ACCESSION NUMBER:230909
FILE ID:EU-303
DATE:06/10/92
TITLE:EUROPEAN SECURITY DISCUSSED IN CONGRESS (06/10/92)
TEXT:*92061003.EUR
*EUR303   06/10/92 *

EUROPEAN SECURITY DISCUSSED IN CONGRESS
(Views Expressed on Franco-German Corps)  (660)
By David Pitts
1SIA Staff Writer
Washington -- General Edward Meyer, former army chief of staff, said June
10 that there is a role for NATO in the post Cold War world and that U.S.
forces should stay in Europe for the foreseeable future.  Concerning the
controversial Franco-German corps, he said he found that "non-threatening
at the present time."

Meyer spoke before the Senate Armed Services Committee where he released a
policy consensus report titled, "The Franco-German Corps and the Future of
European Security."  The report was produced by The Johns Hopkins Foreign
Policy Institute and endorsed by a large number of defense experts,
including David Abshire, Harold Brown, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Burt,
Frank Carlucci, Melvin Laird, Paul Nitze, James Schlesinger, and Helmut
Sonnenfeldt.

Meyer summarized the report's major recommendations:
-- The U.S. should maintain a "significant force" in Europe.  Present
circumstances merit a force of 75,000 to 100,000 through the 1990s.

-- U.S. ground and air forces "should be rotated frequently between Europe
and the United States."

-- The U.S. "should foster and increase the European role in the NATO
command structure and should do what it can to rationalize European defense
decision-making processes."

-- The U.S. "should welcome European steps to revitalize the WEU and should
do what it can to strengthen WEU-NATO cooperation and coordination."

-- The U.S. should look upon the Franco-German Corps as a possible first
step in the creation of a European army.  "The creation of such a corps
will provide a rationale for the continued presence of French forces in
Germany and will support U.S. efforts to increase French involvement in
NATO activities."

-- The U.S. "should also respond with support to an evolution of an
out-of-area mission for the Franco-German corps."

"Among the most important lessons of the Cold War is that a close
European-U.S. partnership is essential to a stable Europe and to an open
and prosperous global economic and political system, and that closer
European integration can contribute to such a partnership", Meyer remarked.

Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a former
assistant secretary of defense offered a different emphasis.  He accused
the French of trying to develop the WEU "as an alternative to NATO" rather
than a complement to it.  "To further its claim that the time has come to
shift the security of Europe from NATO to the WEU, France has been
aggressively pressing the establishment of a Franco-German military force,
initially a brigade, now as a corps," he remarked.

"France seems determined to consign NATO to the mission for which it is no
longer needed while blocking it from adopting missions that will be
essential in the future.  It is a policy of atrophy by veto," Perle noted.

Perle advocated changes in NATO's mission.  But he said that, "Few in NATO
are ready to draw the appropriate conclusion and revise the NATO charter so
as to assume some responsibility for protecting NATO's interests beyond
NATO territory, even in as near and important place as the Gulf."

Phillip Karber of BDM International Inc., spoke about U.S. troop levels in
Europe.  He said that planned manpower draw-down "should not be accelerated
before 1995."  NATO reorganization "needs to be predicted on stable
expectations of American commitment," he added.

"For 1995 and beyond -- the level of U.S. forces should be predicated on the
1lear definition of U.S. interests in Europe, the defined security
structure and strategy we wish to pursue, not short-term budgetary alliance
bashing," Karber remarked.

Fred Ikle of the Center for Strategic and International Studies discussed
U.S. relations with Russia.  He called for a "defense community" between
the United States and Russia, which he defined as an "evolving program of
institutionalized links between the two military establishments."

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