EUROPEANS VOW NEW PUSH ON DEFENSE

Kosovo Crisis Spurs Ministers to Commit to Advancing Common Policy

By Roger Cohen

New York Times Service - International Herald Tribune, May 12, 1999

BERLIN - Alarmed by their dependence on the United States in NATO's military campaign against Serbia, European ministers vowed Tuesday to develop a robust common defense policy. Meeting in Bremen in northern Germany, defense and foreign ministers of the Western European Union, Europe's long dormant military arm, issued a statement saying they were now committed to ''the development of an effective European defense and security policy.'' George Robertson, the British defense secretary, summed up the mood by declaring, ''In Kosovo, we have all come face to face with the European future, and it is frightening.'' The European Union has long been an economic giant and military midget, content to leave the bulk of its security concerns to NATO. Past calls for Europe to coordinate its defense policy, increase defense spending and even begin to lay the groundwork for a European army have tended to lead only to inertia. But a combination of the crisis in Kosovo, a new British readiness to contribute to a European def

ense arm within NATO, and a growing German determination to play an active security role in Europe appear to have led to a decisive shift of mood that may bring concrete results. ''With this meeting, we have taken a considerable step toward a common European security and defense policy,'' Rudolf Scharping, the German defense minister, said. ''Today, we have too many institutions and too little substance.'' The reference to institutional excess was clearly an allusion to the Western European Union itself, an organization of 10 European countries that belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Several European governments, including Germany, have concluded that the WEU must be merged with the European Union as soon as possible. This measure, combined with the appointment of a European High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, would begin to give the 15-nation European Union the means to coordinate defense policies that now duplicate each other in many areas, increasing cost and dim

inishing effectiveness. Several ministers said Tuesday that they hoped to push through these reforms by the end of next year. Europe, with no equivalent to the C-5 and C-17 aircraft, is almost completely dependent on the United States for air transport of troops, an increasingly important asset at a time when mobility rather than static ground defenses is at a premium in the aftermath of the Cold War. The Continent also depends heavily on Washington for strategic reconnaissance and has lagged in the development of new military technologies like laser-guided bombs. Anxious to cash in the ''peace dividend'' over the past decade, European governments have cut military spending to an average of about 2.1 percent of gross national product, compared with about 3.2 percent in the United States. In the Kosovo campaign, the United States, with 639 aircraft, already has more than double the number of planes of all its NATO allies combined. It is planning to dispatch 176 more planes. In effect, the Europeans have playe

d an active supporting role, but been obliged to confront the extent of their dependency. ''We Europeans should not expect the United States to play a role in every disorder in our back yard,'' Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said recently, arguing thatEuropean governments had generally failed to modernize their armies for the post-Cold War era. Mr. Blair played a central role in the framing of a British-French defense initiative late last year that was significant because it seemed to represent the end of a long division between a France committed to a stronger European defense arm, even at NATO's expense, and a Britain overwhelmingly committed to the Atlantic Alliance. The accord reflected France's grudging acquiescence to the idea that Europe's defense should be developed within NATO, and Britain's realization that it had to work more closely with its European defense partners. Duplication in spending has long made Europe's defense outlays much less cost-effective than those of the United States. The

defense ministers said Tuesday that a European defense arm must emerge ''in complementarity with the Atlantic alliance.'' Mr. Scharping said recently that ''the last aim is to sever the European decision-making process from NATO'', adding that the intention was ''to strengthen the European pillar within the Alliance.'' On this basis, the Clinton administration has supported Europe's emergent efforts to put together a more coherent military organization and force that would be able to undertake some NATO missions using American military assets but not American troops. However, exactly how ''a common defense policy'' for Europe would work in practice remains uncertain. What seems clear is that efforts to increase military spending will meet resistance from many Europeans, even in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict. European budgets are also constrained by a financial pact to bolster the single European currency, the euro, that limits deficits. ''A European army is still very much in the planning stage,'' Jo

schka Fischer, the German foreign minister, said Tuesday.