European Security and Defence Policy: Taking Stock. ESF Working Paper No. 8, September 2002

Contains four separate papers: Chairman's Summing Up, by Francois Heisbourg; European Security andd Defence Policy: A European View, by Nicole Gnesotto; Changes in European Security Landscape: A Russian View, by Victor Kremenyuk; Power and Weakness, by Robert Kagan. The presenters and the participants in the discussion were invited by the Chairman to bear in mind the following questions: - What is the most relevant response to the emerging threat of terrorism of mass destruction? Are the traditional tools of military power the most relevant vis à vis what looks less like a Hobbesian jungle (where power goes to the big and the strong) than a fight against mutating viruses in which small is both ugly and powerful? Following, are military capabilities, and the readiness to use them, the primary benchmark for measuring power? - Is NATO condemned to play an essentially regional role in managing a Kantian Europe (“OSCE in uniform”); or will it play a global role? And wouldn’t the latter option imply that the US military be fully part of NATO, not simply the comparatively small US European command (EUCOM): is such an evolution likely? - Is the EU as feckless as it is sometimes portrayed? Are we all Woodstock-era flower children, despite the fact that most EU members have an imperial legacy and notwithstanding the recurring use of force by a number of European countries in recent years as well as in the previous decades? - Conversely, is the US as ready to act decisively as we are sometimes invited to believe? More specifically, what does the US refusal to assault Tora Bora tell us about the US military’s readiness to run risks