Why does everyone overlook history when discussing European defense?

 European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently called for a unified European Army. Jane’s then pointed out that the real efficiencies would come from a single European Air Force. An official U.K. spokesperson then predictably said no, even though London really can’t stop other countries from going ahead: “Our position is crystal clear that defence is a national, not an E.U., responsibility and that there is no prospect of that position changing and no prospect of a European army.”

There are many fine arguments against a united European military. But, perhaps predictably, a British analyst advanced what is quite possibly the stupidest. “There’s no point in talking about an army unless you're talking about a federal state.”

Oh, for f--k’s sake. Back in 1952, six governments wrote 86 goddamned pages explaining exactly how you could build a single army without a federal state. It would be useful to explain why it would be a bad idea to take the 1952 treaty off the shelf and apply it today. (Article 10, for example, would need extensive rewriting.) It would be useful to explain why the treaty creates a federal state by stealth. (AFAICT it doesn’t, but if Mr. Keohane thinks it does I would be fascinated to hear why.) It would be useful to explain why the idea is a political nonstarter in 2015. (It is, but I do not understand the reasons.) 

But we just get some handwaving. The fellow doesn’t even seem to realize that Europe came within a few French votes of a single military 63 years ago.

The ignorance of history is breathtaking.

Anyway, a call to our friends at AFOE: why does a resurrection of the EDC appear to be off the table?

Comments

[J.H.]

I think the biggest issue is that there are too many divergent interests for a true EU army/airforce. You could perhaps get a subset of EU countries pooling their militaries together along the lines of the 1952 treaty but this would likely exclude the UK (for very obvious reasons) and perhaps also France (independent nuclear power, desire for a separate military force to carry out missions of French interest such as in Francophone Africa, for much the same reasons as it rejected the prospect in 1953) and some Central European states (which might not wish to integrate their armed forces any more tightly as a result of having regained a lot of freedom to act independently from the Soviet sphere).

Plus there are the neutral countries like Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Austria which would likely not join suit since there would be the sticky question of how such a European army relates to NATO (the 1952 treaty explicitly ties it to NATO which was not a problem since all the prospective members were basically NATO members or fell under NATO's umbrella anyway). I can't see the neutral 4 signing up for a unified army which may have NATO commitments when they themselves do not and I can't see any NATO members signing up for a unified army which would be a neutral, non-NATO force in order to accommodate the neutral 4.

So we are left with...probably Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark and perhaps some eastern and central European states like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania (I can't see Orban's Hungary signing up for this).

But then any unified European army with Germany at its core will probably have to follow the Bundeswehr tradition of not being in engaged in anything except NATO operations, defensive operations and peacekeeping operations. Even then Germany declined to participate in NATO's Libyan operations and presumably Germany would not be comfortable with a unified European armed forces that it participated in doing so either at the time. A number of the other potential contributors DID participate in Operation Unified Protector and so would probably not be okay with the German post-war tradition for use of the armed forces.

So ultimately the core group of countries where this concept could work would probably be the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark and perhaps some eastern and central European states like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania. This is already a fairly fragmented group and is even more so without Germany, France and Poland in the mix.