The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is seen throughout Europe as a crucially important stabilising force. And worldwide it is recognised as the sole effective defensive alliance - the only one with a real military capability. This was shown in Bosnia when, after years of ineffective - because it was passive - UN humanitarian involvement, action by NATO, acting under United Nations auspices, brought belated peace to the area.
Moreover, in Kosovo Russian forces now operate in conjunction with NATO troops - and effectively under NATO command - as part of Kfor, and genuine mutual respect has grown up between them. This helpful development has recently been reinforced by the fact that Russia, Europe and the US have recently come to share a common objective in this region - preventing Albanian guerrillas from destabilising the pluralist Macedonian state.
Furthermore, in the countries of central and north-eastern Europe, NATO is seen as an essential element in the preservation of peace. Given the history of this region, and the dangers posed by a military vacuum there, it is not surprising that the countries of this region should seek security within this alliance.
While memories of the Cold War still lead many Russians to see NATO somewhat negatively, this is not true of all. There is also a Russian view that NATO actually offers a measure of security on Russia's western borders.
This reflects the fact that at different times during the first half of the last century the Russians had some of their territory occupied at different times by Finns, Estonians, Poles and Romanians (partly, but not in all cases, in response to Russian occupations of parts of these countries). Against this historical background, the stability offered by NATO's presence on the western borders of Russia can be seen as helpful to that country in view of the problems it faces in central Asia.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, European concerns refocused on the resultant emergence of instability in the western Balkans. Where formerly Europe and the US had shared a common interest in maintaining a shield against a Soviet threat to western Europe, what has faced us during the past decade has been a threat to peace and human rights emanating from ethnic tensions in the Yugoslav-Albania region - a threat that, understandably, has been of much deeper concern to Europeans than to the US. European attempts to prevent the collapse of Yugoslavia, and later to deal with the lethal consequences of its disintegration, were notably unsuccessful. The use of European ground forces under UN auspices for humanitarian purposes was a failure: British and French forces effectively became hostages of the Serbs, inhibiting action to protect the local population from violence.
It was only when troops from these and other countries came under NATO command that their capacity to challenge the Serbs - and Croats - could be deployed to any effect. Part - although only part - of the problem lay in the fact that these European troops had been logistically dependent upon the US, and when the protection of besieged populations in towns surrounded by forces of the illegal Bosnian Serb Republic required a helicopter airlift of European forces to save their populations, the US had been unwilling to risk the lives of their helicopter pilots in this kind of operation.
What this clearly demonstrated was that in the new post-Cold War situation European security needs could not be fully met by NATO. For, while during the Cold War there had been an identity of interest between the US and Europe vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, the European security problems that have arisen in the aftermath of that confrontation have not necessarily all involved the interests of the United States to the same degree.
Thus, Europe has come to need a military capacity of its own: one that could, with US consent, draw upon NATO hardware, but without involving US forces in cases where the US does not see its interests sufficiently engaged to be prepared to commit US troops.
The Yugoslav experience also made it clear that the kind of equipment needed for European security purposes was in some respects different from that actually available within NATO. The absence of a capacity to airlift troops to besieged towns reflected not only US unwillingness to risk their helicopter pilots, but also the fact that US capacity of this kind is itself somewhat limited.
When I raised this issue several years ago with someone close to NATO, the semi-humorous response that I received was that in the kind of defensive war NATO had been created to fight, their troops would be retreating - and thus would not have required a helicopter capacity to deliver troops to places besieged by the Russians. (But, I should have had the wit to ask, might they not have needed such a capacity in order to evacuate their besieged troops?)
Moreover, Europe's deficiency in airlift capacity is not confined to short-range helicopters. Whereas the US has 70 large-lift military aircraft (as well as having the power to conscript civil aircraft for this purpose) Europe has no aircraft of this kind. Consequently it is also dependent on the US for aircraft needed to undertake overseas UN peacekeeping operations, of which the US has tended to steer clear since its unhappy experience in Somalia.
Other European military deficiencies include the fact that it has only four aircraft carriers - the US has 12 - and only seven satellites for communications and intelligence purposes, as opposed to 70 in the US.
What Europe does have, however, is two million military personnel - as against the 1,400,000 of the US. However, the way its two million troops are organised in separate national armies, and the commitments they have to undertake, are such that when reinforcements for Kosovo were recently sought, only one country felt able to offer any additional soldiers.
All this argues for a review of Europe's military capacity, which seems seriously ill-adapted to post-Cold War needs. But the last thing we in Europe need to do is duplicate NATO's capacity. What we need instead is to have available a dedicated force, capable of drawing upon NATO military assets but without being dependent on the availability of US ground forces, and possessing a logistical capacity that will enable it to preserve security in Europe - and to undertake UN missions overseas without having to rely on US heavy-lift aircraft.
It is this need that led Tony Blair several years ago to propose the creation of a European Rapid Reaction Force, linked to but separate from NATO. And it is to this force, to be available within two years, that we are committed to supplying 1 per cent of its strength - 850 soldiers.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie