| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 20, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- EUROPEAN BUSINESS
Coming Soon: A Euro-Army (int'l edition) When NATO went to war in Kosovo, U.S. aircraft conducted almost all the attacks. The Europeans lacked the will and the gear to do the job. But things are changing. On Dec. 11 in Helsinki, European Union heads of state are expected to approve plans for a 60,000-member rapid-reaction military force, armed by a reinvigorated European defense industry. And British Prime Minister Tony Blair is leading the charge. The new military force is intended to allow Europeans to put out fires by themselves without depending on NATO. ''When we saw that the U.S. and NATO wouldn't fight in Europe below 15,000 feet, we realized that somebody had to be ready to act on the ground,'' says Peter Ludlow, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. The new force, which will probably be commanded by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, will be ready by 2003. The aim is to be able to deploy within 60 days. Also, while Europe wants a more assertive role without spending more, it doesn't want to damage ties with the U.S. So the EU force will intervene only when NATO and the U.S. decline to do so. The 15 EU armies have 1.9 million soldiers and the U.S. 1.4 million. But Europe's armies have disadvantages. Many are made up of draftees. And many are still intended to defend against a Soviet attack in Central Europe. The proposed solution is to construct smaller, more mobile, better equipped forces. Some doubt Europe will pull this off. Its defense budgets total two-thirds of America's. ''A European force needs a lot of new hardware,'' says Maartje Rutten, an analyst at the Western European Union's Institute for Security Studies in Paris. ''This can't be financed just out of savings.'' Still, Europe's defense industries are shaping up quickly. BAE Systems is now the world's fourth-largest defense contractor. France's Aerospatiale-Matra, Germany's DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, and Spain's CASA recently formed European Defense & Space Co., EADS Group, which is even larger. Both are more profitable than U.S. competitors. Some U.S. policymakers fear that Europe will become less a partner than a rival. But Britain's presence should ease these anxieties. After all, if the U.S. is rattled by an initiative led by its closest ally, it will never be ready to accept a true European partnership. By William Echikson in Brussels, with Stan Crock in Washington _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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