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Europe Is Ready for Its Own Army (2019)
- nmca 7y agoSeems superficially similar to roam research, which has been good to me so far.
- peteretep 7y agoFrance will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent. France will never accept the idea that the working language is English or that French troops might have to take orders from a Romanian. The Brits clearly don’t trust the French or German intelligence services enough to let them into the FIVEYES club. French, Brits and the Dutch are the only ones with veteran militaries. Nobody will be willing to give up veto power and nobody will accept anyone else having it anyway. Western European voters are never going to accept Johnny and Jean-Pierre dying to save Boris the Bulgarian Slav from Boris the Russian Slav. Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work. Hope I’m wrong, but history is on my side with this
- Tomte 7y ago> France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent. They already offered that, under Mitterand. Sure, Germany would have been the junior partner, but the offer explicitly included Germany being at the table.
- blargmaster33 7y agoGood arguments untill you pulled the racists card.
- pjc50 7y agoThe UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing. More complicated is deciding what the objectives are. Domestic defense only or airstrikes in Libya and Syria?
- goatinaboat 7y agoThe UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing Research the Franco-German Brigade and then reconsider the main blocker...
- brosinante 7y agoEurope is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work. As a european, I have to say, what a ridiculous statement.
- peteretep 7y agoWhat’s your nationality?
- BjoernKW 7y agoWhy is a label in my (or their) passport relevant to this discussion?
- peteretep 7y agoBecause I suspect a Romanian or Bulgarian or Greek has witnessed dramatically more racism than a Dutch or Swedish person.
- interdrift 7y agoI'm Bulgarian living in the Netherlands and I literally never witnessed racism (first because i'm white duhh?) and 0 discrimination. I'm on the high end of education tho so yeah :)
- kortilla 7y agoOh sweet summer child, racism applies to far more than skin color. Discrimination against country of origin is considered racism in today’s discourse. It’s a convenient cudgel to make essentially every country racist, but it is what it is.
- interdrift 7y agoI think it's fair to be afraid of the unknown but eastern European economies are growing and then even the point of us being too poor will be gone. Anyway, I don't really care about racism because anyone who is racist enough not to hire me is a great dodged bullet anyway lol. Also..sweet summer child? I don't get if you're trying to sound condescending
- kyriakos 7y agoOf course they will help Boris from Bulgaria because allowing Bulgaria to be taken over the Russians will be one step closer to the back door of their own country. Eastern Europe is a buffer zone that works as long as they are not conquered.
- peteretep 7y ago2017-2019 has not convinced me most voters are willing to look beyond the end of their nose. Where was the EU action over Crimea?
- interdrift 7y agoSanctions? As you may know we don't have an army. What else do you suggest?
- peteretep 7y agoNo idea, but the point I was responding that Europeans would never let Russia dominate a border country, and the Ukraine seems like a counter point.
- akmarinov 7y agoUkraine is Russia’s buffer to NATO, not the EU’s buffer to Russia.
- michaelt 7y agoIf western europe was looking to square up to Russia to protect an eastern europe buffer zone, they could have used the Budapest memorandum on security assurances as a pretext to offer military assistance the moment Russian troops started crossing the border. One could reasonably argue that Ukraine simply wasn't part of the EU, and if Russia threatened Poland it would be a different matter. That it is the EU membership, not the buffer zone, that is important. Another possible interpretation is EU would have wanted to intervene, but its current political structure proved too deliberative to react before it was too late. That would imply an EU army would also need political reform.
- Merrill 7y agoAfter Brexit, why would the working language of a European military be English? Are the Irish that influential?
- peteretep 7y agoBecause American and Canadian allies aren’t going to learn Dutch, and almost everyone in the officer class has a working comprehension of English already. I could — at a huge push — believe in Spanish, maybe, kinda, almost. France and Germany won’t let the other win it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- makomk 7y agoThe de facto working language of the EU is English, not because of the UK but because it's the one language that plenty of people in every country across the EU speak as at least a second language. If anything this is probably due to the US being so influential.
- majewsky 7y agoAlso, using everyone's second language is going to be less controversial than picking either German or French.
- interdrift 7y agoFirst of all, most of the balkans are slavic and even Poland is a slavic nation. Any slavic nation under agression by any other will nowdays meet not only the slavic armies but also western european ones
- peteretep 7y agoI hope you’re right! I’d suggest that the Visegrád group’s military aspects suggests the Central Europeans are worried they’d be on their own in case of Russian aggression though.
- interdrift 7y agoEastern Europe has been a battlefield for millennia, any nation in NATO has to guarantee their own safety to this moment. V4 are working together but I do believe we will achieve it on a wider scale after the brits are gone
- peteretep 7y agoI’ll believe it when I see it. I think we’re far more likely to see closer Franco-British integration (with maybe some Hanseatic colour thrown in) well before an EU army
- kyriakos 7y agoEU seems to be standing idle while Turkey is trying to dig out hydrocarbons from Cyprus and Greece EEZ.
- timwaagh 7y agoPlenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well so I don't know why you picked these three as being 'veteran'. Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this. In any case, not having to die a whole lot can only be seen as a win. FIVEEYES is a club for 5 former english colonies that speak english. Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club, but somehow I doubt they want to have any part of it. Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene from other Mbene and in that context saving Boris from other Boris isn't such a leap.
- peteretep 7y ago> Plenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well The Brits and the French have had plenty of their own non-NATO adventurism. The article notes "[they're] almost never not at war somewhere, officially or otherwise". They also have _by far_ the most troops deployed abroad; twice as many when taken as a percentage, and an order of magnitude more when taken in absolute numbers[0]. Apparently I was overestimating the Dutch contribution. > Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this That is far from clear[1] > Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club Actually, France would, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway[2]. > Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene In Francophone Africa, where people speak Jean-Pierre's language, where Camus comes from, and where the French have nostalgic ideas about empire. Far from the same thing. Also, the top three names in a random Francophone African country I just chose are Florent, Yves, and Frank. Isn't Mbene a Nigerian name? [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/11916/which-countries-have-the-most-active-troops-abroad/ https://www.statista.com/chart/11916/which-countries-have-th... [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-or-not-france-and-britain-deepen-military-alliance-lancaster-treaties-defense-david-cameron-nicolas-sarkozy/ https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-or-not-france-and-bri... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Six_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Six_Eyes
- timwaagh 7y agoI have no idea where Mbene is from. It sounded African enough. It is not like France never fought for Eastern Europe (ww1 they got drawn in because their alliance with Russia, ww2 because of alliance to Poland). Other than explanations based fantasies about empire based on a neo romantic conception of France as this old world place lost somewhere five hundred years ago, deployments to places like Mali are of interest for the protection of France and the rest of Europe against unchecked propagation of Islamic extremism. Which is why other European allies have joined that operation. In that sense, it is similar because in both cases the reason for intervention is the strategic interest of France. It's unsurprising that France still has bilateral military cooperation with Britain. But Britain's historical track record on the EU level military cooperation issue is that they do not want anything to do with it.
- Torches68 7y agoDid you intend to conflate "racism" with perfectly natural, healthy, sensible in-group preference? Why should I send my son to die for foreigners against foreigners in a foreign war? I would also add that you can sleep easy: the total capitulation of Western and Northern Europe to foreigners from some of the worst places in Earth, and the ubiquitous celebration of their own replacement, demonstrates a complete erasure of the will to survive that every healthy nation must possess. Europe's problem with nationalism is the total absence of it.
- Causality1 7y agoThis is going to completely shatter the US' political power in the region while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing for Europe's real defense. Europeans throw violent protests if they have one less vacation day a year; there's no way they would tolerate giving up 15% of their taxes, i.e., 15% of their entitlements, to build and maintain a real military force capable of taking on the likes of Russia.
- huffmsa 7y agoThe US has an entire Western hemisphere it can and should be doing more to unify and improve. Like Trump said in 2016, it's time to turn our resources back home. Rebuild our own infrastructure, social programs, etc.
- Causality1 7y agoBut we're not doing that. We're just spending more on the military.
- krapp 7y ago>Like Trump said in 2016, it's time to turn our resources back home. Rebuild our own infrastructure, social programs, etc. Like a lot of Trump's rhetoric, this sounds nice, but the proof is in the pudding. I don't think we were spending infrastructure and social welfare resources on our military to begin with, so not doing so doesn't necessarily free up resources. The US is fully capable of doing all of these things, it's not short on resources. Also, it's now 2020, and Trump is toying with war in Iran, moving new troops into Iraq, increasing military expenditure by billions of dollars, repealing and cutting funding for social programs and AFAIK not actually rebuilding our infrastructure at all in any significant way.
- akmarinov 7y agoNot even one wall...
- ben_w 7y agoFrance, alone, spends more on their military than Russia. Overall, the 28 countries currently in the EU have a combined military budget about 3.5 times the size of Russia’s. (I’m sure there’s a better metric for military power than mere budget, but I don’t know enough to find out what that might be).
- yulaow 7y agoI saw a lot of EU policy makers moving towards an "independence from USA" goal in the last 2-3 years. The army is just one, but even in software some of the research projects in which part of my group is coordinating/participating with the EU are gonna receive an unbelievable amount of money in the next ten years to build a complete internet infrastructure independent from any us software and hardware. I'm talking about 10-50x more funding than usual until now, and it's gonna grow. I cannot say a lot because most of the projects are tba and under a formal "keep it secret" clause right now, but one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years and involve around thirty big software companies and universities in eu. It's really a good time to be a sw researcher here right now.
- ben_w 7y agoI know it can be tempting to be chatty, but if you know about projects that should be kept secret, do you really think it wise for you to say how much money is involved?
- phire 7y agoThe 2016 US election has done major long-term damage to the US's position as a superpower. Even if the next election "puts everything back to normal", this whole episode has made everyone question the wisdom of relying on the US for anything.
- rapsey 7y ago
- huffmsa 7y agoIt's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away. Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism. Merkel is in favor because she's tied her county's future to fossil fuels coming from Eastern Europe. She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open. I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good.
- elfexec 7y ago> It's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away. It is a real institution. > Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism. They are planning to create the army outside of the EU framework. > She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open. Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe. https://apnews.com/a038942bb9f0f1af239c6a56a54ae408 https://apnews.com/a038942bb9f0f1af239c6a56a54ae408 > I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good. If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.
- lmm 7y ago> Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe. All that seems to support the grandparent's view? > If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient. It's easy to imagine those 28 nations would otherwise become client states of the US or China. An integrated EU could give its members more independence at the global level, as paradoxical as that sounds at first glance.
- adventured 7y agoThis is an inherently silly article. It's premised heavily on Trump. He's around for a maximum of one more four year term. The only guarantee is that whatever President comes after Trump, will be a supporter of NATO and the former political approach to allies that has defined the post WW2 era. Trump is a one-off. There is no next Trump, the entire US political landscape top to bottom is overwhelmingly dominated by the anti-Trump types, there isn't a single other major political candidate (one that could actually win the Presidency) anywhere in the US that is like him. Most of Trump's biggest supporters in Congress are anti-Trump types when it comes to entities like NATO (Lindsey Graham for example is a McCain-like globalist hawk that loves the old systems, including NATO). > A world where an American president declares NATO, the cornerstone of American defense policy since World War II, obsolete. Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster. Nine times out of ten it's empty bluster, as everyone has noticed at this point. The article is taking the obvious - Trump's belligerent angling & needling approach to negotiation - and pretending it means something (Trump wants to do away with NATO) other than what it obviously does. The article author realizes that's incorrect and uses it anyway out of convenience to support the silly premise they're floating. Back in reality Europe can't afford its current military expenditures (and neither can the US of course), and there is no scenario where an EU army of any consequential scale comes into existence. What it's going to almost solely consistent of, is coordinated industry (arms manufacture, research and compatibility), not an actual EU army.
- cwingrav 7y agoI'd like to believe that. I'd like to believe this is a blip. But you're forgetting that the American people, about half, voted for him, and about half still want him, even after all he is doing. > Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster. It could be, but he has said it. And his people repeat it. It's a part of the mindset of a large percentage of Americans.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoNot entirely true, Trump woke up Europeans regarding military and life in general and gave the last push. There's no coming back when the boss of NATO shits on article five. Interesting times ahead.
- m0zg 7y agoPrediction: they'll run the numbers, scratch their heads, and begrudgingly start paying 2% of their GDP to NATO like they signed up to do. Shit's expensive, and Europeans are taxed through the nose as it is.
- kyriakos 7y agoEU members already have independent armies combining may actually bring the costs down.
- zuminator 7y agoNobody's paying 2% of their GDP "to NATO," not the US, not anybody else. NATO's entire budget is less than €2.4 billion. The agreement is for NATO member nations to aim to move toward spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense by 2024. So spending money on a EU-wide army would be one method of attaining that goal.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago"The United States has met the target, and dedicated 3.36 percent of GDP (around $664 billion, according to NATO figures) to military spending in 2016." [1] 1. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/us-pays-2214-nato-budget-germany-1465-13-allies-pay-below-1 https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/us-p...
- zuminator 7y agoI didn't state otherwise. In fact,the US has spent over 3% of its GDP on defense for over 15 years. However, only a portion of that is spent in Europe. And a tiny fraction of that is spent on NATO. Let's not conflate national defense budgets with the NATO budget with the overall cost of the defense of Europe. They're all totally different things.
- m0zg 7y agoIf US were to withdraw from NATO, a significant chunk of this money would have to come out of Europeans' taxes. As a US taxpayer paying six figure taxes, I'm completely in favor of reducing the part of my tax that does not go towards protecting the United States.
- skissane 7y agoA perennial idea, going back to the aborted European Defence Community (EDC) of 1952. The EDC was supposed to be a military counterpart to the EEC (European Economic Community, which would go on to evolve into the EU). It was seen as necessary to rearm West Germany to defend against the threat of Soviet invasion, but the defeat of Nazi Germany was only seven years earlier, and many were afraid of what would happen if a rearmed West Germany experienced a resurgence of Nazism. The proposed solution was that West German troops would be part of a European army, the command of which would be dominated by France. The whole plan failed when the French Parliament refused to ratify the treaty, believing that it ceded too much sovereignty to an international body. In the end, it was decided to let the West Germans control their own army instead. The feared Nazi comeback never happened.
- lqet 7y agoIn my opinion, this is only likely to happen if there is a concrete, immediate and easy to grasp threat to Europe, like Russian or Turkish troops crossing the border. An abstract threat is not enough to overcome the strong nationalistic tendencies in Europe. A historic example of this is the Mongol invasion in the 13th century [0]: > Warring European princes realized they had to cooperate in the face of a Mongol invasion, so local wars and conflicts were suspended in parts of central Europe, only to be resumed after the Mongols had withdrawn. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#European_tactics_against_Mongols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Euro...
- kyriakos 7y agoI have to agree with this, this will only happen if a member state is invaded and there's fear that the invasion will spread to neighbouring members. At that point the public opinion will support the creation of a unified military force to stop the threat. Once that is done a permanent military institution will be established as deterrence to potential enemies in the future.
- ivan_gammel 7y agoThink of refugee factor. Inability for Europe to project enough power in regional conflicts in Middle East and Africa is now one of the biggest sources of internal political instability. AfD, Northern League and the likes are entering coalition governments and no one in mainstream political parties is happy about that. Everyone in Western Europe wants to solve the problem of refugees outside EU borders and this requires coherent foreign policy and military power to support it. So, yes, Europe is ready and if there will be any new major conflict in neighboring regions, it will accelerate the process.
- Proven 7y agoThey could stop importing fake refugees (aka migrants), for example. There was no refugee crisis before. Hungary still doesn't have this problem and needs no EU army. It is effective enough to send assistance to actual refugees, but that wasn't enough for Merkel and the globalists.
- Merrill 7y ago>While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of the alliance was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay,_1st_Baron_Ismay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay,_1st_Baron_Isma... NATO has outlived its purpose, and a new European defense arrangement is needed.
- hopia 7y agoMost European nations are already members of NATO. Despite recent political speeches I see little interest in developing some kind of duplicate defense framework on top of the existing NATO structures.
- michaelt 7y agoI don't know if this will come about, but Brexit must have made it more likely; an EU army is the kind of thing euroskeptics would have hated.
- Someone 7y agoTrump may have accelerated it, but I think this process has been going on for way longer. There have been some far-going experiments in cooperation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-German_Brigade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-German_Brigade: operational since 1989, German troops stationed on French soil since 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._German/Dutch_Corps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._German/Dutch_Corps: 30,000 troops (mostly German, I would guess, but several time with a Dutch commander) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeNeSam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeNeSam: Belgian and Dutch navy cooperation since 1948, with a joint commanding officer since 1996 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Benelux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Benelux). Chances are this, eventually, will lead to a merger of armies, navies, and air forces of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
- Torches68 7y agoPrediction: This will be used almost exclusively for the militaristic oppression of indigenous Europeans. Any nationalist congregations opposing their own replacement by millions of unchecked foreigners from Africa and the Middle East, or the extraordinary violence and dysfunction wrought upon them in their ancestral homelands by these foreigners and descendants, will be crushed by this EU military under complete control of those who openly hate Europeans.
- Proven 7y agoWhat do they need it for? More plunder of taxpayer money, more power to Brussels, less freedom for people and nation states, and internal and external interventionism. That's why.
- bromuro 7y agoWhy not dismantle the armies instead?
- majewsky 7y agoPrisoner's dilemma. Dismantling the armies only works if you get all countries in the world to do it at the same time.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoWouldn't it maybe make sense for the EU to possibly establish their own quasi representative democracy? Maybe each nation-state keeps it's current government. The head of the government becomes a 'chancellor' i.e. President among other Presidents. Every 2 years the Chancellors elect from among themselves who will lead (be the deciding vote on ties and conflicts of opinion). This would still give some autonomy but also congruity and fix issues where one party does not agree by having a designated decision maker. But all policies enacted by the EU would need to be binding and accepted by all nations as law.
- asdfase22 7y agoRemind me again. Why is it every time Germany raises an army, everyone regrets it?