-Caveat Lector- <<Does this mean that if the U.S. provides a majority of the aircraft assaults, the Europeans get to contribute the land forces?>> >From Chicago Tribune http://chicagotribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,ART-27634,00.html ""After the Cold War, he noted, the U.S. reduced its military manpower to 1.4 million from 2 million, and used the savings to increase its lift capability and other means of projecting force abroad. By contrast, the 14 traditional NATO members in Europe have combined forces of 1.7 million men and women under arms. With the forces of the three new members -- Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary -- that figure rises to 2.1 million."" <<The combined populations of Brits, Germans, Dutch, and Italians exceed 200 million.>> Rising to their own defense By Ray Moseley Tribune Foreign Correspondent April 25, 1999 CONTINUING COVERAGE Keep up with updated coverage on the conflict in Yugoslavia. LONDON--The Kosovo conflict may be a European war, but it is no surprise that about four-fifths of the aircraft involved in the airstrikes on Yugoslavia come from the U.S., and all of the cruise missiles -- including those fired by the British submarine HMS Splendid -- are American. And, if ground troops go in, there are no cigars for guessing which country will supply the biggest number of forces. Or for guessing, when it's all over, whose taxpayers will pick up the lion's share of the costs. Most of the 45 years of the Cold War, and the near-decade of Balkans collapse that has followed, have unfolded against a chorus of complaints from Congress and others that Europe does not pull its weight in the common task of trans-Atlantic security. The United States supplies the manpower and the sophisticated weapons and pays the bills, and Europe reaps the benefits -- or so the argument goes. Any suggestion that Kosovo is about to cause that to change is bound to elicit a we've-heard-it-before skepticism in the U.S.; the Europeans sometimes talk a good game, but they are hopeless at getting their act together and can't break their dependence on the U.S. when the chips are down. But this time, experts say, the Europeans really do mean it, and that should become apparent at the NATO 50th anniversary summit in Washington, which ends Sunday. They said a strong statement in support of a European defense initiative would be one of the main results of the summit. "There are reasons to be skeptical," said Dana Allin, an American analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "But the prospects are more serious now than I've ever seen them. The Americans and Europeans understand better than ever before that it is in their interest to have Europe take a bigger role." Allin and other experts point out that Europe already had begun taking steps toward a greater sharing of the burden before the Kosovo conflict erupted, and they say Kosovo has merely given impetus to that. Not many people noticed, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac took the lead in this matter in December when they met at the Brittany port of St. Malo and launched what they called the European Security and Defense Initiative. The basic idea was to transform European military forces so they could perform many of the tasks that now only the Americans can handle, and if need be to mount credible military operations on their own. An essential part of the plan is a more unified European defense industry. These are no small goals. The U.S. has military assets the Europeans do not possess -- strategic reconnaissance from high-flying spy planes and satellites, command-and-control facilities, intelligence capabilities, the ability to transport troops and equipment on a large scale -- that are extremely costly and would take time for Europe to build. Francois Heisbourg, chairman of the Geneva Center for Security Policy, estimates the task will take at least 10 years. "The problem in Europe now is that monies are being horribly misallocated," he said. "Too much goes into bloated force structures geared to territorial defense, which made more sense during the Cold War than it does now." Money should be reallocated, Heisbourg said, to enable European nations to project force abroad -- as Kosovo demonstrates -- rather than focusing on defense. He noted that Britain and France have begun work on developing their own cruise missile, but said it would not be ready for another three years. "That most of the aircraft used in the Kosovo operation are American doesn't make sense," he said. "Europe should proportionately have more stuff in there; it's too lopsided for anybody's good. The Americans are impatient, but why shouldn't they be?" Heisbourg stressed that the idea behind the Blair-Chirac initiative was not that Europeans should do all the fighting in a European war while the Americans "are safely behind their computer screens," providing non-combat backup. "Rather, we need more computer screens of our own to pull more weight," he said. Likewise, all experts recognize that neither the Europeans nor the Americans have any interest in eliminating a U.S. role in European military affairs. That would mean the end of NATO, which is based on the concept of collective security. Indeed, despite grumbling from Congress about Europe getting a free ride, successive American administrations have been reluctant to see the Europeans take on a larger role because they regarded this as a threat to the U.S. role in Europe. The Clinton administration has generally supported the recent evolution in European thinking about defense, but has coupled that with warnings about making sure American-European ties are not weakened in the process. Heisbourg argues that such reservations are misplaced. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott, he said, "are still churning out stuff from the word processor of four or five years ago." The Blair-Chirac initiative arose, to a large degree, from the European experience with the U.S. in the early stages of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. European nations contributed substantial forces to a UN Protection Force, but the U.S. refused to take part. Still, the U.S. was, as Allin put it, "kibbitzing from the sidelines," and put pressure on the Bosnian government to reject one peace plan that the Europeans were convinced would have ended the war much earlier than was the case. "The British and French are still furious about that," Allin said. "That's why they insisted on the Americans being in the stabilization force for Bosnia after the war." The lesson for the Europeans, Allin said, was: Get used to it. The U.S. always will be kibitzing from the sidelines, and exerting its considerable power to get its way, even though it doesn't have troops involved in a particular situation. "If the Europeans can't deal with that, they can't have an autonomous defense capability," he said. At the same time, he noted that even when Europeans mount their own military operations they will still be partly dependent on NATO assets, which are mostly American assets, and that gives the U.S. an implicit veto over European action. But, he said, "The U.S. has to be very cautious about exercising such a veto." There are undoubtedly huge obstacles in the way of a European defense initiative. For one thing, a common defense policy implies a common foreign policy and, while that has been a goal of the European Union for at least the last eight years, it is nowhere near a reality. Just as Europe and the U.S. often have conflicting foreign policy interests, divisions within Europe can be just as apparent. The Kosovo conflict is a prime example of that, with Greece reluctantly supporting airstrikes against Serbia but remaining fundamentally pro-Serb in its outlook. Heisbourg said he expected that, after Kosovo, the European Union would become the political vehicle for European defense ministers getting together and deciding how to spend their money differently. He argued that building up European defenses is not so much a matter of spending more money but of allocating it better. After the Cold War, he noted, the U.S. reduced its military manpower to 1.4 million from 2 million, and used the savings to increase its lift capability and other means of projecting force abroad. By contrast, the 14 traditional NATO members in Europe have combined forces of 1.7 million men and women under arms. With the forces of the three new members -- Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary -- that figure rises to 2.1 million. Collectively, Europe spends 60 percent of what the U.S. spends on defense. NATO Europe's defense spending represents 2.2 percent of national income compared with 3.3 percent for the U.S., while per-capita spending averages $365 in Europe, $804 in the U.S. Such statistics entrance and enrage many of Europe's critics in the Congress. But any comparison based on these figures, say European experts, is simplistic and misleading: The U.S. has defense responsibilities in the Far East, the Indian Ocean and other parts of the world; Europe does not. Heisbourg said the problem lies in the difference in assets that can be used to project force abroad. "In some categories Europe has only 30 percent of U.S. capability, and in some only 5 to 10 percent," he said. Heisbourg said that Britain and France have taken the lead in trying to alter the ways in which they spend money, and that Italy and Spain have announced they want to follow suit. "The Germans are pretty much the laggards," he added. Germany had planned to undertake a strategic review this year, but that has been postponed by the necessity to focus on Kosovo strategy. Peter Zumkley, a former German army colonel and Social Democratic member of parliament, told the Bundestag in Bonn in a defense debate Thursday that all European nations should strengthen the European Security and Defense Initiative. "But there will have to be consequences," he said. "We will have to have more activities, and more spending. It is very unpopular to say such things now." Zumkley said he believed European nations eventually should give up sovereignty over their military forces to a supranational European body, but acknowledged that was politically impossible now. The immediate target, he said, should be to improve European armaments. "We can't fight a war now without American weaponry," he said. "In future we will start to narrow this gap." Heisbourg said British forces provide the benchmark for military reform in Europe. The British, he said, have a small force structure and a fairly good ability to project force abroad, and they concentrate spending on weapons acquisition, research and development, and operations and maintenance. The Blair-Chirac initiative rests in part upon Europe developing greater coordination in its defense industries, ideally through mergers that cross European frontiers. Earlier this year, British Aerospace and Marconi Electronics System, the arms division of Britain's General Electric Co., announced plans for a $12.7 billion merger that would create the world's third-largest defense firm, behind Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. Blair and some other European leaders looked askance at that. They argued that such a merger, involving British firms alone, would hinder progress toward a pan-European defense industry and would create a company with such a dominant position as to lead to higher-than-necessary weapons prices. Heisbourg, formerly an official of France's Matra defense firm, said most European defense industries are in good financial shape and are in a good position to carry out mergers and acquisitions. Matra and France's Aerospatiale are in talks on a merger due to be completed this spring. But talks on cross-border mergers in Europe have broken down in at least two instances in recent months, so it is apparent that industry coordination, like other aspects of the European defense initiative, is still in its infancy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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