The next month the aforementioned Klaus Naumann wrote a column which contained the demand that "The EU should...take steps to improve its ability to conduct operations. New EU Battlegroups should be strengthened through regular training and certification, preferably using NATO standards...."
(Daily Times [Pakistan], December 1, 2005)
The piece also urged that "The two bodies must expand their strategic dialogue beyond their current focus on the Balkans and Afghanistan" and included the same recomendation made by Julianne Smith earlier that the EU and NATO must jointly escalate their intrusion into other areas including "regions such as Ukraine or Moldova."
(Ibid)
The integration of EU and NATO military and foreign policy continued apace for years and reached its crescendo at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania in April of last year.
During the summit "US Permanent Representative to NATO Victoria Nuland
asserted that the key to strengthening NATO was to build a stronger European Union."
(Der Spiegel, April 1, 2008)
A newspaper from the host country reported that "A high American official has recently stressed that, far from being considered a threat to NATO, the consolidated European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is an immediate necessity...."
(Nine O'Clock News, March 31, 2008]
The EU's presidency was held by France last year and French President Nicholas Sarkozy was the prime mover in pushing for the EU-NATO-US axis at the Bucharest summit.
Though he wasn't its only proponent:
"US President George W. Bush backed Thursday the idea that Europe should build up its own defence capability, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, describing it as a 'historic turning point.'
"Bush's support for a 'Europe of defence, as Sarkozy described the intervention, was voiced at a summit of NATO leaders in Bucharest...."
(Deutsche Presse-Agentur, April 3, 2008)
Bush's speech at the summit reiterated that "NATO is no longer a static alliance....It is now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces
across the world...."
(USA Today, April 1, 2008)
His address also contained the by now routine denunciation of the post-World War II [1945-1991] order in Europe with "I said that Europe must overturn the bitter legacy of Yalta, and remove the false boundaries that had divided the continent for too long."
(Ibid)
A Romanian news source reported of EU-US relations during the summit that "[T]he quality of Transatlantic cooperation is currently going through a profound transformation, adapting to the new post-Cold War conditions and preparing for a new type of global partnership."
(Nine O'Clock News, April 3, 2008)
The same source a day earlier quoted former Romanian foreign secretary Mircea Geoana as claiming that "What this Summit is expected to bring about is....a new alliance of the 21st Century.”
(Nine O'Clock News, April 2, 2008)
To week after the summit concluded Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in warning that NATO was bent on usurping the role and functions of the United Nations said, "This is....an attempt to form some new global union with a Western core wishing to claim all but UN functions."
(Interfax, April 17, 2008)
With France as the main go-between, as holding the presidency of the EU and having announced its intention to rejoin NATO's military command, the drive for EU-NATO-US military symbiosis accelerated throughout last year.
In a dispatch with the headline "France trumpets EU defences, key plank for NATO future," French Defence Minister Herve Morin boasted of having "boosted the European Union's military capacities, a key condition for France to fully reintegrate into NATO."
(Agence France-Presse, November 10, 2008)
Morin provided an idea of the rate of EU military buildup at a meeting of European defense ministers (most wearing both EU and NATO caps) in stating, "I can say, that as of November 10... we have already made substantial and considerable progress, probably as much as we have seen in 10 years."
(Ibid)
At the same time Jean-Francois Bureau, NATO's assistant secretary-general for public diplomacy, said that "Twenty-one of 27 EU nations are also members of NATO, and both organizations 'are active together in the same theaters of conflict.'
"'From a NATO perspective, there is a huge need for even more cooperation' with the EU on military matters."
(United Press International, November 12, 2008)
