I don't think there's any need as long as the US is willing to defend/bear the brunt of the cost
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
EU need to remove its dependence on US military power
- Thread starter fanboi
- Start date
I mean...that's a very blunt way of articulating what will be probably the greatest security issue Europe will face this century.
Climate change and all the associated effects will cause immense conflict around the world, and Europe will be better off than much of the planet.
The EU spends a total of just under 200€ billion on military. The US spends 500€ billion on military and has a bigger military than like the next 12 countries combined or something. There is no way the EU needs to match that. Even half the US military budget is plenty for the EU (250€ billion) which is a small increase. I don't believe that is even necessary because in either case the EU would have the second largest military in the world by far. The US' budget is a bloated result of corporate lobbying and is in no way a benchmark for what the EU (Or anyone) should be spending on military unless the EU plans on going to war with the US.
Again, the EU just needs cooperation, harmonisation, and a single budget in order for that money to actually be put to effective use to project military power.
Exactly.AmFreak said:
Last edited:
The combined countries in the EU already have the:
- 2nd biggest army size after China
- 2nd biggest military budget after the US
- 2nd biggest fleet after the US
And costs would go down with an EU wide army, because of then redundant equipment and R&D.
In no way would the EU spending more then China and Russia on defense mean they have a larger military than those powers do. Far from it.
If the EU were serious about standing on their own militarily, the would need to combine all their forces, grow their numbers, and conduct a massive build out program. That would be incredibly expensive, but without that they would not be able to stand against a determined attack from hostile powers.
I never said they would need to match US defense spending, but you are significantly underestimating the investment they would need to make.
If Germany would spend "those 2%" then the german army would instantly be the 4th largest army in the world. And thats something nobody wants.
Right now there is no political will in European states to have a centralized military (countries with strong right wing parties do not wants to sacrifice the military might of their "nation state"), but it might change in the future. Many figureheads in the EU would like to have a centralized defense force: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legis...nger-global-actor/file-european-defence-union
Somebody has to lead Europe in the future, it's either going to be France or Germany
Well typically to make an army larger you need to add people to it, not just money. And that process takes time.
While you are definately correct that increasing manpower takes a lot of time:
I'd argue that raw manpower doesn't matter that much anymore because everything is dominated by equipment and technology.
Not even us germans want germany to have a large powerful army. Germany is already investing almost 2% of its GDP but the larger share goes into foreign humanitarian aid instead of the military. There's no way that germany would focus on creating a large military force within the next years because we're kinda sick of wars.
It certainly matters less, but you still need soldiers to fight wars.
And I was just ribbing you on the "instantly 4th largest army" point.
Hasn't Germany been scaling back their military and readiness recently?
Seems like France on the other hand has been increasing their readiness
Seems like France on the other hand has been increasing their readiness
The idea that you can easily merge together 27 different armies (I'm excluding the United Kingdom) ... it doesn't work like that.
A country like Germany would far likely end up spending more on a standalone European army then being a NATO member, whether its population likes it or not.
Much rather have Germany be up there than China or Russia or North Korea or Turkey or Iran