Wanted: Mightier Military

In a world facing modern threats such as international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, conventional self-defense strategies are fast becoming outdated. The European Union recently has been rethinking its security strategies and proposing plans for Europe to become better prepared to fight terrorism and other global threats.

An EU-commissioned report published September 15 calls for Europe to develop the military and civilian resources to engage in regional conflicts around the world and the capabilities to respond to terrorist threats at their source. To facilitate these plans, defense experts propose more defense spending and a 15,000-member human security response force. The proposal not only entails the use of military power, but using civilian means such as policing to help with crisis management and civil disruption after EU intervention.

In a separate paper, the Institute for Security Studies—an autonomous EU institute dominated by the Germans and French—is proposing an EU defense strategy that would include preemptive wars. In it, military strategists suggest the preemptive strategy include the use of nuclear arms, stating that British and French nuclear weapons could be used as a military option (www.german-foreign

-policy.com, October 10). Their proposal stresses the need for the EU to develop a strategy that fosters early, rapid and robust intervention.

There is no doubt these new proposals and plans will be considered seriously with the aftermath of the Iraqi war still going on and the Madrid bombing of March 11 still fresh on European minds. The EU is learning from U.S. experience in Iraq and realizing more and more the importance of preemptive strategies for fighting terrorism.

Watch the EU develop more aggressive strategies to become a dominant global force—using terror threats as an excuse to beef up its military.