That's a disingenuous argument: yes 'defeated' countries like Germany mainly are US 'influenced'[I would not use the term satellite: It's not exactly a situatio

That's a disingenuous argument: yes 'defeated' countries like Germany mainly are US 'influenced'[I would not use the term satellite: It's not exactly a situation like Russia & Transnistria technically speaking] but the rest of the continent does not have this kind of relationship but a more 'grateful one'.The EU became a bureaucratic nightmare as soon as it started shifting from an economical union and added more attributions to it.NATO exists, even more importantly than that: sovereign nations exist(by the way this is not a legitimate argument for saying "This is how Putin is getting away with it". Europe has shown repeatedly that it can quickly mobilize against a real common enemy).Centralizing power is the mistake we keep repeating in Europe for thousands of years and it never works, because obviously power corrupts and some will be greedy and overstep. An EU army is the worst idea i've heard and the biggest counter-argument of being pro-EU.You talk like we don't have armies: we do, and strengthening them is the priority instead of creating more super-national entities which will have no effect pragmatically speaking, and a lot of overhead in terms of wasted money.It will open loopholes where people who hold more power at an EU-level will abuse the army for doing their bidding.As a matter of fact, EU can demand nation-states to do economic & regulatory measures between countries as long as nation states continue with their membership,but it does not have any power over sovereign states in most matters, especially military & security-wise.