Comment on ‘A European SACEUR?’

Abstract

For every solution there is a problem, General de Gaulle is supposed to have said. Sir James Eberle’s chapter outlines the mish-mash of command arrangements that history and national jealousies have bequeathed to NATO, and he does so with the feeling of someone who has actually had to try to make those arrangements work. Although the idea of a European SACEUR has been put forward before (by Henry Kissinger among others)¹ Eberle’s experience dictates that the argument deserves especially careful scrutiny. Yet still neither Eberle nor Kissinger seems to have identified in convincing fashion a problem to which a European SACEUR is the solution.