America Uber Alles, or is the European Union about to put us in our place?

Great Debates
21

Absolutely. Just to add to what Crusoe elaborated on, I think it worthwhile to point out that the EU standing army has one purpose and one purpose only, territorial defense - as its name reflects: European Defense and Security Force. Any actions outside the European theatre will for a long time require the involvement of the armed forces of the member states for the reasons Crusoe points out. As such these actions will continue to depend on the central command structures, policies and operational principles that the NATO has developed - IOW will be dependent of US cooperation.

Sparc

22

Don’t forget that the U.S. also has huge space assets, including the GPS system. The Russians had a GPS satellite system as well, but I don’t know if it’s still very operational.

Plus, the EU would be split apart if it came to conflict with the U.S., because there are a number of strong U.S. allies there. And Great Britain would be sure to be on the side of the U.S.

The U.S. also has a tremendous advantage in that it is geographically isolated. The U.S could stage attacks on Europe from any number of places. The Europeans would have to land on the continental U.S. or Canada, and an invasion force would be spotted a long way off and never make it to land fall.

That’s assuming a conventional all-out war, which will never happen when there are huge numbers of nuclear weapons in the world. France has enough nukes to act as a deterrant against the U.S., and the U.S. has enough to wipe out every major city in Europe.

Therefore, there is ZERO threat of a direct conflict between the U.S. and the EU. What is more possible, but still highly unlikely, is that a situation arises akin to the cold war, in which the EU starts militarily opposing U.S. allies or satellites, while also trying to win the hearts and minds of other countries to draw them into their sphere of influence. Such a war would be marked by diplomatic bickering, the occasional inflammation of disputes into short, sharp military interventions, a build-up of militaries on both sides, etc.

But even that is very unlikely. I’d be much more likely to believe that the next threat could wind up being something like the rise of an Asian threat, with China in the middle and perhaps even Russia moving to that side. That would be much more dangerous, because it would expose the U.S. to the combined nuclear arsenals of Russia and China, and potentially a massive conventional army made up of Chinese soldiers with Russian technology.

China is the biggest worry. China is developing a blue-water navy. China wants to be a world superpower, and by most accounts will be one within 20 years or so. China is rapidly developing a very robust space program and wants to land men on the moon. And China’s economy could boom if they continue to restructure along capitalist lines.

If China grows into a superpower with Carriers and a thriving space program, the threat would be to Europe, not the U.S. But the U.S. would come to the aid of its European allies. So it’d be the U.S. and Western Europe against China, some other Asian states, and maybe even Russia if it thought it was in its interests to move that way.

23

The EU also has GPS plans; unless of course they cancelled in the last few months.

24

Cite?

People have been predicting that slumbering China would awake and confront the world for 200 years now. Yet, they haven’t shown much interest in being a superpower. They haven’t made any territorial gains to expand their power. Yeah, they invaded Tibet to have a better defense against India, but China has never attempted to gain territory outside of their general part of Asia in order to have a strategic advantage against other superpowers. China is happy as it is, with a few complaints on matters in its vicinity (i.e. Taiwan and the Spratleys)

By the time China could become a superpower, the EU will have expanded to contain all the countries who are currently members of the Council of Europe, thus were Europe drawn into any kind of war, the U.S. wouldn’t be coming to the aid of “Western Europe”, but a European Federation. Remember that Eastern Europe is much much bigger than Western Europe.

Why do you think China would move against Europe and not the US?

UnuMondo

25

Economically, the success story of Europe over the past decade was Ireland. Through lower taxes stimulating economic growth, Ireland has improved its position in the world economy. The tendency towards socialist hindering of the economy, as sleestak anecdotally reports, will cripple the EU in time.

Why anybody would be willing to surrender so much of their soveriegnty to the EU is beyone me. I can only imagine there will be a nationalist backlash against this collectivism in due time.

26

The Celtic tiger has certainly been a success story. But do you think it has all been down to low taxes?

27

When people talk of the EU as a challenger to the US I don’t think they are referring to an EU-US war but to the EU having the military capabilities to act as a serious global power with an independent foreign policy.

As several posters have noted the EU doesn’t have the military capacity to project force around the world.

My question to the military buffs here:
What are the requirements for conducting a medium-sized war half-way across the world. Ie. how many aircraft-carriers, how much sea-lift,air-lift capacity etc? How much would it cost and in how many years could the EU realistically build such a force assuming the political will to do so? I am expecting only rough estimates ,of course.

28

I concur with UnoMundo. China has shown very little interest in become a superpower in the colonial spirit. I find it disturbing that one would think any great power apart from the US is malignant by design.

29

I think the biggest worry is not a war between two pacts.
I think we are just moving more towards hell, because we are speaking about democracy, but just speaking.
There will be an occupation here and there and as a result a huge war on terrorism.
The terrorism should be fought, not created.

The interesting point here is how ready Europe is to fight terrorism. I would say that this is a question of how we can co-ordinate the police-forces and special troops inside EU.
And I think we already can do it well, it takes some time to be even better.

I agree with Sparc, that EU-military-forces will be a defence-force, but it would be interesting to know if EU-forces can be used under e.g. UN elsewhere?

30

I thought I mentioned that I was talking about longshots, not likely scenarios. I don’t think we’re headed for another global conflict, at least not a forseeable one.

If there is another global conflict, it’ll probably be something that comes out of the blue. Who would have guessed two years ago that the world would look like it does today? Who would have guessed in 1900 that there would be two world wars in the next 40 years?

31

For US forces, try this source.

The numbers for rapid airlift are rather astonishing to me. A semi-complete Airborne division takes 1,101 C-141 and 78 C-17 sorties, or 3 RO-RO ships. (Big cargo ships that can ‘roll on’ and ‘roll off’ their cargo). Keeping them supplied would be quite an ordeal as well, regardless of the climate and nature of fighting.

No Eu state has C-141’s or C-17 right now (I think the UK is going to lease some C-17’s), and the planned EU airlift savior is the Airbus A400, which is a beefier C-130, not a true strategic asset. They could press civilian cargo planes into service, but they generally can’t take the outsized cargo that the military has. It would take at least a decade, IMHO, if they started right now, to develop the nucleus of a viable strategic airlift capability.

32

So does anyone know how many C-141, C-17 and RO-RO ships the US has and how much, roughly, these things cost. Also how much those big nuclear-powered aircraft carriers cost?

I just want to get a rough idea how much it would cost to develop the basic military capacity to project force overseas. 100 billion? 300 billion? 1 trillion?

33

A C-17 goes for about 173 million. C-141’s have not ben made in a while. LMSR’s (Large, Medium speed, Ro-ro Ships; The acronymn could use some work) go for roughly 300 million each, but that is a ‘bare ship’, so figure another 50-100 million in doo-dads and tesla-coils or whatever.

While the cost of the planes and ships is high, the maint. costs is what does most players in. It takes a massive investement in time and money to keep the fleet(s) going. One of the more popular conservative knocks against Clinton is the fact that he gutted the armed forces’ maintenance budgets to pay for various interventions. That has come around to us now, with the current administration needed 12 billion or so to make up the shortfall, and it looks like even that may not be enough.

The most important part of the cost, I daresay, is how much you sink into training your transport people and maintaining their gear. While C-17’s are the cat’s ass of air transport, maybe you could with IL-76’s, but put more money in maintenance. Or go with C-130J’s, and put the savings into tankers and maintenance. There are dozens of ways of doing it.

For a US-sized transport fleet, I will take a wild stab and say 100 billion a year for decade or so. Like I said, the cost isn’t only the planes and ships themselves, their associated facilities tend to cost nearly as much as the planes and ships themselves. And training. And fuel. And cargo to put on those cargo planes. Etc.

34

I remember reading an estimate of the value of the entire U.S. military inventory. It was on the order of 2-5 trillion dollars, as I recall, but don’t quote me on that because it’s a hazy memory.

A single Nimitz-class aircraft carrier costs about 4-5 billion dollars to build. The aircraft on it are worth another billion or two. Direct operating costs of the carrier itself (not aircraft) is a couple of hundred million a year.

But a carrier by itself is vulnerable, so you have to float an entire battle group to protect them. A Nimitz-class battle group consists of the carrier, two guided missile cruisers, a guided missile destroyer, a conventional destroyer, a frigate, two attack submarines, and a supply ship/oiler.

A battle group as a whole costs about 1 billion a year just in maintenance and operational costs, has probably 15,000 men on it, and costs maybe 10-15 billion dollars to put together and equip. I don’t know what refitting and overhaul costs would be, but probably something like 1/3 of the original purchase price, every ten years or so.

The U.S. has 12 of them, and three more under construction.

Who else in the world could possibly come close?

If the U.S. loses its supremacy, it won’t be because someone else outbuilt/outspent them. It will be because of a rapid change in the nature of the threat, such that the conventional military becomes rapidly obsolete. Or, if some critical event happened that caused the U.S. economy to crash relative to the rest of the world’s so that it couldn’t maintain its spending levels.

35

Actually, the US is very opposed to this EU plan and had been trying for years to prevent this satellite system to be actually launched (by trying to influence some EU countries, in particular Germany IIRC). I understand that the US wants to keep this monopoly to itself as much for strategical than for economical reasons. It doesn’t seem to me that the EU countries came to an agreement on this topic, so I’m not convinced this system will be actually launched in the short term.

However, some indivual countries member of the EU have military observation satellites. But no global positionning system.

36

“Who else in the world could possibly come close?”
According to your figures ten carrier battle groups would cost 150 billion dollars which is less than 2% of EU GDP and which could be spread over several years. Ten billion dollars a year for maintenance and operations is peanuts compared to EU GDP. If there was a good reason to build this kind of force the Europeans could do it without breaking sweat.

 In fact if the Chinese economy has another 10 or so years of good growth they could probably afford a 10-carrier fleet built over a further ten years without much straining their economy.

One reason why the US appears unchallenged in conventional military terms is that other big economies are largely uninterested in challenging it. But if US policy gives them a reason to, several countries will be capable of challenging the US in a couple of decades especially in particular geographical areas. So it would be wise to keep that in mind while making foreign policy.

37

First off, that ‘meager’ 2% (I would guess more, but hey) of thier GDP is already going towards other things. Social programs. All of the sudden, French workers, who are prone to strike because the weather is nice, will OK a plan to axe their programs so they can get a few carriers? Not likely.
And it takes more then money to create and run large carrier groups; It takes expertise. To an extent, they could make up for the lack of expertise with money, but only up to a point. It would time, and several generations of carriers, for the EU to catch up to the US. One does not create a modern blue-water navy overnight, just by opening the checkbooks.
Granted, if the EU got the Croatians to join up (rather pro-American right now), I am sure Croatia would lend their ship for the cause, so long as the EU brings the oars.

38

2% spread over 10 years is 0.2% of GDP. This can easily be raised without cutting any significant social spending or by a small rise in taxes ,provided there is a good reason. Like I said the reason that the Europeans don’t spend much on defense is that they don’t think they will get much out of it. It is a matter of choice not necessity. As for expertise we are talking about a 10-20 year horizon and countries with sophisticated scientific/industrial infrastructure. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

39

But you don’t JUST need Carriers. You also need logistics, supply, ground troops, space assets, intelligence…

The real figure for being able to compare to the U.S. would be for suddenly the EU to not only begin spending as much per year as the U.S. does (roughly 400 billion), but also spending enough over that to build up the forces to the point the U.S’s is at right now.

So for the EU to be able to challenge the U.S. militarily, it would have to spend maybe a trillion dollars over and above the annual match.

But it’s even worse than that, because if the U.S. saw the EU building up its military, and also saw relations deteriorating, then it would step up its defense spending as well. The U.S. could afford to spend a lot more than it is now.

40

Suppose that there is a country that does want to put out all, even their own, (flying & communicating) electronics in case of war.
Suppose that this country has power enough to put magnetic waves around the world a few times every time it push the button.
Do You remember when there was serious problems with the cell-phones all over the world some years ago?
Someone testing?
Where will all the sophisticated weapons be then?

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
(W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Scene V, Act I).