A European Union is now being prepared in Brussels and Paris
In Paris, Brussels and other European capitals, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being wake up call in favor of greater European integration. Not only in the field of energy and foreign policy, but certainly also for more defense spending as part of building EU defense cooperation or even an EU armed force.
On Thursday and Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said at the start of an informal EU summit in Versailles Thursday and Friday. “Europe is united in a response to the war and is going to change faster and more powerfully because of that war.”
Growth spurt for the EU
Le Figaro concluded: ‘has made more progress over the past two weeks in recent years. The war in Ukraine is a huge, historic driver for the EU.’
Will there also be a European army?
The French have wanted it since the beginning of European integration in the early 1950s, although it was also the French who subsequently canceled it. The French idea: with military cooperation within the European Union, the EU could be less dependent on America and give NATO and the EU a more independent role in the world. It would also give the French arms industry a boost.
Macron surprised the other EU government leaders on Thursday and Friday at an informal summit in Versailles to speed up the militarization of the EU. The European Commission should come up with proposals in May to close gaps in European defence. An additional informal summit meeting will then be held about this, again under French leadership. The idea is that military cooperation in an EU context is no longer optional.
Vladimir Putin is making a, perhaps historic, turn in favor of EU defense cooperation of even an EU armed forces. But he is not the first. The previous US president, Donald Trump, caused a shock effect with his anti-Nato and anti-EU statements, especially with the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who already sided with Macron’s European defense plans five years ago.
EU: paper tiger
The EU is in theory already a defense pact. As with NATO, an attack on one is an attack on all. But Europe does not offer much more in the field of security.
Countries that benefited from the protection of the United States, such as Poland and the United, as well as Denmark and the Netherlands, improved the boat and preferred to buy American helicopters, fighter jets and anti-aircraft defense systems, also to confirm their usefulness as allies. Germany did not want to join the armed forces, whether it was under a blue NATO or a blue EU flag. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed countries’ minds.
The Germans have fallen for them that by trading walking (change) in Russia. Chancellor Olaf Scholz invests 100 billion euros in defence.
With Britain’s exit from the EU, America’s greatest friend has left, and with it a vote against competition with NATO. Finally, Europe has not yet recovered from Donald Trump’s shock, knows Bruno Lété, the defense and NATO expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an American think tank that was founded in the 1970s with German money as a thank you. for Marshall Aid.
Fighting under Italian high command?
A European army is still going too far. Dutch troops will not fight for an Italian EU general. European countries can work well together, especially in the purchase and development of weapon systems. That money and benefits the interoperability received.
That includes that battle time. act as a single force. Think of British Marines performing jointly because they have the same language and training. Of Dutch soldiers piloting German Leopard tanks. After all, we no longer have any tanks. We do lease eighteen German Leopards, which in turn are part of a German-Dutch tank battalion.
Well with the neighboring countries
The Netherlands is not hesitant about bilateral cooperation. That’s how we share the Karel Doorman with the Germans and we have merged our air defenses with Belgium and Luxembourg. There is always a jet fighter somewhere in the Benelux ready to intercept aircraft.
We are not doing this out of European conviction, but more out of a need for money. Weapons are getting more expensive and Western European countries receive less money on defense. The Netherlands once bought more than 200 F-16s for the equivalent of 14 million euros each. For the successor, the F-35, we pay more than 70 million euros per aircraft. There are also operational costs on top of that, and that also costs more.
European military complex
The more a manufacturer can make, the cheaper they become. Finland, Israel, Japan and South Korea did not participate in the Joint Strike Fighter development program, but buy F-35 anyway, result in the price drops, result in the Netherlands nine additional aircraft can warm up.
Simultaneously, Dassault (creator of the French Mirage) and Saab (Gripen) envy the success of Lockheed. In Brussels and Paris it is seen as a missed opportunity for the European arms industry.
Although Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom have jointly developed the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Germany, France, Italy and Spain are working together on a European drone, Brussels wants more. There are plans to build a new ‘Eurocter’, as a successor to the German-French Tiger. There must also be one European infantry vehicle, a European missile system, even a European underwater drone to detect submarines. These plans have been dusted off in recent weeks.
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has been writing a ‘strategic compass’ with a drafted ‘threat analysis’ for months. That is mainly paperwork, but in order to achieve defensive work, it is useful to be able to defend oneself. There was disagreement until a few weeks ago.
There is a European European fund to support projects that can be supported, but it only contains 1 billion euros per year.
‘Structured collaboration’
There have been 60 military cooperation projects under the heading of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) for a few years now. That’s all free. Two countries, Denmark and Malta, are not participating at all. The Danes will be allowed to decide in June in a referendum on their goals in European defense. In 1993 they did not cooperate with the help of a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty that they did not participate in it.
The Netherlands is responsible for military mobility within PESCO. The aim is to be able to move faster through Europe. They still often have to deal with roads that are too small and bridges that are too weak and sometimes even paperwork from customs! The Netherlands has three corridors aimed at wartime will be sent to the Eastern Front. Where those corridors are is a secret.
Outside the PESCO, France sends another European ‘flash force’ of 5,000 soldiers from, among others, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Which may be any moment, but that is reality.
The Defense Fund and PESCO are part of a European Defense Agency: an office with 140 employees on the Lakenweversstraat in Brussels. By way of comparison: 4,000 Americans, Canadians and Europeans work at the NATO headquarters on the outskirts of the Belgian capital.
The European agency, in its most recent Evaluation of European defense policy, that nothing has been done yet. Most European countries in the future have structure, there are large backlogs in equipment and personnel in equipment and personnel.
Cooperation between countries comes in fits and starts. The European Union does not have the capacity to realize its ambitions. Only 60 percent of the troops and weapons available on paper.
It begs the question of: is the EU really the answer to the Russian threat? Couldn’t we better strengthen NATO? NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomes European investment in defense of course, but also says: ‘the EU cannot defend Europe’.
NATO already has the same rules
NATO countries already have the same procedures, protocols, ranks and uniforms. And experience. American, Canadian and European soldiers have joint execution in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya.
NATO also has a flash force, not of 5,000 but of 40,000 soldiers. It was summoned for the first time last month to defend Eastern Europe. It is within NATO and not the EU that Western countries have stationed troops and combat aircraft in the Baltic states since 2014 – the year Russia annexed Crimea.
Lété points out that NATO also has the command structures to really train as one army in wartime. Admiral James Stavridis headed that chain of command from 2009 to 2013. The Former Commander in Chief NATO recommends base more troops in Poland and Romania permanently.
Eastern European committed to NATO
The Poles have been asking for a NATO base for years, as have the British, Germans and Italians, and are willing to pay in advance. Part of the European missile defense system is located in Romania. With naval bases on the Black Sea, the country can also help keep the Russian fleet in check. The American warships lying in Spain would move Stavridis to Romania.
The reason European countries are not full on NATO is the trauma Trump cited. Macron went very well with the name Germany, hit hard. Trump was not the president who complained that Europeans were spending too little on first; he was the first to threaten to impose consequences.
American complaints about European military weakness are not new, nor are European doubts that America, in the worst case scenario, would risk nuclear war with Russia to protect the continent. During the Cold War, however, the Americans saw Europe’s freedom as self-interested. Today, the American interest is to Asia. Russia was included by both Trump and his executive, Barack Obama.
Stavridis had troublemakers in Washington ten years ago predicting that Russia posed yet another looming threat: “Our presence continued to be made up of NATO partners like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who constantly warned me of the threat posed by Russia. †
Stavridis, a Democrat, but it was Obama who weakened a missile defense shield over the back of Eastern Europe to befriend Putin. Poland and the Czech Republic are not getting any missiles.
The same Obama floated the spot in late 2012 with his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, when he identified Russia, not China, as America’s main rival. Cold War mentality, he that. The Poles and the Czechs and the Romanians knew better. A year later, Russia invaded Crimea.
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