“Does the European Union Need Its Own Army?”
“Where efficiency and practicality diverge”
War in Europe is entering its third year in February 2024 as the Russian – Ukraine War continues with no hopeful signs of ending soon. The NATO countries of Europe, for the most part, have started moving in the direction of increasing defense spending to both support Ukraine in its war, and increase spending on their own militaries, many of which have been in a long state of neglect. European NATO countries have accelerated their spending to reach the 2% of GDP goal that was agreed upon in 2014, as there is increased speculation of a Russian – NATO war within 10 years of the end of the Russian – Ukraine War. The question for military and political leaders in Europe should increased defense spending be in the current national framework, or should the European Union focus on creating a European army?
The European Union, on paper, is a formidable military power. The countries of the European Union have 1.4 million active military personnel and 2.3 million reserve personnel, both of which is greater than the United States with 1.3 million active personnel and 0.8 million reservists. The EU is also an economic power that has an economy that is second in the world, only behind the United States. The combined defense budgets of the 27 EU nations are $295 billion which is greater than China’s $230 billion but well behind the $820 billion budget of the United States. When compared to Russia the EU has more military personnel and a much larger defense budget.
The calls for more defense spending in the NATO and EU countries would seem unfounded with European NATO and EU forces being well above the Russian conventional military capability. The issue with the EU is that there are 27 countries in the union, and all have their own militaries and command structures. They pursue their own weapon system procurements, so this means that the EU member states as a military entity in its current format has inefficiencies that are not found in the United States or Russia.
For example, the EU countries have 14 different main battle tank variants compared to the U.S. currently have only the M-1 Abrams main battle tank in their arsenal and Russia has five (it would only have three but the tank losses in Ukraine have required pulling mothballed Cold War era T-62s and T-64s from storage). NATO tries to streamline the process by recommending standards such as caliber sizes and interoperability, but NATO does not have procurement authority, so it can only go so far in streamlining.
This means that despite calls primarily from the U.S., and the motivation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, every Euro that is spent in the EU for military defense is spent in an incredibly inefficient system when compared with its potential adversaries. The other underfunded gap are EU militaries and NATO are highly reliant on the U.S. to provide “strategic enablers” such as command and control, strategic airlift and transportation, surveillance and reconnaissance, space assets, and aerial refueling. This means that the EU, without the U.S., has a significant capabilities gap when compared to Russia, the U.S. or China.
The EU, as a potential military force, has upsides in its potential capabilities and improved efficiencies that it could add to defense spending and priorities would be a near exponential improvement in stretching defense outlays by eliminating the current inefficiencies created by 27 different militaries. The EU also have significant headwinds in becoming a military superpower because it cannot stand on its own with no U.S. support and cannot rival the U.S., Russia or China in world class military capabilities. These headwinds are mainly in the strategic enablers capabilities gap which would be a significant cost to create and maintain but that is not the only headwind.
The other is the question of convincing the 27 countries of the EU that this is in their interest. The first issue that has to be clarified in the creation of an EU army is will it supersede all national militaries or will it just supplement the existing national armies, and giving the EU a military capability that it does not currently have (outside of 5 brigades that were created as an experiment)? The issue with an EU army that serves alongside the national armies is it does not overcome any of the inefficiencies that currently exist and would add a 28th army in the EU and one that would have to be funded by member countries. This means that to unleash the military potential of the EU, an EU army would have to supersede all national armies of the EU, and this is easier said than done.
Issues that are created by a supersession of the current EU national armies are vast and not easy to rectify. First off, the EU is not part of NATO but most of the member countries of the EU are NATO members. This means that nearly all member states of NATO would no longer have a military capability to provide NATO as all military resources and command are transferred to non-NATO member EU. For the EU to become a member of NATO, it would have to receive unanimous consent from all NATO members. It would be assumed that non-EU member Turkey and United Kingdom could have objections and potential issues with the United States. Most likely the EU would have to submit to NATO membership prior to the supersession of national militaries, and that would mean Turkey, United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Canada could have say so on how the EU forms its army if it hopes to get the unanimous consent from non-EU members.
The other issue is that Austria, an EU member that is not part of NATO is a declared military neutral, so an EU in NATO would be contrary to Austria’s national interest, so how would that be addressed? If a special carve out exception is given to Austria, wouldn’t other countries want their own carve outs to opt out of the EU army, with most of them being in eastern Europe? That means that the inefficiencies that would be the real benefit of an EU army would not be fully realized if special exceptions were given.
How will the EU keep the union together when there is a disagreement on how the EU military is deployed. For example, would the states that are in the Baltics, which would be a military focus of NATO, object along with NATO if the EU decides that it would like to keep the bulk of the EU army deployed to the west and south of Europe away from the flashpoints in the Baltic and the Russian frontier? How would a private from Poland feel serving in Malta to patrol for North African migrants when the Russians are saber rattling about claims in their Polish homeland. Would a person who never left his country (40% of Europeans have not left their home country) even agree to join an EU army that they do not necessarily identify with? Nationalism still serves a purpose in martial culture.
The EU does not have a strong executive authority as seen in the United States, China, and Russia. So, their military would not have a civilian commander-in-chief and would instead be led by a committee or committees, which would make deploying the military in a crisis more difficult as decisions would be subject to consensus before action can be taken. Also, a funding mechanism and procurement process will have to be created within the EU. All of these means the EU would have to be significantly reformed prior to taking on the responsibility of an EU army and defending EU interests. So, all member states would have to approve the reforms, and that is not something that is easily accomplished.
What seems like trivial matters, may not seem so trivial, is a determination of what national language will be used for the EU military? As a matter of efficiency, 20 languages cannot exist as the official language for a unified military. How are the command ranks to be filled out? Will the countries with the bigger GDPs or populations have more say in the appointment of commanders, or will the countries that have the most danger (Eastern Europe) or the ones that contribute the most troops to the EU army? This may seem trivial, but the EU had to make up historic symbols when they created their currency, the Euro, because the EU could not come to an agreement on real symbols that would be accepted by member states. The questions of language and command are guaranteed to be exponentially more tense than artwork on the Euro.
With all these challenges, is it worth trying to pursue an EU army or would it be better to work within the framework of NATO? The challenges seem too daunting and that it would be easy to continue down the road of NATO and the over reliance on the United States. The system has worked well up to this point, but what if the U.S. decides to leave NATO, or more than likely, focus most of its resources in the Pacific to face China. Then the cost of the status quo option does not look so attractive and looks risky. Without the U.S. capabilities and a reliance on an inefficient military funding system in Europe that crowds out developing strategic enablers and streamlining of military forces will risk making a Europe that it will be weak on the world stage and will be vulnerable within its own continent despite its economic dominance.
References:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49217.htm
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-union-army-war-training-france-spain-nato/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/20/is-an-eu-army-coming/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italian-foreign-minister-calls-formation-eu-army-2024-01-07/
https://www.euractiv.com/topics/eu-army/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/18/european-union-army-ukraine/
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/case-eu-defense/
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/czech-president-eu-army-no-longer-in-macrons-mind/
https://cepa.org/article/europes-next-generation-main-battle-tank-new-hope/
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