Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been a clear division of labor in Brussels.

NATO takes care of the security of its allies, while the European Union pressures Russia with sanctions and organizes humanitarian aid for displaced people.

This has worked quite well so far, but it is precisely the situation that France and some other countries wanted to break out of.

The demand for “strategic autonomy”, which French President Emmanuel Macron had championed, was intended to strengthen Europe militarily and make it more independent of America.

The new "strategic compass" should become the working instructions for this.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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On Monday, the Union's foreign and defense ministers adopted this concept in a joint session, after more than two years of intensive work.

That was supposed to be a highlight of the French Council Presidency, now it was overshadowed by the war.

The compass, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell freely admitted, is not the answer to the war in Ukraine, just part of it.

For the states in Eastern Europe in particular, another message was even more important than usual in the past few weeks: that NATO “remains the foundation of the collective defense of its members”.

This is now right at the beginning of the text, is repeated several times and sets a limit to further ambitions.

"A quantum leap forward"

The final version states that the “more hostile security environment is forcing us to take a quantum leap forward, strengthening our will and ability to act”.

However, the European Union will limit itself militarily to limited crisis operations.

A "rapid deployment capability" of up to 5,000 soldiers, who could be deployed in a "non-permissive", i.e. competitive environment, should contribute to this.

This should not be a standing force - which would be at the expense of NATO, which is now using its rapid deployment force for collective defense for the first time, and of all things with France as the leading nation.

Rather, in tortuous terms, there is talk of a "modular capability" that is supposed to be based on national capabilities and "substantially changed EU battlegroups".

So far there are two of them, with 1,500 to 3,000 soldiers, but only on paper.

From next year onwards, the troops are to exercise together and be operational by 2025.

Defense Secretary Christine Lambrecht said Germany was ready to take the lead in the first year.

In the deployment scenarios, the focus should initially be on "rescue and evacuation operations" and on the "initial phase of stabilization operations".

This reflects the sometimes traumatic experience of the airlift from Kabul last August.

The Europeans had to admit that they would not even be able to get their own employees to safety without American help.

Experts doubt that such a scenario would be possible with 5,000 soldiers.

The Americans had sent that many just to secure the airport in Kabul, alongside thousands of experts who sat at computers, evaluated satellite images and piloted drones in order to be able to assess the security situation.

But at least the Union sets itself a sufficiently specific goal and does not hide its shortcomings: "We have to give our skills, decisive enablers and equipment a boost in order to close the gap between our level of ambition and the available resources". strategic deployment with aircraft, satellite communications systems and enhanced capabilities for reconnaissance, cyber defense and landing operations.

That sounds pretty big again, but it describes priorities in armaments policy that are to receive start-up financing from the European Defense Fund – from which NATO then indirectly also benefits.