Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez are among the latest voices to support the idea of a European army to ensure a credible and lasting peace in the continent.
“It is time to create a European army, EU armed forces with troops from all 27 member countries, working under a single flag with the same objectives,” Sánchez said. “This is the only way that we become a true union.”
However, despite calls from various capitals in recent years, EU officials in Brussels remain reluctant to reignite the conversation.
The idea isn’t really for everyone to give up their militaries, at least in the short to mid term, but to integrate that army with a central command. There are already various integrated divisions and battalions serving with other member’s armies, iirc for example the dutch have attached a pioneer battalion to the german forces that essentially operates as one of theirs, pretty sure the Scandinavian countries have done similar things as well.
For central command there is the NATO infrastructure. Even if the US don’t participate, the central command is there.
Fair point, although NATO without america would essentially be EU and friends. So it makes sense to build up that infrastructure locally.
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The central command is there, but it’s led by America. This means that, if we rely on NATO mechanisms, America effectively controls collective responses by Europe, which is undesirable now that they are not on Europe’s side in the conflict with Russia, and they state over and over again that they intend to annex Greenland.
A European central command and standardisation between countries makes a lot of sense to me. If member states don’t want to give up autonomy, maybe with some kind of opt-out clause. That way the countries that are willing won’t need to coordinate poorly through dozens of bilateral communication channels, but can jointly operate with a common strategy, and at worst, not all member states would contribute to every action. Plenty of possibilities for problems still, but a step up from the current situation.
I would personally still prefer to see a more integrated European military, though. While we will have a bunch of low-population countries all doing all possible tasks poorly, instead of having some specialise to specific strengths and sourcing collectively, the EU will always be weaker militarily than a comparable force that is not split in such a manner.
Central command is no material infrastructure. Europe can listen to a European commander when they are fighting European fights.