I'm STILL puzzled

Yesterday Asparagirl continued a debate started at More Than Zero about the sad state of Europe's militaries (article entitled WHERE'S THE EUROPEAN EQUIVALENT OF G.I. JOE?" -- her permalinks appear not to be working at the moment).  Eric Mauro contends that the U.S. has actively and vehemently lobbied against a combined EU military force (whilst conceding the extreme hesitancy of Europe to undertake it). He cites a paper, "Defense Research Guide", by Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby (he omits Libby's name, perhaps because it is not as recognizeable). The most puzzling thing to me, though, is his writing: When the Euros proposed a combined EU military body, the US essentially vetoed it, threatening to leave NATO over it When I puzzledly responded: Is not the theory behind a combined EU military that neither the U.S. nor NATO in its present form will then be necessary? If not, what does the EU consider to be its purpose? he replied The purpose of a combined European force is for Europe to have the ability for strategic military power. The Europeans, as you could probably point out next, were afraid to go it alone, but the US was and is vehement about not letting them go. Well, I'm still puzzled. Will not the possession of "strategic military power" by Europe include the ability to defend themselves.  If so, what real purpose does NATO serve?  Do European chancelleries hope to use it as a scheme to use American troops as cannon fodder?  If the U.S. does decide to get up and walk away from the NATO conference table, what current threat to Europe is so great that it might overcome them before they can their combined military force operating?  Are they so wedded to multilateralism that they are horrified, not only by unilateral action on the part of the U.S., but by the prospect of unilateral action of their own? Or is this a subtle message that Europe in fact does not want to actually possess independent military power, prefering to spend the money on subsidizing its citizenry and buying bread and circuses for soccer hooligans, and using real or imagined U.S. opposition as a pretext? I can't read More Than Zero; something about the HTML causes the text to overlay itself in my browser so that it illegible.  So, does someone want to clue me in here? (UPDATE:  Thomas Roberts has clued me in with this letter) John "Akatsukami" Braue Thursday, March 21, 2002

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