EU-DIGEST

European Defence Force

Daniel Mützel writesin EurActiv.de: "The EU is stepping up its efforts on common defence policy and a “coalition of the willing” could quickly deploy EU troops and promote common defence projects. EurActiv Germany reports.

How under threat is Europe? The question has worried European security policy lawmakers for some time and the events of 2016 have escalated concerns.

Back in June, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presented her Global Strategy, which called for an EU-wide integrated security community to tackle instability on Europe’s doorstep.

Another white paper produced by the German and French foreign ministers a few months later warned against an “erosion” of the EU and called for stronger military cooperation between member states".

Many people feel that NATO has in fact outlived its purpose of a combined US - European Defence force to protect Europe during the cold war. Instead NATO has dragged most if not all of its European member states into costly US "military advetures" in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which all have been basically total failures and created an incredible Refugees problem for both the EU and Turkey.

As to the present military situation in Syria and the NATO's effectiveness there, one can only qualify that as a total disaster.
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A report recently discussed in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee shows how far Brussels has moved forward with the idea.

Hardly any other EU document better describes how the perception of European security politicians has changed in reaction to global events.

It alleges that the EU is now “surrounded by an arc of instability”, which includes “terrorism, massive refugee flows, or disinformation campaigns”.

The report also adds that since international relations are now dominated by power politics again, “defence and deterrence capabilities” are crucial when it comes to diplomacy. It concludes that the EU has to use its “unrivalled soft power with hard power.

EU-Digest

The US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has managed to gain unprecedented attention for stating in his usual flamboyant fashion something that many respected foreign policy analysts have maintained for years: that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an obsolete security arrangement created in a vastly different era to meet an entirely different security situation. Yet NATO partisans typically act as though the date on the calendar reads 1950 instead of 2016. They see Russia as nearly identical to the Soviet Union at the zenith of its military power and global ideological influence and regard democratic Europe as a helpless protectorate.

Today, however, Russia is little more than a regional actor with limited ability to project power. And far from helpless, Europe’s democratic nations have robust economies. As long as they continue to rely on America’s military and its security guarantees, they will not divert financial resources from their preferred domestic welfare priorities to national defense.

A striking feature of analysts who echo former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s contention that the United States is the “indispensable nation” is the bland assumption that America must take primary (and often exclusive) responsibility for the defense of other regions. One popular proposal is to reverse the post–Cold War drawdown of U.S. forces stationed in Europe. Advocates also typically want to pre-position large quantities of sophisticated weaponry in the Baltic republics and along other points on Russia’s western frontier so that the American military can ride to the rescue if Moscow engages in threatening behavior.

The notion of the United States as the indispensable nation is a manifestation of national narcissism that is especially pernicious with respect to Europe. The European Union now has both a population and an economy larger than the United States. Equally pertinent, the European Union has three times the population and a gross domestic product (GDP) some ten times that of Russia — the principal security concern of those countries.

Even post-Brexit, that impressive strength will be diminished just modestly. Clearly, the European Union is capable of building whatever defenses might be necessary to deter Russian aggression — even granting the questionable assumption that Moscow harbors large-scale expansionist ambitions instead of just seeking to preserve a limited security zone along its borders. The European nations have not done more to counter Russia because it has been easier for them to free-ride on America’s security efforts.

Read more: NATO is an Institutional Dinosaur | Cato Institute