Commentary by Daniel Rackowski in Brussels for ISN Security Watch (02/05/08)
At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that they would jointly host NATO's 60th anniversary summit next year in Strasbourg and its German sister town of Kehl - shortly after Sarkozy plans to announce his decision on whether France will become a full NATO member. What better timing could there be to show a much needed political breakthrough for the alliance?
Recent statements made by Merkel, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Sarkozy regarding the sorry state of European defense capabilities have spurred the debate over struggling armies on the continent and the need for enhanced military cooperation. But this debate predates even the European institutions without yielding much return, and one might be excused for asking what could give new impetus to an essentially old idea.
For one thing, these comments come from the EU "big three." While an accord on such a major policy issue among these leaders is in itself a sign that the message should be taken seriously, they are also known to be in favor of stronger trans-Atlantic ties and as such, they arguably helped to generate a paradigm shift in US attitudes toward a strong and more independent European military.
This shift was perhaps most vociferously articulated by US-NATO Ambassador Victoria Nuland in a landmark speech in Paris in late February during which she went as far as to call for "a place where we can plan and train for such missions as a NATO-EU family."
The location and timing of Nuland's speech were by no means a coincidence. The main thrust behind European defense has traditionally emanated from the Elysée Palace, but it was Sarkozy's bid to re-join the NATO military integrated command and the suggestion that an EU bloc within the grouping with a more synchronized voice would be mutually beneficial to the US and EU, that really did the trick.
Curiously, the US may give the EU a decisive push toward a "permanent structured cooperation" within the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) framework, as set out in the Lisbon Treaty.
With France poised to take over the EU presidency this summer, the US and NATO have lent their support at a critical juncture. Sarkozy has been pushing heavily for a defense bloc consisting of, at least initially, the EU's six biggest member states. What would be novel about this force is not so much the idea, but rather the fact that under the Lisbon Treaty, single member states would not be in a position to veto such a push forward. One of the envisaged requirements for membership would however be a minimum allocation of 2 percent of their respective GDP, a condition currently met only by the UK and France.
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May 4, 2008
franchie
An EU army meens that its goals would be the defense of EU interests , that those ones would differ of the american's, though that might happen in trade relations with certain ME and China aeras.
Now, who's gone to defy the mighty US influence ?
I expect that will happen when countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil according to their groth rate, will join the elitist US as influent and decisive states on the world wide, say one more decade.
If EU wants to play its part, then it's time to think about an EU army, that needs a few years to be effective.