EU rapid reaction force needs much more time

By Douglas Hamilton

BRUSSELS (Reuters): The rapid reaction force to be founded by the European Union next week can provide a catalog of military assets for crisis management, but getting real capability needs more time, say sources close to the project.

A significant proportion of the assets to be pledged to the EU force at a conference in Brussels on Monday is already committed to NATO and, like many of the troops and commanders to be earmarked for the project, must be "double-hatted".

The pledging process will inevitably expose some gaps that will need to be plugged, the sources said. But the EU is anxious to maintain the political momentum of the project and a public pledge of men and weapons is seen as putting flesh on the bones.

The force will require a pool of about a quarter of a million troops to meet the unofficially expanded objective of deploying 80,000 soldiers within 60 days to a crisis zone up to 4,000 km (2,485 miles) away, and maintaining the force for up to a year.

The EU's original "headline goal" for the force, agreed at a Helsinki summit last December to give Europe more military clout and redress the security burden-sharing imbalance with the United States, was 60,000 troops.

Planners from NATO and the EU studying the range of scenarios the force must be designed to deal with by the target date of 2003 -- from gendarme tasks to combat -- decided that was too light.

But even with 30 percent more manpower, this will still be a far cry from becoming a European standing army, sources said.

"No one is going to bring any extra forces. They may bring extra means. We only have one set of assets that are to be common to both the EU and NATO," said a source who did not wish to be quoted by name.

He pointed out that among EU countries only the British and French have significant experience in expeditionary operations of the kind the new Rapid Reaction Force would be expected to undertake. Others would have to learn.

Achieving the necessary level of inter-operability of the designated component units of a multinational EU corps, making the parts fit smoothly together to forge an effective military force would require extensive training together -- one of NATO's biggest continuous outlays over its 50-year existence.

Next week, some of the EU member states will feel obliged for political reasons to pledge forces that they -- and their EU partners -- know very well they could not come up with if a crisis flared next month.

NATO member Portugal, for example, already finds it difficult to maintain peacekeeping units in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, relieving them every six months with duplicates training at home for their stint.

Manpower, equipment and training shortcoming could be filled by a rise in defense spending by EU members, although there is little sign of that at the moment.

But the sources said creating real EU military capability would depend ultimately on setting up the basic organizational structures that govern decisions on when and how to use it, backed by a united political.

"This is going to mean time," said a source, noting that the EU took 30 years of gestation and building in stages before finally launching its common currency, the euro, last January.

"The problem with our approach is treating it as a product when in fact it is a process just at its beginning. We must be asking: are the foundation stones strong enough to bear the building?"

The EU and NATO and ploughing through difficult negotiations on how Europeans will be able to employ NATO-committed assets in future crisis operations in which the alliance as such -- meaning the United States, its dominant partner -- chooses not to get involved.

While 11 of NATO's 19 allies are also EU members, eight are not. The EU's current 15 members also include four theoretically neutral states. The partial overlap complicates the debate, which sources say is being driven by individual governments while the EU and NATO as institutions look on.

"Unless we produce locking mechanisms, it could be profoundly disruptive. We could end up competing for the same resources," said one source familiar with the details.

The EU now numbers 20 military officers in its embryo military headquarters cells in Brussels, set to expand to 100 of all ranks by the end of next year.

The Atlantic allies, based across town, want to be sure it develops as a complementary organization, not a rival.

A NATO official on Friday said the alliance believed no artificial deadline such as the EU summit scheduled to take place in Nice on Dec. 7 should be allowed to speed up the pace at the expense of the results.

"If it comes down to a clash between getting it right and getting it soon, we would prefer it later. We mustn't get crowded by artificial deadlines," he said.

France, the EU's current president and host in Nice, recently presented new proposals to safeguard the interests of NATO's six European but non-EU members, of whom Turkey is most deeply concerned by the risk of exclusion.

"This shows its full awareness of the need to sort out the participation issue," the official said.