EU army

[gruffalo]

98elise said:

I see a flaw in the an EU army. I joined the British Armed forces, I would not have joined a Euro Armed force.

I was happy to be a part of NATO and to work with other nations armed forces, but I would not join a single EU armed force.

Yep, that rings true for me as well.

[Hugo a Gogo]

don4l said:

Are kippers whining about the EU forming an army?

I voted Leave and I would be very happy to see the EU have an army.

In fact, the problem is that most EU members do not spend enough on defence.

If Britain and France had not cut military spending in the 1930s, then WW2 would never have happened.

the French army was enormous in 39, widely considered as the strongest in the world at the time, outnumbered Germany by miles in tanks, planes, guns and men, their tanks were the best in the world too

Russia had more stuff, more men, but tended to execute their own officers, so weren't great, tactically

[anonymous-user]

paulrockliffe said:

And on that chart you can be sure that Greece might be spending a lot of money, but it won't be providing any real defence. It'll be hosed on managers and pensions and bribes.

Both the UK and the US include military pensions in the defence spending budget. Indeed without it, the UK would be under the 2% contribution as was revealed recently when the MOD took on the expense from DWP.

Here's why Greece spend as much as they do on defence.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-greeces-military...

[Shar2]

+1
If anyone knows recent history, they will know that the Russians like to have a country sized buffer between them and Europe, this is why they are upset with the EU courting the Ukraine. The annexing of the Crimea is also a way of keeping their only warm water port, not to mention Sebastapol, which they fought hard to keep during WWII, and the riviera city of Odessa.

[LimaDelta]

Shar2 said:

+1
If anyone knows recent history, they will know that the Russians like to have a country sized buffer between them and Europe, this is why they are upset with the EU courting the Ukraine. The annexing of the Crimea is also a way of keeping their only warm water port, not to mention Sebastapol, which they fought hard to keep during WWII, and the riviera city of Odessa.

*cough* Syria

[JMGS4]

Talksteer said:

EU army is entirely logical and not particularly scary.
Collectively the EU spends a phenomenal amount on defence and fields a large number of men.
However they lack a number of capabilities particularly in terms of rare full spectrum stuff like ELINT, transport, expeditionary stuff, HQ and comms systems.
They replicate plenty of capabilities in small inefficient penny packets.
Chipping in for these capabilities at an alliance level makes sense so does common procurement.
The EU military command is only going to be able to command troops provided by members and will only be able to deploy with some complicated decision making.
Feasible uses for the EU army.

• Improved capabilities to respond to Russian little green men on the borders most probably under a NATO article 50 response.
• Deployment on a major operation like Iraq or Bosnia
• Provision of peace keepers

The EU collective decision making isn't going to allow for much adventurism.
It's not going to be used to attack other members anymore than NATO would nor will members be obligated to provide men. Like NATO it also wouldn't have had any prohibition on members acting independently.
As an aside the rest of the EU really wanted the UK to lead it as the EUs biggest defence spender and most belligerent member.

Agree with most of the above....
Germany and France have a combined Brigade based near here... to use a US expression a total clusterf*ck.
They can't even agree on what radio frequencies to use, or on which computer language, or on who supplies the vehicles.....
As a fighting force absolutely useless as the "commanders" are politically appointed puppets with seemingly minimal actual experience!

I can't see an EU "army" as anything except a shambles, with the dutch long hair, the belgian language problem, the froggy nationalism, and the germans not wanting any uniforms....and none of the mentioned can march properly either!
Juncker and his cronies couldn't organise a proverbial p*ss-up in a brewery, so to be in charge of an "army" without having dozens of
conflabs before any action is taken would lead to a totally incompetent and useless bureaucratic shambles. And arriving too late at any "action", as usual...

[BMRuss]

Ah the EU army, the one that Clegg said would NEVER happen and tried to make Farage look an idiot for suggesting it in their debates...good luck to them I say, let them get on with it.

[Foliage]

gruffalo said:

98elise said:

I see a flaw in the an EU army. I joined the British Armed forces, I would not have joined a Euro Armed force.

I was happy to be a part of NATO and to work with other nations armed forces, but I would not join a single EU armed force.

Yep, that rings true for me as well.

Don't think it would work like that, wouldn't the regiments be rolled in under an eu command structure which in itself wouldn't have been an issue, the issue would have been when the UK command structure was removed and we couldn't for example send ships to support a natural disaster on one of our colonies without eu approval, for the squaddie on the ground you wouldn't see much of a change id not think.

The issue isn't the eu army itself its the command structure and who is in control, MEPs having a more diverse political ambition could cause vast problems. They could stop us defending the falklands for example, forcing us to give it up.

[Shar2]

LimaDelta said:

Shar2 said:

+1
If anyone knows recent history, they will know that the Russians like to have a country sized buffer between them and Europe, this is why they are upset with the EU courting the Ukraine. The annexing of the Crimea is also a way of keeping their only warm water port, not to mention Sebastapol, which they fought hard to keep during WWII, and the riviera city of Odessa.

*cough* Syria

Ok, Only warm water port in mainland Russia.

[paulrockliffe]

Camoradi said:

paulrockliffe said:

And on that chart you can be sure that Greece might be spending a lot of money, but it won't be providing any real defence. It'll be hosed on managers and pensions and bribes.

Much of the Greek military spending was on massively overpriced submarines which were never delivered.

Have a guess who was supplying them....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/10895239...

Standard.

[paulrockliffe]

pablo said:

paulrockliffe said:

And on that chart you can be sure that Greece might be spending a lot of money, but it won't be providing any real defence. It'll be hosed on managers and pensions and bribes.

Both the UK and the US include military pensions in the defence spending budget. Indeed without it, the UK would be under the 2% contribution as was revealed recently when the MOD took on the expense from DWP.

Here's why Greece spend as much as they do on defence.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-greeces-military...

Thanks, that was a useful read. When I added pensions to my list of examples, I remembered the controversy around our pensions - Is it pensions we pay out or future liability accrual that we include? The latter makes sense, so it's probably the former. Anyway, I included it as I'm sure the Greek pensions will be inline with their other pensions and be excessively generous.

[Mark Benson]

What happens when 2 member states fall out, do they get to pick teams like we did at school?

"I'll have Germany's tanks", "Well I'll have France's planes", "Aww I wanted them", "Well you should have picked them".....

[Esseesse]

gruffalo said:

98elise said:

I see a flaw in the an EU army. I joined the British Armed forces, I would not have joined a Euro Armed force.

I was happy to be a part of NATO and to work with other nations armed forces, but I would not join a single EU armed force.

Yep, that rings true for me as well.

I've also thought something along these lines. If anything serious happened and people were required to die to defend the EU, would anyone turn up?

[s2art]

If they go ahead it will kill NATO. Why should the USA pay for most of NATO when the EU has its own armed forces.Massive duplication of effort. It will give Trump the excuse to pare down NATO to just the USA, Canada and the UK (maybe one or two scandiwegians too)

[paulrockliffe]

Doesn't matter really, whoever controls the military controls the nation state. There won't be nation states left to argue. Or leave.

The actual answer is that they can't because of NATO, so someone has to decide to leave NATO first. Can you be in the EU and not in NATO? If not you just gave away your army.

[ATG]

gruffalo said:

98elise said:

I see a flaw in the an EU army. I joined the British Armed forces, I would not have joined a Euro Armed force.

I was happy to be a part of NATO and to work with other nations armed forces, but I would not join a single EU armed force.

Yep, that rings true for me as well.

That's not what's being proposed. You wouldn't be joining an EU Army, you'd be joining the Belgian Army (hoo hah) or whatever, and going on joint exercises and operations with armed forces from other EU member states, using compatible equipment and looking to build collective capabilities; pretty much exactly the way NATO operates.

There certainly are people looking to create a genuinely federal european state out of the EU, but they are nowhere near succeeding and their ambitions to date have been roundly defeated over and over again. For example, there is no "european foreign policy". There was an attempt to get member states to pool their foreign policy competence within an EU entity, and, guess what? It was roundly rejected by the member states and is now off the table. It's one of many examples of where the proposed "EU Constitution" was a daft fantasy that got watered down to the point of ceasing to exist in all but name. In the absence of EU-level, collective foreign policy, the idea of having an "EU Army" in the way that the French of British have an army is absolutely bonkers, and no one is proposing such a thing.

So, the question really is whether or not having an EU version of NATO operating alongside NATO makes any sense. Is it just an unnecessary duplication? Would it create yet more bureaucracy? Would it make NATO more capable? Etc, etc.

[alfie2244]

Is this the cue for Italian army jokes?

[ATG]

paulrockliffe said:

Doesn't matter really, whoever controls the military controls the nation state. There won't be nation states left to argue. Or leave.

.

given it'll be the member states controlling their own, national armed forces, it isn't going to be shifting power to a new centralised state.

[Mark Benson]

ATG said:

Is it just an unnecessary duplication? Would it create yet more bureaucracy?

As with the vast majority of the activities of the EU, the answers are yes and yes.

[carinaman]

44 minutes in, written evidence about EU Army submitted to Defence Select Committee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihFx3LiTJPw