Essay Idea Post.

[Ajax]

Occhi, thankfully, you were quick to respond to this. I was hoping for your input in particular. :-)

Security operations, such as UNPROFOR 1991-1995, were abysmal failures due to failures in leadership, not for lack of skill or resources on the ground.

While I would agree that NATO provides a much more solid structure to solving regional problems, there are others out there who would not. Frédéric Bozo has written an article titled The Effects of Kosovo and the Danger of Decoupling, in which he argues that in Kosovo "…the Alliance [i.e. NATO] only succeeded in that it did not fail." He goes on to argue that European structures could be more capable than the NATO ones. Of course, to me this sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it too--his understanding of the relationship is that Europeans will have their own autonomous security doctrine, but still have access to NATO assets (hence, the "Danger of Decoupling").

The EU has two problems to resolve if they want EFFECTIVE multilateral security organs that can operate outside of the NATO structure. I worked on a few mid 90's working groups that addressed some of these issues, many of which revolved around big backbone comms connectivity in the Southern Region.

Interesting. I'd like to talk off-line (er... off-thread as it were) about this experience. But the communications issue is the perfect example of the capabilities gap in general. The US forces have actually retained outdated commo gear solely for operations with the allies. As this gear ages, and the Europeans do not upgrade, it is likely to put the US military in an intersting situation. Retain archaic gear, or get rid of it and not communicate with the allied nations? Additionally, issues of information security and technology transfer pop up. Do we transmit sensitive data over more vulnerable systems, or simply not communicate very well with the allied component? SIPRNET comes to mind... A thorny issue.

1. Deciding when they (EU) don't want to operate with the only A team around. There will be times that such will appeal to the governments involved. The rest of the time, playing with the A team will enhance their security objectives and likelihood of successful action.

Again, a sensitive issue. According to this article, the EU has already engaged in OPS outside of Europe without the support of NATO. So if you have a worldwide scope of humanitarian involvement, no logistical capabilities and rudimentary C3, what happens? You either curtail your ops or your develop logistic and c3 capability. Only the European finances don't look like that'll happen.

Which brings us to...

2. Paying for a capability that works, and investing in the training that makes the force effective when called upon. That ain't cheap, as mentioned above. The lack of will to spend the dough has been a problem in Europe since the early 1980's.

kandrathe's new link is moderatly useful, but I doubt it would apply for the post 9/11 world, or to this new round of European security development. I'm trying to find some more current figures. That being said, it doesn't seem that there has been any significant change, apart from maybe Britain.

3. Leadership. The one significant shortcoming in European politics at present is lack of leadership. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians, though as bureaucrats and consensus builders, Europeans score many points. Trouble is, when you get to applying armed force to solve a problem, one requires decisiveness for success. That is in short supply. Absence of this element will doom any number of missions to failure. The professionalism and talent currently resident in the peacekeeping focused forces of Europe, about which I have nothing but good things to say, will not always translate into effective combat capability in more dire scenarios.

As kandrathe pointed out, the ability to build consensus and administer a bureaucracy has a limited use in military operations. I would point out that these skills are a bit more useful in the RRF's avowed roles of "crisis management" and "humanitarian intervention" but as the situation gets closer and closer to actual, true-blue warmaking these skills tend to fall out of favor relative to "decisiveness."

And this begs the overall issue: Europe still seems to want a free ride to global security through US military power. The EU member states don't want to spend the money to help in a profound way (although France has a significant capability advantage over most of the states, and Britain is increasing its funding), but they want to be able to determine strategic plans. The words "free" and "riders" seem to pop into my head, as if out of the blue!

Some other things which come to mind are force structure. Are Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) practicable for NATO or the EU? How about HQ structures? Should the EU develop its own HQ or should it rely on FR and UK structures already in place (and the GER one under development)? How does this impact the duplication and competition issues with NATO?

Thanks for your post.