Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 26. Oktober 2005 / Time Line October 26, 2005
Version 3.525. Oktober 2005, 27. Oktober 2005
10/26/2005
U.S. Dead and Iraqi Dead
CINDY SHEEHAN
Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, is currently in
Washington, D.C., and will be participating in a vigil with other
members of Gold Star Families for Peace in front of the White House
this week. She said today: "Mahatma Gandhi stated: 'Civil
disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless
and corrupt.' Throughout this week we will be fasting for the
length of the vigil in solidarity with the hardships that Americans
and Iraqis are enduring on a daily basis. ... Every day at 6 p.m.
we will have a 'die-in.' We will ask everyone who is present at 6
p.m. to lie down and represent a dead soldier."
Three truckers killed in Iraq
By Lance Orr
http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=49855
A U.S. Army officer corroborated published reports that three
truckers were among four KBR contractors killed Sept. 20 in
Duluiyah, Iraq, 45 miles north of Baghdad...
Study: 100,000 Excess
Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
10/26/2005
Iraqi Civilian Deaths Exceed U.S. Toll
By Jim Krane, Associated Press
Philadelphia Inquirer
The number of Iraqis who have died violently since the U.S.-led
invasion is many times larger than the U.S. military death toll of
2,000 in Iraq. At least 3,870 have been killed in the last six
months alone, according to an Associated Press count.
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, said
the figure for the entire war could be 30,000 Iraqis, which many
experts see as a credible estimate. Others suspect the number was
far higher, since the chaos in Iraq leaves the potential for many
killings to go unreported.
The losses are far larger than most analysts and Pentagon planners
expected before the war and mean Iraqi civilians are bearing most
of the suffering.
10/26/2005
Concern Over Delays in the E.U.'s Defense Integration
Process
Drafted By: Dr. Federico Bordonaro
http://www.pinr.com
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies
(C.S.I.S.) issued a significant report on October 11, 2005 just one
day before a meeting of European and NATO leaders in Brussels. The
report, co-edited by NATO's ex-chief, U.S. General Joseph Ralston,
and former German Defense Minister General Klaus Naumann, speaks
volumes about the current concerns influential U.S. and European
elites have about the E.U.'s weak defense and military
capabilities.
Moreover, the 97-page document shows once again that an integrated
European defense is not only the goal of dedicated Europeanists,
but it is also perceived by many U.S. strategic thinkers as an
indispensable tool for improving both NATO and Euro-American
defense cohesion.
The Report
In light of Ralston's and Naumann's careers, it is fairly obvious
that the C.S.I.S. study is not really an academic exercise. Its
main conclusions, exposed by the Financial Times on October 11, are
the result of one year of research involving consultation with many
high defense officers in E.U. countries. Moreover, the conclusions
reflect the core of U.S. and NATO concerns about the E.U. defense
policy. Therefore, it is largely a message from Washington directed
to Paris, Berlin and London and other leading states involved in
the construction of a European Security and Defense Policy
(E.S.D.P.).
The authors of the study are very clear on their view of E.U.
defense capabilities. They state that the 25 E.U. member-states can
count on less than five percent of their manpower for joint peace
support operations. Defense spending is inadequate, but will remain
so in the foreseeable future. Therefore, the report argues, instead
of complaining about the lack of funding, the most pragmatic way to
improve the Old Continent's common defense capabilities is to
augment the degree of integration. Concretely, this should be
conceived as a common effort in shared planning and cooperative
research, development and the procurement of priority military
capabilities.
According to the report, if increased military spending is hampered
by budgetary constraints and social issues, then the goal of the
E.U. member-states should be to better employ the already existing
defense budget. For instance, it is suggested that European states
should spend 25 percent of their defense budget on research and
arms development/production, and only up to 40 percent on
personnel.
Apart from some technical details, however, the importance of the
paper lies in its political conclusions. The authors clearly
indicate that the rise of a strong and integrated European defense
policy is in U.S. interests. Such a common defense policy could
function as a valuable tool to improve Euro-American common
operations and NATO's effectiveness. Interestingly, before the
C.S.I.S. report was mentioned in the press, some members of a U.S.
neo-conservative think-tank, the Project for the New American
Century, also launched an initiative ("Committee for a Strong
Europe") in which they called for stronger European defense
capabilities, as reported by the French newspaper Liberation.
It appears that Washington believes that stronger European defense
capabilities are necessary to re-launch a strong transatlantic
relationship.
Reasons Behind U.S. and NATO Concerns
The reasons for U.S. and NATO concerns about the E.S.D.P. date from
the 1990s. During the last decade, the nature, scope and
geopolitical orientation of the E.U. defense policy often occupied
center-stage in the transatlantic debate. After the Mitterrand-Kohl
combine unsuccessfully tried to launch a Common Foreign and
Security Policy aimed at giving post-Cold War Europe more strategic
independence from the U.S. (while renewing the transatlantic
alliance), the rising E.U. defense identity was conceived as a set
of tools "separable but not separate" from NATO assets, following
the decisions of the June 1996 Atlantic summit in Berlin.
As many then noticed, it was as if the Washington Treaty had been
placed at the heart of post-Cold War European security, even though
the Western European Union -- whose Article 5 established a mutual
defense guarantee for the member-states -- was kept in the
game.
However, such developments did not dissipate all the doubts that
U.S. policymakers had about the E.U.'s defense policy. In
Washington, some feared that such a set of institutional and
military tools born inside the transatlantic structures would
detach in the future. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright said in December 1998 that the European states should
avoid any duplication of Atlantic assets.
Therefore, the Washington line was clear: the Atlantic Alliance
should remain the cornerstone of European security, and all
European defense capabilities should be conceived with
inter-operability with NATO in mind. That was -- at least in large
part -- also London's stance. A new Paris-London-Berlin combine was
then the leading trio of Europe's defense efforts in the 1998-2003
period. However, in the winter of 2002-2003, the Iraq crisis
dramatically divided London from Paris and Berlin.
In April 2003, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg proposed that
the E.U. should have its own military planning headquarters.
Although they did not call for any action to exit from NATO, they
did suggest a higher degree of autonomy for the E.U. defense
establishment. Such a stance revived the United States'
aforementioned worries about a possible progressive loosening of
transatlantic cohesion. At the end of 2003, London successfully
called for a fresh start in the E.U.'s common defense projects and
reaffirmed its bridge-building role in the Washington-Brussels
relationship.
However, even though the European Defense Agency was launched in
2004, the political crisis unchained by the 2004 enlargement and
the 2005 failure of the E.U. Constitutional Treaty severely
hampered the E.U.'s big powers from decisively stepping toward an
effective, credible common foreign, security and defense policy.
Even worse, anti-E.U. and pro-sovereignty movements gained strength
in both the U.K. (i.e., the U.K. Independence Party) and France
(i.e., the Movement for France).
This largely explains why the C.S.I.S. paper expresses worries
about the unwillingness of the E.U.'s key states to cede
sovereignty in security and defense matters. American and Atlantic
strategic thinkers see the European defense establishment as a
federated entity fully integrated into the Atlantic Alliance.
Therefore, they call for the armies of E.U. member-states to
specialize in "niches," in order to improve their inter-operability
with U.S. and NATO forces. In this respect, they propose precisely
what French pro-sovereignty movements -- and adversaries of the
E.U. Constitutional Treaty -- struggle to avoid.
Paradoxically, NATO seems to call for a centralization of the
E.U.'s defense integration effort which has been advocated by
France and Germany for many years, but with another goal in mind.
Paris typically conceived the E.U.'s defense policy as a tool to
maximize its own influence in the world, thus rebalancing U.S.
power and influence in the Atlantic Alliance. Fifteen years after
the Maastricht negotiations began, it is now Washington that would
like the E.U. states to further integrate their defense
capabilities because that would guarantee more effective U.S.-E.U.
common strategic action under the leadership of the United
States.
In fact, at the same time as Washington and NATO are formulating
their "European strategy," some politicians in what the U.S. often
sees as "Old Europe" are trying to breathe new life into the E.U.'s
defense policy. For instance, on October 19, Belgium Prime Minister
Guy Verhofstadt stressed the importance of the coming year's
efforts to revitalize the integration process. He then called for
increased cooperation among leading E.U. states to promote the
so-called European social model and the E.U.'s common defense
policy. The week before, the French Defense Minister Michele
Alliot-Marie also illustrated plans to increase the E.U.'s military
capabilities.
Such efforts -- or at least such propositions -- signal that after
the crisis of the 2004-2005 large integration, those French,
Belgium and German decision makers who tried to give the E.S.D.P. a
more autonomous character in April 2003 could attempt to resurrect
supposedly "dead" plans of creating a core of "pioneer" member
states to lead the European foreign and security policy.
Conclusion
Since the European integration process entered a crisis after the
2004 enlargement -- a crisis best epitomized by the French and
Dutch rejections of the E.U. Constitutional Treaty -- the European
defense policy is now at a crossroads. After years of ambiguity,
its fundamental geopolitical orientation is now the real stake in
its construction.
The U.S. and the Atlanticist factions understand that its very
crisis is a window of opportunity to tightly link the E.U.'s common
defense policy to a renewed transatlantic alliance. On the other
hand, some European factions are trying to re-launch the concept of
a "hardcore" group of E.U. member-states interested in taking the
lead in the construction of the E.S.D.P.
The year 2006 will probably be a decisive year for the E.S.D.P.
project. For the proponents of a "European superpower" that is more
autonomous from the U.S., the room for maneuvering seems
dramatically reduced. We can thus expect the entire dynamics of
E.U. defense integration to be dominated by the Atlanticist view in
the next year. However, such an approach is likely to cause even
more dissatisfaction in those groups that want more autonomy from
the U.S., such as the French sovereignists, some neo-Gaullists and
some factions in Germany, Belgium and other E.U. member-states.
Indeed, due to the difficulties encountered in creating a more
integrated European defense policy, the NATO-sponsored plan's main
effect could be that of worsening the image of E.U. integration
among large parts of "old Europe's" society, since this public
partly perceived the construction of the E.U. as a tool to balance
U.S. hegemony in the transatlantic relationship.
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