> The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have had exclusively professional armies for 50 years or more.
One idea would be for the EU, instead of individual member states, to stand up a professional army. Then you don't have to force people and it also just might bind European countries more closely together.
European army might be happening in the future, but entity protesting the European army the most will be USA diplomacy. On one hand US armed forces would like for Europe to be self sufficient so they can concentrate on China. On the other hand US diplomacy would lost leverage on Europe + getting another geopolitical competitor (despite being ideologically aligned with USA) isn't something what USA is looking for.
There are already some extensive collaborations. For example, Dutch divisions now report to German command. And the French and German armies coordinate on a lot of things and we're all NATO members of course.
There are some calls for bringing back military service in some countries. I'm not sure that's needed or a good idea. The reason most European armies are not in great shape is not a lack of people but years of budget cuts and mismanagement. That would be because they don't actually do a whole lot of fighting normally. They defend without ever being attacked and there is the odd mission abroad where some countries send maybe thousands of troops at best. I don't see that change any time soon. And that's a good thing. I count myself lucky to not have been exposed to major wars close to where I live. And I live in the middle of Berlin. Buildings here still have scars from WW II. At least the few that survived that.
The most credible threat on our eastern border was the Russian army. And courtesy of their own ineptness, they seem to be hard at work reducing that threat by expending most of their officers and usable equipment in the Ukraine. It doesn't look like they are recovering soon.
Also, there is the point of this being a remarkably old school conflict. The Russians tactics have barely evolved since the 1940s. They seem unable to use their airforce effectively, their navy is not a factor either. Mostly they are just launching wave after wave of cannon fodder at their enemies. Brutal and it's not working great for them judging from the recent news.
Most modern conflicts are very different. Relatively poorly trained conscripts don't add a lot of value in such conflicts. Europe needs lots of rockets, drones, etc. Keep the fight far away from its borders.
A bigger risk would be an armed uprise within our borders. For that reason getting a lot of small countries excited about building out their armies is not a great idea. I'm old enough to remember the Bosnian war and I've visited Mostar a few years ago. Political populism and armies are not a great mix. A lot of blood got spilled in Europe that proves that.
Mostly agree, except I don't think the US would like us to be self sufficient. Quite the opposite, really. They have nothing to gain from a strong EU. Not at this point anyway.
I am all for a professional EU army but forcing - let's face it - young men to join, even for an year, doesn't sit well with me.
The US would like nothing more than Europe to be able to deal with Russia without help.
A joint European army does nothing to reduce US leverage; the US is still the only meaningful nuclear deterrent to Russia, and everyone in Europe knows it. But if the EU is able to credibly counter conventional threats, that's a huge bonus for the US.
While the UK and France have nuclear warheads, their numbers (225 and 290, respectively), pale in comparison with that of Russia (5889) and the US (5244).
Also, the UK's force is sea based and France's is land and air based, both Russia and the US have a nuclear triad:
three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines, and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.[1] Specifically, these components are land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers. The purpose of having this three-branched nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack. This, in turn, ensures a credible threat of a second strike, and thus increases a nation's nuclear deterrence.
> While the UK and France have nuclear warheads, their numbers (225 and 290, respectively), pale in comparison with that of Russia (5889) and the US (5244).
Around 90% of the non-rural Russian population is in their most populous 100 cities. Taking those out would pretty effectively destroy Russia as a country.
Yes, but consider the delivery systems. The UK has 4 SSBMs, and at best 3 of them are seaworthy at a time.
Even if the UK managed to launch successfully without those systems being taken down (and there will be a missile failure rate), Russia has sophisticated air defenses, and there will be a substantial loss rate. Only a small fraction of those warheads will hit.
And those are not megaton warheads. These are small nuclear weapons meant for battlefield use. What's more, the UK is simply not going to go for a genocide; they're going to hit military assets, which are far more spread out.
So while the UK can deter from conventional attacks on itself, it's by no means a MAD scenario. They do not really have a shield to extend across eastern europe the way the US does.
I honestly (and I do not think I am alone in this) think the costs of EU dependency FAR exceed the benefits and we only got started doing it to prevent Western Europe from getting steamrolled by Russia post-WW2.
On the one hand, that does make a lot of sense. Some European politicians want a more unified foreign policy, and a unified military force would give more weight to this desire.
On the other hand, it could get very awkward if we had another situation like we had in 2002/2003 when the US were asking other countries for support in their war on Iraq. Europe was deeply divided - at least at the leadership level - in this matter. With a unified EU military, countries would have to give up a large amount of sovereignty. And there is already a fair amount of hostility towards the EU for taking sovereignty away from member states, remember Brexit.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea if all countries could agree to give up their own national military. But I don't think it will happen. At most, I could see countries agreeing to move more authority to the NATO.
Last but not least, there are more than 25 languages being spoken in the EU. We'd have to agree on one language being the lingua franca in a unified military if we want it to work.
> On the other hand, it could get very awkward if we had another situation like we had in 2002/2003 when the US were asking other countries for support in their war on Iraq. Europe was deeply divided - at least at the leadership level - in this matter. With a unified EU military, countries would have to give up a large amount of sovereignty.
If you can't disagree and commit, how unified are you really?
That's the catch, isn't it? Every country wants the EU to be a unified actor on the world stage, but none are willing to give up sovereignty over their foreign policy. That is why it's not going to happen. A loose alliance such as NATO is as as close as we get, at least for the foreseeable future.
There is no reason why it couldn't have. There are currently already combined German-Dutch military units, for example, and NATO often acts like a single military too.
Theoretically this can change at any time with the agreement of the members.
That said: even now the UK has left, there are many in the EU who don't want total integration — as you can see from other aspects like the Euro, Schengen, and the Blue Card not applying to all member states — combined with with the language barriers between almost every pair of states[0], I think this would be a long time coming even if everyone was on board.
Although, NATO is a thing and arguably does all that without any of those problems, so perhaps it's easier than I'm assuming…
[0] Austria and Germany being an obvious exception, except they're banned by treaty from ever being combined again
a) no-one wants that, so b) no-one would vote for that, and so c) it won't happen.
In some remarkable circumstance that the EC proposed such a thing, and all the MEPs did think that was a good idea, there'd still have to be an EU treaty that allowed for it, because it's certainly beyond the scope of the CFSP. Said treaty would have to be ratified by the member states.
the UK, with one of the more powerful militaries, is not part of the EU. many EU members and the UK are part of NATO which performs much the same job that an EU force would.
NATO armed forces would be under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who by pure coincidence happens to always be an American. Right below him is the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who has been British in 22/30 cases.
If the EU wants to have an army that serves their interests, I would consider it prudent to have the command of that army be in EU hands, instead of just handing their soldiers to the US. They can still join defensive treaties with the UK, or simply stay in NATO, but that's a different question from how the army is organized when Article 5 of NATO hasn't been triggered.
A future equivalent to the Kosovo war (that time NATO intervened, but they didn't have to). Or what about wars on the EU's South-Eastern border? Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran. The US has complicated feelings about the region that don't always align with the EU. Also protecting European interests in a future war between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the water in the Nile River (Egypt is right next door to Greece and Cyprus after all). Not to mention future actions in Lybia, Algeria or Morocco to deal with illegal immigration.
If we are to convince France to merge their army with the common EU force the EU might be forced to also protect French interests in West Africa (they are quite involved in that region still)
well, i'm not convinced that an EU force is viable. NATO has a pretty clear raison d'etre - attack one of us and all of us will respond. but somehow I can't see germany supporting france in west africa, or poland supporting italy in actions against libya.
Notwithstanding a myriad of other practical problems, I don't see how that would be compatible with the NATO countries Article 5 responsibilities - bearing in mind that there are several countries in the EU that are not in NATO like Austria, Ireland and (for the moment) Sweden.
One idea would be for the EU, instead of individual member states, to stand up a professional army. Then you don't have to force people and it also just might bind European countries more closely together.