Nine EU countries are expected to sign on to a new European military force. Non-EU countries can also participate, including Britain – if Brexit ever really happens.
The new military force will be known as the “European Intervention Initiative” and have the ability “to deploy rapidly to deal with crises,” reported via The Duran.
This is the latest attempt by EU member states at rolling out an ‘EU Army’ construct, a development that 21WIRE has been tracking for several years now. We also covered this story at the start of Monday’s UK Column News.
SEE ALSO: UK Column’s Series on EU Military Unification
Meanwhile, there’s the ongoing NATO question.
Goodbye NATO?
NATO’s days are numbered, as we wrote back in 2015. All the tea leaves point to its schedule for decommissioning. All NATO needs is a good crisis to hasten that inevitability. Maybe Turkey has delivered the game changing pretext Brussels needs. This does not necessarily mean that NATO would be winded-down, but that it would give way to another military structure – like an EU Army.
You’d expect Washington to be averse to a NATO downgrade, down to a second tier international organization. After all, the US has used NATO as a multilateral trojan horse of sorts – an alternative flag it could fly in order to bypass any due process or Constitutional restrictions in waging war around the globe. In other words, Washington has used NATO to cheat its own laws, and expand its geopolitical hegemony, and to drag along its European partners where possible to help make it look like a ‘team effort’, and a unilateral action. The truth is, regarding international affairs, the US has long-since replaced its NATO widget with the “Coalition” widget, and will wage war as and when.
At home, it has replaced the near redundant Constitutional Declaration of War with the more fluid and flexible ‘Authorization of Military Force‘ (AUMF), and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which essentially means that, on paper at least (through color of law, and not actual law), that the US is always under emergency war footing.
There is visible US-EU split, one which became evident during the planning of Washington’s coup d’etat in the Ukraine in 2013-2014, when the US Sate Department’s assistant secretary for European affairs, Victoria Nuland was caught on tape telling her colleague Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt to, “F*ck the EU!”, as they argued over which US-backed puppet leader would be installed in Kiev.
What Washington really wants (and needs) now is a big ‘Coalition’ partner, preferable one which is not directly governed by a local representative democracy, but governed by a remote, mostly unelected bureaucratic system. In this context, a new European multinational force would be the perfect ‘Coalition’ partner for Washington.
This is where this complex confluence of events is taking us – from Brussels, Paris, Syria, Ukraine, and Russia, all roads lead to an EU Army.
No More Rubber Stamp from America?
The Duran also writes this latest move by the EU “could be perceived as a start towards a multilateral security arrangement totally independent of America.” Geopolitically, this would mean for Europe a lessening of dependence on both the US and NATO to ensure its own security.
Of course, the US could view a new arrangement like this as yet another bureaucratic lever on the world stage. A new widget to add to its global hegemonic tool box.
Watch this space.
READ MORE EU ARMY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire EU Army Files
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