DALE MCFEATTERS EU's experiment in peacekeeping

The European Union embarked on an interesting and possibly far-reaching experiment this week. In a ceremony in Sarajevo, the EU formally took over Bosnia peacekeeping operations from NATO.
In the early 1990s, the Balkans were tearing themselves apart in an ugly civil war, ugly enough to give us the term "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism for genocide. The war was nastiest in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims fought with chilling ferocity for dominance. Unchecked, that war could have spilled over into southeastern Europe with disastrous consequences.
The major continental European nations stood paralyzed, lacking the political will and the military resources to stop the conflict.
Enter NATO, the World War II military alliance whose continuing usefulness many were beginning to question. Under U.S. leadership, 60,000 NATO troops -- including many from these same European nations -- entered Bosnia and, without a single combat casualty, separated and demobilized three armies and brought about a peace that now needs only 7,000 NATO troops, about 900 of them American, to enforce.
Lesson learned?
The lesson was not lost on the EU. It resolved to create a military force of its own to prevent any more Bosnias and, certainly in some Franco-German minds, to perhaps supplant the U.S.-led NATO.
Taking over the peacekeeping duties is the EU force's first real operation. Bosnia is stable enough that it should not be too terribly difficult. And maybe the EU will be able to lay hands on Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, Bosnia's most-wanted war crimes suspects.
However, the larger question is whether the EU can muster the political resolve and military resources to create a permanent force large enough, fast enough and combative-minded enough to prevent another Bosnia from happening in the first place.
NATO shouldn't pack away its gear just yet.
Scripps Howard News Service