Why It’s Time to Reconsider a European Army

Photo: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Commentary by Max Bergmann

The idea of a common European army has been discussed continuously since the European project began in the early days of the Cold War. The Eisenhower administration even successfully cajoled European leaders to agree to create a common European army only to be thwarted by the French parliament. The European project was a few votes from launching as a military project rather than an economic one. The idea of a common European force was revived in the 1990s as the European Union was formed, but the concept lost favor due to U.S. opposition and commitment to NATO.

The major problem with a European army is that while it makes sense in principle, it was not seen as practical. Yet, Europe defending itself as 25 or more distinct nations without the United States neither makes sense nor is it practical either. It is thus time for Europe to seriously revisit the concept.

In the last decade or so, the whole concept of a European army had become a distraction. Those mentioning the words “European army” mostly did so to deride the very notion of the EU doing anything on defense. Any EU defense proposal, however narrow, would lead to overstated accusations that this was a stealth EU effort to create an army. German defense analyst, Ulrike Franke, aptly described the EU army as the “ghost in the system of the European Defence debates.” Defense analysts who saw a vital role for the European Union in defense alongside NATO envisioned it as the back office of European defense, supporting procurement cooperation, funding research and development, and harmonizing the defense industry.

Yet, it is time to seriously revisit the idea. The United States is unfortunately not interested in acting as the guarantor of European security. This is a shock to Europe and in many ways a betrayal. After all, the biggest opponent of an integrated European defense, of the European Union doing anything on defense, or of NATO creating a European pillar was the United States. This leaves Europe in the lurch.

But the focus of European discussions is almost entirely on funding, not the tremendous structural problem of Europe’s fractured defense landscape made up of 25 or more bespoke militaries. To put it bluntly, these militaries are not designed to defend Europe. It is good that Europe is thinking big when it comes to funding, but they also need to think big when it comes to reform and integrating Europe’s forces.

Europe, however, also needs to approach their defense vulnerabilities with a sober approach that separates the short-term urgency to act and the long-term need to replace the U.S. military in Europe.

In the short term, Europe’s challenge is not replacing the U.S. military like-for-like. The challenge for Europe is to deter Russia from thinking about offensive action against EU territory. Fortunately, the Russian military has been battered by Ukraine. With the United States likely to end its military support for Ukraine, Europe should make sure Ukraine can continue the war effort and degrade and deplete Russia as much as possible. As cynical as this sounds, it buys Europe time. Europe then needs to focus on addressing major short-term gaps in capabilities. In particular, it needs more munitions and must produce them at a much-accelerated pace. Europe must also figure out how to fight together in the short term. This may involve ad hoc solutions. The point here is that Europe needs to take urgent, good-enough, steps to make its militaries mildly coherent. This is doable.

But for the long term, Europe should get serious about building a common European force that can fight and act as one to defend Europe, that can replace the United States. Instead of one singular force, a common European force would likely mean more of a hybrid force.

First, the backbone of Europe’s defense will remain Europe’s big national militaries. France, Poland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if it chooses, as well as frontline states like Finland and the Nordic-Baltic states which have relatively strong and cohesive forces, should be the backbone of European defense. These exist and provide substantial combat power. Yet Europe’s goal should be to get these forces to operate as cohesively as possible together. This means buying the same kit and increasing joint training. Many of the EU initiatives that have been developed over the past number of years can help achieve this if they receive a dramatic increase in resources. In short, the European Union should ramp up what it has been planning on doing.

Second, the European Union should create a standing common EU force that would not belong to any nation but would belong to the EU collectively. This is akin to the 60,000 strong rapid reaction force that Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac agreed to at St. Malo in 1998, just not to intervene in crises abroad but ones in Europe. Instead of an EU army, this would be more like the EU marines.

This should be a standing EU force, however, not one made by rotating units from national forces. To create it, the EU could recruit across Europe. The EU could offer competitive salaries that might be highly attractive to Europeans in poorer regions, as well as offer EU citizenship to recruits from certain candidate countries, such as in the Western Balkans. The officers for the force could be recruited from existing European militaries, much the way the European External Action Service recruits from diplomatic services across Europe. As for language, something long considered an obstacle to a common force is no longer an issue. Recruits would be required to speak English, the EU’s de facto lingua Franca, which Europeans are now taught almost at birth. As for developing the force, training could be done and doctrine developed by one of Europe’s major national militaries, just as European forces are training completely green Ukrainians in combat tactics. The doctrine and training could therefore align with one of the more powerful member states’ militaries.

One more controversial way forward is for Europe’s non-frontline member states to fold much of their national forces into this force. The EU and NATO’s many full-spectrum small militaries do little to contribute to Europe’s overall combat power and create massive coordination headaches. Europe on paper has nearly 2 million personnel in uniform and spends roughly $338 billion per year on defense, more than enough to deter Russia and enough to make Europe collectively a military power. But the numbers on paper do not match reality. Europe’s militaries are way less than the sum of their parts. Many of these forces are in militaries that are not ready to fight. For all of the chest thumping about NATO’s strength, its wartime operations in Libya and Afghanistan have all demonstrated the challenges of coordination. Thus, the goal of a common European force is to reduce incessant multilateralism, shrink the number of relevant militaries, and thereby minimize the duplication and waste, and create a more cohesive fighting force.

The EU could incentivize non-frontline militaries to contribute to a European force instead of spending more on their forces, or by folding in their militaries into a common force. Big southern European countries like Italy and Spain, which spend well below 2 percent, could choose to contribute to an EU fund or spend even more on their defense, perhaps 2.5 percent. Unlike NATO, the EU has the power to monitor European budgets and penalize if targets are missed. Usually, the EU does this to prevent excessive spending, but it could also work to ensure defense spending.

Furthermore, member states could choose to opt in to support an EU force. These countries would contribute 1 percent of GDP into a common EU pot of funding to support the force, as well as provide personnel and legacy equipment. The bargain would be countries get to spend less in total on defense, transitioning their own national militaries to resemble more of a national guard or reserve to react to crises and disorder, rather than military conflict. The EU would pay to equip and recruit these forces and, in doing so, would also seek to help harmonize kit used by Europeans across its forces.

Merging a national force into an EU one would be an enormous national decision and require national referendums from countries to agree to create such a force. At first blush, it may seem that few countries would be interested. But for many Europeans the idea of spending significant amounts to beef up their relatively small militaries makes little sense. Hence, public opinion data consistently shows overwhelming support in Europe for bold approaches that effectively shift the burden of defense from the national to the European level.

Third, the European Union would need a unified command structure. The EU could develop its own command headquarters that could command both the EU force and sit as supreme European commander above the national militaries. Creating an EU command has been talked about for decades, and the EU does have an embryonic command structure to manage its peacekeeping missions. But concerns over duplication with NATO and U.S. opposition blocked its creation. However, now that there may be a clear division between the United States and Europe on defense, it makes sense for Europe to have an independent command capacity at the very least to prevent any organizational gaps in European defense.

This command could also be integrated with NATO. NATO and the EU could seek to make the deputy NATO commander dual-hatted as the top EU Commander as well, with the EU’s current missions remaining with the current EU commander. The main job of the EU commander would be to command the EU force. But should the United States or Turkey object or not want to cooperate or manage a war against Russia in NATO, the EU command would manage Europe’s war effort.

There will be issues and challenges with this structure. But the goal could be to create as cohesive as possible a European pillar of NATO through the EU. This should in turn make NATO stronger. This does mean the EU potentially joining NATO as a member, assuming transatlantic relations become more tranquil, just as the EU became part of G-7.

Fourth, the EU should develop the integrated capabilities and key enablers to back European forces. This includes tasks such as air transport, air tankers, intelligence and targeting capability, and integrated command and control needed to get Europe to fight together, which the United States has provided. These efforts should be Europeanized as much as possible and done at the EU level. For instance, the EU could buy air tankers and air transport and recruit pilots and crew from around the bloc to serve essentially as EU air support. The EU should also create its own defense intelligence service. This could work with NATO’s existing capacities to assist in targeting.

Inevitably, there will be lots of issues and challenges to setting up a force. It is very easy to make such reforms seem impossible. Bureaucracies despise change and they especially despise dramatic change. But creating such a force is not as dramatic as it seems.

First, Who Is in Charge of the Force?

The EU council president or the commission president do not have the legitimacy to serve as commander in chief. This is true, however, the post–Cold War discussion of a European army envisioned it being deployed abroad. The purpose of such a force today is to defend Europe. Not to deploy abroad. Thus, decisions on its use, whether it should be deployed or not, which have understandably stood in the way of an EU army in the past are somewhat mute. It will stay home. Additionally, the EU force would respond to the commander who would report to the EU council just as EU Battlegroups were intended to. This is maybe not streamlined, but it is not as if there is no civilian control or higher civilian authority above the EU military command.

Second, Would It Require a Change to the European Treaty?

Probably not. More broadly, the EU treaty’s section on defense reads like it was written in the 1990s, where the idea of territorial defense is unimaginable. Importantly, there is no language prohibiting such a force, in fact it envisions the EU creating a deployable EU force. Additionally, the EU does deploy forces but does so through off-budget funding. Thus, funding a common EU force should be possible. The EU is already likely to drop its prohibition against the EU buying arms, as this prohibition stemmed from a bizarre and overly broad reading of the EU treaties. Nowhere does the treaty prevent the EU from buying weapons.

Furthermore, since the European force’s purpose is to defend EU borders, it could be developed under the same legal authorities that formed the European border and coast guard agency called Frontex. Frontex’s mission is to “support Member States on the ground in their efforts to protect the external borders.” As a result, it has guns, drones, and ships. One could certainly see a scenario of instead of calling this force the EU marines, they are called the EU’s “Enhanced Border Integrity Security Enforcement Service” or some other unintelligible acronym.

But importantly, the treaty allows for those seeking to do more together and gradually deepen defense cooperation within the EU framework. The EU force, if formed from a blend of smaller nations blending their militaries, pan-European recruitment, a mix of EU and national funding, would meet that standard. Furthermore, Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union may offer the ultimate out-clause should the EU need to engage in combat. As it says, member states should use “all the means in their power” to aid a member state who is the victim of armed aggression. Since the member states created the EU and have the power to direct it, using the EU and an EU force would certainly seem to be consistent with using “all the means in their power.”

Lastly, What About the Neutral Countries?

Ireland, Austria, and Malta are all self-described “neutral” countries (despite being a political union) and object to being part of a military alliance. But these countries account for less than 5 percent of the European Union. The EU should ask them for solidarity purposes to support an EU defense force to defend the EU. But if not opt-outs and workarounds can easily be found, just with existing EU military missions.

Ultimately, the EU as a political union should be able to defend EU territory with or without the United States. It is EU territory that must be defended. Should Ukraine become an EU member but not allowed into NATO, the EU will have, by extension, provided security guarantees and will have to be a defense actor.

As opposed to resisting the EU having a role in common defense, European states and their national ministries of defense, should realize this is the United States’ ultimate goal for NATO. The U.S. objective in NATO was never to keep the “Americans in” indefinitely. The U.S. goal was to use NATO to birth a new integrated Europe in the United States’ image. It is time to realize that.

The time to build a European force should have begun at St. Malo in 1998, it absolutely should begin now.

Max Bergmann is director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and Stuart Center in Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

---

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

©by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.