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The Kosovo war will cost Nato countries $11bn, and peacekeeping in the Serbian province will add $10bn to that each year. But a possibly greater price of the conflict is the urgent need for Europe to strengthen its own military muscle.
The figure for the war's direct military costs, calculated by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, exceeds any official estimate. It includes manpower and logistical costs, weapons and ordnance expenditure, and equipment attrition during the 11-week bombing campaign.
But the fiercest spotlight of the The Military Balance, the London-based think-tank's annual assessment of global military trends issued yesterday, is directed at Europe's defence shortcomings, harshly revealed in Kosovo. And the institute doubts the situation is about to change radically.
National and transnational plans already in hand might lead to some improvement. "But unless defence expenditure rises," said Dr John Chipman, the institute's director, "the build-up of a serious European defence force will remain the stuff of communiques."
A shortage of precision-guided munitions is one problem. But the biggest weakness was the lack of strategic air-lift and combat-support capability, including unmanned reconnaissance drones and mid-air refuelling capacity.
In each case, the allies were overwhelmingly reliant on the US. Of 200 refuelling aircraft used in the war at least 150 were American. "Britain and France had 25 between them, Italy a couple and Germany none," said Colonel Terence Taylor, the report's editor. "If they have pretensions to an independent military capability, this deficiency is a clear lesson for the Europeans."
The same goes for unmanned reconnaissance craft. The standard US drone, the Predator, could operate up to 25,000ft, for 24 hours, see through clouds, send back real- time video pictures and intercept enemy radio. The Franco-German equivalent, the CL-289, can stay aloft for 30 minutes, at 2,000ft. Overall defence spending by European Nato countries continued its post-Cold War decline in 1998, with outlays down a further 1 per cent to $171bn (£103bn).
Given the depreciation of the euro, the dollar value of most European defence budgets has dropped 7 per cent this year, a trend that Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, former defence secretary and now Nato's Secretary-General, will find it hard to reverse.
Another weakness was exposed by delays in assembling the K-For peacekeeping force. Theoretically, Europe has two million men under arms. But getting just 2 per cent of them to Kosovo reasonably quickly was almost more than the European allies could manage, with the exception of Britain.
Part of the problem was the slow pace of professionalisation of national armed forces. Britain has a professional military, and France soon will have. But Italy and Spain had hardly started overhauling their military, and Germany had not begun.
Making Europe's task even more pressing was the waning moral authority of the US, said Dr Chipman. The shock senate defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would not lead to a surge in nuclear testing, he said. "But it deepens the perception of the US as a country which preaches one law for everyone else and another for itself.
"Once, the US was clear about what it would do, and unclear about what it would not. Now Washington is clear about what it will not do, but vague about what it will do. This allows other countries to call its bluff."