Source: New York Times

Finally, it is beginning to sink in with the Europeans that the United States is shifting its attention away from the Continent and toward the Asia-Pacific region.

This does not mean that the United States is going to walk away from NATO or that it will forget Europe. The ties are too deep and too important for that to happen.

What it does mean is that European nations will have to break their decades-old dependence on the United States for taking care of their defense, providing the strategic thinking for them and keeping Europe’s own backyard — the Balkans — stable.

So far, however, both the European Union and the European countries in NATO have reacted to this historic shift in a most extraordinary way. Judging from the lively debates at the just-concluded Bratislava Global Security Forum, few governments are doing long-term strategic thinking.

“Somehow, collectively, the Europeans are not serious about defense,” Nick Witney, a security analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the participants.

For many months, the European Union has been discussing how to combine and share defense resources in order to reduce duplication of military equipment and increase efficiencies.

It would seem an ideal opportunity to do so, given the economic crisis that has led to drastic cuts in defense budgets in most European countries.

Yet despite all the lip service, hardly anything is being done to pool and share. One reason is that governments are loath to weaken their control over anything that involves defense. That would entail ceding some sovereignty and losing some jobs.

That seems to matter much more than the fact that pooling and sharing would allow the bloc to establish a credible long-term security and defense policy that could underpin its values. It could even make the European Union’s soft-power capabilities more effective.

After all, having at the disposal of the bloc a pool of helicopters and mobile medical hospitals, logistics and heavy strategic aircraft are also part of the panoply of soft power, not just hard power. But that does not get discussed.

“Pooling and sharing is about giving something up and someone else doing the job,” said Zbigniew Wlosowicz, the Polish deputy defense minister for defense policy. “These are very complex decisions. This is where the question of sovereignty kicks in.”

Several other European governments agree. Somehow, there is the suspicion that if a country gives up some kind of equipment, there is no certainty it can have access to it when it wants it.

And if one E.U. member state does not agree with a mission, could it then prevent others from using its equipment, or even block the operation?

There are no easy answers to these questions. But some defense experts in Bratislava argued that the United States should insist that Europe take on a bigger share of the burden instead of just complaining.

Only then, they say, would that concentrate the minds of the Europeans on finding answers.

Indeed, look what happened last year, when the standoff on the border between Kosovo and Serbia could have developed into a conflagration.

The catalyst was a trade dispute about the recognition of customs stamps. (Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state.)

To outsiders, the incident was just another spat between Kosovo and Serbia. But such episodes cannot be ignored. When it turned to violence, NATO and its hard power — not the European Union and its diplomatic overtures — prevented further escalation.

“As long as Europe does not take over the responsibility for its own security in the region, we will never develop a proper defense,” said Werner Fasslabend, president of the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy and former defense minister.

“Why don’t we do it? I will tell you why,” Mr. Fasslabend added. “Because people believe the Americans will do it. But we should take over, gradually, the responsibility in Europe. It is the only way that we can be strong and efficient allies in the future.”

To do that, Europe would need a strategic culture that encompasses all of the European Union and European NATO countries.

A decision last year by Britain and France, Europe’s most important military and strategic powers, to agree to a major defense cooperation accord in order to cut costs showed their frustration, but also their ambiguity, in trying to forge such a culture.

The nations subsequently derailed proposals by Poland to establish an E.U. military planning headquarters that would have helped establish a common defense culture.

This lack of cohesion within Europe makes it even more difficult for the Europeans to decide how to respond to the U.S. shift toward the Asia-Pacific region.

Christian Schmidt, deputy defense minister of Germany, suggested that the Europeans and Americans should at least discuss the different perceptions of threats and challenges.

This would not necessarily mean agreeing with the United States, he maintained. But it would help clear Europe’s mind about what developments a European defense policy would need to provide for.

“We have to reach some cultural and political understanding about security,” he said.

Until the Europeans know what they want, analysts said, this understanding is a long way off.

This article was originally published in the New York Times.