German defense minister to Macron: EU depends on US security guarantee

[Sheilbh]

We are not talking about that kind of thing though, we are talking about being a military threat.

True although I wonder about tech and the risks of cyber-warfare etc and part of me thinks that might be where Europe does diverge. I could see it basically ending up with a Five Eyes bloc, EU bloc and China-backed bloc. It'd be interesting to see how that would interact with the actual hard military stuff.

[crazy canuck]

The EU is a 27 member-state body, I do not believe the EU or its constituent countries can independently guarantee the sovereignty and independence of all of the member states. I consider the notion that the EU has a practical nuclear deterrent to protect states like Latvia/Estonia/Lithuania to be fanciful. If Russia started really applying pressure on those states or started the kind of faux-war it has in Ukraine, there would be little that the EU could or would do about it. I even speculate a direct war of invasion against those three states would not be met by a French nuclear attack or a conventional resistance by larger EU countries.

Russia likely still fears American commitment to NATO enough not to do these things in the Baltics, I do not think it would feel similarly about an EU on its own.

I have no doubt the EU's sole nuclear state would use that deterrent in the face of certain aggression, probably against a larger EU country closer to France's own borders (like Germany for example), but do I really see the French being willing to use a nuclear weapon against Russia to protect the independence of countries like Bulgaria and Romania? I really don't. That's also the most extreme case involving thought of nuclear exchanges, the more likely scenario of Russian "irregulars" fracturing these border states with instability and quasi-occupation, I think the EU by itself would have no functional response to whatsoever, and I think some EU members would still want to mostly continue as-normal economic relations with Russia in such a scenario.

I think the US has become such an unreliable ally that the EU is forced to become self reliant.   

[Tonitrus]

The problem though, is that with members like Poland/Hungary, the EU itself is internally unreliable.  France will try to push everyone along...Germany will muddle, and Hungary will outright sabotage. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The problem though, is that with members like Poland/Hungary, the EU itself is internally unreliable.  France will try to push everyone along...Germany will muddle, and Hungary will outright sabotage.

France will only push if it fits in their own strategic plans.
A major European state will only go forward with something if it is beneficial for them. If not they'll agree to disagree, make a statement with some expensive sounding words and do nothing.

[Valmy]

A major European state will only go forward with something if it is beneficial for them. If not they'll agree to disagree, make a statement with some expensive sounding words and do nothing.

Minor European states do that even when it is something beneficial for them though.

[Admiral Yi]

The problem though, is that with members like Poland/Hungary, the EU itself is internally unreliable.  France will try to push everyone along...Germany will muddle, and Hungary will outright sabotage.

Poland, leaving aside it's medieval politics, seems pretty gung ho about confronting a Russian threat.  They are a front line state after all.

[PDH]

I don't see how Europe can protect themselves, they don't even have a Space Force.

[The Brain]

I don't see how Europe can protect themselves, they don't even have a Space Force.

Is that always a Supra?

[fromtia]

I don't know very much about military matters. I do play Warthunder obsessively with my brother, which makes me almost as well qualified as some high faluting defense analyst, so I'll opine;

It does seem reasonable, assuming Russia as the primary security threat that the EU does a better job of organizing it's defense without assuming the US is coming to the rescue. I mean, Russia is sort of a criminal organization pretending to be a country with an economy about the size of Spain. Must be possible to rebuff their future advances, or perhaps dissuade them from making them in the first place, right?

I understand the fearsome reputation, the Red Army rolled over the Wermacht, no one saw that coming at the time. I've played enough Warthunder to know about Stalinium armor and depleted Putinite shells, but I still think it's well within reason that the EU, with an economy bigger than China and , what, about 500 million people, can match this brigand on it's eastern border.

[The Brain]

A guy with a knife who is perfectly ready and willing to use it can easily intimidate 5 guys with knives who really want to avoid a fight, and get what he wants.

[Berkut]

The paper tiger recently annexed the Crimea and gobbled a chunk of Ukraine, receiving only a short retaliatory strike of tut-tuts in return.

The Baltics are potentially vulnerable to such a little green men strike. And the experience of Hungary shows how easily Russia can compromise the EU from within.

We are not talking about that kind of thing though, we are talking about being a military threat.

Russia may win other ways but having a big well funded and centrally controlled military will not help the Euros much with that stuff.

Of course it would help. Having a credible threat to respond is the first step in being able to use diplomacy to stop that if needed, or perhaps never even letting it begin to start with.

[Berkut]

US "reliability" is of a different kind than European reliability. I think.

If Putin is considering eyeing the annexation of Lithuania (after the requisit bullshit with Russian speakers and such), Putin might look at the US as not being a reliable defender of NATO because if there is a Trump in charge, who knows what he will do? Incompetence is hard to predict. But he wouldn't question the basic idea that the US would have the will at least in theory, to go to war in Eastern Europe or that they would have the capability of doing so in a fashion that matters.

When it comes to Europe where there is no NATO, just the EU with its rather vague guarantees that don't really seem to actually *obligate* anyone to do anything...I think he could reasonable conclude that not only is there a lack of political will on the part of Spain (as an example) to protect Lithuania, he would also conclude that Spain lacks the capability to do so anyway. And the EU overall lacks the kind of unified capability (even in aggregate), now or in the near future, to do much of anything should he decide to stroll into Lithuania or Estonia.

The US might not be reliable, but they have to be accounted for in the calculus. The EU is both unreliable, and probably can be dismissed (now and in the near future) as a credible block to regional military adventurism.

And this says nothing about the ability to the EU to extend military might even to its near sphere of influence, should they want to do so. Absent NATO, what could the EU do against an aggressive Turkey, for example, willing to invade a neighbor that the EU would really rather they not invade? IIRC, didn't some EU countries have to get munitions from the US in order to engage in the bombing campaign in Libya?

[Berkut]

What do you mean by militarily capable here? I mean they probably cannot project power abroad to enforce their imperialist dreams but I don't see why them being capable of defending their territory and regional interests is fantastical.

On paper we have everything to do it. France has the nuclear deterrent and the combined size of armies of all euro nations are over 1 million active personnel and the budget is roughly half of the US' (of course, the spending is not nearly as efficient due to all national armies having overlapping structures and capabilities). There's plenty of caveats, not the least a political will to really have a semblance of coordinated defence policy (the EU does have an equivalent of NATO's article 5, but no formal structures to enforce it), but the basic capabilities to defend the EU are there.

I think the basic foundations are there to create the capabilities, but they have not yet been created, and doing so is not trivial. It involves more than just spending money, and even that hurdle doesn't seem like something the EU states are interested in overcoming.

[Razgovory]

When they are talking about an EU military I'm think of more of missions like keeping the peace in the Balkans, Caucus mountains, Cyprus, and North Africa.

[The Brain]

When they are talking about an EU military I'm think of more of missions like keeping the peace in the Balkans, Caucus mountains, Cyprus, and North Africa.

Let's learn to walk before we try to run.