Thanks for your comments and opinions across the board regarding the Eurocorps-Foreign Legion concept and its Single European Regiment (SER).
Firstly, the bottom line is belonging to the Euro single currency to limit the perceptions or verifiable conflict or confusion of economic and political interests. Nevertheless, I wouldn't be naive to think that such conflict would be altogether precluded after joining the Euro zone. Hence, ratification of the EU constitution would not necessarily be the bottom line. Political powers-that-be obviously decide definitive benchmarks.
Secondly, regarding personality-types and your comments, I think the criteria of verifiable self-restraint and self-discipline in the selection process could be better criteria in the selection process than a blanket personality type-B in the selection process.
Thirdly, the companies of this multinational regiment (SER) would deploy together with national battalions of EU and NATO Member-States represented in the officer ranks of the SIngle European Regiment in small high-readiness battle-groups. Each EU Member-State would have the complete freedom to retain or withdraw officers prior to the deployment of the SER; and their replacement would be by officers from Member-States participating in its deployment
Fourthly, I'm posting the essential parts of the last comment by me in the other forum:
The purpose of this concept is not to set the U.S. and Europe on a collision course: it attempts to show additional options for both sides to consider as Allies in NATO and in the United Nations framework.
The background of the concept, that is, its reflection, conception, publication, presentation and awareness-building including this board is the massacre of Srebrenica: it was a verifiable failure and political 'reality check' for the European Union.
Also, read English-language footnote 34 of the French text available through my URL. Read Dr. Phyllis Bennis: she contends how far international law has been violated for geo-strategic and oil reasons and not WMDs. 'Might is Right' by Otto von Bismarck has been adapted in Iraq in her contention. However, the recent liberation/invasion of Iraq assumes huge potential risks at least for the U.S. of radiological retaliation that cannot be understated.
The Eurocorps-Foreign Legion concept attempts to spread the risks between genuine democracies, that is, with verifiable 'free 'n fair' elections and turnover in political leaders if not reelected, in any part of the world. Such countries from every part of the world, and all from the UN Permanent Security Council irrespective of the 'democratic standard', would be invited by a EU(WEU)-NATO framework at the UN to participate in the concept through its UN dimension, that is, imbedded UN CIVPOL police officers: their accountable role to a U.N. Ombudsman would be to prevent the repetition of situations of verifiable abuse, humiliation, torture and murder of prisoners. This is how the much-invoked 'greater-burden sharing' in NATO could take shape, and in keeping with the stated EU political intention of its current 25 Member-States to assume scenarios in the Petersberg and 'Berlin Plus' declarations.
Also, the concept advocates the punctual, periodic or permanent presence of French-speaking American and Canadian NATO liaison officers in order to limit suspicion and manipulation of perceptions by individuals in any national hierarchy. Obviously there need to be counterpart provisions, for example, in the counterpart U.S. and Canadian units, for example, USMC, Ranger and Canadian green beret units, as participating NATO Member-States in the deployment of the Single European Regiment. The permanent presence of French-speaking officers in the Single European Regiment would represent a sure transatlantic policy acceptable to both sides in the United Nations at the disposal of the UN Secretary-general: it would be a provision adopted after sustained agreement between successive U.S. and Canadian administrations in the respective political spectrum. The bottom line for EU candidates is to be part of the Eurozone as a starting benchmark for being 'European'.
However, the use of the military in History has always been linked to geo-strategy and the national self-interest since the rise of the Nation-State. This concept safeguards the prerogative of 'national sovereignty' and proposes additional options where/when the national self-interest cannot be easily identified but where troops are called in the collective sense, that is, in the EU and NATO frameworks and by extension in the United Nations.
The concept seems easy enough to conceive but the correct instruction needs to be given for this type of conception. Nevertheless, the concept also exposes a verifiable lack of political will to undertake such a concept in earnest even after the above necessary and preliminary stages and individual and collective thresholds have been addressed in the written press and the pertinent forum outside of the national demarcation.
Furthermore, I fear that such challenging concepts are only looked at after a REAL and DEEP crisis when everything seems to be stable. 9/11 was a REAL crisis for the US: it responded. Srebrenica was a real crisis for the European Union in its international projection: it responded with its NATO allies including an estimated 80% U.S. participation in the 'Operation Allied Strike' in Kosovo. A conceptual response is called for to avoid the repetition of the Srebrenica scenario.
Lastly, the link to the presentation of the concept at the European parliament in June 2003 has been updated inside my URL.
Comments and edits are always welcome from either side of the pond among others.
