Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

29 October 2003

ESDP

• According to the Financial Times, the French government this week assured U.S. diplomats that any EU-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia would be planned and operated through NATO. In what it sees as a stance likely to ease U.S. objections to an Alliance handover to EU troops by the end of next year, the newspaper reports that at meetings in Paris, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bradtke was promised France would ensure any EU operation would use the new “Berlin Plus” agreement. The newspaper recalls that this allows the EU access to NATO assets but forces it to use the Alliance’s planning and operational structure to carry out operations. It claims that a decision on the future and size of the Alliance’s presence in Bosnia could be reached at a NATO ministerial meeting in December. The newspaper notes, however, that despite the French assurances, Bradtke said the U.S. remained concerned that EU deliberations over a new defense policy in its nascent constitution could lead to an undermining of NATO. According to the article, Bradtke offered qualified support for a British plan to create an EU planning cell within SHAPE. “We’re willing to look at a headquarters in SHAPE,” Bradtke reportedly said, adding: “But we would not go down that road if they were in a wing of the building but totally separate.”
  
  
• The Federal government is involved in plans for an EU mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote Financial Times Deutschland, Oct. 27. The newspaper claimed that a German document about “scenarios of future civilian crisis operations” of the EU, which it has obtained, stresses that further considerations regarding police missions “are aimed at EU involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.” According to the article, planned scenarios show that the Federal Government wants to prepare the EU for being able to act quickly and show the flag as soon as the security situation in Iraq improves. The article continued: “The document was drawn up in the German mission at the EU in Brussels. It is part of a comprehensive concept, which outlines topical and future areas of influence and operations for ESDP.”

GERMANY- DEFENSE

• Berliner Zeitung, Oct. 28, wrote that “if matters proceed according to the military leadership’s idea, the Bundeswehr of the future will be anything but a purely defensive force.” According to the newspaper, “flexible intervention in a crisis situation, breaking resistance with the force of weapons, advancing against the enemy,” are among the options of the generals, who, in the coming weeks, will discuss the future structure of the German armed forces. The article said: “The first drafts outline that 35,000 soldiers in the long term are to be organized as a veritable intervention force—with all the technical potential an attacking army requires. The British troops that moved into Basra in the Iraq war are seen as a model. A second ‘ring’ of the new Bundeswehr structure would then be in charge of stabilization, that is, those deployments that the Bundeswehr is already performing in the Balkans or Afghanistan. The planned number of 75,000 soldiers corresponds less to the greater weight of this mission than to internal necessities: peacekeeping deployments take more time; more personnel will serve in turn.” The article stressed, however, that these numbers and structural ideas are still only a rough draft for a basic restructuring that will begin in earnest only at the end of next year. Currently, the structure is still being debated within the Bundeswehr. Defense Minister Struck is to receive an initial draft shortly before Christmas, the daily claimed. Noting that at a meeting of commanding generals last week, Chief of Staff, Bundeswehr, Gen. Schneiderhahn stated that “the probability of deployments must determine the structure,” the newspaper concluded that “deployment readiness is the goal the generals now increasingly set for themselves—in accordance with what preoccupies NATO partners.”