Novel Idea: Europe Should Defend Itself

Novel Idea: Europe Should Defend Itself

This one was worth quoting extensively.

Reuters AlertNet - Time Europe defended itself -EU military official

SALEN, Sweden, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The European Union's top military official suggested on Sunday that American and European forces should be responsible for their own territorial defence and only cooperate on major crises outside their regions. . . .

"The American and the European pillars (of NATO) would be responsible for their respective territorial defences, and would together engage in crisis management outside their own territories," Hagglund told the conference in Salen, 450 km (280 miles) northwest of Stockholm. . . .

"My prediction is that this will happen within the next decade," he told a news conference later.

Yeah right. I'll believe this when I see it . . . but it's a nice thought all the same.

U.S. forces would handle high-intensity operations involving terrorism and weapons of mass destruction while Europeans would concentrate on sustained low-intensity crisis management such as conflict prevention, he said. . . .

EU leaders agreed in December on arrangements to create a military planning cell that could, under tightly limited circumstances, run military operations when NATO was not involved.

The EU's fledgling rapid reaction force made its debut in peacekeeping operations last April, sending a tiny force to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, followed by a mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Hagglund, who will be replaced in April by Italian general, Rolando Mosca Moschini, said there was no threat in Europe that the EU now could not handle itself, especially after the bloc takes in 10 new members in May, mainly former communist states from central and eastern Europe.

"We don't know if the United States will have forever the resources, or the interest, to defend Europe," he said.