The future of the transatlantic community: European security and defence identity and NATO

Given the lack of political will, inadequate military capabilities and ineffective decision-making structures within the European Union (EU), the Europeans have agreed to build the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after the end of the Cold War. Due to the decisions made in Brussels and Berlin in 1994 and 1996 respectively, NATO has developed the Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) as a means of carrying out EU-decided Western European Union-led military operations on behalf of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy and the future Common Defence Policy. The building of ESDI within NATO on the basis of CJTF is a tentative outcome. It still leaves unanswered such important challenges as the degree of American say over the deployment of European CJTF and generally the future of American commitment to European security, as well as the viability of European integration in political, economic and defence spheres. Yet, in light of the future enlargements of the EU, the very slow progress in reinforcing Europe's power-projection capabilities, and the strategic imperative of cementing the transatlantic security community that has developed after the Second World War, the NATO-based ESDI ought to be supported and strengthened. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...