Not such a soft power: The external deployment of European forces

Despite the failure of EU member states to meet their 2003 targets for the Headline Goal, which would make their formal commitment to a European Security and Defence Policy operational, there was significant progress in other areas of European defence cooperation that year. Among them were the 'Berlin-Plus' arrangements for cooperation between NATO and EU military operations; the transfer to the EU of responsibility for peacekeeping in Macedonia (Operation Concordia) and for policing in Bosnia; and the successful launch of the EU's first long-range operation, Operation Artemis, in the Eastern Congo. In fact, there has been a remarkable increase in the scale, distance and diversity of external operations by European forces - an increase that has scarcely registered in public debate across Europe, let alone the United States. At the same time that EU governments were slipping behind the Headline Goals target, they were sustaining 50,000-60,000 troops on operations outside their common boundaries, in more than 20 countries in southeast Europe, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Iraq and the Gulf, and Africa.