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Britain is putting the finishing touches to a campaign to persuade its European Union partners to acquire enough military punch to act together without Nato in the event of a new Kosovo-type crisis.
Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, joins EU colleagues in Brussels today for a meeting of foreign and defence ministers to try to forge agreement before next month's Helsinki summit.
Keith Vaz, the foreign office minister for Europe, said Britain wants a commitment for a 40,000-strong peacekeeping force that could be deployed within 48 hours.
After years of grappling with the issue, the hope now is that the EU will be able to handle crises in which the US chooses not to become engaged.
Beyond the pledge to provide troops, Britain is proposing an EU equivalent of the North Atlantic Council - the political body that steers Nato - which would involve neutrals such as Ireland, Sweden and Finland as well as non-EU Nato members Turkey and Norway.
"This not about a European army but about maximising cooperation between the defence forces of the European partners," Mr Vaz said.
"In Kosovo we felt that the EU did not have the ability to take independent action. It's time we developed that."
Diplomats have decided on a the idea of military "convergence criteria" - borrowing from the Maastricht treaty's terms for membership of the single currency - but want to avoid any impression of surrendering sovereignty.
"Clearly, there are developments at a European level that we want to influence but they will not involve British forces serving in a European army," Mr Hoon said yesterday.
Britain, in its traditional role as bridge-builder between the US and Europe, is keen to respond to American calls for greater burden-sharing brought about by the experience of Kosovo, where EU members with 1.9 million troops struggled to find a force.
With the former defence secretary Lord Robertson now installed as secretary-general of Nato, and the alliance's former chief, Javier Solana, as the EU's new foreign policy supremo, the prospects are looking good.
The immediate consequence will be the end of the Western European Union, a largely dormant defence body which will be taken over by Mr Solana to help give the EU a cohesive foreign and security policy.
Like the British, the French and German governments have been stung by warnings from Washington that the US will no longer be prepared to carry most of the burden in future European crises.
They are beginning to realise that practical measures on defence cooperation would save them money at a time when public opinion - and in Germany's case, an austerity programme - is forcing cuts in national defence budgets.
The only EU member to have increased defence spending is Greece, and its efforts are directed towards possible conflict with Turkey, rather than any commitment to building an EU-wide defence capability.