Today's meeting of Nato defence ministers in Slovenia is likely to be as depressing as it is important. For the alliance's credibility now hangs on its mission in Afghanistan; yet the 26 allies cannot seem to find the extra 2,000 troops considered necessary for the success of that mission. The best prospect for "increased" manpower appears to be to re-flag some US soldiers already in Afghanistan as Nato forces. The mismatch between Nato's aspirations and capabilities is becoming acute, and a possible danger not only to the alliance itself but also, as we saw at Srebrenica a decade ago, to civilians it claims to protect.
In the case of the US, military over-stretch is largely self-inflicted and therefore perhaps easier to remedy. If it did not have 140,000 troops in Iraq, it would have sufficient elsewhere, because the US plays far less of a part in United Nations peacekeeping operations than its European allies.
Chronic military over-stretch is really more of a European ailment. Numerous cures have been tried over the years in Nato and latterly through the European Union, with little success. Europe's military inadequacies, particularly its difficulty in operating with the ever more high-tech US forces, were shown up in the first Gulf war, and highlighted again in Nato's air campaign over Kosovo. To ginger its European members along, Nato adopted a defence capabilities plan, and when that did not work, a similar initiative was tried in the EU. The hope was that, if not nagged by the US in Nato, the Europeans might raise their military game in the EU. In other fields, such as monetary integration, Europe had shown itself capable of carrying through big co-operative projects, thanks to peer pressure and timetables. But though the EU has set up a European Defence Agency, it has not been very effective so far.
Yet the Europeans are fielding more peacekeepers than they used to - hence the over-stretch. While Britain and France are doing most, others are doing more. According to International Institute for Strategic Studies data, last year 21 EU states had troops in Kosovo, 19 in Afghanistan, 18 in Bosnia and nine in Iraq, while smaller numbers of EU governments deployed troops in a further 18 countries.
However, one problem is that this extra effort is piecemeal rather than co-ordinated to any strategic effect. A rare exception is the development by several European countries of the Airbus A400M, but this will only be avaible to lift their troops and equipment to distant trouble spots towards the end of this decade. Another problem is that the demand for European peacekeepers' services keeps rising, beyond many countries' willingness to meet it. It was partly over an offer of more troops for Afghanistan that Poland's coalition government broke up a week ago. That is hardly propitious for today's meeting in Slovenia.
