Would be interesting for Europe Union to form its own army. The combined effort would produce a super-power status armed forces which could rival America.
as i have said many times before; it doesn't matter how many shiny war toys the EU could collect together, europe is post-war, they don't have the balls to use those toys, so it would have very little influence in bolstering europes foreign policy.
it would just look very pretty on the parade ground, and be treated as such.
-------------------------------------------------
you also need to be able to create a common foriegn policy........... which doesn't exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boohugh
In theory the idea is interesting, it would just be the next big stage of a process in defence procurement and cooperation that is already happening to some degree.
The only problem is there would be no political agreement on when to use it so it would be pointless having in the first place! :laugh4:
Edit: Although like to add, pretty sure all the EU defence budgets combined still wouldn't rival the US one.
even that doesn't work very well, A400 anyone, or Horizon, etc.
agreed, as i said above.
indeed not, because europe is post-war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Subotan
YESSSSSSSS:yes::yes::yes:
given your enthusiasm for a euro-army is expressed in a thread dedicated to the most euroskeptic british electorate in a long time, i have to question your judgement. do you honestly see the next parliament having a mandate for foriegn policy integration with the EU sufficient to create a euro-army?
01-13-2010, 13:53
Subotan
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
No, but a man can dream. A man can dream.
01-13-2010, 14:21
Beskar
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
as i have said many times before; it doesn't matter how many shiny war toys the EU could collect together, europe is post-war, they don't have the balls to use those toys, so it would have very little influence in bolstering europes foreign policy.
it would just look very pretty on the parade ground, and be treated as such.
You would make a great American.
Quote:
you also need to be able to create a common foriegn policy........... which doesn't exist.
Other than NATO which can be argued as one, there is the brand new office which could cover this... so yes, there is.
01-13-2010, 14:31
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
You would make a great American.
Other than NATO which can be argued as one, there is the brand new office which could cover this... so yes, there is.
am i wrong.
NATO constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party, and having a high representative does mean we have anything even remotely like common foreign policy objectives.
01-13-2010, 14:46
Vladimir
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
Would be interesting for Europe Union to form its own army. The combined effort would produce a super-power status armed forces which could rival America.
:laugh4: There already is one except the initials are U.S. and not E.U.
Laughable. Europe, and Europeans, would never support such a force. They're as addicted to U.S. military support as we are to middle-east oil.
It does have some appeal though. Many have commented on the fact that we only kill brown people nowdays. Real men fight in Europe.
Oh, and this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
You would make a great American.
Other than NATO which can be argued as one, there is the brand new office which could cover this... so yes, there is.
I suspect that is a compliment. That's how I would take it if someone claimed I would make a great German, Brit, or (the sadly unattainable goal :shame: ) a Dutchman. I'd even settle for a Walloon.
NATO as a common foreign policy? You must be joking.
01-13-2010, 14:56
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir
I suspect that is a compliment. That's how I would take it if someone claimed I would make a great German, Brit, or (the sadly unattainable goal :shame: ) a Dutchman. I'd even settle for a Walloon.
NATO as a common foreign policy? You must be joking.
given he's a brit, i suspect it's not.
sadly that is about the limit of 'muscular' european foreign policy; "don't attack me, i have a big brother who'll duff you up!"
Like many Tories, George Osborne loves a Swedish model and this evening was with Sweden’s finance minister who like him is young and articulate but has the added advantage of being in power and fresh from his role in his country’s EU presidency (not that much of a triumph some say). The Shadow Chancellor used their get together to issue a message that should by rights make waves, namely that the Tories will cut spending as soon as they get in (if the voters allow, natch).
I repeat: spending for FY 10/11 will be cut under a Conservative government.
Mr Osborne has provided no further details beyond repeating the hit list he set out in Manchester, namely tax credits for those on £50k+, no more Child Trust Fund for the well off, slashing ‘propaganda spending’, etc. What he hasn’t said either is whether spending will be cut relative to FY 09/10, or whether spending will grow less than planned by Gordon Brown: spending in 10/11 is due to rise by £31bn. Is Mr Osborne lopping that off and more or what? This is the kind of statement many have been pressing him for, and Brown Central have been hoping he’ll make.
Full details are in Andrew Porter’s story for tonight’s Telegraph, and the key quote from Mr Osborne is: “The message could not be clearer – if you find yourself on the wrong road, you take the first available exit instead of carrying on. With the date of the general election increasingly likely to be after the beginning of the next financial year, that means we will need to make early in-year reductions in existing plans. Programmes that represent poor value for money, excessive spending on things like advertising and consultants, spending on tax credits for people earning over £50,000, and spending on Child Trust Funds for better off families will all have to be cut during the financial year.”
01-15-2010, 11:40
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
Would be interesting for Europe Union to form its own army. The combined effort would produce a super-power status armed forces which could rival America.
One of the major consequences of the ongoing war in Afghanistan is a very changed understanding of NATO and the dynamics of the alliance. The response of the European nations to NATO’s call for additional forces for the IFOR mission shows this.
The heaviest burden in Afghanistan has been borne by the US, UK and Canada. Of the older NATO nations Denmark has played a major role, contributing more troops and taking more casualties as a part of its population than any other continental European nation. However, other Western nations have not pulled their weight at all, with Germany now acting as the problem child of the Western Alliance.
Germany, with the fourth largest economy in the world and a much larger population than the UK, had less than half of the force strength in Afghanistan as the UK. While British forces are committed to the toughest part of the country, the south, and are there to fight, the Germans have stationed their force in the safest part of Afghanistan, the north, and have and surrounded their commitment with numerous caveats restricting when and how their forces might engage in combat.
In short, while the US, UK, Denmark, and the Eastern Europeans are in Afghanistan to fight a war, the German government has generally avoided calling their deployment a “war” and has generally framed it as ‘peace” operation. Confronted with a huge leftist peace movement at home, Angela Merkel’s government will not expand its force in Afghanistan. German troops are stationed in Afghanistan as a symbolic act of NATO solidarity than as a true military ally. NATO officers in Afghanistan complain that the German army will not actively patrol and tends to hole up in their heavily fortified camps. In short, they will not do the kind of active counterinsurgency operations among the population that the operation requires. This is not because the Bundeswehr is an incompetent force, but because the German commanders sent to Afghanistan are under strict orders to avoid casualties.
The extreme sensitivity of the Germans to any kind of fighting was demonstrated by the German political crisis that ensued after a German commander called in an airstrike on a gasoline tanker truck that had been seized by the Taliban. The strike was successful and the truck destroyed, although there were civilian casualties. The fact that German actions had caused civilian casualties set off the German media and the politicians of both Right and Left and pushed Merkel to fire both her defence minister and the military chief of the Bundeswehr.
In fact, there was no scandal and what the German commander had done was exactly right. Given their use of suicide bombers, the Taliban would have used the truck as a huge bomb against other Afghans or NATO forces. A bomb of that size might have killed hundreds of Western forces — so the NATO air strike that caused such agonies in German domestic politics actually saved hundreds of lives. Yet, such is the force of the pacifist Left in Germany today that no senior person in the government would stand up and tell that simple fact to the public.
While Germany is proving to be a major weakness in the NATO alliance, the new Eastern European members of NATO have stepped up to the mission and proven their committment to Western defence. While Germany rejected the recent call for reinforcements to Afghanistan, the Poles are increasing their force to over 3,000 men. Poland, with half of Germany’s population, will soon have troop strength equal to Germany’s. The Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – have a combined population of about 10 per cent of Germany’s. But in late 2009 these three countries had a military and civilian deployment to Afghanistan of over 700 military and civilian personnel – a much larger committment in terms of their populations and economies than Germany’s.
Unlike the Germans, the Poles and Baltic forces deploy their troops to combat without restrictions or conditions. They are currently serving and taking casualties under US and UK command in the tough parts of Afghanistan. Friends of mine serving in Afghanistan now refer to Germans and to “real allies” – meaning the Eastern Europeans. The strong commitment of these countries to the Western system is revitalising the alliance.
01-15-2010, 12:04
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Mythbusters: Britain's finances are in a poor state because of the financial crisis that began in America
No minister, this disaster began years before the credit crunch
Britain is in a financial mess because of a spending binge that stretches back to 2002, says Jeff Randall
By Jeff Randall
Published: 8:20PM GMT 14 Jan 2010
'Of all the ways to dig out what's really going on," said my friend, the world-weary newshound, "there's nothing better than a DFE."
I nodded sagely, pretending to catch his drift, while trying to work out what or who a DFE could be. A quick trawl through Google provided little help. Neither Double Faced Eels (a Latvian rock band) nor Dragon Fli Empire (a Canadian hip-hop group) seemed likely sources of red-hot stories. Decision-Feedback Equalizers (a routine for reducing errors in storing computer data) were a possibility, except that my chum could barely work the hairdryer, much less hack into an information system.
After a couple of feeble bluffs, I came clean. "Er, what exactly is a DFE? Anything to do with the Department for Education?" Dismayed, the Fleet Street veteran explained, very slowly: "Disaffected… Former… Employees. They know where the skeletons are."
DFEs exist in all walks of life – business, the media, sport – but nowhere more obviously and poisonously than in politics. Since he became Prime Minister in 2007, Gordon Brown's leadership has been polluted by a steady flow of ex-Cabinet colleagues who became toxic DFEs. Charles Clarke, Hazel Blears, Caroline Flint, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt all turned sour after losing ministerial influence. They were joined this week by James Purnell, a rarity among Labour's leading lights in that one would not crawl across a busy motorway to avoid him.
Mr Purnell's piece this week in The Guardian did not savage Mr Brown in the way that Miss Flint had done after her inelegant exit, when she accused the PM of treating women as "window dressing". It was damaging, none the less, because it set out Mr Purnell's reasons for resigning seven months ago.
"I couldn't continue in Cabinet saying things I no longer believed to be true," he said. This, he knew, would prompt speculation about how many who are still there have no such qualms.
Mr Purnell went on: "There were major policy differences… It was clear that some cuts would be needed, because the economy was smaller than everyone had previously thought. GDP had been artificially inflated by the housing and financial bubble."
GDP artificially inflated? Well, who would have thunk it? There we were believing that the United Kingdom's remarkable "growth" was down to Mr Brown's managerial genius, his elimination of boom and bust. Not so, Mr Purnell admitted: "By being clear about that, early and fully, I thought we would be in a better position to convince the public that the debt was down to our response to the credit crunch, not to excess spending before it."
Oh dear. He was doing so well up to that point. Then he ruined his case with blind adherence to Ballsonomics. This is the dismal science's version of flat earth mythology, ie that all Labour spending is productive "investment".
Let us debunk this nonsense. For it is simply untrue to claim that the foundations of Britain's towering edifice of debt, the Burj Khalifa of state borrowing, were laid by the financial crisis, rather than Labour's fiscal incontinence.
The last time a British Chancellor delivered a balanced budget – or better, one in surplus – was 2001, the year of Tony Blair's second general election victory. Much has changed since then, especially for those with red rosettes. That year, Liverpool lifted the FA Cup and Red Marauder (an omen of things to come at Number 11?) won the Grand National. Confident of victory at the polls, Mr Brown labelled his Budget "Investing for the Long Term". His plans included annual spending of £394 billion and income of £398 billion.
It was his last dance with pretty Prudence. Thereafter she was ditched in favour of her ugly cousin, Profligacy. In each of Labour's eight subsequent Budgets, expenditure has exceeded revenue.
The slide began modestly. In 2002, the Budget deficit was £10 billion, just 2.4 per cent of the £418 billion that Mr Brown dished out. Then came the deluge. Long before collateralised debt obligations hit the headlines, years before anyone had heard of "Ninja" mortgages (No Income, No Job, No Assets), at a time when an expanding economy should have enabled the Government to build up its savings, Mr Brown cut loose.
In 2003, government spending rose by 9 per cent, in 2004 by 7 per cent, then by 6 per cent in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and 5 per cent in 2008. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, our ability to pay for this binge did not grow at anything like the same rate. From 2002-2008 (the year before the full impact of the credit crunch), government spending increased by 48 per cent, but taxes went up by only 41 per cent.
Contrary to Mr Purnell's assertion, Labour's debt pile-up preceded the credit crunch. As a state, we had become addicted to the never-never. In 2003, the Budget deficit was £28 billion, then £33 billion in 2004, £32 billion in 2005, £36 billion in 2006, £34 billion in 2007 and £43 billion in 2008.
From 2003-2008 inclusive, the Chancellor's overspend as a percentage of the Government's annual outlay ranged between
5.8 per cent and 7 per cent, with the average being 6.4 per cent. In his 2008 Budget, Alistair Darling predicted GDP growth of 1.75-2.25 per cent, yet still planned to borrow £43 billion.
This is a core structural deficit, which has nothing to do with the financial crisis "that began in America", as Mr Brown likes to incant. It was akin to a family with a weekly income of £500 spending £532 every week for six years. At first, the process is not ruinous, but trouble accumulates until something unexpectedly bad happens – then, the finances whizz out of control.
In 2009, with the state coffers already bare, tax revenues collapsed as unemployment shot up and welfare payments ballooned. The Government's response – an unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus – did not solve the problem: it merely blurred reality, while deferring discipline. The upshot was borrowing of £178 billion, 27 per cent of state spending.
In its research paper "Popular Delusions", Société Générale noted this week: "Removing the stimulus will involve pain; lower growth, higher unemployment and political unpopularity. But policy-makers don't like lower growth, higher unemployment and political unpopularity. They enacted the stimulus in the first place to avoid it! At what point will they decide they do want lower growth, higher unemployment and political unpopularity?
"Given the choice, they won't, ever. So it will be imposed on them (and therefore us) by a suddenly less generous bond market via a government funding crisis."
Mr Brown is betting the bank that such an outcome will not occur before the general election. He is still hoping to buy votes. But as Mr Purnell reminded us, we have been here before. After Labour's election defeat in 1931, R H Tawney, the historian and economist, concluded that the party failed because it had courted the people with "hopes of cheaply won benefits". Then, as now, it "demanded too little and offered too much".
One of the major consequences of the ongoing war in Afghanistan is a very changed understanding of NATO and the dynamics of the alliance. The response of the European nations to NATO’s call for additional forces for the IFOR mission shows this.
The heaviest burden in Afghanistan has been borne by the US, UK and Canada. Of the older NATO nations Denmark has played a major role, contributing more troops and taking more casualties as a part of its population than any other continental European nation. However, other Western nations have not pulled their weight at all, with Germany now acting as the problem child of the Western Alliance.
Germany, with the fourth largest economy in the world and a much larger population than the UK, had less than half of the force strength in Afghanistan as the UK. While British forces are committed to the toughest part of the country, the south, and are there to fight, the Germans have stationed their force in the safest part of Afghanistan, the north, and have and surrounded their commitment with numerous caveats restricting when and how their forces might engage in combat.
In short, while the US, UK, Denmark, and the Eastern Europeans are in Afghanistan to fight a war, the German government has generally avoided calling their deployment a “war” and has generally framed it as ‘peace” operation. Confronted with a huge leftist peace movement at home, Angela Merkel’s government will not expand its force in Afghanistan. German troops are stationed in Afghanistan as a symbolic act of NATO solidarity than as a true military ally. NATO officers in Afghanistan complain that the German army will not actively patrol and tends to hole up in their heavily fortified camps. In short, they will not do the kind of active counterinsurgency operations among the population that the operation requires. This is not because the Bundeswehr is an incompetent force, but because the German commanders sent to Afghanistan are under strict orders to avoid casualties.
The extreme sensitivity of the Germans to any kind of fighting was demonstrated by the German political crisis that ensued after a German commander called in an airstrike on a gasoline tanker truck that had been seized by the Taliban. The strike was successful and the truck destroyed, although there were civilian casualties. The fact that German actions had caused civilian casualties set off the German media and the politicians of both Right and Left and pushed Merkel to fire both her defence minister and the military chief of the Bundeswehr.
In fact, there was no scandal and what the German commander had done was exactly right. Given their use of suicide bombers, the Taliban would have used the truck as a huge bomb against other Afghans or NATO forces. A bomb of that size might have killed hundreds of Western forces — so the NATO air strike that caused such agonies in German domestic politics actually saved hundreds of lives. Yet, such is the force of the pacifist Left in Germany today that no senior person in the government would stand up and tell that simple fact to the public.
While Germany is proving to be a major weakness in the NATO alliance, the new Eastern European members of NATO have stepped up to the mission and proven their committment to Western defence. While Germany rejected the recent call for reinforcements to Afghanistan, the Poles are increasing their force to over 3,000 men. Poland, with half of Germany’s population, will soon have troop strength equal to Germany’s. The Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – have a combined population of about 10 per cent of Germany’s. But in late 2009 these three countries had a military and civilian deployment to Afghanistan of over 700 military and civilian personnel – a much larger committment in terms of their populations and economies than Germany’s.
Unlike the Germans, the Poles and Baltic forces deploy their troops to combat without restrictions or conditions. They are currently serving and taking casualties under US and UK command in the tough parts of Afghanistan. Friends of mine serving in Afghanistan now refer to Germans and to “real allies” – meaning the Eastern Europeans. The strong commitment of these countries to the Western system is revitalising the alliance.
They got the right idea, unlike us who stupidity fights America's imperialistic wars for them.
01-15-2010, 12:14
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
we responded to a treaty obligation, it is that simple.
and i agree that intervening in countries that allow foreign terrorist organisations is a good idea, and that intervention should include crushing the terror groups whilst building the domestic institutions that allow the failed state to own a monopoly on violence.
germany isn't doing its job.
01-15-2010, 15:26
al Roumi
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
we responded to a treaty obligation, it is that simple.
and i agree that intervening in countries that allow foreign terrorist organisations is a good idea, and that intervention should include crushing the terror groups whilst building the domestic institutions that allow the failed state to own a monopoly on violence.
germany isn't doing its job.
You do know Germany has severe hang-ups about even having a military for anything other than self defense -and i mean self defense in Germany. Right?
It also seems that that article/blog has wilfully ignored the horrific death toll of civilians resulting from the tanker strike. Had that been a UK fire mission, I should hope there would have been a scandall here too.
Killing civilians, especially in order to prevent deaths of NATO/western troops, is not going to be an acceptable balance to Afghans. Ever. Same as it isn't in Pakistan, won't be in Yemen or isn't in the west either.
01-15-2010, 16:08
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Sure i do, i read most of the der-spiegel reports on the bombing.
That does not change the fact that a defensive alliance is only worth the confidence the participants hold that their allies will respond to a call to arms.
And none of this does anything but show a complete lack of common purpose, as well as a total lack of any common value they might attach to achieving that purpose, which makes a ludicrous basis for attempting to create institutions of common foreign policy.
you can have as many shiny euro-tanks as you wish, parading down Brussels boulevard with missile launchers in tow, but they will be treated as nothing more than toys by your enemies know that you have neither unity nor the resolve to use them.
01-15-2010, 20:13
Sarmatian
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
you can have as many shiny euro-tanks as you wish, parading down Brussels boulevard with missile launchers in tow, but they will be treated as nothing more than toys by your enemies know that you have neither unity nor the resolve to use them.
Kind of irrelevant since the point of them wouldn't be to enforce will of EU unto others but to ensure that others don't enforce their will on the EU. "Others" including US, Russia, China and a long list of developing countries with large territory, population, natural resources that are edging ever closer technologically.
It's still far away as a practical idea, I give you that.
01-15-2010, 20:29
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarmatian
Kind of irrelevant since the point of them wouldn't be to enforce will of EU unto others but to ensure that others don't enforce their will on the EU. "Others" including US, Russia, China and a long list of developing countries with large territory, population, natural resources that are edging ever closer technologically.
It's still far away as a practical idea, I give you that.
not when considered as an instrument of foriegn policy.
thanks, much appreciated.
01-15-2010, 23:15
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
A European Army? Please dear God make it so. We could bring 1AD home along with all of the Balkans "police" efforts and let the locals handle it. Once United Europe ended (amicably) the NATO alliance, we'd be able to get back to letting the marines guard the embassies and be done. We wrecked France twice, surely that's payback enough for De Grasse's efforts.
01-15-2010, 23:28
Evil_Maniac From Mars
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
A European Army? Please dear God make it so. We could bring 1AD home along with all of the Balkans "police" efforts and let the locals handle it.
With extreme respect, and no offense intended, no, you could not. A European Army would be even less effective than separate British, Polish, German, and French militaries, simply because we would be able to reduce military spending even further. A unified European Army would be no better than the modern French armed forces, and certainly not even close to an allied Europe working together freely with multiple, national armies.
01-15-2010, 23:40
Brenus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
"We wrecked France twice, surely that's payback enough for De Grasse's efforts." Never.
And you came a little late during the 1st one...:book:
French saying: Vous volliez au secours de la victoire...
And we can discuss about the willingness of the 2nd...:beam:
01-16-2010, 01:56
Furunculus
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
With extreme respect, and no offense intended, no, you could not. A European Army would be even less effective than separate British, Polish, German, and French militaries, simply because we would be able to reduce military spending even further. A unified European Army would be no better than the modern French armed forces, and certainly not even close to an allied Europe working together freely with multiple, national armies.
with respect, the french armed forces are both professional and have a reasonable amount of political spine behind them to achieve political ends via military means.
01-16-2010, 02:02
Evil_Maniac From Mars
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
with respect, the french armed forces are both professional and have a reasonable amount of political spine behind them to achieve political ends via military means.
Indeed. In fact, that was why I intended to showcase them as the cream of the crop in modern day Europe.
My point was essentially that a European military would have the cutbacks of the British, the willingness to fight of the Germans, and the rough size of the French. While the French military is of a very respectable size and capability for a single nation, one would effectively be replacing the militaries of over twenty nations acting in cooperation with a single one that is barely larger and no more effective, and one would be spending billions to do so. An impractical exercise.
01-16-2010, 02:02
Subotan
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Such as coups in Central Africa :yes:
01-16-2010, 02:32
Beskar
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
I wonder why all 20 countries of Euro would magically go down to the size of France... :inquisitive: Where does that even come from?
Some-one is making up little porkies again...
01-16-2010, 02:36
Louis VI the Fat
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
A European Army? Please dear God make it so. We could bring 1AD home along with all of the Balkans "police" efforts and let the locals handle it. Once United Europe ended (amicably) the NATO alliance, we'd be able to get back to letting the marines guard the embassies and be done. We wrecked France twice, surely that's payback enough for De Grasse's efforts.
??
I get the impression that you base the above on the relentless drivel of the anti-EU press.
Many proponents of an EU army are quite pro-Atlantic. For example, the current political force behind further integration of European defense is Sarkozy, who is not anti-Atlanticist at heart.
Firstly, nothing in Europe is already as internationally harmonised as precisely the military. Ooow! If only the EU could harmonise European legal and economical aspects to the extent that NATO has harmonised European defense!
Defense has managed to become this integrated, because this integration is overwhelmingly outside the political control of the EU. It is NATO that has integrated European defense. Hence there is far less democratic control (pesky referenda!), political opposition, or even public knowledge of this harmonisation.
What applies for NATO applies for the EU: synchronisation and harmonisation work, it has all sorts of mutual benefits - what is the point of Denmark trying to sustain a defense policy of full military capacity? That is, an army, air force and navy, capable of performing a thousand different tasks? That wouldn't work. Better to have the Danes specialise in one aspect, and let the Germans, Belgians and Spanish do what they are good at in turn. That is, France and Germany build airplanes, and the Danes build ships to watch the North Atlantic.
The more integration like this, the better Europe can fulfill its share of the military preservation of the free world. NATO and a common EU defense are complimentary, sometimes supplementary. Not mutually exclusive competitors.
Four further considerations:
- Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Austria are not NATO members, but are members of the EU. (Combined, that's the population and GDP of Canada). Their integration into a synchronised Western alliance could be aided by the EU.
- The EU has already taken over from NATO in the Balkans. This happened after the British and Americans left for Iraq. The EU filled the void.
- A European defense policy means Europe is less dependent on the US.
Strangely, both the pro-American and the anti-American, both the conservative American or the pinko-Eurogaymarxist, would support this. The first, because EU is no longer taken a free ride, the second, because Europe no longer needs to sit up and jump when Washington so requires.
- The world is bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan. The EU has, and has had, many foreign military missions. For example, in Chad.*
Missions like these, incidentally, are where all those French troops that are not in Afghanistan are. Not a Briton or American in sight here - they are at home, gnashing their teeth over the French who refuse to send as many troops to Afghanistan as they do, kept blissfully oblivious by their Daily Outragograph of the fact that France has as many troops in international missions as Britain.
Note, besides France suppying half the troops, how for example non-NATO member Ireland has a large force present, and to a lesser extent, Sweden and Austria.
01-16-2010, 02:40
Evil_Maniac From Mars
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
Where does that even come from?
Past experience of European willingness to fight, continual cutbacks in terms of equipment and spending, and opinion. The armies won't just merge into one big whole, they will be cut and trimmed down to size. I can't see them being much larger than Europe's current largest European power.
01-16-2010, 02:50
Louis VI the Fat
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
Past experience of European willingness to fight, continual cutbacks in terms of equipment and spending, and opinion. The armies won't just merge into one big whole, they will be cut and trimmed down to size. I can't see them being much larger than Europe's current largest European power.
Synchronisation is a cost-cutting mechanism indeed. But, the idea is: more efficiency, so more bang for our bucks.
Must Europe have 27 airforce headquarters? 27 different military attachés in Brazil? Five, or three or one, are less expensive. Get rid of the pencil pushers, and use the money for actual defense. Either by maintaining current defense levels, in which case defense capability goes up, or by maintaining current capability, in which case expenditure goes down.
A European Army? Please dear God make it so. We could bring 1AD home along with all of the Balkans "police" efforts and let the locals handle it. Once United Europe ended (amicably) the NATO alliance, we'd be able to get back to letting the marines guard the embassies and be done. We wrecked France twice, surely that's payback enough for De Grasse's efforts.
that is precisely why the US is so keen on a more federal europe with a common foreign policy and unified army command, so that they have a real partner in the 21st century as US hegemony declines.
and it's why they want the UK inside the federal entity so bad, so that it maintains a pro-us theme in its governing organs.
Beware of opinion polls. Millions of people can't find a party they want to vote for
It looks as though I rattled a few of the bars on several cages yesterday, so I ought to say a bit more about the BNP. (I’ll come to UKIP another day – and my own party and New Labour, too.)
John Denham, the Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities (another bit of PC mumbo-jumbo) must have been reading what you have been writing here on this blog. The Government really is running scared of losing seats not so much to the BNP, but because of the BNP, to other parties.
They need not have have waited this long to wake up to the problem. When I condemned multiculturalism back in 1997, the modernisers tried to get me expelled from the Conservative Party. When Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said much the same sort of thing in 2006, Ken Livingstone advised him to join the BNP.
More recently still, when I interviewed Trevor Phillips for The House Magazine in January last year he told me that whilst he thought that discrimination against women, the elderly and disabled, not to mention “ethnic and sexual hate crime” were still serious issues, he was more worried about “the big and growing problem of people stuck at the bottom of society … and that is not to do with race”.
I do not think it did Trevor Phillips much good in the race relations industry to say such things, least of all to me, and he has had to put up with a lot of sniping from his “friends” since then.
However, whether it is because of me, Trevor Phillips, or the BNP, I am glad that even this Government is becoming aware of the plight of poor white kids denied decent schools, and of the fact some ethnic minorites (such as the Chinese and Ugandan Asians) seem not to be held back by “racism”. We should all cheer at the sight of a sinner stumbling towards repentance, even if not virtue.
I thought that, as we are going to have one before very long, I might offer a morsel or two of food for thought about elections.
Beware of the published polls telling us that the Conservatives are running at about 40 per cent, Labour at 30, Lib Dems at 18 and 12 for the rest. There is another big party out there called “None of the Above”.
So here are some figures. The electorate in 1979 was 41.1 million. In 2005 it was 44.1 million. On a very good day for Labour they made 13.9 million votes (in 1951, when the electorate was only 34.6 million). Well, it wasn’t altogether a good day – they lost.
On a very good day for the Tories they made 14.1 million in 1992. The Lib Dems managed 6.0 million in 1992 and in 2005. Margaret Thatcher won in 1979 with 13.7 million. After eight years she won a third time with 13.8 million.
Tony Blair won in 1997 with 13.5 million. After eight years he won again with 9.5 million. You have to go back to the 1920s to find a government being elected on less than that. Even when they lost in 1992, Labour polled 11.6 million. But it only took Tony Blair eight years to turn 4.0 million Labour supporters off voting.
So who on earth would want to be “the heir to Blair”? The Tories, by the way, polled 9.6 million in 1997, 8.4 million 2001 and 8.8 million in 2005.
So where did all those Tory and Labour votes go? Nowhere. They belong to people some of whom have died, but mostly to people who cannot find a party which represents their views, and people who don’t think it would make much difference who won the election.
I find that worrying, don’t you?
this is what happens when democracy ceases to be representative, as much is the word is derided as an irrelevance in european governance these days, it is mainstream politics that will be the victim of its own callous indifference to the voters!
