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Wednesday, November 29, 2000
| POSTVIEW | EDITORIAL |
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The mouse that roars Joseph Ralston is a general. His job is not damage control. Yet that's just what the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, an American, was pressed into doing recently. To some extent, his efforts were mandated by his title. Supreme Allied Commander harks back to Normandy, when the world measured military supremacy in terms of just how many troops the United States and its allies could bring to bear in an effort to dislodge the Nazis from Occupied France. "We are delighted," says General Ralston, "with the prospect of linking NATO and the EU together." But is he? European Union defense ministers announced recently that they intend to create what amounts to a European army. They hope that such a force might add a military chapter to an economic alliance. It's not a new idea. Charles de Gaulle, the late French leader and a former general, dreamed ambitiously of a "Force de Frappe," a lightning force that would end France's, and Europe's, reliance on U.S. firepower. It never came to pass because economic concerns outweighed military ones and it was soon apparent Washington had little interest in fussing with the French -- especially while facing the Soviet menace. All that has changed. The EU, struggling to implant the idea of its single currency, seeks face-saving outs. One of them -- no surprise -- is a return to the French concept, which Paris quite openly supports. Since military hardware requires hefty doses of cash, and the EU likely would buy in-house, the logic of a pan-national force is a decent gross domestic product thruster. Why buy U.S. jets when the Swedes, French, Italians (and yes, Czechs) might have a better and brighter offer on the table? What General Ralston struggled to find, however, was the broader justification for such a force, which he supported on paper. The advantage of U.S.-led NATO military is not only the availability of American might, but its relative detachment from European political priorities. It is not ideologically involved in that sometimes Ship of Fools known as Europe. To wit, how does a pan-European force react to a crisis in the Balkans? As Europe's Muslim population grows, how might it address Middle East-related missions? How does the eventual EU force sort out and sort through national enmities when one European government finds it intolerable that the nationals of a one-time enemy nation enter its territory as would-be peacekeepers? The United States remained largely above such dilemmas because it was, in fact, Europe's liberator. It never pretended to groom its armies solely as national defense forces. It knew it was headed "over somewhere." "Developing European capabilities will inevitably place an additional demand on the individual armed forces of the 15 EU member nations," notes Ralston. What he's saying, cautiously, is this: Europe, be aware of what you're getting yourself into. If you want an army, get ready to create the resources to manage one. Find the generals. Find the chain of command. Find the means not to squabble. That's a tall order for a continent that supported the Gulf War but let Washington and London do most of the fighting, and which didn't insist on deploying hundreds of fighter-bombers to match the U.S. and British efforts in Kosovo. We are delighted, says Ralston. He probably isn't.
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