European Army

LabR@t · 13 Nov 2018 at 19:54

The UK will pick up the pieces again, they still owe us from the last two times.

TJM · 13 Nov 2018 at 19:55

G-MAN2004 said:
"Haha, are you dumb? There will never be an EU army, you stupid conspiracy theorist. Now vote remain"

The UK, as a member state and a highly influential one at that, could have blocked this proposal (if it ever became anything more substantive than remarks to journalists). 'The UK will not be forced into a European army' is as true now as it ever was.

LabR@t · 13 Nov 2018 at 19:56

Moses said:
Exactly. So if it's like what we have with NATO already, it's hardly some huge power grab etc... even if it's a bit more substantial than NATO, it'd still be in the same ballpark.

Although it'd offer more security than NATO does given Article 5 is only triggered if there's an armed attack... a higher bar than the trigger for EU collective defence (armed aggression). A significant difference when it comes to international law, even if they sound the same.

Explain the difference between armed attack and armed aggression.

LabR@t · 13 Nov 2018 at 19:56

I bet the French generals aren't happy about this.

Tom_ed1987 · 13 Nov 2018 at 20:23

TJM said:
The UK, as a member state and a highly influential one at that, could have blocked this proposal (if it ever became anything more substantive than remarks to journalists). 'The UK will not be forced into a European army' is as true now as it ever was.

Whether the UK would be forced to participate in an EU army was never the point discussed - It was the very notion of an EU army ever existing that was labelled a 'dangerous fantasy'

Nasher · 13 Nov 2018 at 20:31

This worries me more than Trump sillyness tbh.

One will probably be gone in a couple of years, the other will continue marching towards their end goal, in which we have no say (well I suppose we had a say in the UK

)

h4rm0ny · 13 Nov 2018 at 21:37

Roar87 said:
I bet tensions with Russia will improve once there's a United European Army on their border /s

Tombstone said:
Its an interesting point of view though, what will be Russias view of a European Army, would that make them form an equivalent of their own by linking with some other nations? Or would they dismiss the European Army as a non-threat.

Tricky to say. But it's possible that this would actually EASE tensions with Russia if it means that the EU will stop relying on the USA for its defence quite as much. Most Germans quite want to buy oil from Russia for example (they're for the Nordstream 2 project) and the USA keeps trying to kill it. The EU is currently trying to work around US sanctions on Iran for another example. European policy is heavily distorted by US military presence in Europe which the USA uses to push its agenda against Russia, pro-Israel and for dominance in the Middle East. If the EU ultimately (I'm not talking short-term here) feels militarily independent of the USA, it may well become much more amicable towards Russia than currently. Maybe.

h4rm0ny · 13 Nov 2018 at 21:37

Tom_ed1987 said:
Whether the UK would be forced to participate in an EU army was never the point discussed - It was the very notion of an EU army ever existing that was labelled a 'dangerous fantasy'

Nice find.

LabR@t · 13 Nov 2018 at 22:02

Clegg is a complete pos.

Lie after lie, we can all see farage was right all along.

sityeuropa · 13 Nov 2018 at 22:13

Yet us leavers are the stupid ones who don't know anything.

I would like to say from the leavers "We told you so".

dowie · 13 Nov 2018 at 22:14

how to make a Brexit thread in GD

post something EU related that ostensibly isn't about Brexit itself

then wait...

LabR@t · 13 Nov 2018 at 22:29

dowie said:
how to make a Brexit thread in GD

post something EU related that ostensibly isn't about Brexit itself

then wait...

It was one of the remain camps core lies?

XeNoN89 · 13 Nov 2018 at 22:33

This was one of the many reasons people voted for Brexit. I remember lots of remainers at the time saying this won't happen but it sure seems like EU want it to happen now!

Amp34 · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:06

IronWarrior said:
We already have that, it's called NATO and from that, we have the NATO Response Force (NRF) and for a ultra super fast force, they have the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).

The issue appears to be that Trump is trying to destabilise it, hence the resurgence in creating a similar, European specific force.

From the BBC link posted earlier:

Mr Macron has already proposed a joint intervention force for crisis missions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the idea of an intervention force in June, but said it would have to be part of "the structure of defence co-operation".

The UK, while in favour of such a joint force, is opposed to a European army, because of the potential risk of creating a parallel structure to Nato.

and subsequently

President Macron has already warned that Europeans can no longer rely on the US to defend them, and he revived the theme on Tuesday, in response to President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of a 1987 nuclear treaty with Russia, banning medium-range ground-launched missiles.

"Who is the main victim? Europe and its security," he told French radio station Europe 1.

"I want to build a real security dialogue with Russia, which is a country I respect, a European country - but we must have a Europe that can defend itself on its own without relying only on the United States."

The issue here as always is the opinion on what is a "European army". Leavers seem to consider it as something very different to most politicians and remainers.

h4rm0ny · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:12

Amp34 said:
The issue appears to be that Trump is trying to destabilise it, hence the resurgence in creating a similar, European specific force.

Trump is, correctly I believe, complaining that several European countries are not paying the amount they committed to, to support NATO. That includes France, Germany, Italy. Spain isn't paying close to the promised amount. That leaves other countries such as the UK, the USA, Poland and (bless their hearts) Greece, paying MORE than their commitment to make up the shortfall.

As far as I'm aware, all this is true. So there are legitimate grounds for complaint, no?

chroniclard · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:14

Is there some crazy issue I am missing that makes people froth at the mouth over this?

Amp34 · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:14

h4rm0ny said:
Trump is, correctly I believe, complaining that several European countries are not paying the amount they committed to, to support NATO. That includes France, Germany, Italy. Spain isn't paying close to the promised amount. That leaves other countries such as the UK, the USA and (bless their hearts) Greece, paying MORE than their commitment to make up the shortfall.

As far as I'm aware, all this is true. So there are legitimate grounds for complaint, no?

This was discussed at length in the Trump thread in Speakers Corner. To put it bluntly Trump as usual had no idea what he was talking about. Countries like Germany are meeting the commitments they said they would, which ramp up to the 2% over a number of years.

h4rm0ny · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:20

Amp34 said:
This was discussed at length in the Trump thread in Speakers Corner. To put it bluntly Trump as usual had no idea what he was talking about. Countries like Germany are meeting the commitments they said they would, which ramp up to the 2% over a number of years.

Okay. Well in that case I'd need to look at that in more detail to understand it. I am going off several news sources that said these countries were not meeting their 2% commitments.

B&W · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:27

Good, a strong European military will mean they are no longer reliant on the USA. No country should ever have to be reliant on another for its security if it has the means to protect itself.

Amp34 · 13 Nov 2018 at 23:29

h4rm0ny said:
Okay. Well in that case I'd need to look at that in more detail to understand it. I am going off several news sources that said these countries were not meeting their 2% commitments.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...b5d2aba7ac5_story.html?utm_term=.f4cda2df064d

See here as an example. The 2% commitment was agreed in 2014 more of a politically sensible number rather than a hard and fast rule.

Defense planners, including some of the people who helped develop the pledge, say the figure has less to do with adequately protecting NATO than with what’s a realistic goal for increased spending, even as that spending remains well short of Cold War-era levels. (NATO has a separate, classified list of military requirements, tailor-made for each member, that reflects alliance security needs.)

“It was not a judgment that if everybody spent at 2 percent, then NATO would be fine,” said Adam Thomson, who was the British ambassador to NATO in 2014 and was involved in the push to get allies to sign on. “It was a judgment about what level could be set that was politically at least somewhat credible.”

“Nobody could quite have expected the way it has been taken up in such an unsophisticated fashion by Trump,” Thomson added. “But that, too, has had a real impact.”

and

The subtlety has often dropped out of Trump’s rhetoric. So has the squishy nature of the commitment itself: Leaders said they would “aim to move toward the 2 percent guideline within a decade,” a hedge layered on a hedge.

“Two percent is not the be-all, end-all of a country’s commitment to the alliance,” said Alexander Vershbow, a retired senior U.S. diplomat who was NATO’s deputy secretary general at the time the pledge was negotiated. “Not to say that anybody should be let off the hook, but it is fair to look at broader measures.”

Trump took a broad commitment and tried to turn it into a hammer to hit countries over the head with.