The Revival of European Defense Ambitions and Historical Background

Faced with continued Russian aggression and a US that appears strategically uninterested in Europe, unless it’s trying to annex Greenland, EU officials are once again pushing for a big bang rethink of Europe’s common defense. Only a couple of days ago, the defense commissioner floated the idea of creating a standing European military force of 100,000 troops that could potentially replace US troops in the event of a mass withdrawal. A German MEP (Member of the European Parliament) has proposed the creation of a new European security council based on the existing Security Council in the UN.

The idea of a European army was first seriously considered in 1952 when the US pushed for West Germany to rearm and join NATO. France opposed this and instead proposed a European defense community, which would have merged the armies of six European states under a supranational command. The plan collapsed in 1954 when the French parliament refused to ratify it and when West Germany joined NATO instead. France tried to resurrect this idea in the 60s when President Charles de Gaulle, who really didn’t like Europe’s growing dependence on the US, sought to turn the European Economic Community into a security alliance.

But other members still preferred to stick with NATO because there was no need to create a new European security architecture when Europe already had NATO, which covers most of Europe and includes the world’s biggest military in the form of the US. Nonetheless, significant progress was made towards an independent EU security policy around the turn of the millennium when French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair signed the St. Marlo Declaration in the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars. The declaration laid the political groundwork for the EU’s common security and defense policy and set a goal to create a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force that could intervene in European crises. However, this force was never realized, and progress towards a European army regressed........

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