EU lawmakers to call for military investment after Kabul chaos

The European Parliament is set to call on Thursday for the 27-nation bloc to strengthen its defence cooperation and investment to become more independent of the United States after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The European Parliament is set to call on Thursday for the 27-nation bloc to strengthen its defense cooperation and investment to become more independent of the United States after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. "The EU must invest in military awareness, surveillance and reconnaissance, intelligence and strategic airlift," according to a draft resolution set to be approved later in Strasbourg.

The non-binding resolution notes the inability of European forces to secure an airport such as Kabul for evacuations without U.S. support. The draft also criticized the U.S. planning of a drawdown from Afghanistan that EU lawmakers will say was unilateral and without sufficient coordination with NATO allies, many of which are EU members.

The resolution is set to call the chaotic withdrawal a collective failure of Western foreign and security policy that, in the short term, damages the credibility of the West. The dependency on Washington for evacuations from Afghanistan has triggered fresh discussions in the European Union about the establishment of a rapid reaction force.

EU efforts to create such a force have been paralyzed for more than a decade despite the creation in 2007 of a system of "battlegroups" of 1,500 troops that have never been used due to disputes over funding and a reluctance to deploy them.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)