Sarkozy, Chastened by Chad, Seeks Money for EU Armies (Update1)

By James G. Neuger

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union's biggest peacekeeping mission, the dispatch of 3,700 troops to Chad this year, got off to an inauspicious start: EU governments repeatedly delayed the deployment, halted troop transports when fighting broke out in February, and ultimately had to rely on Russian helicopters to ferry the force to the African desert.

The rocky start to the mission to protect 400,000 refugees displaced by civil war in Sudan and fighting in Chad was a blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had goaded the EU with the words: ``We're not going to let Chad fall.''

With France taking over the EU's six-month presidency today, Sarkozy's priority is to upgrade Europe's military. The French leader is seeking to boost European defense investment, better coordinate the bloc's 27 armies, re-anchor France in NATO and overcome U.S. skepticism about European capabilities.

``From the American point of view, the more coherent, strong, independent, capable Europe is, the better, but I'm not overwhelmed with optimism that that is where Europe is heading right now,'' says Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Washington- based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who coined the phrase ``Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.''

Sarkozy's job got tougher last month when Irish voters rejected a new EU governing treaty that would have strengthened the bloc's foreign-policy chief, established a mutual defense clause and created a framework for military cooperation.

Military Operations

From Bosnia-Herzegovina to Indonesia to a Gaza Strip border crossing, the EU has conducted 17 peacekeeping operations on four continents since 2003, deploying almost 10,000 soldiers and 3,000 police.

Yet a shortage of equipment, money and political will leaves Europe far from a 2003 goal of being able to project a 60,000-man force into a conflict zone within 60 days and sustain it for a year.

Peacekeeping in Chad is ``frustrated because of the absence of an authoritative control and command system in the EU, and we must overcome this if we are to punch our weight,'' says Andrew Duff, a British Liberal Democrat in the EU Parliament.

The U.S. outspends Europe by a factor of 3-to-1 on military hardware, and by 6-to-1 on defense research, the French Defense Ministry said in a policy paper last month that outlined Sarkozy's planned shakeup.

``If nobody makes the effort to finance Europe's defense, there won't be a European defense,'' says Henri Guaino, a top Sarkozy adviser.

Healing Rift

The core of any European force, experts agree, has to be France and Britain, holders of the bloc's most capable armies and, because of their colonial past, the EU countries with the most global commitments. They're the EU's only nuclear powers and combined to spend $114 billion on defense in 2006, about 45 percent of the EU total, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is based in Washington.

France's defense establishment was roiled today by the resignation of the head of the army, Bruno Cuche, who quit after a mix-up between blanks and live bullets in a mock hostage rescue exercise on June 29 injured two soldiers and 15 civilians, including a 3-year-old child.

Sarkozy's first stint in the EU chair offers the chance to heal an inner-European rift dating back to 1954, when the French legislature revolted against a proposed European army and left the EU to evolve as an economic bloc instead.

EU Defense Arm

To build an EU defense arm, Sarkozy needs to roll back another go-it-alone French action -- Charles De Gaulle's decision to take France out of NATO's permanent military staff in 1966 -- that has bred a legacy of friction with the U.S.

De Gaulle's vision of an independent France leading Europe is so ingrained in French thinking that many doubt Sarkozy, languishing at a 37 percent approval rating, can lash France's armed forces to the European banner.

``We can expect some publicity-grabbing moves by President Sarkozy and his team, some fireworks but no lasting impact on EU policy,'' says Jacques Poos, former Luxembourg foreign minister. Sarkozy represents a ``temporary rupture in French foreign policy which, after De Gaulle, always had a safe distance from the Americans.''

That gulf was at its widest after the Iraq invasion in 2003. France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg floated plans for a Europe-only military headquarters at what the U.S. State Department derided as a ``little bitty summit'' of ``chocolate makers.''

Afghanistan

Pleading for European reinforcements in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush has since set aside American ideological objections to a stronger EU defense outside of NATO as long as Europe spends more on the military.

To plug the holes in Europe's airlift capacity that forced the Chad troops to hitchhike aboard Russian helicopters, Sarkozy wants more governments to buy the A400M transporter being built by European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., the French- and German-controlled maker of Airbus jets. Six EU countries plan to buy the planes, designed to carry 116 troops or two attack helicopters.

Sarkozy also wants to upgrade the EU's fledgling military staff in Brussels into a full-time command center capable of planning and executing two to three crisis-response missions simultaneously. France's wish-list includes joint EU purchasing and operation of military satellites.

The next U.S. president ``will expect more from Europe in terms of capabilities, particularly for Afghanistan,'' says Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak Defense Ministry official now at the London-based Centre for European Reform. Europe will have to ``show it puts its money where its mouth is.''

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net

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