European Union nations are concerned about Trump’s victory, as Trump has historically opposed the NATO alliance siphoning funding from the US. Before Trump, only a handful of nations were paying their 2% of GDP obligation. World leaders are now calling for a European army, but a plan is already in place for a unified army that NATO could rapidly deploy.
Now, EU nations host multinational armies of 1,500 troops and have had them in place since 2007, yet they have never been deployed. France famously vetoed plans for a unified European army, but President Macron is now open to creating one. The Baltic nations also oppose a unified EU army as they believe it will decrease NATO’s strength. The UK once vetoed the proposal as well when they were within the bloc.
“If we do not start thinking about ways to organise our common defence, we will not be strong enough when we need to defend ourselves, or our neighbours,” voiced Polish leader Luc Frieden. Poland became the top contributor to NATO in terms of GDP after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“At the beginning, we should go ahead with a coalition of the willing. A few countries that are ready to pool their sovereign rights to be more efficient in defence.” He added, “Of course, each country will want to keep control over important decisions such as when to activate its army, when to send its soldiers to war. But it is also obvious that the current situation does not offer the level of security that we need. So, we need to start thinking about a European army.”
How could an effective military strategy be developed if each nation were acting independently? It simply would not be effective. Still, the EU is creating a Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) force that some are calling a “European Army.”
The first RDC exercise took place last month in Spain, with the cooperation of nine EU members and 2,800 military personnel. The EU believes that by next year, it will have 5,000 troops within the RDC who can deploy at a moment’s notice.
NATO has eight multinational brigades with 300,000 troops who could be ready for deployment within 30 days, and it has the capacity to expand to 500,000 if needed.
Trump does not want America involved in endless wars, yet he is inheriting 2.5 proxy wars.
