Ian Murray
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Greg Nowell
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 2:57 PM
> To: lbo talk
> Subject: LA Times article (4/20/99) echoes article posted by Burford.
>
>
> LA Times article (4/20/99) echoes article posted by
> Burford.
>
> Battle for Kosovo Shows Europe Still
> Needs U.S.
> Military: Air campaign demonstrates
> NATO's heavy reliance on American
> firepower and high-tech prowess.
> By JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG, Times Staff Writer
>
>
>
> RUSSELS--As the Balkans
> began their descent into war
> eight years ago,
> Luxembourg's veteran foreign minister
> proclaimed, "This is the hour of
> Europe, not the hour of the
> Americans"--meaning that
> Europeans could solve their own
> problems.
> The calamities that
> ensued--wars in the independence-minded
> Yugoslav republics of Slovenia,
> Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,
> the last of which cost more than
> 200,000 lives--showed the
> rashness of the forecast by
> Jacques Poos, the foreign minister.
> And what's been happening
> for the past month in the skies over
> Yugoslavia shows just how junior
> a military partner Western
> Europe remains, paradoxically at
> the time when the Europeans have
> been clamoring for more
> decision-making power and a "defense
> identity" of their own.
> "If anything, what we're
> doing in Kosovo proves that Europe
> can't handle war without the
> Americans," said a European official at
> NATO headquarters in Brussels.
> "Peacekeeping operations the
> Europeans can do, but not
> war-fighting."
> As NATO's 19 members prepare
> for the alliance's 50th
> anniversary summit in Washington
> beginning Friday, what was
> supposed to be a celebratory
> birthday party is shaping up as a
> soul-searching session.
> "Kosovo is clearly going to
> be a main theme--perhaps the main
> theme," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea
> has said.
> For Europeans in particular,
> some of the lessons now coming
> out of the Balkans have been
> jarring. The air campaign against
> Yugoslavia "has underlined the
> range of capabilities where Europe is
> too dependent on U.S. help,"
> British Defense Minister George
> Robertson said in a speech Friday
> at Harvard University's John F.
> Kennedy School of Government.
> "If Europe is serious about
> shouldering more of the burden in
> future conflicts like this, it
> must improve its capabilities," Robertson
> said.
> Few expect a quick fix.
> The label "NATO campaign"
> that has been affixed to Operation
> Allied Force, in fact, masks its
> great asymmetry. Of the roughly
> 1,000 aircraft committed to or
> requisitioned for the campaign of
> airstrikes against Yugoslav
> President Slobodan Milosevic's army
> and police, about 700 are
> American, NATO sources say.
> The operation is under the
> command of a four-star U.S. Army
> general, Wesley K. Clark. And
> U.S. armed forces, military analysts
> say, have contributed assets no
> others can match: B-1 strategic
> bombers, F-117A Stealth fighters,
> and two types of tank-hunting
> attack aircraft, the fixed-wing
> A-10 "Warthog" and the AH-64
> Apache helicopter.
> A British Royal Navy
> submarine in the Adriatic, the HMS
> Splendid, has fired a grand total
> of five cruise missiles since
> Operation Allied Force began
> March 24, a NATO source said
> over the weekend. U.S. warships
> have launched Tomahawks by
> the hundreds.
> "The fact is, without the
> Americans, without their airplanes and
> ships and command-and-control
> structures and all the other things
> they bring to the order of
> battle, we can't win this," said the
> European NATO official, speaking
> on condition he not be
> identified.
> To some on this side of the
> Atlantic, such U.S. preeminence is
> humiliating in a year that has
> seen creation of a common European
> currency, and one in which the
> 15-nation European Union is
> supposed to name its first common
> representative on diplomatic and
> security affairs. Many hope that
> the European trade bloc will turn
> out to be the skeleton of a
> future Pan-European government.
> "It's one thing to
> intellectually know that Europeans are
> dependent on Americans; it's
> another to see it. Here, now, we're
> seeing it," Franklin Dehousse, a
> professor and specialist in
> European affairs at Belgium's
> University of Liege, said in a
> newspaper interview.
> Jane Sharp, defense analyst
> at the Institute of Public Policy
> Research at King's College in
> London, predicted that the imbalance
> in capabilities bared by the
> Kosovo conflict will galvanize Europe's
> NATO members to do more in the
> future.
> In particular, she said she
> believes that it will energize a
> pioneering effort undertaken by
> Western Europe's two nuclear
> powers, France and Britain, to
> sketch out a military role for the EU.
> In June 1996, NATO foreign
> and defense ministers agreed to
> build a separate "European
> Security and Defense Identity" inside
> NATO--jargon for allowing the
> Europeans to use alliance assets for
> missions that the United States
> doesn't object to but where it found
> no compelling reason to get
> involved itself.
> Planning, however, evidently
> has run away from hard reality.
> Since the end of the Cold
> War, estimated one German official at
> NATO, military capabilities of
> the European allies have been drawn
> down by a total of 30%. During
> Operation Desert Storm, in what
> must have been a humbling moment,
> a detachment of the French
> army, once Europe's largest, had
> to be supplied by a U.S. logistics
> unit to stay in the line of
> battle.
> "If people want a European
> defense identity, they need to get
> used to the idea that they are
> going to need to spend money," Ben
> Fiddler, defense-sector analyst
> with the London-based bank
> Dresdner Kleinort Benson, told
> the European Voice, a Brussels
> weekly.
> The level of defense
> expenditures, however, is just one measure
> of European weakness. In many
> cases, European countries still are
> paying to maintain hardware
> designed for the Cold War, when the
> threat was a massive invasion of
> Soviet armor. "It's like keeping up
> a 12-year-old Mercedes, when for
> the same amount of money, you
> could get a new one," a NATO
> official said.
> According to the British
> Defense Ministry, European NATO
> members have more than 4,000
> warplanes between them. But
> many are old, lack infrared and
> laser guidance systems, or aren't
> carrying the kind of "smart"
> bombs or other munitions needed for
> the precision attacks that the
> alliance is trying to carry out over
> Yugoslavia.
> After NATO's earlier
> peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, and
> growing talk about the need to
> use ground troops in the current
> crisis, "the Europeans now
> realize the need is for mobility and
> sustainability--to go in quickly,
> in force, and to be ready to stay," a
> senior NATO official said.
> Defense specialists rate the
> European allies as particularly
> deficient in long-haul and
> massive airlift capability, in their ability to
> get troops rapidly to a battle
> zone and in warplanes that can take on
> a gamut of combat missions.
> For West European
> policymakers, the fallout from Kosovo may
> be enough to change one anomaly:
> the fact that more than four
> decades into the process of
> European integration, defense
> operations and industries still
> are a jealously guarded national
> prerogative.
> "The European Union
> countries [11 of which belong to NATO]
> collectively spend on defense a
> bit more than 60% of the U.S.
> defense budget," said Francois
> Heisbourg, chairman of the Center
> on Security Policy, a
> Geneva-based think tank. "But out of those
> 60-and-some percent, we don't get
> 60% of your force projection
> capability, we don't get 60% of
> your military intelligence-gathering
> capability, we don't get 60% of
> your theater command-and-control
> capability."
> After the conflict in Kosovo
> is over, Heisbourg predicted, there
> will be a "very significant push"
> for better Europe-wide coordination
> in defense planning and spending.
>
> Western Europe's slowing
> growth and high joblessness-- 16.3
> million people are out of work in
> the 15 EU countries alone--are
> added incentives to squeeze
> everything possible from each pound,
> mark or drachma spent on defense.
>
> Unless the Old World starts
> playing catch-up with the New, a
> two-speed NATO may be the result.
> In the future, "those without
> U.S. technology may be flying
> blind in relation to those with it,"
> David Wright, Canada's permanent
> representative to the alliance,
> has warned.
> NATO's Washington summit is
> expected to chart a future for
> what is known as the alliance's
> "European pillar." A debacle in
> Kosovo could fuel demands already
> aired by some Europeans for a
> greater say in what they consider
> an organization overly subject to
> U.S. influence. But even critics
> of NATO as it is currently
> constituted don't think that's
> happened yet.
> "What's been wholly
> demonstrative in this war is that the
> Europeans have acted in the
> framework of NATO alone, inside
> NATO structures under NATO
> command, and have applied
> NATO plans," said Paul Marie de
> la Gorce, a prominent
> left-leaning defense analyst in
> France.
> In any event, as the makeup
> of Operation Allied Force shows,
> Europe's hour is yet to sound.
> "Europe must do more to
> contribute to the alliance's capabilities.
> But in the real world, this will
> take time," Robertson, Britain's
> defense secretary, said Friday.
> "America, as the alliance's principal
> power, must play the role
> assigned to it by history."
> --
> Gregory P. Nowell
> Associate Professor
> Department of Political Science, Milne 100
> State University of New York
> 135 Western Ave.
> Albany, New York 12222
>
> Fax 518-442-5298
>
>
>