Wednesday, March 23, 2022

a trans-European army?

A trans-European army? I say Why not? Trump's main complaint about NATO was that the US has basically been footing the bill for Europe's defense while European countries have allowed their own militaries to atrophy (the lone exception would be the UK, which maintains a strong national defense—even more so now, given that it's out of the EU). 

The video below makes the strange point that French president Emmanuel Macron thinks France and the US don't see eye-to-eye on defense issues, and that Europe needs to think about developing a Eurocentric defense apparatus. I don't see how this is different, in spirit, from what Trump obviously wanted, i.e., for Europe to foot (more of) the bill for its own defense. Be that as it may, the video below argues that Macron is pro-Eurocentric army, and that's just fine by me. Bringing in European troops of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds shouldn't be too big of a deal: the Swiss, who speak at least four different languages, have done this since forever (in fact, there's a joke in Switzerland that the Swiss army is the country's greatest unifying force).

The video also seems obsessed with talking about a trans-European army as if it had to take the place of current standing armies. Why? Why not make a separate trans-European military and work out sovereignty questions that way? By doing this, you don't have the French complaining that they'd no longer have control of their army: they'd still have their army to defend France, plus there'd be the trans-European army whose generic purpose would be the defense of all of Europe. Or am I being naive?





2 comments:

John Mac said...

I'm sorry. You make valid arguments in support of a trans-European army. But when I first saw the headline the image that flashed in my brain was an army of transgender individuals. Then again, that might work too.

Anonymous said...

This is more of the same globalist BS that created the EU. It is another attempt to subject nations to a supranational body. The ultimate horror is a country's troops being used to subdue its own subjects. If the EU is falling apart how do they expect cohesiveness in such an army?

Bill