Europe Is Ready for Its Own Army (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Europe Is Ready for Its Own Army (2019)

foreignpolicy.com

77 pointskenneth112 comments

I saw a lot of EU policy makers moving towards an "independence from USA" goal in the last 2-3 years.

The army is just one, but even in software some of the research projects in which part of my group is coordinating/participating with the EU are gonna receive an unbelievable amount of money in the next ten years to build a complete internet infrastructure independent from any us software and hardware. I'm talking about 10-50x more funding than usual until now, and it's gonna grow.

I cannot say a lot because most of the projects are tba and under a formal "keep it secret" clause right now, but one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years and involve around thirty big software companies and universities in eu.

It's really a good time to be a sw researcher here right now.

I know it can be tempting to be chatty, but if you know about projects that should be kept secret, do you really think it wise for you to say how much money is involved?

Nothing of that could be much of a secret with the amount of non governmental institutions involved.

The technical content of the projects is still under secrecy. The money involved is not, also because it is publicly negotiated between all member states.

The 2016 US election has done major long-term damage to the US's position as a superpower.

Even if the next election "puts everything back to normal", this whole episode has made everyone question the wisdom of relying on the US for anything.

It has not changed the aspects of superpower. It has however changed the notion of the US being a stable and reliable partner.

It’s not who you are but who you know. The US still needs the EU and other countries to validate their actions in conflict. It’s the difference between waging terror war and righteous war. This image and support (even if just in the media) costs the US. They have to be bodyguards for the rest so they don’t go to China or Russia to seek alliance. And the difference between superpower and superterrorist is just a headline in newspapers.

Superpowerdom has always been defined as military capability and the ability for others to do your bidding. The US has this through military strength and the US dollar being the reserve currency.

Justifications and perceptions are secondary and only follow the real source of power.

Historically speaking. But these days having that is not enough. Russia is still technically a superpower but see their actual power on the world stage. Without public support and strong economical and political ties you’re just a madman with the biggest gun. So unless you’re willing to use it against everybody and go to war with the world your status as a superpower is fluid.

Do you think the US is dumping all those resources in Europe out of the kindness of their heart? Why would a superpower do it if it didn’t need it? These days military power can only be used sparsely if ever against the civilized western world so it has to be “monetized” in other ways. By offering it as a service in exchange for service (or servitude, depending on interpretation).

Public perception is always something that is managed and controlled. There is absolutely nothing new about this concept.

I disagree with your original thesis that the US needs EU to validate their actions. France arguably historically the most important US ally was dismissed and thrown immediately under the bus during the Iraq invasion for not agreeing.

Thinking US needs the EU for justifications of their actions at home is naive. If you think the US does not have a firm hold of propaganda inside their borders, then I suggest reading Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent.

And yet you give no attempt at an explanation of why the US is spending more billions on EU defense than the EU is spending for themselves. I mean beyond the not so subtle insult that I must be naive...

When bombing Syria the US actively seeked the public support from EU countries even if it didn’t involve much action. Again, there’s a fine line between fighting a righteous war and an abusive, terrorist one. Between the righteous US and the terrorist Russia and China. And that means keeping friends close. Not “public” as in you or me but as it our leaders. When Germany actively refused to cut economic relations with Russia or Iran the US proposed withdrawing troops. Then looked to cause more tensions in Iran which would make it unpalatable for EU countries to continue these relations. In this connected world being alone is bad even if you have the biggest army.

If what I say was wrong the US would go ahead with no approval from anyone. But even when nobody supports that war with actions the US still waits for the public approval. Not doing it risks turning them into “just” another abuser. Any repercussions arising from this (allies distancing themselves, or cooling of economical and political relations) will not be solved by the US being a superpower. China is a superpower but without any validation from enough legitimate allies (like the EU) the superpowerdom is not enough.

Realistically speaking an actual show of force against Europe is absolutely off the table without risking them turning their allegiances east. Hence the alternative means if keeping friends.

Don’t take this as geopolitical analysis, just as pragmatic evidence since nobody spends hundreds of billions every year for “strangers” out of charity. It’s more effective to buy influence in the civilized world than to beat it out of them.

> And yet you give no attempt at an explanation of why the US is spending more billions on EU defense than the EU is spending for themselves. I mean beyond the not so subtle insult that I must be naive...

Because since WW2 the US geopolitical strategy is to prevent any power from rising to match them. That power can only come from a limited number of places. It has been recognized from the start that an alliance between Russia and Europe, namely Germany is to be prevented at all costs.

Actions and alliances are a result of a cost/benefit equation. Anything else would be irrational. Having allies is obvious a benefit. But if allies are not possible to get, the US has shown plenty of willingness to go at it alone. Or to do it in secret and suppress any mentions in home media, because of the inherent immorality of the action, like supporting terrorist groups against Assad, or supporting Saudi Arabia in their genocide against Yemen.

> the US geopolitical strategy is to prevent any power from rising to match them.

...without direct use of weapons on them. Because WW2 is over, the cold war is over, and the definition of a superpower is less about weapons and more about influence. They keep you safe while applying the real power that makes you super. The police is strong because they have influence not guns.

The tone of the comment suggests you think I am wrong but the actual content supports what I said to the letter. Buying the influence works where trying to get it by force would have the exact opposite effect and push some critical parties into the arms of the enemy.

Hence the “power” part of superpower being more about this these days than actual weapons. Weapons help make sure nobody hits you directly. But in today’s world using the military anywhere but in the more remote, less... organized parts of the world is doomed to fail. Which is why it’s not happening.

Saudi Arabia and Israel openly have a far more outsized influence on US politics than their standing armies suggest. If this doesn’t tell you that the Cold War dictionary definition of a superpower is pretty irrelevant in today’s world stage then you’ll be calling people “naive” as your argument for a long time.

Being from a developing nation, we had been fed a certain narrative about the US. It was the epitome of all the virtues humanity could conceive. Circa 2010 the advent and prevalence of cheap smartphones and social media across the globe (including third world countries), turned a new leaf on access to information from the hitherto filtered mainstream media. This removed the veil on the actual social, political and economic life in the US (in the eyes of my contemporaries and I). The 2016 elections and the circus it has been since then, tossed away the veil altogether. In the last 4 years, with utmost respect, I do attest the US has lost something at the global stage: at least its charm and probably much more.

It's probably your age. Mass media, particularly in Europe, has been laughing at Americans'stupidity for generations, predicting all kinds of terrible things. They laughing off of people like Reagan, the Bushes, Sarah Palin, etc, had been going on for many decades before the 2016 election and your acquisition of the internet.

It will eventually be nice that I don't have to foot the tax bill for superpower expenses.

Is this funding coming from an EU level mandate and trickling down to nations and then national research programs or is it treating the leaves of the research tree as part of "EU Research" as a whole? I'm not familiar enough the political mechanics of EU research so forgive me if my analogy does not hold.

The second one.

The EU is very visible in their research programmes, see for example https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en and https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm

And one of the aims of these programs are for EU research institutes to collaborate transnationally.

The EU-as-an-instituion has a budget of 1% of the member states’ GDPs: 1% of ~15 Tr/y, or 150 Bn/y.

Given that, 100 Bn/5 years sounds implausible for a single project for the EU-as-an-institution, so I’d assume it would be EU-as-a-region with the EU-as-an-institution as one of the project partners.

Well other big European projects like the HBP turned out less than ideal. If any of the past track record is an indication any EU led project will be a huge political mess, with ~20% going to administrative overhead and only 1/10th of the promised budget will actually materialise.

Look at Russia: their new prime minister is allegedly corrupt and became rich while managing federal tax service. However his digitalization projects appear to be very successful, even if corruption overhead consumed large part of the budget. If EU allocates enough money (and they can put much more than Russia in this), they can achieve the goals.

I don't know how that relates to EU projects. I'm not alleging corruption, just stating facts. The flagship projects were promised 1 billion in funding over 10 years. A lot of that money was spend in Switzerland, which isn't even a EU member state. The last funding period will now actually involve 20% in administrative overhead, spend on administrators mostly located in Switzerland. I've seen some of the planning diagrams for future European cloud initiatives especially in the HPC sector. Most of it is just shuffling around funds from one budget to another, that is they relabel existing HPC infrastructure and university compute resources to be now part of a "European Research Cloud" (https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-...)

Another aspect is that as soon as a university is involved, you get lots of cheap basically black labor by gullible university students. Take https://qt.eu for example, they promise 1 billion in funding over 10 years and 5000+ researchers. That works out to 20000€ per researcher per year. A PhD student in Germany makes roughly double that, if he has a fully funded position. So this figure relies on:

- Paying people half the normal salary, but expecting them to work full time, which is common practice in European academia.

- Significant additional funds being provided by member states and universities, all the while the European Union has the leverage to call the shots on research direction and funding.

My point is that various overhead and mismanagement does not mean that project goals won’t be achieved. If budget is big enough, it may be more effective to work with already existing administrative structure to get things done rather than trying to improve management and optimizing costs.

> one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years

This does not sound right. The entire proposed EU Research & Innovation investment programme for the next 5 years is 100B euros (Horizon Europe [0]). This is the funding that pays for all EU funded research projects in all fields, among other things.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-i...

When we talk about EU sponsored projects we include both the EU funding, which comes directly from EU budget, and the estimation of the required additional public and private investment to the project which must_be/has_been secured.

This is common for all eu sponsored projects I worked in.

What’s the most successful EU project in IT or CS ever? Maybe Galileo which replicates the US’ GPS? I’m not aware of anything else worth mentioning.

What’s the closest Europe has to AppAmaFaceGooSoft? SAP, probably.

The talent is obviously there, but there’s no real reason to believe the organizational talent is. If one player’s constraint is “Make it and make it work.” and the other’s is “Make it. Make it work. Make it with substantial contributions in all major and some minor European countries.” the latter group is much more likely to fail just due to coordination problems.

I totally agree with you. I still think it is worth to try and try again.

The EU doesn't have ginormous behemoths that try to do absolutely everything the way AppAmaFaceGooSoft do but I don't see that at all as a bad thing.

There are plenty of smaller EU companies that have successful businesses, such as Spotify, Zalando and Supercell. It's just that where in the US those would all be sub-products of an enormous megacorp, in the EU they're separate companies.

You must be under the impression that there are no successful businesses smaller that Google in the United States.

You make it seem like it's desirable to have monopolies. I think the EU disagrees. The lack of FAANG type companies is indicative of a healthy economy and society. The fact that they exist in the US is indicative of the opposite. Of course, if one is ingrained in US culture and its propaganda, it's easy to see how one could value monopolies over a healthy economy. Most people outside the US, however, have no delusions of becoming a billionaire (or even a millionaire), of monopolies being positive for society, or of the massive inequality created by such monopolies being positive for society. Don't get me wrong. Monopolies still exist outside the US. They are just not as fetishized by the masses everywhere as they are here.

Nobody fetishises monopolies in the US. Some naturally come about, such as Facebook, and they naturally come about much easier and faster in the United States than in Europe. So they become world monopolies. If there wouldn't be competition from the US, there would have been a European Facebook, Google, etc., just not as inventive and bold, and a few years later.

That's hilarious. I love how confident you are that a European equivalent of fb, Google, etc. would not be as inventive or bold. That's cool, but let's not pretend like it's a fact.

As to your other point, I'm not sure how else to describe it. Not only do we fetishize monopolies and other large, dominating corporations, we fetishize their CEOs like Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Musk etc. We encourage our kids to see them as role models. We bend over backwards legally to increase profits for such entities and their CEOs to the detriment of millions of Americans. The pursuit of monopoly is the only business strategy that can even be discussed, let alone contemplated. I think fetishize is too weak of a word here, actually. Worship is a better term.

1. I'm glad you find it funny, but the reality speaks for itself.

2. Americans do tend to respect very wealthy people, like Musk. But Musk, for examine, is not a monopolist. You're just lumping all rich people with monopolists. Warren Buffet is also admired. What does he monopolize?

France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent. France will never accept the idea that the working language is English or that French troops might have to take orders from a Romanian. The Brits clearly don’t trust the French or German intelligence services enough to let them into the FIVEYES club. French, Brits and the Dutch are the only ones with veteran militaries. Nobody will be willing to give up veto power and nobody will accept anyone else having it anyway. Western European voters are never going to accept Johnny and Jean-Pierre dying to save Boris the Bulgarian Slav from Boris the Russian Slav. Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work.

Hope I’m wrong, but history is on my side with this

> France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent.

They already offered that, under Mitterand.

Sure, Germany would have been the junior partner, but the offer explicitly included Germany being at the table.

The UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing.

More complicated is deciding what the objectives are. Domestic defense only or airstrikes in Libya and Syria?

The UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing

Research the Franco-German Brigade and then reconsider the main blocker...

  Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work.

As a european, I have to say, what a ridiculous statement.

What’s your nationality?

Why is a label in my (or their) passport relevant to this discussion?

Because I suspect a Romanian or Bulgarian or Greek has witnessed dramatically more racism than a Dutch or Swedish person.

I'm Bulgarian living in the Netherlands and I literally never witnessed racism (first because i'm white duhh?) and 0 discrimination. I'm on the high end of education tho so yeah :)

Oh sweet summer child, racism applies to far more than skin color. Discrimination against country of origin is considered racism in today’s discourse. It’s a convenient cudgel to make essentially every country racist, but it is what it is.

I think it's fair to be afraid of the unknown but eastern European economies are growing and then even the point of us being too poor will be gone.

Anyway, I don't really care about racism because anyone who is racist enough not to hire me is a great dodged bullet anyway lol.

Also..sweet summer child? I don't get if you're trying to sound condescending

I'm Romanian living in Romania and in physical conversations while not drunk, people are cautious. But drunk (e.g. Okto berfest) or under anonymity of Internet forums, the dark side of humanity did surface out. Of course it's a small percentage of people but racism and xenophobia is alive and well.

well yea but i usually joke about bulgarians stealing stuff or etc. if someone says it seriously then it's clear they're retarded so...no point in continuing. anyway, we are earning our glory brother, slowly but surely!

In a discussion about nationalism in certain EU nations? Gee, I wonder.

So, because someone has a certain nationality they are nationalistic?

European too, and I agree completely with the statement

A regular persons opinion has very little in common with the ones who actually wield power.

Of course they will help Boris from Bulgaria because allowing Bulgaria to be taken over the Russians will be one step closer to the back door of their own country. Eastern Europe is a buffer zone that works as long as they are not conquered.

2017-2019 has not convinced me most voters are willing to look beyond the end of their nose. Where was the EU action over Crimea?

Sanctions? As you may know we don't have an army. What else do you suggest?

No idea, but the point I was responding that Europeans would never let Russia dominate a border country, and the Ukraine seems like a counter point.

Ukraine is Russia’s buffer to NATO, not the EU’s buffer to Russia.

If western europe was looking to square up to Russia to protect an eastern europe buffer zone, they could have used the Budapest memorandum on security assurances as a pretext to offer military assistance the moment Russian troops started crossing the border.

One could reasonably argue that Ukraine simply wasn't part of the EU, and if Russia threatened Poland it would be a different matter. That it is the EU membership, not the buffer zone, that is important.

Another possible interpretation is EU would have wanted to intervene, but its current political structure proved too deliberative to react before it was too late. That would imply an EU army would also need political reform.

Crimea is/was part of Ukraine though not part of EU. There are still active sanctions over Russian activities there and were recently renewed.

Crimea already had a major Russian naval base in it.

By that logic, there would be nothing to complain about if the US takes over the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate since they already have an air base there (Ramstein).

No, by that logic Russia or someone else would hesitate to attack Germany because of the US airbase. Just like the EU and the US hesitated to defend Crimea because of Sevastopol.

Sure, just like Poland had written European border guarantees issued in March 1939. Not to mention 1994 Ukraine ones signed by Russia, Britain and the United States.

This is why this shit is not going to fly in Poland, our government will do everything in their power to get as much US troops on the ground as possible, at the cost of being USA gofer in Iraq/Afganistan/Iran/wherever POTUS fancies this week.

Germany has already been shown going back to their old tricks, scheming another Molotov-Ribbentrop behind whole EUs back with Nord Stream, and especially Nord Stream 2. Paradoxically US is the only country with some backbone to oppose this german-Putin deal, with most western EU countries sitting silent.

Do you really believe that the US is against Nord Stream 2 because some morals stand? Trump tried to remove all of the Russian sanctions that are herding the US economy. The day that US will get more from Russia than Poland the US troops will be gone.

After Brexit, why would the working language of a European military be English? Are the Irish that influential?

Because American and Canadian allies aren’t going to learn Dutch, and almost everyone in the officer class has a working comprehension of English already. I could — at a huge push — believe in Spanish, maybe, kinda, almost. France and Germany won’t let the other win it.

The de facto working language of the EU is English, not because of the UK but because it's the one language that plenty of people in every country across the EU speak as at least a second language. If anything this is probably due to the US being so influential.

Also, using everyone's second language is going to be less controversial than picking either German or French.

First of all, most of the balkans are slavic and even Poland is a slavic nation. Any slavic nation under agression by any other will nowdays meet not only the slavic armies but also western european ones

I hope you’re right! I’d suggest that the Visegrád group’s military aspects suggests the Central Europeans are worried they’d be on their own in case of Russian aggression though.

Eastern Europe has been a battlefield for millennia, any nation in NATO has to guarantee their own safety to this moment. V4 are working together but I do believe we will achieve it on a wider scale after the brits are gone

I’ll believe it when I see it. I think we’re far more likely to see closer Franco-British integration (with maybe some Hanseatic colour thrown in) well before an EU army

EU seems to be standing idle while Turkey is trying to dig out hydrocarbons from Cyprus and Greece EEZ.

Plenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well so I don't know why you picked these three as being 'veteran'. Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this. In any case, not having to die a whole lot can only be seen as a win. FIVEEYES is a club for 5 former english colonies that speak english. Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club, but somehow I doubt they want to have any part of it. Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene from other Mbene and in that context saving Boris from other Boris isn't such a leap.

> Plenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well

The Brits and the French have had plenty of their own non-NATO adventurism. The article notes "[they're] almost never not at war somewhere, officially or otherwise".

They also have _by far_ the most troops deployed abroad; twice as many when taken as a percentage, and an order of magnitude more when taken in absolute numbers[0]. Apparently I was overestimating the Dutch contribution.

> Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this

That is far from clear[1]

> Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club

Actually, France would, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway[2].

> Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene

In Francophone Africa, where people speak Jean-Pierre's language, where Camus comes from, and where the French have nostalgic ideas about empire. Far from the same thing. Also, the top three names in a random Francophone African country I just chose are Florent, Yves, and Frank. Isn't Mbene a Nigerian name?

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/11916/which-countries-have-th...

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-or-not-france-and-bri...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Six_Eyes

I have no idea where Mbene is from. It sounded African enough. It is not like France never fought for Eastern Europe (ww1 they got drawn in because their alliance with Russia, ww2 because of alliance to Poland). Other than explanations based fantasies about empire based on a neo romantic conception of France as this old world place lost somewhere five hundred years ago, deployments to places like Mali are of interest for the protection of France and the rest of Europe against unchecked propagation of Islamic extremism. Which is why other European allies have joined that operation. In that sense, it is similar because in both cases the reason for intervention is the strategic interest of France. It's unsurprising that France still has bilateral military cooperation with Britain. But Britain's historical track record on the EU level military cooperation issue is that they do not want anything to do with it.

In my opinion, this is only likely to happen if there is a concrete, immediate and easy to grasp threat to Europe, like Russian or Turkish troops crossing the border. An abstract threat is not enough to overcome the strong nationalistic tendencies in Europe. A historic example of this is the Mongol invasion in the 13th century [0]:

> Warring European princes realized they had to cooperate in the face of a Mongol invasion, so local wars and conflicts were suspended in parts of central Europe, only to be resumed after the Mongols had withdrawn.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Euro...

I have to agree with this, this will only happen if a member state is invaded and there's fear that the invasion will spread to neighbouring members. At that point the public opinion will support the creation of a unified military force to stop the threat. Once that is done a permanent military institution will be established as deterrence to potential enemies in the future.

Think of refugee factor. Inability for Europe to project enough power in regional conflicts in Middle East and Africa is now one of the biggest sources of internal political instability. AfD, Northern League and the likes are entering coalition governments and no one in mainstream political parties is happy about that. Everyone in Western Europe wants to solve the problem of refugees outside EU borders and this requires coherent foreign policy and military power to support it. So, yes, Europe is ready and if there will be any new major conflict in neighboring regions, it will accelerate the process.

Trump may have accelerated it, but I think this process has been going on for way longer. There have been some far-going experiments in cooperation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-German_Brigade: operational since 1989, German troops stationed on French soil since 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._German/Dutch_Corps: 30,000 troops (mostly German, I would guess, but several time with a Dutch commander)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeNeSam: Belgian and Dutch navy cooperation since 1948, with a joint commanding officer since 1996 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Benelux). Chances are this, eventually, will lead to a merger of armies, navies, and air forces of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Wouldn't it maybe make sense for the EU to possibly establish their own quasi representative democracy? Maybe each nation-state keeps it's current government. The head of the government becomes a 'chancellor' i.e. President among other Presidents.

Every 2 years the Chancellors elect from among themselves who will lead (be the deciding vote on ties and conflicts of opinion). This would still give some autonomy but also congruity and fix issues where one party does not agree by having a designated decision maker. But all policies enacted by the EU would need to be binding and accepted by all nations as law.

It's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away. Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism.

Merkel is in favor because she's tied her county's future to fossil fuels coming from Eastern Europe. She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open.

I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good.

> It's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away.

It is a real institution.

> Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism.

They are planning to create the army outside of the EU framework.

> She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open.

Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe.

https://apnews.com/a038942bb9f0f1af239c6a56a54ae408

> I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good.

If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.

> Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe.

All that seems to support the grandparent's view?

> If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.

It's easy to imagine those 28 nations would otherwise become client states of the US or China. An integrated EU could give its members more independence at the global level, as paradoxical as that sounds at first glance.

The US wanting to shut the pipeline is pretty textbook "not incentived to keep it open" but people read what they want to read.

And yes, a unified Europe makes it like the American federation. Perfectly capable of infighting, but gets to swing a unified weight at the international level

So I read that article, but it didn't explain the legal reasoning behind any sanctions. It's almost like they said the soft part out loud e.g sanctions because we'll lose money.

>While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of the alliance was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay,_1st_Baron_Isma...

NATO has outlived its purpose, and a new European defense arrangement is needed.

I don't know if this will come about, but Brexit must have made it more likely; an EU army is the kind of thing euroskeptics would have hated.

Most European nations are already members of NATO. Despite recent political speeches I see little interest in developing some kind of duplicate defense framework on top of the existing NATO structures.

A perennial idea, going back to the aborted European Defence Community (EDC) of 1952. The EDC was supposed to be a military counterpart to the EEC (European Economic Community, which would go on to evolve into the EU). It was seen as necessary to rearm West Germany to defend against the threat of Soviet invasion, but the defeat of Nazi Germany was only seven years earlier, and many were afraid of what would happen if a rearmed West Germany experienced a resurgence of Nazism. The proposed solution was that West German troops would be part of a European army, the command of which would be dominated by France. The whole plan failed when the French Parliament refused to ratify the treaty, believing that it ceded too much sovereignty to an international body. In the end, it was decided to let the West Germans control their own army instead. The feared Nazi comeback never happened.

This is an inherently silly article. It's premised heavily on Trump. He's around for a maximum of one more four year term. The only guarantee is that whatever President comes after Trump, will be a supporter of NATO and the former political approach to allies that has defined the post WW2 era. Trump is a one-off. There is no next Trump, the entire US political landscape top to bottom is overwhelmingly dominated by the anti-Trump types, there isn't a single other major political candidate (one that could actually win the Presidency) anywhere in the US that is like him. Most of Trump's biggest supporters in Congress are anti-Trump types when it comes to entities like NATO (Lindsey Graham for example is a McCain-like globalist hawk that loves the old systems, including NATO).

> A world where an American president declares NATO, the cornerstone of American defense policy since World War II, obsolete.

Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster. Nine times out of ten it's empty bluster, as everyone has noticed at this point. The article is taking the obvious - Trump's belligerent angling & needling approach to negotiation - and pretending it means something (Trump wants to do away with NATO) other than what it obviously does. The article author realizes that's incorrect and uses it anyway out of convenience to support the silly premise they're floating.

Back in reality Europe can't afford its current military expenditures (and neither can the US of course), and there is no scenario where an EU army of any consequential scale comes into existence. What it's going to almost solely consistent of, is coordinated industry (arms manufacture, research and compatibility), not an actual EU army.

I'd like to believe that. I'd like to believe this is a blip. But you're forgetting that the American people, about half, voted for him, and about half still want him, even after all he is doing.

> Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster.

It could be, but he has said it. And his people repeat it. It's a part of the mindset of a large percentage of Americans.

Not entirely true, Trump woke up Europeans regarding military and life in general and gave the last push. There's no coming back when the boss of NATO shits on article five. Interesting times ahead.

> Trump has zero interest in eliminating NATO or reducing it. It's just another case of Trumpian bluster.

And ... Trump has delivered on more promises than any American president in history. [1] I don't think he's bluffing on this either.

1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trumps...

Your premise of "the article is silly don't listen to it!" doesn't sway me nearly as much as the ludicrous situation the US has placed itself into. This article written 5 years ago? I'd be with you 100%. In 2020 it's not even a bold prediction...

The damage Trump has done to the US is immeasurable on the world stage and even Obama 2.0 being re-elected couldn't fix it. The world has woken up with a bucket of cold truth dumped in our faces: The US is politically unstable and cannot be relied on as a military superpower or even as a rational ally.

The world is in a very dark place when news of Germany building an army makes sense.

Prediction: they'll run the numbers, scratch their heads, and begrudgingly start paying 2% of their GDP to NATO like they signed up to do. Shit's expensive, and Europeans are taxed through the nose as it is.

EU members already have independent armies combining may actually bring the costs down.

Nobody's paying 2% of their GDP "to NATO," not the US, not anybody else. NATO's entire budget is less than €2.4 billion. The agreement is for NATO member nations to aim to move toward spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense by 2024. So spending money on a EU-wide army would be one method of attaining that goal.

"The United States has met the target, and dedicated 3.36 percent of GDP (around $664 billion, according to NATO figures) to military spending in 2016." [1]

1. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/us-p...

I didn't state otherwise. In fact,the US has spent over 3% of its GDP on defense for over 15 years. However, only a portion of that is spent in Europe. And a tiny fraction of that is spent on NATO. Let's not conflate national defense budgets with the NATO budget with the overall cost of the defense of Europe. They're all totally different things.

If US were to withdraw from NATO, a significant chunk of this money would have to come out of Europeans' taxes. As a US taxpayer paying six figure taxes, I'm completely in favor of reducing the part of my tax that does not go towards protecting the United States.

The article I submitted states that the 3.36% of GDP spending is spent by the US on NATO. If you a source that states otherwise, please provide a citation.

Why not dismantle the armies instead?

Prisoner's dilemma. Dismantling the armies only works if you get all countries in the world to do it at the same time.

Seems superficially similar to roam research, which has been good to me so far.

This is going to completely shatter the US' political power in the region while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing for Europe's real defense. Europeans throw violent protests if they have one less vacation day a year; there's no way they would tolerate giving up 15% of their taxes, i.e., 15% of their entitlements, to build and maintain a real military force capable of taking on the likes of Russia.

The US has an entire Western hemisphere it can and should be doing more to unify and improve.

Like Trump said in 2016, it's time to turn our resources back home. Rebuild our own infrastructure, social programs, etc.

But we're not doing that. We're just spending more on the military.

>Like Trump said in 2016, it's time to turn our resources back home. Rebuild our own infrastructure, social programs, etc.

Like a lot of Trump's rhetoric, this sounds nice, but the proof is in the pudding. I don't think we were spending infrastructure and social welfare resources on our military to begin with, so not doing so doesn't necessarily free up resources. The US is fully capable of doing all of these things, it's not short on resources.

Also, it's now 2020, and Trump is toying with war in Iran, moving new troops into Iraq, increasing military expenditure by billions of dollars, repealing and cutting funding for social programs and AFAIK not actually rebuilding our infrastructure at all in any significant way.

Not even one wall...

France, alone, spends more on their military than Russia. Overall, the 28 countries currently in the EU have a combined military budget about 3.5 times the size of Russia’s.

(I’m sure there’s a better metric for military power than mere budget, but I don’t know enough to find out what that might be).

Is that PPP-adjusted? It's easy to imagine that a smaller Russian budget might translate to more (poorly paid) troops, more (cheaply manufactured) vehicles and so on.

If the whole EU's sole objective was to counteract Russia it would be ridiculously cheap, nowhere near union-wide 2% spending.

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