While speaking to a summit of NATO defense ministers in Romania Oct. 13, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the NATO Reaction Force (NRF), the alliance's new rapid reaction force, was now ready for deployment. The NRF essentially extends NATO's operational reach while serving as a tool far defter than wings of bombers and phalanxes of tanks. In the future NATO could use it in the case of a resumption of conflict in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, to protect Turkey's Iraqi flank and of course to stamp out any smoldering embers in the former Yugoslavia or Albania. As assembled, the NRF's deployment time is expected to be between five and 30 days. Conventional forces often take months to get moving. Unlike many military forces, the NRF has a floating organizational structure with individual NATO members providing key operational nodes on an informal rotating basis, which are assembled into deployable forces as the mission at hand dictates. That prevents the force from ever training into a crack operation, but it also keeps the mentality of rapid reaction at the forefront of their commanders' and civilian overseers' minds. Elements of the NRF have already been deployed to Afghanistan to assist with pre-election security, as well as to Athens to assist with Olympic security. It is best to think of the new NRF as a sort of Marine Expeditionary Unit — a fast, flexible force capable of engaging in a wide array of missions. Put another way, the NRF is heavily-armed and large enough to go into places where peacekeepers dare not tread — or quiet enough that a full war will not need to be fought — while being small and light enough to get there before it is too late. Had the NRF been available earlier, it may have been used in Afghanistan — and it certainly would have seen lots of action during the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Yet when the United States proposed the NRF back in 2002, its goal was not simply to extend and transform NATO's capabilities in a post-Cold War world. The NRF always held dual priorities. In addition to the nuts-and-bolts operations outlined above, the NRF served a very clear political goal of the Washington — keeping Europe militarily dependent upon the United States. Several European states — particularly France — have been attempting to tease Europe's military evolution away from the U.S.-dominated NATO. One angle of this strategy has been to develop a parallel military arm under the aegis of the European Union. Unfortunately for the states who'd like to get some breathing room, there are not many European states willing to pay for NATO and a military force independent of the alliance. Furthermore, while no alliance is perfect, the NATO allies have a strong record of working together efficiently and linking in some pre-existing assets into a new rapid reaction framework proved far simpler —and cheaper — than building the new French-inspired force from scratch. For the bulk of the EU's new members in Central Europe, the political connotations of the French initiative are hardly opaque, and they have not so much as waved a dossier in Paris' general direction, instead pouring their heart and soul — and militaries — into the NATO force. Consequently, the NRF already boasts a force of 18,000 which will hit 22,000 by 2006, while the various European reaction forces continue to be redesigned. The most recent version — while more useful than the 900-strong Eurocorps which, in its "coordinating" role, rarely deploys to an environment more aggressive than a parade route — envisions nine groups of 1,500-2,000 soldiers by 2007. Despite claims that these mini-forces would be able to handle combat operations, such forces would be too small to take on any opponent worth mentioning, relegating them — again — to peacekeeping operations after NATO has already cleared the way.