-Caveat Lector- -----Original Message----- From: RL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, June 15, 1999 4:28 AM Subject: NYT "confirmation" Mr. Miller: I only last night discovered your organization via your post "Pax Germanica & U.S. of Europe -- or a New World Order," etc., which I found quite fascinating. Remarkably, this morning's New York Times carries the following analysis; as you might imagine, the first paragraph had a stunning impact on the heels of your piece. Thank you for the thoughtful work. RL ------------------ The New York Times June 15, 1999 Uncomfortable With Dependence on U.S., Europe Aims for New Parity By ROGER COHEN BERLIN -- The Kosovo war has brought radical changes to the European continent, thrusting Germany into a leading military role not seen since 1945, galvanizing attempts to forge a common European defense policy and altering Europe's relationship with the United States. Of course, with Russian stability still deeply uncertain, and the abrupt movements of Russian troops in Kosovo suggesting that Moscow's military may be restive, Europeans remain wary of any "decoupling" from Washington. But the desire to maintain trans-Atlantic ties is now accompanied by a push to balance them in a new way. Gerhard Schröder, now often called the Kriegskanzler, or War Chancellor, has found himself steering a coalition made up largely of former pacifists toward involvement in a war that has ended with the planned deployment of 8,000 German troops in Kosovo, the largest contingent after Britain. "Germany has become a normal country in military terms, and that is a critical change for Europe," said Jonathan Eyal, a British defense analyst. "The change is timely because the war has shown how much Europe needs to do to catch up with the United States in defense terms." Until the Kosovo war began, the European Union remained obsessed with the creation of a common currency, the euro. Efforts to develop shared European defense and security policies were largely stalled. But an 11-week NATO bombardment of Kosovo that was dominated by the United States appears to have changed things. Europe's need for new military technologies like laser-guided bombs was clear, as were its dependence on the United States for strategic reconnaissance and its lack of aircraft. As a result, a debate that had been confined to a few foreign policy and military experts about Europe's growing dependence on the United States and its failure to keep up with new technologies has become a subject of wide public discussion. The decisions Europeans will make are not yet clear, but they know they have to make some. "Kosovo has been a watershed in so many ways," said Karl Kaiser, a German foreign policy expert. "For Germany, it has represented a coming of age. For Europe, it has brought a crushing realization of the asymmetry of military power between it and the United States, and the need to do something about that." Already, Europeans have shown that they intend to be in the fore of the Kosovo deployment. Troops from the four major European Union countries -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- will total about 33,000, outnumbering the planned American unit of 7,000 troops by almost 5 to 1. The British commitment of 13,000 troops reflects Prime Minister Tony Blair's determination to give his countrya leading role in the development of European defense. This makes him critically different from former leaders, who saw such a policy as a betrayal of the Atlantic alliance. The Germans have clearly moved from a peripheral role in Bosnia -- where far fewer troops were deployed, and those only after a heated national debate -- to a central one in Kosovo that was quickly approved last week by Parliament. The ghosts of Nazi horrors in the Balkans, so present at the time of the Bosnian discussions, have faded. But on Sunday there was evidence of tensions surrounding the German deployment. A German military spokesman said German NATO troops in Prizren shot and killed two Serbs. In another episode about 25 miles south of Pristina, two German journalists from the weekly newsmagazine Stern were shot and killed by unidentified men. The large European deployment reflects both the Pentagon's enduring hesitations about ground troops and Europe's emerging desire to prove itself after its failure in Bosnia and the American domination of the air campaign over Kosovo. "Our vision of a multipolar world is being reinforced," Jacques Chirac, the French President, said of the Kosovo deployment, picking up an old French theme stressing the need to counter American "hegemony." Europe can point to a real role in ending the Kosovo war: its envoy, President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, brought home the peace agreement from Belgrade. At the same time, Europe at last merged its redundant defense body, the Western European Union, with the European Union itself and appointed the NATO Secretary General, Javier Solana, as its first high representative for foreign and defense policy. But, as Eyal, the British defense analyst, remarked, "These changes, for the moment, are largely symbolic ones, and all the difficult decisions lie ahead for a continent still massively dependent on the United States for the military power that was decisive in Kosovo." Those difficult decisions include increasing defense spending. The United States spends about 3.2 percent of its total output of goods and services on defense, compared with an average of about 2.1 percent in Europe. Such increases are sure to meet strong domestic resistance in many European states, where important bodies of left-of-center opinion suspect NATO's reinvention of itself as an agent of humanism. They see it as merely a way to reinforce defense industries and spread American capitalism behind a mask of benevolent concern for human rights. Constraints on European budget deficits imposed when the euro was created will also hamper increased defense spending. "Kosovo has made it clear that a complete restructuring of European armed forces is needed," said Kaiser, the German analyst. "The notion that everyone does and repeats the same thing has become absurd. There has to be a new division of labor, new synergies, new European thinking, but politically it will not be easy." Still, for perhaps the first time since the end of World War II, Europeans seem aware that they cannot eternally remain the security orphans of 1945 or depend overwhelmingly on the United States, which is deeply reluctant to deploy ground troops in conflicts. Europeans have also realized, more fully even than over Bosnia, that conflict on the continent did not end with the cold war's conclusion, but merely shifted to the Balkans. "There is no military exit strategy from the region," said Carl Bildt, the United Nations Kosovo mediator. "An international military presence to guarantee peace in the Balkans must be seen in the coming decades as something as natural as it was to have troops in divided Germany during the cold war years." Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company *********************************** Lloyd Miller, Research Director for A-albionic Research (POB 20273, Ferndale, MI 48220), a ruling class/conspiracy research resource for the entire political-ideological spectrum. 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