Could the EU justifiably attack the United States?

Great Debates
1

Suppose in the near future, several other nations are invaded unilaterially by the United States, and over time wears supplies and morale thin. Could the European Union react with military force in response to the UN violations the United States committed? And by taking advantage of a stretched out military, restless and disaffected populace at home, and monstrous national debt actually take on the United States in military engagements?

I’ve often heard that other modern nations wouldn’t have a chance in hell to beat the United States, but lately I’ve been thinking that there would be quite a few militaries out there that would have a chance if the US was in a vulnerable position- if all their eggs were in so many baskets, and the entire European Union combined all of its military assets into stopping the United States, and no nuclear weapons are involved in the conflict, could they in fact succeed?

Suppose that the United States someday invades Iran, and Great Britan, France, and Germany (for example) send forces to drive the US forces out of Iran. Could they do it? A lot of Europe is pretty pissed off at US foreign policy right now, and I imagine it is only a matter of time before they get an opportunity to give the US a taste of its own medicine :frowning:

2

With UN sanction? No. Because the US holds veto power.

Would need more specifics to even hazzard a guess But I strongly doubt Europe has strong enough united political will to embark on such an endevor. It took them an awfully long time to respond to the Balkan conflict.

3

Before that happens, someone is going to have to get rid of the NATO treaty.

And likely a whole bunch of other mutual defense agreements.

But that NATO treaty would be the big problem. Especially since there are thousands of US troops on EU territory right now.

4

You mean them sending troops to Iran not invading the US, right? I doubt they’d send actual troops. At most they’d only give the Iranians weapons and such. NATO would either dissolve or we’d be expelled. An invasion of the US mainland isn’t feasible. They’d need land bases in Canada or Mexico to do it. The UK and/or France would have to launch a nuclear attack on the US. Then we’d nuke them back.

Europeans may not like US foreign policy but most likely they’d rather turn the EU into a greater economic superpower than the US.

5

Right, I’m not imagining either side necessarily stepping into each other’s real estate, but rather fighting within another country (using Iran as an example).

Turing the EU into a greater economic superpower wouldn’t necessarily stop the US from continuing to do its thing. If they expelled troops out of their countries (Germany, Japan, etc) it would give them a little leverage since they could strike against US incursions without worring about US troops sitting right in their backyard. And they would have the advantage of being familiar with much of the technology the US uses to conduct war.

This brings about another interesting question- Isn’t there a contingency in the NATO charter if one country goes nuts? “We can’t attack them because they are part of nato” seems like a silly rule if according to UN they would be allowed to. And wouldn’t UN rules overrule NATO rules in this case?

6

I doubt the EU would actually engage US militarily. The threat of direct retaliation on Europe would be too great, even if the war started in Iran or somewhere else.

Somewhat more conceivable is the EU fighting a proxy war by supplying fighters in a non-EU country at war with the US with weapons, money, intelligence, etc. This would be analagous to the US supplying Afgan fighters against Russia, or Russia/China supplying the NVA against the US. This strategy has a good record of success, and seems to be the way that polite nuclear superpowers go to war these days.

7

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the point of your question, but how is a question of the justifiability of an attack something to which one could give a factual answer? For instance, a pacifist would answer that no attack is justified, but I don’t think that’s what you’re getting at.

8

I’m not sure if the OP is using the term “could” as in whether the EU would be “allowed” to attack the US, or whether it means that the EU could attack the US and have a chance of winning.

In terms of being allowed to attack the US, the UN Charter binds all countries who are UN members to receive UN Security Council authorization prior to the use of military force, the exception being individual or collective self-defense against an armed attack. The North Atlantic Charter, which is the foundation of NATO, supports that view, and expands upon the fact that an attack on one NATO member enables all NATO members to rush to its defense, in accordance with the collective security mechanism of the UN Charter.

That being the case, the EU or other NATIO members would not be acting in accordance with international law if it chose to retaliate against the US for the invasion of Iraq or whatever the OP referred to. If the US unilaterally invaded Iran, as was also mentioned, the EU or NATO members could only offer assistance to Iran insofar as the countries were part of a collective security arrangement, which they are not.

In terms of NATO, upon the accession of the new NATO members, talks were already underway about establishing procedures by which a country’s membership in NATO could be suspended for cause. I am not sure at this moment whether there has been a resolution to those talks, but they were primarily aimed at keeping new members, like Bulgaria or Hungary, from sliding back into authoritarianism; but purely in an exercise of fantasy, it would be possible that, once those procedures were adopted, that the US could be suspended. More likely that the whole alliance would fall apart before it got to that point, anyways.

In terms of capabilities, this is kind of an IMHO thing, but it would take rather extraordinary turn of events for the EU to defeat the US on a battlefield, primarily for two reasons. One, European airlift is in a state of chaos and is years away from being fixed, and two, a significant percentage of European military forces are conscripts with comparitively poor training.

9

Justification for unilateral action by the EU or other contries against the United States for the purpose of changing US foreign policy would necessitate a complete “regime change”. Surely there would need to be a precedent for that sort of action…

10

Moved to GD from GQ.

Lack of a factually answerable question, IMHO.

samclem GQ moderator

11

International law recognises a right of self-defence, including a right of collective self-defence. So Country A and country B could form a defensive alliance and, if country B was attacked by Country C, both Country A and Country B could respond, and that response would be legitimate as a matter of international law.

So, yes, it’s possible to construct a hypothetical scenario in which the EU engages militarily with the US in defense of a third state.

Of course, you’d need a completely different international political environment than the one we have today.

12

Lack of any answer at all, since “justifiable” and “feasible” could be used interchangably here, apparently.

13

Simply put, not a chance in hell, even in the bizarro-world scenario you setup.

14

About the only chance the EU would have would be in the arena of public opinion. Were the cassus belli on the part of the US sufficiently odious, and presuming that the war was fought in someone else’s backyard, then it is possible the US would lose. Not likely, but possible. Korea and Vietnam are two wars where the US wasn’t willing to go the distance. It could happen again.

cj

15

This thread has given me an idea for a new thread titled “If you transported the US military back to Roman times, could their hold off the Huns?”. That would be about as realistic as this thread but not intended to imply or infuriate.

16

Your question does not seem to have anything to do with the word “justifiably” that you used.

But here are the facts at hand:

  1. The EU could never attack the United States with United Nations approval, the United States can veto any UNSC action, that is the end of that train of thought. So if justification = UN support, then no, it is impossible.

  2. Democracies don’t war. I can’t really think of any examples from the last 200 years in which two democracies have gone to war against one another. Can any of you?

Obviously 19th century Europe is the best place to look. But many of the countries of 19th century Europe are democracies in about the same sense that China is a democracy now. I mean, Bismarck’s Prussia for example had an elected body but during the Franco-Prussian war when they went to war with France (who was led by a very undemocratic Napoleon III) the will of the people meant nothing as Bismarck and the Kaiser ruled with an iron fist.

The war of 1812 may be a good example but I don’t consider the UK to be that democratic at that stage, it’s at the very limit if we are to consider it as such, and the U.S. itself wasn’t near as democratic as it is today.

  1. Assuming nukes don’t come into play is so foolish the entire question is realistically not worth discussion.
17

I suppose if the EU could figure out a way to have the US attack itself it could successfully attack the US…or something like that.

To answer the OP directly though…no on both counts. The EU could not ‘justify’ an attack on the US through the UN because the US is one of the big 5 and would veto such an act. Direct military attack by the EU is simply inconceivable against the US…simply put they don’t have it to do. Perhaps you meant an economic sanction type attack? Even that is pretty inconceivable to be honest…their markets and finances are too closely tied to ours. An attack against the US economically would hurt them as bad or worse than it would us.

-XT

18

Not to mention the fact that the EU has no established, unified military forces. And quite frankly the idea of the French fighting alongside the Germans doesn’t strike me as very realistic anytime in the near future…

19

It’d probably be easier for the EU (along with several other major nations) to stop buying US-issued debt and let us drown in our own red ink, than to actually wage a military adventure of any kind.

20

Cecil’s take on the question.