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Defence in the World

Some tasks require multinational activity in which the United States may not want to be involved heavily or at all. There is currently a requirement for a presence in Bosnia, but the US might fail. It contributed towards the presence but Bosnia is not primarily a responsibility of the other end of the transatlantic alliance; it is primarily the responsibility of the European end. I tell the hon. Gentleman what I sometimes say to my French colleagues: it is possible to maximise the utility of NATO and the EU in a non-competitive way, provided that we shape slightly different roles for them. The EU offers an opportunity especially for bringing together prevention, rehabilitation and civil-military organisation on the ground. That is not as easily achieved by NATO. Indeed, some of our transatlantic partners in NATO may not be especially enthusiastic about getting involved in those matters. For example, let us consider Darfur. Sometimes I think that the world, by which I mean non-politicians—ordinary people who have as much insight and often greater sense than us—has watched events in the past 10 or 15 years and asked why somebody is not doing something. That was probably the case in Rwanda, is possibly the case in the Congo and definitely the case in Sudan.