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European (mainly French / German) attempts at 'strategic autonomy' had been consistently thwarted by the UK's recalcitrant presence. Brexit should've been an op

European (mainly French / German) attempts at 'strategic autonomy' had been consistently thwarted by the UK's recalcitrant presence. Brexit should've been an opportunity, but Putin's invasion of Ukraine quickly shut that window. With the Germans now re-orientating their energy dependency from Russia to the US, as well as committing to buying billions of dollars worth of US military hardware, there is no chance of any 'EU led third way'

matthewmorgan 5y ago
Could you give some examples of how the "UK's recalcitrant presence" have 'thwarted European strategic autonomy'? Because the last time I checked, the UK was doing a lot of the heavy lifting of European security.
- Sakos 5y ago
  Google "UK opposes plans for EU army", ca 2016
  - matthewmorgan 5y ago
    "Strategic autonomy" comes from investing in your armed forces, not adding a layer of bureaucracy on top of them
    - WJW 5y ago
      The EU army would be a layer of bureaucracy less, not more. So far the plans have not gone anywhere because national governments have been unwilling to give up final authority over their armies ("No German will command a Frenchman into battle!"). This has been partly due to historical mistrust, partly due to political considerations and partly due to a lack of urgency. This means that setting up any military activity in EU context (such as Operation Atalanta for example) requires going through all the individual national governments and asking for troops. A true EU-wide army would be a standing organization with pre-approved funding and means that could move much quicker than the current system. Investing in armed forces is also important, but adding up the funding of the individual member states already brings you quite far compared to basically any country except the US and China.
      - Xylakant 5y ago
        Note that there are also legal issues. The German army is the parliaments army, and as such the Bundestag must approve any mission that requires deployment outside German territory (NATO missions and EU missions are somewhat privileged). That would hinder foreign deployments of a joint European army.
      - kkfx 5y ago
        EU army means French army, since it's the sole remaining global power. And for us, EU Citizens, that would be a very good move, but the biggest real barrier is linguistic and even with social willingness (almost present even if, of course, does not emerge on mass media) and political willingness (not present almost at all) such barrier can't be solved. My own personal view is a smaller EU: - France - Spain - Italy (too tied to NATO due to WWII past, but less than Germany) - Portugal - then Germany (too tied to NATO due to WWII past) That form a new core EU in fiscal terms (even if all those countries are different real differences are limited), then in political terms with "cross-border parties", then in military terms like a small scale NATO lead by France. The the rest, smaller western countries can only follow, northern part who now talk out loud but in real terms can't live alone would have no choice but follow. UK can't do much now, with "the Commonwealth crisis" and the domestic intra-UK crisis there isn't much room to maneuver. Russia would not like that, of course, but between China (a historic enemy and still not really friendly and much interested in Russian eastern land) and a really united EU they'll jump the ship quickly: most of their infra, the tech they need is in the west and EU mutually need Russian resources instead of just tapping them giving back only industrial mass production. It's really unlikely but our best interest.
        credit_guy 5y ago
        > Russia would not like that Oh, how much Russia would love that. A smaller EU? Are you kidding? Any day of the week, twice on Sunday.
        kkfx 5y ago
        A united EU, for real and not of small states but the major EU powers, France the seventh world power, Germany a big economic power, Italy the third EU manufacturing power, actually the base of much of Germany and France tech together, Spain and Portugal still very important view their links to South America. For Russia means having a nascent new old global power no one can stop. Remember: until WWI big western European powers was the world leading superpowers. Russia back then was a fragile empire and USA a marginal and local-only power like China. We still have the most advanced tech and the biggest hi quality industrial complex both USA and China can't really rival except on scale.
- hunglee2 5y ago
  yes but only via NATO, a US dominated military alliance. The UK has consistently opposed the creation of the EU army, as well as opposed unified foreign policy etc.
  - hardlianotion 5y ago
    It would have been hard, before the Ukraine invasion, to understand what goals of a unified foreign policy would be, or how the EU army would meet those goals. Now, post-invasion, there is a more common appreciation of how things are, but still early to say that there is going to be a coherent EU policy when the immediacy of the danger is past.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > It would have been hard, before the Ukraine invasion, to understand what goals of a unified foreign policy would be Many in France and Germany could understand it very well. The UK generally resisted EU integration, including currency and foriegn policy, and of course the UK eventually left.
      - hardlianotion 5y ago
        France and Germany are two countries in the EU, there are others with different views. They differ on quite a few foreign policy issues. Poland and Germany, for example have very differing views on what priorities are for security policy in Europe. France and Germany have very different ideas on what priorities are for dealing with China.
- jl6 5y ago
  “Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least 500 years: to create a disunited Europe.”
  - riffraff 5y ago
    "Yes, minister" and "yes, prime minister" are incredibly fun and still very actual shows.
Sakos 5y ago
Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of posting links like this on HN. Most people here seem to generally be clueless about geopolitics, history and military.
- stavros 5y ago
  Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of posting comments like this on HN. They're just shitting on the parent comment without any substance.
ceeplusplus 5y ago
The far bigger issue is that France and Germany (especially Germany) have a chronic underspending problem on their military. They choose to spend on social programs instead. You can't claim leadership of a pan-EU army when you yourself don't even meet the 2% GDP spending target set by NATO.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  In 2020, German spent about 53 billion USD on its military, that’s rank 7 world-wide. The UK spent 59 billion, about the same ballpark. The bigger problem in Germany is inefficient spending.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    Using absolute numbers borders on fraud. What's the %?
    - lorenzfx 5y ago
      Why care about the %? What really matters are the capabilities, no matter the cost.
  - ceeplusplus 5y ago
    Correct, but if Germany wants to be a leader of a pan-EU army it needs to be a dominant military power in the region (for example the US globally, or Turkey in the East Mediterranean, or what Egypt/Libya used to be in the Middle East before the US decided to regime change them). Else you just get political squabbling because the various states have equal power and nothing gets done. I'm not saying social spending is bad, just that if playing a lead role in a pan-EU army is Germany's interest then it needs to spend more.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      How will more money fix the fundamental issue of inefficient spending? It will just be more money inefficiently spent.
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
You greatly understate EU defense dominance. Ship building, subs, tanks, semi-autonomous weapons, small arms, self-propelled artillery, etc., are all areas where EU member states meet or well exceed US/UK weapons exports, particularly Germany and France. Although not an EU member, Turkey is increasingly becoming a player in the drone, small arms and missile space. Its easy to confuse high profile programs like the the F35 with the much greater volume of other categories of arms.
- sofixa 5y ago
  You can add aircraft (yes, there's no equivalent for the F-22 and F-35 but both don't form the backbone of the USAF yet and cost an outrageous amount of money), and helicopters, rockets, radar/sonar, combat systems (Thales is a world leader in that sphere) to that list.
- 323 5y ago
  Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of exporting everything: 2015: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns in an exercise https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19/germanys-army-is-so-under-equipped-that-it-used-broomsticks-instead-of-machine-guns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19...
  - lorenzfx 5y ago
    As commented below: That broomstick example gets paraded around a lot, but this was on a vehicle that wasn't supposed to have a gun in the first place. There is a lot of valid criticism on the readiness of Germany's armed forces, this isn't one.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of exporting everything: They got the message. IIRC, Germany's going to throw something like the equivalent of two years worth of extra defense spending at addressing its military under-funding problems, plus actually meeting its NATO obligation of 2% GDP in defense spending in the future. IIRC, there was even talk about making that a constitutional requirement as well.
kkfx 5y ago
That's what happen now, thanks to a big and powerful propaganda, but skyrocketing inflation (not really caused by Ukrainian war, and many know that) and decade long social degradation have put many on the brink of a civil war. Actually propaganda win, but can't do that for long. That means that's unlikely but not that unlikely that a big EU State (France, for instance) elect a new government that decide it's about time to exit NATO and propose a strategic partnership to Russia. It was about to happen and it was stopped by Eastern European countries just few months ago, it can came back quickly. Actually both USA and Russia prefer a not-really-united EU but EU Citizens are already united enough and since crisis bite things can change rapidly. At that point classic repression will fail and tentative to ride the unrest in different directions might not succeed. Italy and Germany are well subjugated by NATO, France is not, few other EU countries are middle-ground since they can't simply act alone. Re-orienting energy dependency is just an economic move: it's impossible to live on GNL shipping, it's impossible to complete the Green New Deal quick enough, the sole answer is keep and expand nuclear and only States have resources to do so, that means cutting out neoliberals who rule the energy. Even pushing renewable at maximum speed can't really work: it can work with new single-family homes, well placed, EU population density and actual civil structures are incompatible, dense cities can't have buildings re-made to be A-class quickly, electricity grid can't be re-made quickly etc hydro power can be added quickly but States who can orographically already have a significant slice of hydro and can't add much more, similarly we can't all change vehicles quickly. GNLs can't arrive quickly and being properly integrated in actual networks. That's why the EU without much advertisement continue to purchase Russian gas as usual. A change can happen in 7-8 years, perhaps hardly in 5-6 years, not quicker than that. And that's not just energy, too many EU countries depend on other natural resources from Russia and can't substitute them on-the-spot.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  man you sure point too many things, back none, and just mix everything into goulash that doesn't make much sense (apart from outright lies which are also too many to actually discuss properly here)
  - kkfx 5y ago
wolverine876 5y ago
> Putin's invasion of Ukraine quickly shut that window. With the Germans now re-orientating their energy dependency from Russia to the US, as well as committing to buying billions of dollars worth of US military hardware, there is no chance of any 'EU led third way' I think that's backward: European defense independence was limited by funding; they talked about it but didn't invest in it. The Russian attack on Ukraine spurred Germany especially to fund defense; to think of the possibilities, Germany's GDP is about $4.2 trillion, Russia's is only $1.6 trillion [0]. Germany's military alone could easily far oustrip Russia's[1]. Germany's economy is 4th largest in the world, meaning they could build the 4th largest military - beyond a doubt they have the political, technological, and industrial capability. Add to that France, Italy, etc: The EU's total GDP is around $17 trillion. Autonomy doesn't mean having no external dependencies. Only North Korea tries that intentionally, and you can see the results. Forcing countries like Russia and Iran to have no external dependencies is considered a severe punishment. Dependencies on allies is not only fine, it makes things far more efficient, which means you can afford far more military power and economic influence. Nobody can compete without friends. [0] To consider the enormous impact of GDP on defense, the US spends the equivalent of 50% of Russia's entire GDP on defense. For comparison, the target number for NATO is 2% of GDP. [1] Not an idle curiosity: Germany's enormous economy, relative even to Western European countries (the UK's and France's are about $3 trillion), makes Germany an eternal potential geopolitical threat, and is part of the reason for two world wars. That's one of the main original reasons for the EU and NATO - to keep Germany in the fold.

matthewmorgan 5y ago

Could you give some examples of how the "UK's recalcitrant presence" have 'thwarted European strategic autonomy'? Because the last time I checked, the UK was doing a lot of the heavy lifting of European security.

Sakos 5y ago
Google "UK opposes plans for EU army", ca 2016
- matthewmorgan 5y ago
  "Strategic autonomy" comes from investing in your armed forces, not adding a layer of bureaucracy on top of them
  - WJW 5y ago
    The EU army would be a layer of bureaucracy less, not more. So far the plans have not gone anywhere because national governments have been unwilling to give up final authority over their armies ("No German will command a Frenchman into battle!"). This has been partly due to historical mistrust, partly due to political considerations and partly due to a lack of urgency. This means that setting up any military activity in EU context (such as Operation Atalanta for example) requires going through all the individual national governments and asking for troops. A true EU-wide army would be a standing organization with pre-approved funding and means that could move much quicker than the current system. Investing in armed forces is also important, but adding up the funding of the individual member states already brings you quite far compared to basically any country except the US and China.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      Note that there are also legal issues. The German army is the parliaments army, and as such the Bundestag must approve any mission that requires deployment outside German territory (NATO missions and EU missions are somewhat privileged). That would hinder foreign deployments of a joint European army.
    - kkfx 5y ago
      EU army means French army, since it's the sole remaining global power. And for us, EU Citizens, that would be a very good move, but the biggest real barrier is linguistic and even with social willingness (almost present even if, of course, does not emerge on mass media) and political willingness (not present almost at all) such barrier can't be solved. My own personal view is a smaller EU: - France - Spain - Italy (too tied to NATO due to WWII past, but less than Germany) - Portugal - then Germany (too tied to NATO due to WWII past) That form a new core EU in fiscal terms (even if all those countries are different real differences are limited), then in political terms with "cross-border parties", then in military terms like a small scale NATO lead by France. The the rest, smaller western countries can only follow, northern part who now talk out loud but in real terms can't live alone would have no choice but follow. UK can't do much now, with "the Commonwealth crisis" and the domestic intra-UK crisis there isn't much room to maneuver. Russia would not like that, of course, but between China (a historic enemy and still not really friendly and much interested in Russian eastern land) and a really united EU they'll jump the ship quickly: most of their infra, the tech they need is in the west and EU mutually need Russian resources instead of just tapping them giving back only industrial mass production. It's really unlikely but our best interest.
      - credit_guy 5y ago
        > Russia would not like that Oh, how much Russia would love that. A smaller EU? Are you kidding? Any day of the week, twice on Sunday.
        kkfx 5y ago
        A united EU, for real and not of small states but the major EU powers, France the seventh world power, Germany a big economic power, Italy the third EU manufacturing power, actually the base of much of Germany and France tech together, Spain and Portugal still very important view their links to South America. For Russia means having a nascent new old global power no one can stop. Remember: until WWI big western European powers was the world leading superpowers. Russia back then was a fragile empire and USA a marginal and local-only power like China. We still have the most advanced tech and the biggest hi quality industrial complex both USA and China can't really rival except on scale.
hunglee2 5y ago
yes but only via NATO, a US dominated military alliance. The UK has consistently opposed the creation of the EU army, as well as opposed unified foreign policy etc.
- hardlianotion 5y ago
  It would have been hard, before the Ukraine invasion, to understand what goals of a unified foreign policy would be, or how the EU army would meet those goals. Now, post-invasion, there is a more common appreciation of how things are, but still early to say that there is going to be a coherent EU policy when the immediacy of the danger is past.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > It would have been hard, before the Ukraine invasion, to understand what goals of a unified foreign policy would be Many in France and Germany could understand it very well. The UK generally resisted EU integration, including currency and foriegn policy, and of course the UK eventually left.
    - hardlianotion 5y ago
      France and Germany are two countries in the EU, there are others with different views. They differ on quite a few foreign policy issues. Poland and Germany, for example have very differing views on what priorities are for security policy in Europe. France and Germany have very different ideas on what priorities are for dealing with China.
jl6 5y ago
“Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least 500 years: to create a disunited Europe.”
- riffraff 5y ago
  "Yes, minister" and "yes, prime minister" are incredibly fun and still very actual shows.

Sakos 5y ago

Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of posting links like this on HN. Most people here seem to generally be clueless about geopolitics, history and military.

stavros 5y ago
Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of posting comments like this on HN. They're just shitting on the parent comment without any substance.

ceeplusplus 5y ago

The far bigger issue is that France and Germany (especially Germany) have a chronic underspending problem on their military. They choose to spend on social programs instead. You can't claim leadership of a pan-EU army when you yourself don't even meet the 2% GDP spending target set by NATO.

Xylakant 5y ago
In 2020, German spent about 53 billion USD on its military, that’s rank 7 world-wide. The UK spent 59 billion, about the same ballpark. The bigger problem in Germany is inefficient spending.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Using absolute numbers borders on fraud. What's the %?
  - lorenzfx 5y ago
    Why care about the %? What really matters are the capabilities, no matter the cost.
- ceeplusplus 5y ago
  Correct, but if Germany wants to be a leader of a pan-EU army it needs to be a dominant military power in the region (for example the US globally, or Turkey in the East Mediterranean, or what Egypt/Libya used to be in the Middle East before the US decided to regime change them). Else you just get political squabbling because the various states have equal power and nothing gets done. I'm not saying social spending is bad, just that if playing a lead role in a pan-EU army is Germany's interest then it needs to spend more.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    How will more money fix the fundamental issue of inefficient spending? It will just be more money inefficiently spent.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

You greatly understate EU defense dominance. Ship building, subs, tanks, semi-autonomous weapons, small arms, self-propelled artillery, etc., are all areas where EU member states meet or well exceed US/UK weapons exports, particularly Germany and France. Although not an EU member, Turkey is increasingly becoming a player in the drone, small arms and missile space. Its easy to confuse high profile programs like the the F35 with the much greater volume of other categories of arms.

sofixa 5y ago
You can add aircraft (yes, there's no equivalent for the F-22 and F-35 but both don't form the backbone of the USAF yet and cost an outrageous amount of money), and helicopters, rockets, radar/sonar, combat systems (Thales is a world leader in that sphere) to that list.
323 5y ago
Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of exporting everything: 2015: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns in an exercise https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19/germanys-army-is-so-under-equipped-that-it-used-broomsticks-instead-of-machine-guns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19...
- lorenzfx 5y ago
  As commented below: That broomstick example gets paraded around a lot, but this was on a vehicle that wasn't supposed to have a gun in the first place. There is a lot of valid criticism on the readiness of Germany's armed forces, this isn't one.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of exporting everything: They got the message. IIRC, Germany's going to throw something like the equivalent of two years worth of extra defense spending at addressing its military under-funding problems, plus actually meeting its NATO obligation of 2% GDP in defense spending in the future. IIRC, there was even talk about making that a constitutional requirement as well.

kkfx 5y ago

That's what happen now, thanks to a big and powerful propaganda, but skyrocketing inflation (not really caused by Ukrainian war, and many know that) and decade long social degradation have put many on the brink of a civil war. Actually propaganda win, but can't do that for long. That means that's unlikely but not that unlikely that a big EU State (France, for instance) elect a new government that decide it's about time to exit NATO and propose a strategic partnership to Russia. It was about to happen and it was stopped by Eastern European countries just few months ago, it can came back quickly. Actually both USA and Russia prefer a not-really-united EU but EU Citizens are already united enough and since crisis bite things can change rapidly. At that point classic repression will fail and tentative to ride the unrest in different directions might not succeed. Italy and Germany are well subjugated by NATO, France is not, few other EU countries are middle-ground since they can't simply act alone. Re-orienting energy dependency is just an economic move: it's impossible to live on GNL shipping, it's impossible to complete the Green New Deal quick enough, the sole answer is keep and expand nuclear and only States have resources to do so, that means cutting out neoliberals who rule the energy. Even pushing renewable at maximum speed can't really work: it can work with new single-family homes, well placed, EU population density and actual civil structures are incompatible, dense cities can't have buildings re-made to be A-class quickly, electricity grid can't be re-made quickly etc hydro power can be added quickly but States who can orographically already have a significant slice of hydro and can't add much more, similarly we can't all change vehicles quickly. GNLs can't arrive quickly and being properly integrated in actual networks. That's why the EU without much advertisement continue to purchase Russian gas as usual. A change can happen in 7-8 years, perhaps hardly in 5-6 years, not quicker than that. And that's not just energy, too many EU countries depend on other natural resources from Russia and can't substitute them on-the-spot.

saiya-jin 5y ago
man you sure point too many things, back none, and just mix everything into goulash that doesn't make much sense (apart from outright lies which are also too many to actually discuss properly here)
- kkfx 5y ago

wolverine876 5y ago

> Putin's invasion of Ukraine quickly shut that window. With the Germans now re-orientating their energy dependency from Russia to the US, as well as committing to buying billions of dollars worth of US military hardware, there is no chance of any 'EU led third way' I think that's backward: European defense independence was limited by funding; they talked about it but didn't invest in it. The Russian attack on Ukraine spurred Germany especially to fund defense; to think of the possibilities, Germany's GDP is about $4.2 trillion, Russia's is only $1.6 trillion [0]. Germany's military alone could easily far oustrip Russia's[1]. Germany's economy is 4th largest in the world, meaning they could build the 4th largest military - beyond a doubt they have the political, technological, and industrial capability. Add to that France, Italy, etc: The EU's total GDP is around $17 trillion. Autonomy doesn't mean having no external dependencies. Only North Korea tries that intentionally, and you can see the results. Forcing countries like Russia and Iran to have no external dependencies is considered a severe punishment. Dependencies on allies is not only fine, it makes things far more efficient, which means you can afford far more military power and economic influence. Nobody can compete without friends. [0] To consider the enormous impact of GDP on defense, the US spends the equivalent of 50% of Russia's entire GDP on defense. For comparison, the target number for NATO is 2% of GDP. [1] Not an idle curiosity: Germany's enormous economy, relative even to Western European countries (the UK's and France's are about $3 trillion), makes Germany an eternal potential geopolitical threat, and is part of the reason for two world wars. That's one of the main original reasons for the EU and NATO - to keep Germany in the fold.