Overview

It was logical to expect that the European Economic and Monetary Union would lead ineluctably to an autonomous European defense; the very size of the European Union seems to demand it. The EU eventually will reach the point where its economic and demographic weight will far exceed that of the United States. Can it not be expected too that the EU will seek to make this weight felt internationally? Cogan tracks the halting creation of an independent European military structure, a third way between national armies and ATO, since the Iron Curtain's fall. With the Cold War's end and subsequent western engagements in Central and Eastern Europe, it is no longer a question of whether NATO and the EU compare; they now must relate. They have to coordinate their planning and force postures so as to avoid duplication of resources and efforts. Although NATO's integrated command structure theoretically was an anomaly with the end of the Cold War, it nevertheless turned out to be the case in Bosnia, and later Kosovo, that nothing was possible until the Americans intervened. The virtue of integrated command -- American participation and know-how -- was once again seen as crucially important, despite the increasingly anachronistic deficit of sovereignty for Western Europe in defense matters. In the long run, Europe's economic power must be balanced by its military and diplomatic might.

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The Third Option chronicles the last decade's complex transatlantic and intra-european military diplomacy, as the United States and Europe wrestled over the future strategic division of labor between NATO and the European Union. Cogan's past scholarship on French-American relations suffuses the work with a subtle understanding of the historical roots of current issues. The book suggests that there are inevitable contradictions between an improvement in the EU's military capacity and the continuation of a NATO dominated politically and militarily by the United States. For those who wish to manage, or simply to understand, the inevitable transatlantic tensions of the coming years, this book will prove an essential resource. -Barry R. Posen Professor of Political Science Security Studies Program, MIT

Charles G. Cogan has provided a comprehensive analysis of the efforts to create a European defense entity capable of acting independently of the United States. -Parameters The Third Option does a fine job covering the important events of the 1990s. -www.apsanet.org The best account so far of the European Union's push for an autonomous defense capability. -Foreign Affairs ?The best account so far of the European Union's push for an autonomous defense capability.?-Foreign Affairs ?The Third Option does a fine job covering the important events of the 1990s.?-www.apsanet.org ?Charles G. Cogan has provided a comprehensive analysis of the efforts to create a European defense entity capable of acting independently of the United States.?-Parameters The Third Option is a meticulous, comprehensive, clearly and elegantly written account and analysis of the efforts, led by France, in the 1990s to create a European defense entity capable of acting independently of the United States. Dr. Cogan cogently highlights the problems of NATO and the European Union becoming two separate and potentially competing defense organizations in Europe. His study is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand European defense issues and transatlantic security relations. -Samuel P. Huntington Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor Harvard University The Third Option chronicles the last decade's complex transatlantic and intra-european military diplomacy, as the United States and Europe wrestled over the future strategic division of labor between NATO and the European Union. Cogan's past scholarship on French-American relations suffuses the work with a subtle understanding of the historical roots of current issues. The book suggests that there are inevitable contradictions between an improvement in the EU's military capacity and the continuation of a NATO dominated politically and militarily by the United States. For those who wish to manage, or simply to understand, the inevitable transatlantic tensions of the coming years, this book will prove an essential resource. -Barry R. Posen Professor of Political Science Security Studies Program, MIT

Author Information

CHARLES G. COGAN is a Senior Research Associate at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Dr. Cogan is the author of Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO—Then and Now, and Oldest Allies, Guarded Friends: The United States and France Since 1940, both published by Praeger.

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