The idea had earlier failed to gain traction because the UK had potentially threatened to veto any such move. But the UK, the US’ closest ally in Europe, is now leaving the EU, and there is now enough room for France and Germany to reorient the EU in global geo-politics [...]
French president Macron’s call for the creation of a “European Army” and the implicit end of NATO alliance reflects the changing global order, the credit for which must, in the first place, go to the US president Trump, who, through his series of actions, has unwittingly done enough damage to the alliance to force the EU to wean away from the so-called western alliance and project itself as an independent player in the international arena. On the one hand, the concept of a “European army” affirms the growing distance between the US and its allies in Europe, and on the other, it also emphasises how Europe, despite Brexit, intends to stay as one bloc in the international arena and how the creation of a “European army” will only reinforce their existence as a regional bloc. To quote Macron, “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America. We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army.” The emphasis on “we” and the projection from the US as a potential threat and an enemy speaks volumes about how the idea of a “European army” actually clashes with rather than compliments NATO.
The US, therefore, will lose on at leas two major fronts: its global influence will wane at a time when its self-proclaimed ‘global leadership’ role is being consistently challenged by Russia and China, and its ability to materialize its global foreign policy objectives will be seriously affected. This has already started to reflect in how some of the EU policies are going to potentially dilute the impact of the ‘toughest ever’ US sanctions on Iran. This will also mean that with Europe establishing its own military, completely independent of the US, and with Europe also engaging itself with Russia in a “real security dialogue”, as Macron himself put it, Russia, as also China, will be in much better position to counter the US domination of the world than has been the case.
It was, therefore, not surprising to see Russia’s Vladimir Putin appreciating the idea of a “European army”, saying that “Europe is … a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and … sovereign in the field of defence and security”, adding further that it would be “a positive process” that would most likely “strengthen the multipolar world”, and in pursuing this type of world order, Russia’s position “is aligned with that of France.”
Hitting at the core of the issues between Europe and the US, Putin said that the need for a new security dialogue with Russia was imperative since “it is not us who are going to withdraw from the INF Treaty. It is the Americans who plan to do that.” And since it the US alone which has repeatedly accused Russia of INF violations and that no EU countries have joined Trump in this chorus, it is logical to see Europe thinking of a “European army” and enter into a new security dialogue with Russia, for if Europe had really believed in Trump’s rhetoric, they would have decided to strengthen the transatlantic treaty rather than throw out the idea of a “European army”, which clearly is in clash with the US rather than Russia. In other words, the idea of a “European army”, if implemented ever, would only reorient Europe.
It is again for this reason—the growing frustration with the US over its not so down-to-earth policies—that the idea of a “European army” has fond affection not just in France, but also in Germany and European commission. Apparently, the idea of a “European army” isn’t the creation of French president’s mind, but of European commission’s president Jean-Claude Juncker, who reportedly presented this idea about four years ago and argued how necessary it was for Europe to have its own “meaningful defence identity.” It is therefore not surprising to see the commission expressing its ‘delight’ over the recent call for the creation of a “European army.”
The idea had earlier failed to gain traction because the UK had potentially threatened to veto any such move. But the UK, the US’ closest ally in Europe, is now leaving the EU, and there is now enough room for France and Germany to reorient the EU in global geo-politics.
On the other hand, an ‘angered’ Trump, already pressurising the EU countries to beef up their NATO contributions, might feel it a lot more difficult in his own self to support the EU or even NATO when push comes to shove. But will push come to shove when EU currently has more problems with the US than with Russia or even China?
EU is cooperating with Russia over Syria and Iran, and Macron has initiated a debate in Europe about a new security dialogue with Russia, which means that a geo-strategic shift, howsoever imperceptible one may think it is, in Europe is underway, and the probable push vis-à-vis Russia and China is highly unlikely to come to shove in EU at least in the foreseeable future, for the idea of a “European army” is only a logical progression of how EU and the US have drifted apart over Paris climate agreement, over Iran and NATO and even over EU’s relations with Russia.
Originally published on 2018-11-19
About the author: Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
Ilan Pappé is a historian, socialist activist, professor at the University of Exeter, and supporter of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Of Israeli origin, he is a world-renowned scholar on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has written numerous books on the subject, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge.Pappé was interviewed by Alejandra Ríos for Left Voice, where this article first appeared.Alejandra Ríos (AR): You’ve talked and written about the concept of homeland as justification for destroying the native population. What is the meaning of this concept and ...
It is true that every story about the Balkan Peninsula begins with the ancient Illyrians.[1] Historians believe that these Indo-European people were one of the largest European populations to inhabit the western portion of the Balkans from the coasts of the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea to the Alps about 1000 B.C. Their eastern neighbours were also Indo-European peoples – the Thracians. The demarcation line between their settlements and their cultural and political influence was the Morava river in present-day Serbia (in Latin Margus, located in the Roman province of Moesia Superior) and the Vardar river in present-day FYR ...
How many people have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia? On Nov. 18, a UN press briefing on the war in Yemen declared authoritatively that it had so far killed 5,700 people, including 830 women and children. But how precise are these figures, what are they based on, and what relation are they likely to bear to the true numbers of people killed?Throughout the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the media has cited UN updates comparing numbers of Afghans killed by “coalition forces” and the “Taliban.” Following the U.S. escalation of the war in 2009 and 2010, a report by McClatchy in ...
Historical backgroundAfter the failure of the interwar League of Nations to prevent international crises and military conflicts of the 1930s which finally culminated in the next global war, the major Allied states (the USA, the USA, the UK, and China) agreed in Moscow in October 1943 to create a new, more functional, and improved international peace-keeping organization after the war under a new name of the United Nations Organization (the UNO). In other words, the UNO has evolved from a wining coalition of countries fighting against European Nazism and fascism in WWII. Following further negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta, ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
This is a long story which extends over fifteen years. NATO first attempted to silence those citizens who were trying to discover the truth about the attacks of 11 September 2001. Then it turned on those who contested the oficial version of the «Arab Springs» and the war against Syria. One thing leading to another, it then attacked those who denounced the coup d’état in Ukraine. Now NATO is behind the accusations by a pseudo-NGO that the people who campaigned for Donald Trump are Russian agents.The attacks of 11 September 2001 were followed by a permanent state of emergency and ...
A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar ...
The Kingdom of Belgium as a multilingual and multicultural society is today a federal type of experimental laboratory of European integration within the framework of the European Union (the EU). This is also a country in which the capital of the European Union is located and a country as one of the original six establishing countries of the present day the EU. The question of the destiny of the Belgian multicultural federalism is of crucial importance for the future process of European integration or disintegration.The Belgian multicultural society: Long united and long dividedThe population of the Kingdom of Belgium is ...
Uncovering the Western mainstream mass-media lies on Ukraine.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
Over the past 50 years the US and European powers have engaged in countless imperial wars throughout the world. The drive for world supremacy has been clothed in the rhetoric of “world leadership”, the consequences have been devastating for the peoples targeted. The biggest, longest and most numerous wars have been carried out by the United States. Presidents from both parties direct and preside over this quest for world power. The ideology which informs imperialism varies from “anti-communism”in the past to “anti-terrorism”today.Washington’s drive for world domination has used and combined many forms of warfare, including military invasions and occupations; proxy ...
Hypocrisy may be the only consistent guiding principle of US foreign policy. Here's a prime example of the "do as we say, not as we do" that is the core of how Washington does business overseas: In the same week that the the US Justice Department demanded that the Russian-backed RT America network register as a foreign propaganda entity or face arrest, the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DNL) has announced that it is launching a program to massively interfere in NATO-partner Hungary's internal media.So the US Justice Department is cracking down on RT America for what ...
Editor’s note:This article was written and originally published in January 2015. „God is our objective, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for sake of God is the highest of our aspirations“Jihadi credoWest Europe before the 2014 Christmas became once again a target of several mini-terrorist acts by the radical Islamists among whom the Wahabbies are the most active and dangerous. On Tuesday, December 23rd, Germany’s security service warn of the highest terrorist threat in decades as the German participation in the anti-ISIS struggle became the reason for potential terrorism. ...
On January 5th, a very interesting online conference and debate with experts regarding the current Ukrainian crisis was held. The information presented in the debate is very interesting for anyone dealing with the Ukrainian crisis and European policy towards the crisis.Hansjörg MÜLLER (former member of Bundestag from AfD): Training soldiers makes Germany participant of the war. A Bundestag council stated that Russia would be right if attacking Germany in the framework of international law, because Germany started participating in anti-Russian aggression. Treating Ukrainian soldiers in German hospitals is a good sign of humanity. Sending weapons and training soldiers has nothing ...
This article was first published on October 19, 2014This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations.In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As ...
As Europe’s longest ruler, it is a surprise that Milo Djukanovic is only 58. He has served as prime minister or president of various iterations of Montenegro since 1991 – spanning the collapse of Yugoslavia and across and beyond independence of the nation in 2006.What is the secret to Mr Djukanovic’s success? The answer is depressingly predictable: clientelism and the buying – or, depending on your perspective, stealing – of power.The beauty of Montenegro hides this ugly truth. Most know it as a tourist idyll with pristine beaches, crystal lakes and picturesque mountains. But holidaymakers rarely realize they enter less ...
What must the world think watching the US presidential campaign? Over time US political campaigns have become more unreal and less related to voters’ concerns, but the current one is so unreal as to be absurd.The offshoring of American jobs by global corporations and the deregulation of the US financial system have resulted in American economic failure. One might think that this would be an issue in a presidential campaign.The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony is driving the US and its vassals into conflict with Russia and China. The risks of nuclear war are higher than at any previous ...
These are awesome days for headline writers. So many global settings, such an abundance of weapons, such a wealth of choices!On the morning of April 14, the New York Times led with “A Giant U.S. Bomb Strikes ISIS Caves in Afghanistan,” matched by CNN’s “US Drops ‘Mother of All Bombs.’” The Washington Post chose Syria, where “Errant U.S. Strike Kills 18: Victims in Syria Were Allied Forces.” By mid-afternoon that same day, the Associated Press had shifted to the horn of Africa, where the “U.S. Sends Dozens of Troops to Somalia, 1st Time in Decades.”And as the Friday rush hour ...
Congratulations to the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, once known also as Kovno (in Yiddish Kóvne) on its selection as Europe’s “Capital of European Culture” in 2022, sharing the title with Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg.The city’s leaders now have a splendid opportunity to take the moral high road in dealing with a number of ghosts from the present and the past. To start with the present, will the city’s officials now act rapidly to avoid a public perception disaster by moving this year’s neo-Nazi parade away from the city center during the February 16th Independence Day celebrations? Previous years’ marches have on occasion glorified actual Kaunas Holocaust collaborators, causing deep pain to Survivors ...
A NATO defense ministers meeting that took place in Brussels on November, 8-9 resulted in the new and very important decisions for the future of Europe.Speaking at a meeting, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it is vital that European roads, ports, bridges and rail networks are able to carry tanks and heavy military equipment. Stoltenberg also added that NATO countries have agreed to cooperate to improve civil infrastructure objects to make them usable for military needs. What does it mean in practice for Europe in general and for the Baltic States in particular?Lithuanian authorities, for example, will for sure try ...
