security issues there. and it's not a question of going to china. china is coming to europe. they have invested in over 10 percent of european ports. we've seen russia, china maritime exercises in the mediterranean, in the baltic. we've seen like fire exercises with them off the coast of clinical, near clinic grad. so i think that, you know, europe doesn't have this kind of the goober laying back and thinking china is far

away. it's happening right here in their own neighborhood. well, you spoke there a little bit about the context of the u. s. while pulling out and pulling back in certain parts of the world, particularly obviously, and i've got to start over the last few weeks. david, this was, is a us lead mission node that started with counted terrorism became nation building. really, the europeans were always there because of natural law, school 5 out of solidarity with the u. s. so because this was always a washington initiative. why is it that you feel quite so betrayed at the moment? well, it's a good question. i think it's because of the way in which the withdrawal was announced, it was sent out that the press there wasn't really, you know, there was consultations on any eventual withdrawal. i think. but i don't think there was consultations on the way the, the timeframe that withdrawal would occur that occurred over the summer that caused a lot of allies by surprise. and, you know, it really showed the allies,

they had the choice of withdrawing on the u. s. timetable or not withdrawing at all . and you know, that's a, that's a moment of strategic funder ability. that was exposed. pretty pretty. you know, pretty importantly, but you know, we get the shocks to our partners, but they happen repeatedly and then they're just sort of filed away. so if you look at the libyan campaign that was supposed to be european lead operation, you know, where europe and do most of the work there. and the united states was to just provide, you know, intelligence surveillance, recognizance air air refueling. a few key capabilities within 2 weeks, the europe capacity was exhausted. the united states was in lead. and, you know, president obama says that's the biggest mistake of his life, was 1st off, he described his role as, as leading from behind, which was ridicule viciously in the united states. but secondly, you know, it showed the lack of european capacity for, you know, what was a very major security concern, you know,

because of the threat of mass migration and all that. and unfortunately in our european partners, have never got down to building the basic capacity. they handed over to the bureaucracy which builds headquarters and again, you know, more majors and colonels, devising plans for the same 3 infantry battalions will now wander lions saying she wants an expeditionary force. and i've been wondering what the troops are actually meant to be doing. something really struck me in her speech. she said there will be missions when they say, well, the us will not be present, but where the you should be on the ground. our soldiers went side by side with police officers, lawyers, doctors, humanitarian work of human rights, defend as teachers, engineers. we can combine military and civilian along with diplomacy and development, and we have a long history and building and protecting piece nicholas. that sounds an awful lot like nation building to me. i see they've also launched this european piece facility to provide weapons and trying to non european military forces around the

world. is the huge you think wanting to take on a more interventionist role here that he was always being installation building. let's be clear about this. and as the whole point of the original launch project recently was to support state structures among the 6 countries that originally joined. and if you look at what the ears been doing in terms of development, and i mean, your colleagues have been like critical of the use level military mission that's don't forget that there have been a number of moderately successful if rather small military security missions. and the place for this has been most active, most recently is africa and particularly west africa, subsaharan central north central africa. and you know, if you look at the map, you can see why this is and this also addresses the migration point. so i think we should be clear that there isn't, maybe, maybe nobody wants to says out loud, but this of the obvious takes much more. so chemistry, where europe and interests are at stake, and american interests on the who are not. we are, we,

we've had the violence changed the government into those countries in the last couple of weeks childs can collaborate several others refresh instability and all of this is direct feed feeding into the you. so i think that that answers your question, if i want to say one other thing, i think we concentrate the lot here on the obstacles towards creation in the few military. those obstacles are real serious. it's going to be a political process. it's going to be led by micro and by others. it's also and i was going to reason the injection going to goal stefano. so nieto, who is one of the most gifted diplomats i've ever come across. so if there's somebody who constituent these pieces together and turn it into something, looking more like division to phone line because i was in her speech yesterday. it's probably him. maybe somebody said, oh, you're never sorry to interrupt you. i want to bring teresa in here. just very briefly because there was a lot of talk about the soul of the e u in the line speech,

especially around trying to come together around some kind of common interest. so to me, let me give you the last word here. do you see there being some kind of coalescence around this idea looking into the future the european so we'll know it when we see it. i think that there is a lot of skepticism. and depending where you sit in europe, for example, the baltics, i was just at the leonard mary conference and it's donia. they're very skeptical about friends guarding their interest. we saw even with coping in how the gaped when up when it came to mask. so italy was angry, france because they shut off masks for them. do you think that they're going to trust them if they have any sort of need for the military intervention? so i think that this is one of the things that will deeply divide europe if the european army continues the snare. because you have the baltics, you have poland, who are very, very skeptical about these. they're even that the way near recently was, you know,

kind of put it on the naughty set by china and because for leaving the 17 plus one and there was no, you solitary or very, very little of it any the, we're going to have to see if we do actually eventually find any solid hours he around this issue. we're out of time. so i do want to say thank you to all of our guests. theresa fallon, david rose and nicholas white. and you to, for watching, you can see this program again anytime by visiting our website out there a dot com and have other discussion do go to our facebook page that facebook dot com forward slash 8 inside story. we can also join the conversation on twitter. handle is a inside story for me to start it. hey, i'm hoping here by the news

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goes out, challenging place to work from as a journalist, they're always pushing boundaries. part of the sample must always under love. we are the ones traveling the extra mile where auto media goes, goes we go there and we give them a chance to tell their story. ah, i'm can vanelle in the home the don't stories here on there. china has used the us and destroyer of colluding merits reputation after the 2 countries joined britain in the new military alliance. on the agreement trail you will get access to us technology for nuclear powered submarines. katrina, you in beijing says china feels the alliance will cause irreversible damage. while relations between by doing camera are in very bad shape. and analysts that i've

spoken to here says that this really is the nail in the coffin, that if there was any opportunity for.