I won’t pretend to be an expert in these matters but I’ll give an example that I think might explain why I think that this may a reason for Macron’s comments.
The UK is a country that is, in reality, made up of a union between four countries. However, if military action is being taken by the UK there is no ‘committee’ with the leaders of the 3 other countries. (indeed, looking at the Brexit situation, one of the SNP’s complaints is that the majority of Scottish constituencies voted to remain in the EU but the overall, the UK voted to leave).
So fundamentally, if the EU was intending on becoming a country as a union of states, then they could act the same way. And without the US being as much an influence.
I think it’s hilariously unrealistic for politicians in Europe to expect the US to fund a large military and then use it only in ways that benefit the interests of said non-US politicians instead of US interests. There is zero reason to expect the US to act as a subordinate to European countries when it is the largest and strongest member of NATO, it just doesn’t make political sense. Even before Trump it’s been clear that the US doesn’t consider itself subordinate to NATO, and expecting the US to do something it hasn’t done during the 70 years since the start of the cold war and has no reason to do is pure wishful thinking (and post-Trump it’s even worse, as US policy is now much less directed).
The NATO Military Committee is specifically about NATO objectives, is dominated by the US, and works based on unanimous agreement rather than majority. A European focused alliance would have a completely different structure that wouldn’t include the US at all and might well use a voting process that isn’t effectively ‘everyone has a veto’. An EU army would be an actual military force that is under direct control of the EU and not simply troops from various member states under a temporary commander, would also not include the US, and would likely use a different decision making process.
EU nations relied heavily on NATO infrastructure and agreements for their defense against Russian aggression, primarily. In doing so, US geo/eco-political positions on Russia have figured prominently.
Exiting such a formal structure would likely result in America’s withdrawal of military bases, defense infrastructure (missile defense systems?) and perhaps restriction on certain American made military arms. Russia and China would happily offer theirs, of course . It would not be surprising if poorer EU countries would opt for non US arms (see Turkey). So it could all fragment rather quickly.
Which leads me to think that Macron’s comments, whether serious or meant only to troll Trump, were rash and ill considered, no matter the intent.
I know it sounds like an argument for maintaining America’s hegemony in the world stage. But I think the alternatives of China or Russia would be far worse.
I think fundamentally, instead of answering to the North Atlantic Council, it would answer to (and take orders from) the European Commission/President of the EC.
So it would be a military organization that’s composed of EU member states, taking orders from the EU civilian authority, instead of today’s oddness, which is where you have the EU acting as a supra-national government over the individual member nations in pretty much every sense EXCEPT defense. That’s still the province of the individual member nations, and NATO.
I can see why the EU as an entity might want to consolidate all that, and I can see why member states might really NOT like that idea as well.
Macrons comments and the idea of a EU controlled military is one of the reasons why UK needs Brexit.
You have to imagine the acceptability of a EU military council having direct control of UK armed forces - UK public just will not go for it.
EU having a military wing is a nonsense anyway - trying to get any sort of strategy agreed and then implemented in any useful timeframe during some sort of armed crisis is incredibly unlikely.
The only reason Euros have ever got involved actively is because US and UK tend to commit anyway and so it drags them in - think of Kosovo, and even then at Srebrenica and other crises the Euros rules of engagement left populations woefully unprotected - 'fraid any Euro controlled military force is simply a commitment to inaction which might suit other Euro nations however it also completely undermines any deterrent effect they might have, its more of an open invitation to try it on.
I can also imagine (as others have said in this thread) that Macron might’ve been trying to goad Trump to try a raise a more supportive attitude toward NATO from the US.
World leaders can sometimes make some ill-considered remarks (even when they’re actually aware of a microphone in the vicinity…)
Indeed, it would be worse because China and Russia would see opportunities to influence and control individual European states far beyond merely supplying them with weapons. Russia, for its part, isn’t just anti-NATO but anti-EU. There can be no friend found in any nation that actively promotes democracy and things like the Magnitsky Act. Russia and China pretty clearly intend to attack loud democracies from within.
Trump is a Russian asset, not just in terms of disrupting America’s domestic politics, but even more so, their international politics.
I think a cause and effect analysis will show that the U.S. strategy to circumvent its partners has undermined the haleness of the alliance, and Macron’s statement simply points out NATO’s present infirmity.
Yeah a country that needed Britain and US to keep their country (since their own military surrendered) and then demand US to withdraw our troops not included our dead from Normandy!!) for 2 wars!
I’d think it’s a bad idea because the EU goes from being a fundamentally peaceful supranational government to becoming one with actual teeth, that can compel member states to comply with force. That’s got to frighten a lot of smaller EU states- it’s a de-facto loss of sovereignty if you can’t outmatch the EU’s military.
Of course, if the EU really wants their own military, they ought to just spin one up of their own instead of trying to do it by committee via the militaries of the member states. That way, if the President of the EC wants to send the 3rd EU Infantry Brigade on a peacekeeping mission, you don’t have the trouble of say… Germany refusing to send troops overseas, or countries who habitually underfund their military not having capable forces or the support structure to get them where they need to be. Nor would you have issues with member nations unilaterally deciding to pull their own troops out when they start taking casualties.
But the EU is the member states. Unanimity among member state governments would be required to authorise and fund the creation of a separate and discrete EU force, and what personnel and technical resources could it call on other than those already existing in member states? The idea of a European Army has been batted about for 65 years at least, and it all comes back to whether member states are, in the end, willing to cede enough authority and resources to a nascent EU superstate, be it in terms of creating a common fiscal authority, or a military force, or any of the other attributes of an independent state. As different Commission Presidents have had to to learn.
Russia’s threat isn’t just its the future (if not present) potential to invade Ukraine and Baltic states at will; it’s the ability to destabilize Western democracies with information warfare. Russia is a serious, serious threat in this regard, and there’s no sign they’re going to back off; they’re going right for the jugular. They have every reason to now.
Oh, I know. I was just opining that a formal EU military would make more sense than some sort of formalized NATO-style coalition in terms of actually *using *the military forces themselves.
NATO was a military solution to a military threat. Now that it’s extremely unlikely that the [del]Soviets[/del] Russians will come streaming through the Fulda Gap into Germany and beyond, Europe, and the rest of us for that matter, are flailing around on how to counter the much more subtle threat they are imposing. In a way, it’s similar to the way the US has been flailing around in the Middle East against a foe with no real infrastructure behind it.
NATO has several distasteful factors that the EU doesn’t, at least to northern and northwestern European people. I can’t pretend to speak for eastern europeans.
Like Turkey’s membership, under the dictator Erdogan. Turkey’s assault on the Kurds after the US stabbed them in the back? If the Kurds actually attack back en force against Turkey, Turkey could actually decide to invoke Article 5. NATO would have to mobilize against an enemy that has a lot of sympathy across the board on behalf of a dictator. Or fail completely and effectively dissolve.
Then there’s the influence wars that NATO does jack shit about. The US is currently dragging the UK into it’s sphere of power more firmly after Brexit and this trajectory will continue for decades. With the US’ insane neoliberal privatization policies, this is an existential threat to European social democracies. (Consider how the US will destroy Britain’s NHS over the next few decades of negotiating trade agreements with Britain directly)
Russia is claiming the old kind of sphere-of-influence in eastern Europe that they used to have under the Soviet Union. Some neighbouring countries are happy about that, like Belorussia and Serbia. Some are not, like obviously Ukraine and Georgia. But Eastern European politicians are cheap, short-lived and Russia is patient. Meanwhile, Putin is funding right-wing extremists and ultranationalist fascists like Orbán in Hungary and the associated ultranationalist parties in France, Italy, Austria.
And lastly China is targeting southern European countries like Greece with fiscal incentives to surrender ports and access to the belt-and-road initiative and are yanking on the trade leash of every country that dares even think about having an opinion about China’s brutal domestic oppression.
So Europe is under attack - for a given and not immediate value of attack - from the west, east and south-east. NATO could tear itself apart at any moment and doesn’t hold any answers at all against the current nonviolent warfare Europe faces, and the EU is the closer, tighter project for that sort of thing, but doesn’t have any teeth if push comes to shove. Europe will either consolidate into something more defensible and unified - one way or the other - or it will taken apart piecemeal.
Support for an alliance that has, for all intents and purposes, justified its continued existence by relaunching a cold war via breaking guarantees not to expand any further east than a unified Germany, helping create the turmoil in Ukraine (as well as Georgia), and meddling in Russian democracy 2 decades before they returned the favor, is the perfect definition of braindead.