Europe Is Ready for Its Own Army (2019)

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/05/europe-is-ready-for-its-own-army/

by kenneth • 7 years ago

77 112 7 years ago

nmca• 7 years ago

Seems superficially similar to roam research, which has been good to me so far.

peteretep9• 7 years ago

France 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• 7 years 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.

pjc50• 7 years ago

The 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• 7 years ago

The 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• 7 years ago

  Europe 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.

peteretep9• 7 years ago

What’s your nationality?

Toine• 7 years ago

European too, and I agree completely with the statement

rapsey6• 7 years ago

A regular persons opinion has very little in common with the ones who actually wield power.

kyriakos5• 7 years ago

Of 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.

peteretep9• 7 years ago

2017-2019 has not convinced me most voters are willing to look beyond the end of their nose. Where was the EU action over Crimea?

rasz• 7 years ago

Sure, just like Poland had written European border guarantees issued in March 1939. Not to mention 1994 Ukraine ones signed by Russia, Britain and the United States.

This is why this shit is not going to fly in Poland, our government will do everything in their power to get as much US troops on the ground as possible, at the cost of being USA gofer in Iraq/Afganistan/Iran/wherever POTUS fancies this week.

Germany has already been shown going back to their old tricks, scheming another Molotov-Ribbentrop behind whole EUs back with Nord Stream, and especially Nord Stream 2. Paradoxically US is the only country with some backbone to oppose this german-Putin deal, with most western EU countries sitting silent.

Merrill2• 7 years ago

After Brexit, why would the working language of a European military be English? Are the Irish that influential?

peteretep9• 7 years ago

Because 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.

makomk• 7 years ago

The 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.

interdrift6• 7 years ago

First 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

peteretep9• 7 years ago

I 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.

kyriakos5• 7 years ago

EU seems to be standing idle while Turkey is trying to dig out hydrocarbons from Cyprus and Greece EEZ.

timwaagh2• 7 years ago

Plenty 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.

peteretep9• 7 years 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-th...

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-or-not-france-and-bri...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Six_Eyes

Causality12• 7 years ago

This 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.

huffmsa3• 7 years ago

The 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.

Causality12• 7 years ago

But we're not doing that. We're just spending more on the military.

krapp• 7 years 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.

ben_w3• 7 years ago

France, 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).

lmm2• 7 years ago

Is that PPP-adjusted? It's easy to imagine that a smaller Russian budget might translate to more (poorly paid) troops, more (cheaply manufactured) vehicles and so on.

morceauxdebois• 7 years ago

If the whole EU's sole objective was to counteract Russia it would be ridiculously cheap, nowhere near union-wide 2% spending.

yulaow5• 7 years ago

I 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_w3• 7 years ago

I 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?

rapsey6• 7 years ago

Nothing of that could be much of a secret with the amount of non governmental institutions involved.

yulaow5• 7 years ago

The technical content of the projects is still under secrecy. The money involved is not, also because it is publicly negotiated between all member states.

phire• 7 years ago

The 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.

rapsey6• 7 years ago

It has not changed the aspects of superpower. It has however changed the notion of the US being a stable and reliable partner.

cossray• 7 years ago

Being from a developing nation, we had been fed a certain narrative about the US. It was the epitome of all the virtues humanity could conceive. Circa 2010 the advent and prevalence of cheap smartphones and social media across the globe (including third world countries), turned a new leaf on access to information from the hitherto filtered mainstream media. This removed the veil on the actual social, political and economic life in the US (in the eyes of my contemporaries and I). The 2016 elections and the circus it has been since then, tossed away the veil altogether. In the last 4 years, with utmost respect, I do attest the US has lost something at the global stage: at least its charm and probably much more.

Fjolsvith4• 7 years ago

It will eventually be nice that I don't have to foot the tax bill for superpower expenses.

dpflan• 7 years ago

Is this funding coming from an EU level mandate and trickling down to nations and then national research programs or is it treating the leaves of the research tree as part of "EU Research" as a whole? I'm not familiar enough the political mechanics of EU research so forgive me if my analogy does not hold.

yulaow5• 7 years ago

The second one.

aothms• 7 years ago

The EU is very visible in their research programmes, see for example https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en and https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm

And one of the aims of these programs are for EU research institutes to collaborate transnationally.

ben_w3• 7 years ago

The EU-as-an-instituion has a budget of 1% of the member states’ GDPs: 1% of ~15 Tr/y, or 150 Bn/y.

Given that, 100 Bn/5 years sounds implausible for a single project for the EU-as-an-institution, so I’d assume it would be EU-as-a-region with the EU-as-an-institution as one of the project partners.

orbifold2• 7 years ago

Well other big European projects like the HBP turned out less than ideal. If any of the past track record is an indication any EU led project will be a huge political mess, with ~20% going to administrative overhead and only 1/10th of the promised budget will actually materialise.

ivan_gammel3• 7 years ago

Look at Russia: their new prime minister is allegedly corrupt and became rich while managing federal tax service. However his digitalization projects appear to be very successful, even if corruption overhead consumed large part of the budget. If EU allocates enough money (and they can put much more than Russia in this), they can achieve the goals.

zmb_• 7 years ago

one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years

This does not sound right. The entire proposed EU Research & Innovation investment programme for the next 5 years is 100B euros (Horizon Europe [0]). This is the funding that pays for all EU funded research projects in all fields, among other things.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-i...

yulaow5• 7 years ago

When we talk about EU sponsored projects we include both the EU funding, which comes directly from EU budget, and the estimation of the required additional public and private investment to the project which must_be/has_been secured.

This is common for all eu sponsored projects I worked in.

barry-cotter• 7 years ago

What’s the most successful EU project in IT or CS ever? Maybe Galileo which replicates the US’ GPS? I’m not aware of anything else worth mentioning.

What’s the closest Europe has to AppAmaFaceGooSoft? SAP, probably.

The talent is obviously there, but there’s no real reason to believe the organizational talent is. If one player’s constraint is “Make it and make it work.” and the other’s is “Make it. Make it work. Make it with substantial contributions in all major and some minor European countries.” the latter group is much more likely to fail just due to coordination problems.

yulaow5• 7 years ago

I totally agree with you. I still think it is worth to try and try again.

Youden• 7 years ago

The EU doesn't have ginormous behemoths that try to do absolutely everything the way AppAmaFaceGooSoft do but I don't see that at all as a bad thing.

There are plenty of smaller EU companies that have successful businesses, such as Spotify, Zalando and Supercell. It's just that where in the US those would all be sub-products of an enormous megacorp, in the EU they're separate companies.

mnm12• 7 years ago

You make it seem like it's desirable to have monopolies. I think the EU disagrees. The lack of FAANG type companies is indicative of a healthy economy and society. The fact that they exist in the US is indicative of the opposite. Of course, if one is ingrained in US culture and its propaganda, it's easy to see how one could value monopolies over a healthy economy. Most people outside the US, however, have no delusions of becoming a billionaire (or even a millionaire), of monopolies being positive for society, or of the massive inequality created by such monopolies being positive for society. Don't get me wrong. Monopolies still exist outside the US. They are just not as fetishized by the masses everywhere as they are here.

huffmsa3• 7 years ago

It'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• 7 years 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

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.

lmm2• 7 years 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.

alfiedotwtf• 7 years ago

So I read that article, but it didn't explain the legal reasoning behind any sanctions. It's almost like they said the soft part out loud e.g sanctions because we'll lose money.

adventured• 7 years ago

This 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• 7 years ago

I'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• 7 years ago

Not 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.

Fjolsvith4• 7 years ago

Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster.

And ... Trump has delivered on more promises than any American president in history. [1] I don't think he's bluffing on this either.

1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trumps...

Zenbit_UX• 7 years ago

Your premise of "the article is silly don't listen to it!" doesn't sway me nearly as much as the ludicrous situation the US has placed itself into. This article written 5 years ago? I'd be with you 100%. In 2020 it's not even a bold prediction...

The damage Trump has done to the US is immeasurable on the world stage and even Obama 2.0 being re-elected couldn't fix it. The world has woken up with a bucket of cold truth dumped in our faces: The US is politically unstable and cannot be relied on as a military superpower or even as a rational ally.

The world is in a very dark place when news of Germany building an army makes sense.

m0zg2• 7 years ago

Prediction: 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.

kyriakos5• 7 years ago

EU members already have independent armies combining may actually bring the costs down.

zuminator2• 7 years ago

Nobody'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.

Fjolsvith4• 7 years 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-p...

skissane• 7 years ago

A 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• 7 years ago

In 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#Euro...

kyriakos5• 7 years ago

I 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_gammel3• 7 years ago

Think 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.

Merrill2• 7 years 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_Isma...

NATO has outlived its purpose, and a new European defense arrangement is needed.

hopia• 7 years ago

Most 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.

michaelt2• 7 years ago

I 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• 7 years ago

Trump 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: operational since 1989, German troops stationed on French soil since 2009.

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: Belgian and Dutch navy cooperation since 1948, with a joint commanding officer since 1996 (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.

bromuro• 7 years ago

Why not dismantle the armies instead?

majewsky3• 7 years ago

Prisoner's dilemma. Dismantling the armies only works if you get all countries in the world to do it at the same time.

gremlinsinc• 7 years ago

Wouldn'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.

Europe Is Ready for Its Own Army (2019)

Related Stories