Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

yeah, they're going to have to build a new NATO-like alliance and go it alone. Seems like it would be a good thing if the EU had some military teeth of their own to give them more leverage in all the Bad Things going on now.

View on HN

Macron has been advocating for a European Army for around a decade. With the recent EU defence spending announcements the idea of a unified command structure in Europe is becoming likely.

The French offer to extend their nuclear umbrella seems to me to have two purposes:

1. Deal with the immediate vulnerability opened by questions over U.S. Article 5 commitments to NATO

2. Try to get ahead of potential nuclear weapons proliferation among other EU states

Also selling weapons. What this idiot of Trump seems to have missed is that countries have been purchasing weapons to the US to actually purchase US protection (like Australia did when they cancelled the submarine purchase they did to France to purchase US ones instead). Now that the US has announced being an unreliable protector, there is probably good business opportunities for all the countries that are nuclear powers and big arm dealers (such as France).

Depends on the weapons.

Certainly France is competitive when it comes to ships and many expendable munitions, but they aren't selling F-35s and the US is, and so far it seems that the juice is worth the substantial squeeze when it comes to that jet. The race is largely for second, because first place (the Lightning) is so far in front of the pack.

European countries like Germany have been purchasing F-35 for the main reason that it's the only plane which can carry US nuclear weapons, which is mandatory for Germany to carry its obligations to participate to NATO nuclear defense [1]

They will hopefully purchase Eurofighter or Rafale or whatever else in the future.

[1] (fr) https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/03/15/la-d...

We have ITAR-free Rafale. And for better or worse, we don't "vendor lock-in" our planes.

That juice is poisonous. The plane may be alright, but it is no longer a wise strategy to build security using US equipment, unless you are the US.

The F-35 is an expensive, very criticised (even inside the US) plane and the US notoriously have some kind of backdoor to it. It makes no sense to me that the EU would buy F-35 other than as a way to give money to the US ("buying protection").

F-35 is cheaper than the f14 converting, so not a good argument, the high selling numbers of it help drive the price down

My point was that the F-35 is more expensive than European planes which don't have a US backdoor.

In fact I think it was the US army that complained about the F-35 being way too expensive.

3. Repair the French economy with "defense" industry $pending.

I don't think (2) would really work out in practice. I have hard time believing that France would use nuclear weapons if one of the smaller states gets attacked. At the end of the day, when SHTF, you're on your own and Putin or some other aggressor might well call their bluff.

The EU already also has a mutual defense clause extremely similar to NATO though

We saw the EU's commitment to Article 42(7) when France invoked it in response to the Bataclan attacks.

To say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

> EU already also has a mutual defense clause extremely similar to NATO

Is it explicitly nuclear?

Well, there is still NATO. Because the US are unreliable doesn't mean that the other members of NATO are? Genuinely asking.

> there is still NATO

For conventional war, probably. For nuclear, will Paris risk its homeland for Latvia?

Right. So the question is: given that NATO is now a lot weaker because of the US, it's not clear whether the promises of mutual defence still hold. Do I understand that correctly?

Some countries have already started. JEF can operate as part of NATO, or separately. The organisation is also nuclear armed, thanks to the UK.

...and before you know it the old rivalries flare up again on who is to be the leader of this fourth iteration of a European empire. Germany versus France, France versus the UK, Germany versus Poland, Italy versus France, a combination of some of these versus one of the others.

A 'European army' would be under the control of... the EU? Some new organisation to be specifically created for this purpose? Some committee-designed scheme of rotating leadership between the main powers in Europe?

These are not spurious questions. Europe is a large and diverse place, far more diverse than e.g. the USA. Would such an army serve to protect Hungary as well as Spain, Sweden as well as the Czech republic, Poland as well as Germany? Even if some of those countries do not care to fall in line with the agenda set by the Eurocrats in Brussels?

You can ask these questions about NATO as well, and while USA has been the greatest contributor, in a confrontation with China, it wouldn't stand a chance without its NATO allies.

I know that many like to complain of Europe's bureaucracy, but we're talking about half a billion educated people, with enough resources and with an existential crisis, which we're surely facing, the EU+UK, joined by allies, can be a force to be reckoned with.

The problems EU is facing come from within. We have far right movements as well, aided by propaganda, the pandemic and the immigration waves. The far right are more contained than in the US apparently (due to US having just 2 parties), but it can lead to government paralysis. Seeing the US administration ally itself with Russia to dismember the EU wasn't in my cards.

So, it's going to be an interesting year.

Not as long as there is an adversary I.e. the new US-Russia alliance.

I think it's realistically only Germany v. France, with U.K. meddling (powerfully) from the sidelines. And I don't think either Germany or France has the fortitude to establish any real hegemony. So I predict that, with or without expressed U.S. support, Europe will continue to be satellites in the U.S. orbit.

Hungary and Slovakia are pro-russia currently, so not really. But nothing unites people as much as common threat and both US and Russia are currently providing that.

Not much more diverse than the US. Yes, a melting pot, but Europe is now a big melting pot too. The most important axes is City versus rural communities which boils down to rich vs poor. And the USA and Europe are very similar in this way.

I can't speak for the US, but in Europe it's less rich/poor (though some country folk would like you to think so), and more rural conservative values vs city progressive values (which weirdly harbour some very religious-conservative people from immigrant/minority communities).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com