European Adaptation to Expeditionary Warfare: Implications for the U.s. Army

As has North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU) is adapting to the changing regional and global security environment in the wake of the Cold War. Almost immediately, Europe began to recognize that it could not barricade itself from the world and live off the peace dividend while instability rampaged along its border. The existing European security organizations (Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe [OSCE], Western European Union [WEU]) were ill-suited to deal with the host of new challenges, and as the Balkans conflicts revealed, the European contribution to NATO had fallen woefully behind. European relevance in the security arena required the EU to develop an expeditionary force capability. After nearly a decade of evolution, the concept of a European expeditionary force developed and formed the centerpiece of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) generated during the 1999 EU Helsinki Summit. Primarily intended for the Petersberg Tasks? humanitarian and rescue, peacekeeping, and use of combat forces in crisis management including peacemaking?the expeditionary force shall comprise 50,000 to 60,000 troops, with an additional 140,000 troops in support of extended operations. A 5,000-strong police contingent shall supplement the force by providing crisis management expertise. To wean Europe from the United States, the EU will procure sufficient air- and sealift (and sharing of airframes within the EU under the Air Transport and Air Refuelling Exchange of Services (ATARES) agreement; logistics; Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Information, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR); and combat support to provide it with the capability to deploy the force within 60 days and sustain it for a year.