The limits to Sarko’s military dreams

If Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, is to succeed in his plans to boost European defence co-operation, he will need supreme political finesse and he will have to overcome long-standing scepticism in the UK and the US about French designs for NATO. The debate will take place as European governments and their counterparts in North America try to avert military defeat in Afghanistan.

Sarkozy's bid to boost EU defence co-operation and return France to a full role within NATO are almost inseparably linked. In an interview with the New York Times in September, he said that NATO should no longer be seen as "a kind of bogeyman" but said that his offer to return France to NATO's integrated command would depend on making progress on European defence. Whereas his predecessor Jacques Chirac sought to boost European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in direct competition to NATO, Sarkozy is probably the most Atlanticist president that France has ever seen. His plans to work more closely with NATO are driven by a genuine conviction that global security efforts have to come through co-operation with the US, not in opposition to Washington.

At the same time, he is adamant that ESDP should not be 'corralled' into purely civilian crisis management tasks, leaving NATO the responsibility for hard security. Sarkozy has spoken of creating a "European pillar" within NATO which could go as far as constituting a caucus of EU member states within the alliance. This would be opposed by the UK and the US if it tried to replace existing relationships among NATO members.

But Sarkozy's initiative offers the best chance in decades to make real progress in improving the articulation between European defence (through ESDP) and transatlantic defence co-operation (through NATO). What unites France and its NATO allies is the need to increase and improve defence capabilities. The US and UK military forces are overstretched, thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan. Once the Chad and Central African Republic missions go ahead, Paris will have committed around 13,000 troops of its total available expeditionary force, which is estimated at around 20,000.

France is planning to publish a white paper on defence in April or May which will focus on matching available resources to identified threats. With this debate in the background, French thinking is focusing on how to squeeze a greater effort on defence spending from its EU partners. The idea of bringing together the six biggest EU member states in an elite defence group which would sign up to spending a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product on defence, setting up a common defence procurement market and co-operating on major defence infrastructure projects should be seen as a way of putting pressure on rich EU members like Germany to boost their defence efforts.

While the UK is wary of any new institutional initiatives, it is strongly behind the possibility of creating a pioneer defence group as a way, as one EU official put it, of "leveraging extra [military] capabilities".

The UK would welcome France playing a fuller role within NATO and being less obstructive on the alliance's plans to buy non-European military equipment such as C17 military transport planes. But what remain difficult are French ambitions to boost the EU's military strategic capabilities. London is still sceptical about what appears to be a core French demand: equipping the EU with a fully-fledged planning headquarters. As a compromise solution, following a skirmish over this issue back in 2004, the EU set up a fledgling unit which could be used only if other facilities were not available. The UK argues that an independent EU headquarters is a wasteful duplication, given the shortage of qualified planners, while NATO has a fully functioning, well-equipped capability at SHAPE in Mons. One compromise being considered is to create a planning headquarters that could be airlifted close to crisis zones.

On this and a number of other issues, some wariness remains about French intentions. But taking advantage of a genuine willingness from Sarkozy to boost France's role within NATO and to leverage greater capabilities will require compromises on institutional issues. At a time when NATO members are contemplating defeat in their most important engagement since the end of the Cold War - the war in Afghanistan - because some countries are not able to provide the troops to do the heavy fighting, the price of failure could be high - both in terms of casualties and credibility.

If Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, is to succeed in his plans to boost European defence co-operation, he will need supreme political finesse and he will have to overcome long-standing scepticism in the UK and the US about French designs for NATO. The debate will take place as European governments and their counterparts in North America try to avert military defeat in Afghanistan.