"Integration and Security in West Europe's Political Union"

[From the Introduction]. West European defense cooperation has recently become a topic among transatlantic and West European policy makers. All the relevant institutions are busy with discussing proposals: (1) The EC's Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union is elaborating the blueprints for a draft treaty specifying the competences and procedures of EC decision making in security affairs. Relations to WEU are also on the agenda, not so with NATO. (2) NATO has almost completed a review process of its future role, strategy and force structure. Despite some recent official interinstitutional contacts, NATO has hardly started to think of links with WEU and EC. (3) The Presidency of the Western European Union recently (22 February 1991) published plans on the future role of WEU as a bridge between NATO and EC. All of these efforts are designed to (re)organize the security structures in Europe. So far, none of the major conceptual problems has been settled and no master plan has emerged except that NATO, WEU and EC are likely to be interlocked in one way or the other. These three Western organizations will then have to be connected with any of the future all-European structures of security which are in the making, too. The following reflections will deal with some of the proposals and problems of linking NATO, WEU and EC