European States TURN AGAINST Ursula And The EU
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Saturday, May 27, 2017
Germany Is Quietly Building a European Army Under Its Command
EuroBy Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy, May 22, 2017
Every few years, the idea of an EU army finds its way back into the news, causing a kerfuffle. The concept is both fantasy and bogeyman: For every federalist in Brussels who thinks a common defense force is what Europe needs to boost its standing in the world, there are those in London and elsewhere who recoil at the notion.
But this year, far from the headlines, Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, quietly took a radical step down a path toward something that looks like an EU army while avoiding the messy politics associated with it: They announced the integration of their armed forces.
Romania’s entire military won’t join the Bundeswehr, nor will the Czech armed forces become a mere German subdivision. But in the next several months each country will integrate one brigade into the German armed forces: Romania’s 81st Mechanized Brigade will join the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division, while the Czech 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, which has served in Afghanistan and Kosovo and is considered the Czech Army’s spearhead force, will become part of the Germans’ 10th Armored Division. In doing so, they’ll follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the Bundeswehr’s 1st Armored Division. According to Carlo Masala, a professor of international politics at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, “The German government is showing that it’s willing to proceed with European military integration”–even if others on the continent aren’t yet.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has repeatedly floated the idea of an EU army, only to be met with either ridicule or awkward silence. That remains the case even as the U.K., a perennial foe of the idea, is on its way out of the union. There’s little agreement among remaining member states over what exactly such a force would look like and which capabilities national armed forces would give up as a result. And so progress has been slow going. This March, the European Union created a joint military headquarters–but it’s only in charge of training missions in Somalia, Mali, and the Central African Republic and has a meager staff of 30. Other multinational concepts have been designed, such as the Nordic Battle Group, a small 2,400-troop rapid reaction force formed by the Baltic states and several Nordic countries and the Netherlands, and Britain’s Joint Expeditionary Force, a “mini-NATO” whose members include the Baltic states, Sweden, and Finland. But in the absence of suitable deployment opportunities, such operations-based teams may as well not exist.
But under the bland label of the Framework Nations Concept, Germany has been at work on something far more ambitious–the creation of what is essentially a Bundeswehr-led network of European miniarmies. “The initiative came out of the weakness of the Bundeswehr,” said Justyna Gotkowska, a Northern Europe security analyst at Poland’s Centre for Eastern Studies think tank. “The Germans realized that the Bundeswehr needed to fill gaps in its land forces … in order to gain political and military influence within NATO.” An assist from junior partners may be Germany’s best shot at bulking out its military quickly–and German-led miniarmies may be Europe’s most realistic option if it’s to get serious about joint security. “It’s an attempt to prevent joint European security from completely failing,” Masala said.
“Gaps” in the Bundeswehr is an understatement. In 1989, the West German government spent 2.7 percent of GDP on defense, but by 2000 spending had dropped to 1.4 percent, where it remained for years. Indeed, between 2013 and 2016 defense spending was stuck at 1.2 percent–far from NATO’s 2 percent benchmark. In a 2014 report to the Bundestag, the German parliament, the Bundeswehr’s inspectors-general presented a woeful picture: Most of the Navy’s helicopters were not working, and of the Army’s 64 helicopters, only 18 were usable. And while the Cold War Bundeswehr had consisted of 370,000 troops, by last summer it was only 176,015 men and women strong.
Since then the Bundeswehr has grown to more than 178,000 active-duty troops; last year the government increased funding by 4.2 percent, and this year defense spending will grow by 8 percent. But Germany still lags far behind France and the U.K. as a military power. And boosting defense spending is not uncontroversial in Germany, which is wary of its history as a military power. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel recently said it was “completely unrealistic” to think that Germany would reach NATO’s defense spending benchmark of 2 percent of GDP–even though nearly all of Germany’s allies, from smaller European countries to the United States, are urging it to play a larger military role in the world.
Germany may not yet have the political will to expand its military forces on the scale that many are hoping for–but what it has had since 2013 is the Framework Nations Concept. For Germany, the idea is to share its resources with smaller countries in exchange for the use of their troops. For these smaller countries, the initiative is a way of getting Germany more involved in European security while sidestepping the tricky politics of Germany military expansion. “It’s a move towards more European military independence,” Masala said. “The U.K. and France are not available to take a lead in European security”–the U.K. is on a collision course with its EU allies, while France, a military heavyweight, has often been a reluctant participant in multinational efforts within NATO. “That leaves Germany,” he said. Operationally, the resulting binational units are more deployable because they’re permanent (most multinational units have so far been ad hoc). Crucially for the junior partners, it also amplifies their military muscle. And should Germany decide to deploy an integrated unit, it could only do so with the junior partner’s consent.
Of course, since 1945 Germany has been extraordinarily reluctant to deploy its military abroad, until 1990 even barring the Bundeswehr from foreign deployments. Indeed, junior partners–and potential junior partners–hope that the Framework Nations arrangement will make Germany take on more responsibility for European security. So far, Germany and its multinational miniarmies remain only that: small-scale initiatives, far removed from a full-fledged European army. But the initiative is likely to grow. Germany’s partners have been touting the practical benefits of integration: For Romania and the Czech Republic, it means bringing their troops to the same level of training as the German military; for the Netherlands, it has meant regaining tank capabilities. (The Dutch had sold the last of their tanks in 2011, but the 43rd Mechanized Brigade’s troops, who are partially based with the 1st Armored Division in the western German city of Oldenburg, now drive the Germans’ tanks and could use them if deployed with the rest of the Dutch army.) Col. Anthony Leuvering, the 43rd Mechanized’s Oldenburg-based commander, told me that the integration has had remarkably few hiccups. “The Bundeswehr has some 180,000 personnel, but they don’t treat us like an underdog,” he said. He expects more countries to jump on the bandwagon: “Many, many countries want to cooperate with the Bundeswehr.” The Bundeswehr, in turn, has a list of junior partners in mind, said Robin Allers, a German associate professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies who has seen the German military’s list. According to Masala, the Scandinavian countries–which already use a large amount of German-made equipment–would be the best candidates for the Bundeswehr’s next round of integration.
So far, the low-profile and ad hoc approach of the Framework Nations Concept has worked to its advantage; few people in Europe have objected to the integration of Dutch or Romanian units into German divisions, partly because they may not have noticed. Whether there will be political repercussions should more nations sign up to the initiative is less clear.
Outside of politics, the real test of the Framework Nations’ value will be the integrated units’ success in combat. But the trickiest part of integration, on the battlefield and off, may turn out to be finding a lingua franca. Should troops learn each other’s languages? Or should the junior partner speak German? The German-speaking Dutch Col. Leuvering reports that the binational Oldenburg division is moving toward using English.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Ghosts of Europe Past
By Brendan Simms, NY Times, June 9, 2013
CAMBRIDGE, England—THE cheerleaders of the European Union like to think of it as an entirely new phenomenon, born of the horrors of two world wars. But in fact it closely resembles a formation that many Europeans thought they had long since left to the dustbin of history: the Holy Roman Empire, the political commonwealth under which the Germans lived for many hundreds of years.
Some might take that as a compliment; after all, the empire lasted for almost a millennium. But they shouldn’t. If anything, today’s Europe still has to learn the lessons of the empire’s failures.
The similarities with the Holy Roman Empire—which at its greatest extent encompassed almost all of Central Europe—exist at many levels. Today’s European Council, at which the union’s member states gather, reminds one of the old Reichstag, where the representatives of the German cities and principalities met to deliberate matters of mutual concern.
And like the European project, which originated in a determination to banish war after 1945, the “modern” Holy Roman Empire, which was reformed by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, was intended to defuse the domestic German antagonisms that had culminated in the traumatic Thirty Years’ War.
But most similarities are less flattering. Both the European Union and the empire are characterized by interminable and inconclusive debate. The German phrase for delay, which translates as “shoving something onto the long bench,” stems from when imperial bureaucrats pushed their uncompleted paperwork farther and farther down a long bench in the Reichstag council chamber.
And like the European Union, which is rived by tensions between larger and smaller states, the Holy Roman Empire proved too weak to contain over-mighty members like Prussia and Austria. Fears of partition and collapse abounded. The Reichstag was paralyzed; the emperor was hamstrung by rival princes.
Granted, in a world of increasingly absolutist neighbors, the empire stood out in its respect for the law and a high degree of personal freedom. But the truly powerful states of the 18th and 19th centuries were those that learned from the empire’s mistakes.
The German experience was a cautionary tale for the American colonies after the Revolutionary War. They, too, were profoundly divided over how to defend themselves, and above all on the question of how the huge debt accumulated during the war should be repaid.
The existing Articles of Confederation were too weak for the task, and the founders cast about for alternative models. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton looked at the federal system of the Holy Roman Empire, but they found it to be “a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.”
Instead, the patriots embraced the model of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, when the two kingdoms, formerly so divided, had come together by merging their debts, parliaments and collective efforts on the international stage.
The resulting American Constitution created a powerful executive presidency and a representative legislature and made possible the creation of a consolidated national debt, a national bank and eventually a strong military, all of which in time turned the United States into the superpower it is today. The Holy Roman Empire, by contrast, failed to reform and disintegrated after it was defeated by Napoleonic France in 1806.
Some 200 years later, this history has been forgotten. Today’s constant round of European summit meetings and reform initiatives remind one of nothing so much as the interminable and futile German “imperial reform debate,” and they are likely to have a similarly unhappy, if less spectacular, end.
Like the old empire, the union has become preoccupied with legality and procedure at the expense of participation and effectiveness. This renders the euro zone cumbersome in the face of competition from the east and causes the bond markets to doubt its creditworthiness. Indeed, everything that Madison and Hamilton wrote about the empire then is being echoed today in Washington, albeit sotto voce.
Fortunately, there is a solution from history. The euro zone faces the same choice as the Holy Roman Empire and American patriots of old: how to overcome discredited forms of confederation. Rather than digging themselves into a deeper recession and democratic deficit through austerity measures, the states in the common currency need to form a full and mighty union on Anglo-American lines. They must create a strong executive presidency elected by popular vote across the euro zone, a truly empowered house of citizens elected according to population and a senate representing the regions.
The existing sovereign debts should be federalized through a “Union Bond,” with a strict subsequent debt ceiling for the member state governments. There will have to be a single European military and one language of government and politics: English.
This is the only framework that will endow the euro zone with the democratic legitimacy to reassure the bond markets, underpin the implementation of good financial governance across the entire union and defend its interests and values on the world stage.
More than 200 years ago, the choice was between the Holy Roman Empire and Britain. The Americans opted wisely and prospered; the Germans continued to muddle through only to see their empire extinguished. History thus holds out both a great opportunity and a terrible warning for the euro zoners.
Brendan Simms is a professor of history at Cambridge University and the author, most recently, of “Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy From 1453 to the Present.”
CAMBRIDGE, England—THE cheerleaders of the European Union like to think of it as an entirely new phenomenon, born of the horrors of two world wars. But in fact it closely resembles a formation that many Europeans thought they had long since left to the dustbin of history: the Holy Roman Empire, the political commonwealth under which the Germans lived for many hundreds of years.
Some might take that as a compliment; after all, the empire lasted for almost a millennium. But they shouldn’t. If anything, today’s Europe still has to learn the lessons of the empire’s failures.
The similarities with the Holy Roman Empire—which at its greatest extent encompassed almost all of Central Europe—exist at many levels. Today’s European Council, at which the union’s member states gather, reminds one of the old Reichstag, where the representatives of the German cities and principalities met to deliberate matters of mutual concern.
And like the European project, which originated in a determination to banish war after 1945, the “modern” Holy Roman Empire, which was reformed by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, was intended to defuse the domestic German antagonisms that had culminated in the traumatic Thirty Years’ War.
But most similarities are less flattering. Both the European Union and the empire are characterized by interminable and inconclusive debate. The German phrase for delay, which translates as “shoving something onto the long bench,” stems from when imperial bureaucrats pushed their uncompleted paperwork farther and farther down a long bench in the Reichstag council chamber.
And like the European Union, which is rived by tensions between larger and smaller states, the Holy Roman Empire proved too weak to contain over-mighty members like Prussia and Austria. Fears of partition and collapse abounded. The Reichstag was paralyzed; the emperor was hamstrung by rival princes.
Granted, in a world of increasingly absolutist neighbors, the empire stood out in its respect for the law and a high degree of personal freedom. But the truly powerful states of the 18th and 19th centuries were those that learned from the empire’s mistakes.
The German experience was a cautionary tale for the American colonies after the Revolutionary War. They, too, were profoundly divided over how to defend themselves, and above all on the question of how the huge debt accumulated during the war should be repaid.
The existing Articles of Confederation were too weak for the task, and the founders cast about for alternative models. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton looked at the federal system of the Holy Roman Empire, but they found it to be “a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.”
Instead, the patriots embraced the model of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, when the two kingdoms, formerly so divided, had come together by merging their debts, parliaments and collective efforts on the international stage.
The resulting American Constitution created a powerful executive presidency and a representative legislature and made possible the creation of a consolidated national debt, a national bank and eventually a strong military, all of which in time turned the United States into the superpower it is today. The Holy Roman Empire, by contrast, failed to reform and disintegrated after it was defeated by Napoleonic France in 1806.
Some 200 years later, this history has been forgotten. Today’s constant round of European summit meetings and reform initiatives remind one of nothing so much as the interminable and futile German “imperial reform debate,” and they are likely to have a similarly unhappy, if less spectacular, end.
Like the old empire, the union has become preoccupied with legality and procedure at the expense of participation and effectiveness. This renders the euro zone cumbersome in the face of competition from the east and causes the bond markets to doubt its creditworthiness. Indeed, everything that Madison and Hamilton wrote about the empire then is being echoed today in Washington, albeit sotto voce.
Fortunately, there is a solution from history. The euro zone faces the same choice as the Holy Roman Empire and American patriots of old: how to overcome discredited forms of confederation. Rather than digging themselves into a deeper recession and democratic deficit through austerity measures, the states in the common currency need to form a full and mighty union on Anglo-American lines. They must create a strong executive presidency elected by popular vote across the euro zone, a truly empowered house of citizens elected according to population and a senate representing the regions.
The existing sovereign debts should be federalized through a “Union Bond,” with a strict subsequent debt ceiling for the member state governments. There will have to be a single European military and one language of government and politics: English.
This is the only framework that will endow the euro zone with the democratic legitimacy to reassure the bond markets, underpin the implementation of good financial governance across the entire union and defend its interests and values on the world stage.
More than 200 years ago, the choice was between the Holy Roman Empire and Britain. The Americans opted wisely and prospered; the Germans continued to muddle through only to see their empire extinguished. History thus holds out both a great opportunity and a terrible warning for the euro zoners.
Brendan Simms is a professor of history at Cambridge University and the author, most recently, of “Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy From 1453 to the Present.”
Friday, September 21, 2012
European army backed
Bruno Waterfield, Brussels, The Age, Sept. 20, 2012
GERMANY, France and nine of Europe’s most powerful countries have called for an elected European Union president and an end to Britain’s veto over defence policy, in a radical blueprint for the continent’s future.
In a document released following a meeting between 11 foreign ministers in Warsaw, the bloc charted a vision for the “future of Europe”.
As well as calling for a single, elected head of state for Europe, the bloc demanded a new defence policy, under the control of a pan-EU foreign ministry commanded by Baroness Ashton, which “could eventually involve a European army”.
In order to “prevent one single member state from being able to obstruct initiatives”, a reference to British opposition to a European army, the German-led group demanded an end to existing national vetoes over foreign and defence policy. This would give the EU the power to impose a decision on Britain if it was supported by a majority of other countries.
The bloc also called for a new European police force patrolling the external borders of the Schengen passport-free zone and a single European visa.
The plan, which has the backing of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Holland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and Portugal, is likely to increase calls for a British referendum on EU membership.
The document also proposed powers for the European Parliament and further splitting of the EU, by creating a new parliamentary sub-chamber for the 17 countries of the eurozone.
In a joint statement, Guido Westerwelle and Radek Sikorski, the foreign ministers of Germany and Poland, called for the creation of a single EU president, running the commission and overseeing regular summits, and directly elected by voters in a pan-European vote “on the same day in all member states”.
“For Europe to be a truly strong actor and global leader it needs a strong institutional set-up,” said Mr Westerwelle and Mr Sikorski. “It needs a directly elected president who personally appoints the members of his ‘European government’.”
The 11 countries also said changes to European treaties should in future be adopted and implemented “by a super-qualified majority of the EU member states” instead of by unanimity, meaning treaties could no longer be blocked by “No” votes in referendums.
The document follows last week’s call by the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, for the EU to become a “federation” and growing calls in Britain for a referendum on any new European treaty or constitution.
