Posted on 03/08/2015 10:00:43 AM PDT by Olog-hai
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has advocated a combined EU military force, suggesting two major benefits: to improve the bloc’s standing on the world stage, and to send a message to Moscow.
Juncker told the Welt am Sonntag Sunday paper that forming an EU army would be one of the best ways for the bloc to defend its values, as well as its borders.
“An army like this would help us to better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on Europe’s responsibilities in the world,” Juncker told the weekly. “Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.de ...
What they all want is a one-world army, controlled by the UN.
Controlled by the people who control the UN.
Exactly - start wars without having to bother getting any political support.
Like the Nike slogan “Just Do It”.
Only if they get to take over the UN.
I thought that’s what NATO was for?
Not since NATO got taken over by the EU.
Not that Obama cares about stuff like NATO anyhow. Colonialist, you know.
Yes and Nigel Farage has been warning about this.
There’s another aspect. An EU army could stop countries that wanted to leave the EU from doing so. Anything the EU does seems to increase Germany’s control over the rest of Europe and take away freedoms from the little folk.
And this EU army, like the EU itself, would be accountable to no one. So the army could do anything without fear of reprisal from its own people, short of an armed rebellion. Very scary indeed.
Makes sense, but I can’t see the Frogs going along. Probably need a requirement that all officers be Germans.
How many times have we seen this movie? Our bases in Germany have served a major purpose: keeping the Germans from getting too frisky.
Precisely.
For a very long time, conservatives here in the USA have said that Europe should bear the burden of their own defense. They should pay the bills and they should have their own army (or armies).
EUROPE DEFINITELY needs to defend itself, pay for it themselves and have their OWN ARMY!!
The USA does not need to pay for Europe’s defense and it does not need to have US soldiers doing a job that they should do for themselves!!
I CANNOT OVER-EMPHASIZE THAT, no matter how strongly I put it or how many times I repeat it. It CANNOT be over-emphasized!!
They aren’t conservatives. I do not care what they call themselves.
And ever since WWII, the USA agreed to foot Europe’s defense as the main method of preventing old empires on that continent from rising again. Of course, the liberals helped along the European Union, which is just another form of one of those old empires, and it will not be to our benefit one whit, especially if they get a unified military.
Conservatives are not about giving away money-for-nothing for those “do-nothing” European states. They are like LIBERALS over there, wanting someone else to PAY THE BILLS while they get a free ride!
Conservatives here are not like the LIBERALS in Europe who want the FREE RIDE from the USA and the US Taxpayer.
You’ve got it completely backward for conservatives in the USA!
The USA doesn’t need to spend a SINGLE PENNY for defending those “good for nothing” European states!
This goes as far back as 1997 from the CATO Institute!!! Even though it’s “dated” in terms of Russia, Russia is a European problem and not an American one!
— — —
Let Europeans Defend Themselves
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/let-europeans-defend-themselves
During four decades of cold war, rivalry with the Soviet Union was the beacon that guided American foreign policy. The size and structure of the U.S. military, American alliances and security commitments and U.S. involvement in remote regional conflicts all were driven by the need to contain America’s enemies in the Kremlin and their surrogates around the world. No part of the foreign policy debate occurred outside the confines of the East-West conflict.
That Cold War paradigm, which for so long was in the center of every foreign policy initiative, withered away with the Soviet Union, yet Washington policy-makers have displayed a disturbing inclination to maintain Cold War policies.
Rather than welcome the opportunity to divert resources from national defense to more productive sectors of the economy, they cling stubbornly to a military that costs more than it did during the Nixon era and remains configured to confront a superpower enemy. Instead of viewing minor regional conflicts as unfortunate but ubiquitous features of the international state system from which the United States can afford to remain detached, much of the foreign policy elite advocates rushing in at the first signs of trouble, needlessly sacrificing American blood.
Instead of encouraging America’s West European allies to develop a new security system that is relevant to the post-Cold War era, Washington insists on maintaining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - an alliance that was designed to defend the West against the Soviet Union and has no other credible mission or rationale. In many ways, the debate over post-Cold War European security epitomizes the foreign policy community’s irrational, almost sentimental attachment to Cold War institutional and policy relics, regardless of their relevance in the new international environment.
So strong is the determination to maintain NATO that the alliance no longer seems to be viewed as a tool to protect American vital interests; in the eyes of many of its proponents, NATO itself has risen to the level of a vital interest.
That approach is wrong and potentially dangerous. NATO functioned effectively during the Cold War, but it is out of place in the new environment. The conditions that led to its creation - the Soviet threat and the extraordinary coincidence of American and European interests in containing that threat - no longer exist.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the concurrence in American and European interests has diminished dramatically. Conflict, not cooperation, has been the hallmark of U.S.-European relations in the post-Cold War era. Former British diplomat Jonathan Clarke makes the provocative observation, “If NATO did not already exist, it is doubtful that Washington would now invent it.”
Yet Washington not only refuses to “disinvent” NATO, it seems determined to reinvent it. Much of the foreign policy community is obsessed with proposals for new NATO missions and expanded NATO membership. Many of the proposals conflict with one another, and others are inherently unworkable. But their authors remain engaged in an earnest discussion of how to ensure that NATO remains relevant in the post-Cold War world.
To most of NATO’s champions, no suggestion is too radical for serious consideration - except the suggestion that the alliance has outlived its usefulness and should be eliminated so that an alternative arrangement for European security, one that is appropriate to the post-Cold War era, can be made.
What should be done? The Western European Union, the security arm of the European Union, should replace NATO as the primary guarantor of European security. A robust WEU would have a number of advantages over NATO. WEU member states have many common security interests, in contrast to the increasingly divergent U.S. and European perspectives that already have produced serious disarray in NATO.
The West European nations have ample economic resources and are capable of providing for their own defense without a U.S. subsidy. Finally, Moscow is likely to view the WEU as less provocative than a U.S.-dominated NATO - especially an enlarged version that expands to Russia’s borders.
Maintaining NATO as the primary European security institution is expensive and risks drawing the United States into military entanglements even when no vital American interests are at stake. Replacing NATO with the WEU would emphasize that most disputes in Central and Eastern Europe are more relevant to the European nations than to America, and that dealing with such problems is properly a European responsibility. Moreover, once the West Europeans develop a full independent military capability, the WEU would be a strong partner for the United States in the event of a future threat to mutual U.S.-European security interests.
You can stop replying now. You clearly do not understand the situation there. Allowing “Europe” to militarize guarantees war.
Libertarians do not understand geopolitics, and even are fine with amnesty. No sale.
Let Europe Defend Itself
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/06/18/syrian-crisis-highlights-need-to-merge-nato-with-the-eu
NATO was set up 64 years ago to defend Europe against the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic Treaty that created the Alliance hitched the United States’ military might to the defense of Europe and ring-fenced the Soviet empire until it collapsed, leaving Europe without any significant threat. Thanks to European industry and NATO’s defense umbrella, Europeans rebuilt their countries from the devastation of World War II, created the European Union and built one of the largest economies in the world.
But NATO also left two corrosive legacies on the transatlantic allies: Europeans became accustomed to getting their defense on the cheap via the U.S. taxpayer; the United States has drunk deeply from the jug of “leader of the free world” and has difficulty passing even a regional baton to the Europeans. The result: an anemic European security establishment that is regularly criticized by American leaders.
Witness the Libyan war, in which European military forces could do little against the middling power of Mummar Qaddafi until the United States deployed its high tech weaponry to bail out its allies, in their backyard, at a cost to the U.S. taxpayer of $1 billion. Can this unbalanced division of labor in which one NATO member, the United States, is permanently responsible for the protection of 26 European countries continue to be viable forever?
Given the massive cuts to the U.S. defense budget looming on the horizon and America’s “pivot to Asia,” we don’t think so.
Please stop spamming the thread.
A European army resurrects a very dangerous enemy of the USA, bottom line.
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