Foreign policy & defence

EU member-states disagree on whether the EU should have its own military headquarters, or continue to depend on NATO to help run EU operations. This dispute is becoming increasingly theological.

The deal struck between Britain, France and Germany on the future of European defence is good news for those who believe that the EU should focus more on military capabilities than institutions.

European defence has returned to the top of EU governments’ agendas this year, with the divisions provoked by the Iraq war making it a highly sensitive subject. It is possible to argue that the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has proceeded according to plan in 2003.

After it embraces ten new members in 2004, the EU will have long borders with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Few people in today's EU know or care much about these countries.

The US and Europe have to succeed in an exceptionally difficult undertaking. They have to meet not just a single or double challenge, but a triple one: They need to prove, to each other and the rest of the world, that the principal rationale of the US-European partnership is indeed no longer the bilateral relationship and the broader European agenda, but their ability to tackle, together, the growing problems of a troubled world.

The EU urgently needs a security strategy. At present the notion of a credible European foreign policy provokes derisive laughter – and not just in Washington. What Europe lacks, even more than military capabilities, is a shared vision of today's security threats and adequate policy responses.

The French President has employed scorn and threats to insult sovereign European states, in a style reminiscent of comments made by Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle about France and Germany.