Essay Idea Post.

[Occhidiangela]

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

He is well named, that Mr Bozo.  Floppy black shoes and all.  His position is utter crap, that last line . . . until Europe gets serious about spending on credible capability.  However, Kosovo was only successful, if it can be called that, due to US capability.  Look at the sortie count.

I personally consider Kosovo a ludicrous policy decision: typical French/Euro Security attempt, when you put 19 nations against one nation of small economic and military power, already weakened by 8 years of civil war.  Risk?  Minimal.  Impact?  To further the Muslim agenda on mainland Europe, a follow up to the Muslim agenda cloaked in "they are the underdog" in Bosnia.  I saw it then, and I cannot believe more people don't see it now.  They use their economic leverage, oil, to try and influence their long term goals.  Just as any emerging power base does.

The "bully" precedent that so many liberals abuse Pres Bush for was Kosovo.  Thanks, Dems, for that.  Oh yeah, our folks did blow a lot of stuff up, we are damned good at that.  The rubble even bounced.

WJ Clinton let Chirac talk him into attacking a nation who was already on thin ice.  What a shame.

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"). 
Interesting. 

Having seen it close up, it is all hot air.  You hit the nail on the head "want cake and eat it too."  That said, in many, but NOT ALL, situations, US and Europe do indeed have parallel and complementary security interests, and it makes sense to continue to work together.  Let's not break up a pretty good team over differences, let's work through them so that the next time we get it righter, together.  Play is continuous.

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. 

SIPRNET is still a thorny issue, as of the day I left Qatar.  I better leave it at that.

Again, a sensitive issue.  According to this article, the EU has already engaged in OPS outside of Europe without the support of NATO. 

So what?  They started Sharp Fence before we combined WEU and NATO Ops into Sharp Guard.  (I was involved in that) 

As kandrathe pointed out, the ability to build consensus and administer a bureaucracy has a limited use in military operations.

Yes and no.  War is a political act, and many security operations "short of war" take on the same flavor.  Ike found out that his hardest job was keeping the consensus focused, pol mil, and that was in a pretty focused effort, much simpler than the multilateral challenges of today.

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."

The RRF aint rapid.  See lift.

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 [i]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?[/I]

I just came out of the CJTF environment.  CJTF-7 was OK, MNCI barely utile, MNFI frought with security leaks that is getting Iraqi National Guardsmen killed.  See recent news on the ambush of buse full of them.  Obviously an inside job, from what I read in the Open Source reports.

However, if you must from a political angle fight as a coalition, which is American policy, then you have to use the CJTF tool.  That is what, for all its warts, it is built for.

Thanks for your post.
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Thanks for bringing up recent painful memories. :P

Occhi