I know that this is an absurdly hypothetical question, but just suppose that the US declared war on the European Union. I mean, by all rights the EU could be considered a gestalt entity of sorts. We have a central government, common law, one passport and soon, a single currency.
Many politicians speak of a future “Federal Europe” with many analogies to the states. Assuming that the member countries of the EU could or would unite in a single force (as I believe they actually are, at least on paper), what sort of adversary would they be to the US?
I’m not trying to instigate some sort of trans-Atlantic pissing contest here, I just think it’s an interesting premise.
Since the countries of the EU and the U.S. are, for the most part, also members of NATO and participate in joint military actions, I doubt that there will be many secrets from either side.
There are a lot of U.S. soldiers, airmen, and sailors in Europe. There aren’t nearly as many Europeans over here in the States.
Of course I realise this. We (the UK) are also widely considered to be the USA’s greatest allie. That’s why I said that this scenario was highly hypothetical. What I’m saying is “Just suppose…”
But this is problematic because you would have to create an entirely different way of viewing the world. You would have to have a world where the U.S. and EU militaries never cooperated with each other. And the EU countries would have completely different hardware that the U.S. has never seen.
Ok, we’re getting really abstract here, but lets suppose that the recent horrors of September 11th turned out to be a directive from the Eu. Now I know that’s a laughable suggestion, but just suspend disbilelf for a moment. Surely, all US troops would pull out of the EU and it’d be really frosty between our two governments. I know it’s not even slightly likley (thank heavens), but what I’m saying is: What if the unthinkable happened and us Euro-types found ourselves at war with the US tomorrow?
I’m really only talking about funding/ firepower here. Never mind the political reality.
If you let the U.S. throw nukes, the U.S. wins (suffering a lot of damage from British (and remotely possible) French nukes)–then all the survivors die of radiation poisoning.
If it is limited to conventional weapons, it would be a much harder call. The U.S. could dominate the seas, making a westward invasion impossible, but there would be no staging area from which the U.S. could launch an invasion either and no secure region from which the U.S. could provide close support for a beachhead.
If you simply want to know who has more hardware, your best bet would be to go to Jane’s or Military.com andadd up the numbers for each government.
I dunno. It sounds like one of those old B-movie Westerns from the 50s where some guy just has to know which of two friends is the best gunfighter.
Well I guess nobody wins then, but that is the likely outcome of war isn’t it?
Just for morbid fun, who do you reckon would fire their nukes first? My bet would be on the US, but then of course they’d see the nukes we fired at them because of the “son of starwars” network which we’ve let them install, which wouldn’t be here if we went to war and…
Well yeah, it is rather far fetched isn’t it? Maybe we should all just try to get along and target our atomic sights back to the real world, towards middle-eastern fellows wielding pen knives…
ah we had a discussion about this on IRC a JANES type person who knows all military stuff and an ignorant america can kill anybody ,
first of all it depends on who invades who , the US may have 50,000 MBTs but hey you have to get them here first
and with hostile airspace and hot LZs for airlifts and traflgar class SSN attack subs to kill your transport ships (the UK attack SSN is equivilant to late model 688s) so logistics would be a problem , also there would not be much in the way of airsupport other than carriers since they would not have land based runways for larger bombers and or CAS aircraft.
Without the massive logistics movement of hardware and troops the US cannot fight properly (its why the US wants the support of all the countries around afganistan), paratroopers being lightly armed and equiped also cannot fight for long , the US would be in a stalemate with the EU as neither can get its troops safley across the atlantic
Also England and France have nukes and if the American troops were overunning us we would nuke the US , UK and France would cease to exist due to the retaliation nuke strike but the US would eat at least 192 UK nuclear warheads
which are SSBN based which are extremely hard to kill due to size of search area.
Russia is partly europe too , and this would tip the scales massively in our favour as Russians have weapons designed specifically to destroy your high value targets such as AEGIS cruisers (SS-N-22 Sunburn)
BUT the US has a massive number of troops and aircraft already based in Germany so it would be unclear who would be the victor if it could be called that as there would be major casulties on both sides
heh anyway our troops get along well , i know a guy who was based in Germany before the soviets went home and he likes Europe and its nicer food
Germany would take years deciding if its constitution would allow it to take up arms in such a circumstance.
Austria would declare Anschluss and invade Germany, then declare a fifth Reich with a deep respect for the US.
Britain would cancel its special relationship and return fire- never one to keep to long held allies!(see seventeeth to nineteenth century history)
France would declare that as Britain had declared war against the USA, its special position would be to seek to conciliate the USA as French Policy has always been to do the opposite of the UK.
Sweden would claim neutrality; Finland would learn to love Russia! Ireland would claim to be the fifth borough of New York and Italy the sixth.
Holland,Belgium, and Luxembourg would wait to be invaded … again … - they’re getting used to it with four hundred years history!
Greece would suddenly discover that it belonged to the Levant and amalgamate with Turkey.
Spain would suddenly find it was umbilically attached to Latin America; and Portugal to Brazil.
Denmark would be forgotten as usual.
Silly question; silly answer.
The French would immediately surrender to whichever Americans they could conveniently locate, perhaps some tourists at EuroDisney. This would leave a huge foothold for the American infantry and light armor divisions…
Ok, seriously, whoever had to try and take the other mainland would probably lose, if the war stayed conventional. If it went nuclear then everybody would lose.
I can’t see how America could possibly lose. The EU isn’t even a single military unit like the US is. The European part of NATO doesn’t even include France (although this may be a good thing for Europe) and there is always the issue of US forces scattered throughout Europe, Turkey and in the Med. I’d be rooting for Europe* but then I always go for the underdog. The whole thing would be over and then America could move onto China where the real challenge would be.
[sub]*Australians and Kiwis; would you pl ease stop sniggering?[/sub]d
On a serious note, the EU would have a ton of problems, not the least would be who the major powers would side with. I’m sure this has been gone over before. WWIII would be for sure.
I don’t mean to be mean, but a lot of EU countries can’t tie their own shoes. I have never trusted some of those countries. The sad truth is that we, the US actually provide their defense.
In a war with such a huge threat (and it’s true, the EU would be a threat) the US might have to go all the way.
Although Greenkeys was keen to point out that this question was purely theoretical, it may be a good time to point out that both France and Germany have pledged personnel and intelligence support to the US in the current campaign in Afghanistan. Maybe that will go some way toward changing the apparent attitude in the US that some European countries, especially France, are not on “your” side, or else are just plain cowards?
It’s just after 2:00am here in the UK and I can’t sleep because I know the bombing is continuing over there. This one is surely no laughing matter.
