We should be forced to donate one quarter of our national forces to that new army. This way national efforts would be limited for now but it’s still a colossal force that would emerge fast enough.
I see one huge problem with that idea: language.
Seriously how cool wouldn’t it be to have a “European army”. One bound not by national borders, but united under a banner of strength and solidarity, forging a legacy that transcends boundaries and defines a new era of collective power.
We have a European military already: NATO.
Just save the money, time and effort and use NATO for the command structure, but make sure we Europeans make up a larger part, with more men, more kit and more logistics.
Always an idiotic idea.
European nations individually need to bolster their defences, and coordinate themselves even tighter together through NATO.
That is literally all that’s needed, no need to bother with this fantasy of a “united army”. Who would even command it? Who’d decide to deploy it? Waiting for all states to agree? Yeah, no, invest in your armies, name and shame those that don’t.
finally they get it …
By now, I think most (at least European) Redditors have seen the map about the percentages of people who would be willing to fight for their country. The numbers for the most part were not encouraging. Of these, I think those willing to actually DO anything for it (i.e. embarking on a military career) must be even smaller.
So how are we going to find the soldiers for the great European / EU army?
He wants an EU army so that countries dont have to worry about the 2%. So Essentially some pay some dont and this “army” ends up being inefficient as fuck. If it were to happen i would assume everyone pays even more than 2% for like 2 decades so that the project can start and then eventually be lowered to around 2%.
Guy is a clown essentially
You can not have proper armed forces without federalisation. At most it would be like NATO (hence only treaty bound). First and the most important step is centralization of budget. That who controls the money controls everything else. You can when slowly force states to integrate deeper and deeper untill you have united states of Europe.
Legio Europa?
Ahhh, so only Germany, France, the Benelux and the nordics will pay for it then…
I really don’t get what’s the point of this. It’s not as if a European army is going to get more recruits than each country’s national army combined.
And this can have horrible consequences. Did people forget about how the Warsaw pact was used to send soldiers from one country to kill the citizens of another country because they were rebelling? Do we really want a repeat of that again? When people start learning from history?
And what about conflicts of interest? What if when push comes to shove the EU commanders withdraw soldiers from one of the smaller European countries because its not as important to them and leave it to be conquered? The EU has an unequal dynamic as it is, we don’t need to make it worse
What about offensive wars? I don’t think it’s fair that the whole of Europe will need to send its people to die for the interests of SOME countries in the alliance that have nothing to do with other countries (Now yes that’s a problem with NATO as well and I am not a big fan of that either but at least NATO is less centralised)
This is a terrible idea. This army would be a bureaucratic indecisive nightmare, where states would still need to have their own armies to preserve their own political interests.
I could only see it working on a regional level where countries have similar interests, i.e. joint Baltic army, Iberian army etc.
Yup.
Federalize EU, unite EU armies and put all HQ in Luxembourg. Why? Because of small dick complexes that some countries might get
Following this NATO drama has been a roller coaster ride.
So the idea is that European countries are afraid of the uncertainties of US aid because of people like Trump, so to address these concerns they propose cutting the US out of new alliances and focusing on domestic protection. As an American I respect that, a well-armed Europe is better for the western world and most of us agree with that.
However, why not just increase their military spending and improve NATO? Increasing their military improves NATO’s protection and shuts up critics like Trump.
NATO already has an effective infrastructure and control structure, all it needs is for countries to increase their capabilities.
We have an effective fighting system in place already so not sure we need to waste time and recreate the wheel.
It feels like we are all saying the same thing but just want to point fingers at each other and create a shiny new alliance with black Jack and hookers.
The fact that it took Trump to really push this is just insane.
Whats even worse is how long it’ll really take before EU has something close to NATO as far as strength, wealth and organisation.
Absolute failure of politicians. An embarrassment for Europe, with a population massively larger than the US where we arent even close to their real power.
America is so advanced that they’re already looking into a NATO of Asia and a lot of Asians have a much more favorable view of Trumps policies including Japan.
Basically NATO but without US. 100% agreed
If Trump was the kick in the butt to get the federalisation of Europe under way, then im all for it.
Its well past time that EU adopted a common military strategy, which includes a united european standing army, local manufacturing of arms and extensive pooling of ressources.
Someone needs to Czech themselves before they wreck themselves.
How sharp-witted
/s
Good that they realised that. Better late than never
It most definitely does, like yesterday. And mandatory service.
Good way to make peoples willingness to fight even lower. Like it or not, people rather fight only for their own country.
If this were to ever happen I fully expect those polls to have drastically worse results… They’re abyssmal now but this would be the last nail in the coffin.
It needed it’s own army also 70 years ago. Bit it was much more comfortable to rely on US one instead
Europe seriously needs to get its shit together. Our alliance with the US is good but this baby brother mentality needs to stop and we should aim to compete with China and US, not build dependence on them. The war in Ukraine is our war not theirs, Ukraine is supposed to be our European brother. Every time US aid to Ukraine decreases we shit our pants and we can’t have this strategy
Maybe link money for migrants with military duty?
Whether its national or supranational, either way, it needs sufficient funding to be effective. Also, how are you going to agree on procurement given competing industries in different countries?
*Imperial March plays in the distance*
No, thank you
That guy needs to quit Reddit for 5mins
Czechs are spelling it out to avoid looking like Mr. Obvious. The entire EU needs to heed the insights from a nation that understands what it means to be occupied by ‘brothers from Russia.
No, european army is retarded, if its gonna have the same vote rules as the rest of eu decision making (aka hungary vetoing everything) thats a stupid way of doing it. And being pulled into wars by being outvoted by like 3 major eu powers also sucks… individual national armies are tge only reasonable solution… altho i would say a greater degree of standardisation (both tech and command structures) would be helpful.
So instead of paying the 2% for NATO, everyone would have to pay an additional, higher or the same amount for an army they don’t control. This is absurd.
What we need is a new united military block for mutual defense, which could act independently from the US and is tasked with coordination of national militaries and industries in case of a war, not some supranationalist nonsense.
It absolutely does, he’s right. We are assailed by threats on all sides, and soon to be abandoned by Trump.
Having served in the 110 French infantry regiment (Franco – German brigade), it would be awesome. We did Euro trainings with the Germans, Belgians, Estonians, it was so cool, combat training in the day, everyone around a beer in the evening.
In terms of projection capabilities for the first decade it would be very dependent on the french navy / Air Force though.
How would it work though? Could one country veto military action or funding, withdraw troops? What would the chain of command be? There would be a lot to consider.
I don’t understand why it’s necessary to provoke Russia any more than we already have. Not only are we brazenly funding military equipment intended for killing Russian troops, stoking the Ukrainian conflict, causing more and more innocent civilian casualties, but now we’re expecting Putin to gulp down the idea of a unified European army against him? What’s the end goal here, military proliferation to what end? Will Putin shrink his armies in the face of a new unified european one? Hardly. Eurocrats seem to want nothing more than total and utter mutually assured destruction with Russia, without giving any thought to the idea that Putin may just be crazy enough to go forth with it.
I say we all start investing in bunkers soon, since it seems we’re going back to the bad old days of the 1950s, when nuclear war was just around the corner.
39 comments
[removed]
We should be forced to donate one quarter of our national forces to that new army. This way national efforts would be limited for now but it’s still a colossal force that would emerge fast enough.
I see one huge problem with that idea: language.
Seriously how cool wouldn’t it be to have a “European army”. One bound not by national borders, but united under a banner of strength and solidarity, forging a legacy that transcends boundaries and defines a new era of collective power.
We have a European military already: NATO.
Just save the money, time and effort and use NATO for the command structure, but make sure we Europeans make up a larger part, with more men, more kit and more logistics.
Always an idiotic idea.
European nations individually need to bolster their defences, and coordinate themselves even tighter together through NATO.
That is literally all that’s needed, no need to bother with this fantasy of a “united army”. Who would even command it? Who’d decide to deploy it? Waiting for all states to agree? Yeah, no, invest in your armies, name and shame those that don’t.
finally they get it …
By now, I think most (at least European) Redditors have seen the map about the percentages of people who would be willing to fight for their country. The numbers for the most part were not encouraging. Of these, I think those willing to actually DO anything for it (i.e. embarking on a military career) must be even smaller.
So how are we going to find the soldiers for the great European / EU army?
He wants an EU army so that countries dont have to worry about the 2%. So Essentially some pay some dont and this “army” ends up being inefficient as fuck. If it were to happen i would assume everyone pays even more than 2% for like 2 decades so that the project can start and then eventually be lowered to around 2%.
Guy is a clown essentially
You can not have proper armed forces without federalisation. At most it would be like NATO (hence only treaty bound). First and the most important step is centralization of budget. That who controls the money controls everything else. You can when slowly force states to integrate deeper and deeper untill you have united states of Europe.
Legio Europa?
Ahhh, so only Germany, France, the Benelux and the nordics will pay for it then…
I really don’t get what’s the point of this. It’s not as if a European army is going to get more recruits than each country’s national army combined.
And this can have horrible consequences. Did people forget about how the Warsaw pact was used to send soldiers from one country to kill the citizens of another country because they were rebelling? Do we really want a repeat of that again? When people start learning from history?
And what about conflicts of interest? What if when push comes to shove the EU commanders withdraw soldiers from one of the smaller European countries because its not as important to them and leave it to be conquered? The EU has an unequal dynamic as it is, we don’t need to make it worse
What about offensive wars? I don’t think it’s fair that the whole of Europe will need to send its people to die for the interests of SOME countries in the alliance that have nothing to do with other countries (Now yes that’s a problem with NATO as well and I am not a big fan of that either but at least NATO is less centralised)
This is a terrible idea. This army would be a bureaucratic indecisive nightmare, where states would still need to have their own armies to preserve their own political interests.
I could only see it working on a regional level where countries have similar interests, i.e. joint Baltic army, Iberian army etc.
Yup.
Federalize EU, unite EU armies and put all HQ in Luxembourg. Why? Because of small dick complexes that some countries might get
Following this NATO drama has been a roller coaster ride.
So the idea is that European countries are afraid of the uncertainties of US aid because of people like Trump, so to address these concerns they propose cutting the US out of new alliances and focusing on domestic protection. As an American I respect that, a well-armed Europe is better for the western world and most of us agree with that.
However, why not just increase their military spending and improve NATO? Increasing their military improves NATO’s protection and shuts up critics like Trump.
NATO already has an effective infrastructure and control structure, all it needs is for countries to increase their capabilities.
We have an effective fighting system in place already so not sure we need to waste time and recreate the wheel.
It feels like we are all saying the same thing but just want to point fingers at each other and create a shiny new alliance with black Jack and hookers.
The fact that it took Trump to really push this is just insane.
Whats even worse is how long it’ll really take before EU has something close to NATO as far as strength, wealth and organisation.
Absolute failure of politicians. An embarrassment for Europe, with a population massively larger than the US where we arent even close to their real power.
America is so advanced that they’re already looking into a NATO of Asia and a lot of Asians have a much more favorable view of Trumps policies including Japan.
Basically NATO but without US. 100% agreed
If Trump was the kick in the butt to get the federalisation of Europe under way, then im all for it.
Its well past time that EU adopted a common military strategy, which includes a united european standing army, local manufacturing of arms and extensive pooling of ressources.
Someone needs to Czech themselves before they wreck themselves.
How sharp-witted
/s
Good that they realised that. Better late than never
It most definitely does, like yesterday. And mandatory service.
Good way to make peoples willingness to fight even lower. Like it or not, people rather fight only for their own country.
If this were to ever happen I fully expect those polls to have drastically worse results… They’re abyssmal now but this would be the last nail in the coffin.
It needed it’s own army also 70 years ago. Bit it was much more comfortable to rely on US one instead
Europe seriously needs to get its shit together. Our alliance with the US is good but this baby brother mentality needs to stop and we should aim to compete with China and US, not build dependence on them. The war in Ukraine is our war not theirs, Ukraine is supposed to be our European brother. Every time US aid to Ukraine decreases we shit our pants and we can’t have this strategy
Maybe link money for migrants with military duty?
Whether its national or supranational, either way, it needs sufficient funding to be effective. Also, how are you going to agree on procurement given competing industries in different countries?
*Imperial March plays in the distance*
No, thank you
That guy needs to quit Reddit for 5mins
Czechs are spelling it out to avoid looking like Mr. Obvious. The entire EU needs to heed the insights from a nation that understands what it means to be occupied by ‘brothers from Russia.
No, european army is retarded, if its gonna have the same vote rules as the rest of eu decision making (aka hungary vetoing everything) thats a stupid way of doing it. And being pulled into wars by being outvoted by like 3 major eu powers also sucks… individual national armies are tge only reasonable solution… altho i would say a greater degree of standardisation (both tech and command structures) would be helpful.
So instead of paying the 2% for NATO, everyone would have to pay an additional, higher or the same amount for an army they don’t control. This is absurd.
What we need is a new united military block for mutual defense, which could act independently from the US and is tasked with coordination of national militaries and industries in case of a war, not some supranationalist nonsense.
It absolutely does, he’s right. We are assailed by threats on all sides, and soon to be abandoned by Trump.
Having served in the 110 French infantry regiment (Franco – German brigade), it would be awesome. We did Euro trainings with the Germans, Belgians, Estonians, it was so cool, combat training in the day, everyone around a beer in the evening.
In terms of projection capabilities for the first decade it would be very dependent on the french navy / Air Force though.
How would it work though? Could one country veto military action or funding, withdraw troops? What would the chain of command be? There would be a lot to consider.
I don’t understand why it’s necessary to provoke Russia any more than we already have. Not only are we brazenly funding military equipment intended for killing Russian troops, stoking the Ukrainian conflict, causing more and more innocent civilian casualties, but now we’re expecting Putin to gulp down the idea of a unified European army against him? What’s the end goal here, military proliferation to what end? Will Putin shrink his armies in the face of a new unified european one? Hardly. Eurocrats seem to want nothing more than total and utter mutually assured destruction with Russia, without giving any thought to the idea that Putin may just be crazy enough to go forth with it.
I say we all start investing in bunkers soon, since it seems we’re going back to the bad old days of the 1950s, when nuclear war was just around the corner.
He’s right.