Interesting comments yesterday from a senior member of the Project for a New American Century. Discussing the EU’s military ambitions, he scoffed at he idea that Colin Powell had been in any way on Europe’s side. “Despite what the Europeans seemed to think, Powell was never in favour of the European position”, he said, “In fact he did not like Europe at all, he hated being NATO commander”.
This it seems was mainly down to the way that the EU members of NATO would come to every policy discussion with a pre-defined joint position, or in some cases a pre defined split, rather than arriving at the discussion table with any form of open mind. This would make strategy discussions dry and unproductive and merely statements of solid position.
This in turn would mean meetings were sterile and unproductive
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Having been a member of the Military Staff at NATO I can tell you it was soooooooo annoying when we would roll up at a conference and all that would happen is that we would listen to each nation's statement, have a chat, a coffee break or extended lunch and then issue the pre-agreed communique.
As always the real work was done behind the scenes with SACEUR etc doing deals with his opposite numbers in each country to then get things done!
Probably a good thing WW3 never started as we'd still be arguing with the French and bloody Belgians (who made sure they make a lot of money out of all these meetings...).
How old is Sir Colin? Any objection to his being elected as Leader of the Conservatives - surely a better bet than David or Dave?
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