The European Union announced a provision of soldiers and weaponry for a rapid reaction corps today-something like 400 planes, 100 ships, and a pool of 100,000 troops from which can be pulled a ready force of 60,000 for “peacekeeping” missions not already covered by NATO. Doesn’t this sound like the beginnings of an EU army?
I suspect that this is mostly on the part of politicos. I can’t imagine the citizenry raising choruses of praise for the further erosion of national identities. What’s more, the EU corps has the tentative approval of U.S. officials, who say it’s good if it helps with European security.
To me this idea sounds a little shady. I’m curious as to the opinions of 'Dopers in Europe on this twist to the unification issue and where the leadership power derives if the people don’t, in fact, want it.
It’s been in the works for a long, long time. One of the ideas (if I’m understanding this correctly) is to be able to back up OSCE and other European civilian ops with muscle without necessarily having to ask the US for help.
Another is - as you write - to provide forces for UN peacekeeping ops. It was a rude awakening to a lot of armies who were geared for defending against armour in Germany to see how many ressources get tied up in even simple peacekeeping ops. Pooling the ressources makes a lot of sense.
If I were to venture a guess, most Europeans will have few problems with this - we’ve come to grips with NATO a long time ago, so noone bats an eyelid if there are different nationalities in the chain of command. And personally, I like the idea of Europe being able to tackle the Balkan situation on our own. Who knows, the US might get tied up in problems elsewhere or perhaps change its stance on deploying troops overseas. And let’s face it, there’s a lot of anti-US sentiment around the world.
Sad to say, my country (Denmark) is notoriously Europhobic and doesn’t partake in any EU military cooperation - this decision was made by public referendum and predates Kosovo. It makes for bizarre situations where Danish troops can’t take part in stuff like mineclearing, for instance, if the operation is coordinated by the EU. I might hope for this to change, but I believe the chances are slim. There’s a bit of hope in the fact that the support behind participation in UN ops has been great - even when it cost lives.
So to answer your question: I’m all for it. Sometimes it’s necessary to have a stick as well as a carrot.
One thing that helps NATO work is that it is largely a one man show and the rest do what they can.
Yes the UK has made significant contributions and the Germans too but it has all come down to the leadership of the US.
Our interests have been pretty much the same.
A Euro-army is rather differant, the UK advocated going into Kosovo very early on with ground troops but met with little enthusiasm.
Many French interests are at odds with those of the UK, look at Rwanda(not European but illustrative)
I just cannot see France making it work, they were involved in ‘Desert Storm’ which was a real departure for them.They have a history of wanting to talk when the time for that has been well past, they were against direct military threat against Serbia when it was besieging Sarajevo and we in the UK were again wanting to make more than just a mere gesture.The French do not have much of a history of international co-operation.
Many things have involved NATO simply because to try and include the French would have been unlikely.
Germany has not really had the chance to develop its international military policy for obvious reasons.
Holland, well they are involved in NATO so being under the command of their staff would be familiar enough to UK units and vice-versa, same with Norway.
Peacekeeping when it means standing by and watching thugs massacre innocents is meaningless.
I cannot see a situation were such a force could be deployed in say the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq and in other hotspots that NATO found beyond its scope such as Chechnya or Armenia
Look at the balls up that is Cyprus and that is between two NATO and possibly Euro-army states.If we cannot get co-operation there then I just don’t see much hope elsewhere.
The whole thing has already been hamstrung by the phrase ‘peacekeeping operations only’ which will lead to argument as to what exactly that means - it’s pretty nebulous, just how much force will this army be mandated to use, will there be sufficient numbers on the spot even to defend themselves.
What happens when two member states of the Euro-Army take fundamentally differant approaches to a given situation.
It’s going to take many years to develop the relationships to make it work and differant national sympathies are not going to dissappear in just a few decades.
(It ain’t a ‘Euro Army’ per se but a Euro force capable of intervention. There is a big difference)
This idea is something of an old chestnut – previous incarnations include a potential military arm of the Western European Union (the WEU was itself a failure). I believe this new drive to create a fast reaction task force was given fresh impetus in the wake of the hopeless inertia, damn it - it was paralysis, that surrounded European involvement in Bosnia. Some Euro leaders, most certainly including Tony Blair, remain haunted by the inability of Europeans to intervene collectively on the plainest of humanitarian causes in their own backyard.
Lets be clear: the war involving Bosnia / Croatia / Serbia was a European war potentially or actually threatening central European stability. While the US has a very serious interest in maintaining European stability, Europe should be able to deal with that without American support. Remember that intervention - when it finally happened - came under the auspices of the United Nations and in a peacekeeping role. The US would simply not commit ground troops.
In Kosovo we moved one step closer to acting alone by involving NATO in it’s first official non-defensive action. It was still US led – Clinton being as affected by Bosnia as was Blair - but it did demonstrate a greater willingness to intervene. However, using NATO as the tool of intervention means taking onboard a US agenda, relies on the willingness of the American leadership / public opinion to act as well as having US military leadership during the action. We are big boys now and need to be able to exert influence and intervene if European interests alone are directly threatened
NATO has, of course, been the natural focus for European military stability for 50 years and its role has been almost exclusively as a defence-orientated organisation. IMHO, the world has changed and in this post-Cold War climate of old Soviet Bloc ‘nations’ fragmenting into religious or cultural States, Europe should not rely on the approval of American public opinion - as would be the case for a NATO action – in order for it to participate / intervene in a new role as regional peace keeper / humanitarian interventionist.
Having said (all of) that, I do agree with CasDave to a large extent. NATO has worked so well because of one clear unifying objective i.e. to counter the perceived Soviet threat. It is by no means certain that the national interests of individual European nations will coincide in future proposed interventions. One might almost view this development as a hostage to fortune.
However, I can’t really believe the genuine military commitment exists in Europe to make this work in practice - and the UK Government is very concerned at the ability of most European military’s to function effectively in combat at the moment - but we really should be doing a whole lot better than we have done. Bosnia was an unforgivable humanitarian disaster for all of Europe.
I still have heard no mention of the national identity issue. I’ve heard some Scots and some folks serving in the Royal militaries give markedly heated criticisms of the rapid reaction force. Many on the isle of UK seem to be quite against assimilation into the EU and view even the idea of the rapid reaction corps as fundamentally against their individuality and national concerns. Tony Blair and his appointed government seem to be the target of most criticism, and many say that severing the close relationship the UK has with the U.S. is an incredibly bad idea. Apparently, he is trying to sell the rapid reaction corps (to which the UK will be a substantial contributor) as a way of strengthening ties to the U.S.
I can see how some continental countries in Europe, especially Belgium, would be for this joint military force. There seems much to be gained completely outside of humanitarian interests. For, what is a financially unified power without a strong military arm?
I disagree somewhat with the idea that having NATO around for so long will mean complete ease with an EU military force. Like I said, it seems that there are further cultural factors involved with the whole European Union issue. Perhaps the answer lies in altering NATO somewhat to change with the times. Europe faces many more problems these days, obviously, than the spread of Soviet power, and a NATO (which includes the six nations NOT represented in the EU) with different responsibilities might better address the concerns of greater Europe.
Either way, I think for the U.S. or any other country to think that a European military would relieve U.S. involvement is a pipe dream; isolationism has never worked before. We are sort of the arbiters by geographic nature, and I don’t see that changing.