ABSTRACT
In addition to serving as the defence identity of the European Union, the Maastricht agreement accorded the Western European Union (WEU) the task of acting as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) European pillar. The depth of United States (US) unease at European assertiveness could be measured by incidents such as the Bartholomew Letter of February 1991 and the speech of President Bush to the NATO Rome Summit. Just as the crisis in Bosnia exposed the limitations of the WEU's military capabilities and the divergent foreign policy interests of the European states. As far as the United Kingdom was concerned, US-European interests were sufficiently harmonious to trust that American assets would be available for a WEU-led combined joint task forces. The opposition of countries such as Germany and Britain made WEU involvement impossible, to the public chagrin of the French government and the WEU Assembly.
