HOW quickly the need to cut deficits is reducing the European Union’s military ambitions. When EU leaders held a summit to discuss defence five years ago there was heady talk of being able to deploy 60,000 troops within 60 days. Today the objective is to get overstretched troops home from Afghanistan as budgets are cut. The EU is meant to have two “battle groups” of 1,500 men apiece ready to deploy at short notice, but it can barely muster one—and none has ever been used.Pressure to make better use of dwindling resources is pushing governments to share costs and pool equipment. At this week’s summit, leaders will bless plans to develop a European drone to follow the likes of America’s Predator and Reaper. The European version would be an unarmed surveillance system that, unlike military drones, is intended to fly in civilian airspace. Predictably, the plan has caused alarmist talk in Britain about Brussels building a “European air force”, prompting officials to redouble their effort to remove ambiguities from turgid EU texts.Yet the truly alarming prospect is that Europe is demilitarising so fast. Forget about euro-troops crying “Banzai!” Worry instead that the…
