Airborne_Again wrote:
What are you referring to?
Sorry – its been Gas, not oil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Cyprus_gas_dispute
Malibu, these could have been my words.
The fact that AA missed the quasi-war between Turkey, Cyprus and Greece tells a lot about our collective strategic awareness (nothing personal).
There is a tradition of one-time alliances among european countries :
But as De Gaulle said, “Nations have no friends, they only have interests”. I guess all kings knew that 
I wasn’t born at that time but an EU Army would have made great sense when all NATO was waiting for the Red Army tanks. At least we all shared a common interest.
When it comes to foreign interventions, I agree we don’t all have the same interests and the same links to the same 3rd parties.
I guess France and UK have a tendency of fighting the enemy in his backyard, not ours. We have first hand experience that avoiding the former generally leads to the latter 
(btw this doesn’t excuse ALL the recent interventions).
In that logic, the only thing Hollande did right was the Mali operation. Swift and strong (well, he only pulled the trigger, but we were ready). Now it is a mess because the local government can’t get his sh*t together (as usual).
Several EU countries have troops with the UN there. Looking for the bad guys with us wouldn’t be more expensive but they aren’t willing to take any risks.
Jujupilote wrote:
The fact that AA missed the quasi-war between Turkey, Cyprus and Greece tells a lot about our collective strategic awareness (nothing personal).
Actually I didn’t miss it, but for some reason I didn’t connect the firsts and last parts of Malibuflyer’s post.
172driver wrote:
n more recent history, the EU stood by as Russia annexed Crimea, not to speak of the non-intervention in Syria and Libya,
The EU (or any of its countries) are not getting in direct conflict with Russia which has enough nuclear weapons to end civilisation three times over. Note that the USA too only made “strong statements” over Crimea, but did nothing.
Russia also did the same when we invaded Iraq: lots of strong words but no action because Russia wasn’t going to directly confront the USA/UK in war either.
Jujupilote wrote:
I wasn’t born at that time but an EU Army would have made great sense when all NATO was waiting for the Red Army tanks. At least we all shared a common interest.
Wouldn’t have worked then (and now): Every war needs a battlefield. During Cold War it was a (not very well kept) secret, that the Nato wanted Germany (nothing to say these days anyways), Denmark and parts of Netherlands/Belgium to be the battlefield. That would give France/UK enough time to mobilize before the Russian Tanks actually hit their territory.
That, however would imply that the “EU forces” would only be “UK/France Forces” because for any of the battlefield countries it would not make any sense to participate in a military structure with the more or less open doctrine to sacrifice their territory as battlefield.
But that is perhaps the biggest gap in our discussion on EU forces: What is the strategic scenario such forces should be built for? A EU vs. Russia scenario is very unlikely. A China vs. the West war would more likely take place in the pacific. For EU border conflicts (like Cyprus but also Ukrain in a bit wider sense) we have shown that there is not political will at all to act as one European armed force.
The leaves “international policing interventions to let everyone know that not only the US but also the Europeans know better how Africans have to live” as the only option.But wouldn’t a “European Legion Etrangere” be a better option for such conflicts?
Well, sure, in any battle you trade land for time, and thus the land immediately adjacent to the enemy – West Germany in this case – is of no “long term” use. This is no secret. A great example is Hitler trying to invade Russia. He had to cross a huge distance to get anywhere useful, but the USSR didn’t have any real assets along there.
The German situation was a “trip wire” so if the USSR invaded, NATO would have an immediate reason to escalate. As to how far the USSR would have got, is debatable, because nuclear escalation would have been rapid. That’s why it was never tried
Peter wrote:
The German situation was a “trip wire” so if the USSR invaded, NATO would have an immediate reason to escalate. As to how far the USSR would have got, is debatable, because nuclear escalation would have been rapid. That’s why it was never tried
As a book of its time, Red Storm Rising is a good read and deals with this.
Fortunately for Europe, the Russian approach to muscle-flexing is not particularly subtle. As has been identified, it constantly takes the piss around the fringes of Europe and sometimes goes further (such as poisoning political opponents who’ve sought refuge in the UK), which helpfully leaves us in no doubt whatsoever that a certain deterrent must be maintained. The deterrent is NATO, with the heavy lifting done by the US and the UK.
Were we to relax this deterrent then I am in no doubt that Russia, which is an aggressive and malign state under the leadership of a de facto dictator, would continue to take the piss and to an even greater extent. Instead of Crimea or South Ossetia, it would be be a bit of the Balkans or down through Ukraine towards Romania – whatever they thought they could do without prompting a full-on reaction from NATO.
The concern with handing over defence of Europe against Russia to any sort of EU military force is that you’d never get any sort of consensus as to which act of taking the piss constituted a step too far. Look at it from Putin’s perspective – he’d love nothing more than the US and UK to take a step backwards, decide Russia wasn’t their problem, and leave all this to the EU.
Substantial UK military spending on defence against the Russian threat is easy to justify because of how unsubtle Russia’s behaviour is. Were they more subtle, we would have a problem because those who argue for major reductions would have more evidence to support their assertion that the Russian threat is imagined.
Graham wrote:
Fortunately for Europe, the Russian approach to muscle-flexing is not particularly subtle.
That is the impression one can get – and enjoy – by watching these 70ies espionage shows on TV (and more recently the likes of The Americans on Netflix).
The “muscle flexing” takes place in the virtual world – and the Russians (like any other country) don’t even openly admit that they do it. Why should they bother to throw bombs at all German power plants (also a bad thing to do from a carbon footprint POV as these long range bombers are not really fuel efficient) if they can much easier shut them down for 6 months remotely by just pressing a few buttons ?!? Stuxnet was just a simply dry run…
Graham wrote:
Were we to relax this deterrent then I am in no doubt that Russia, which is an aggressive and malign state under the leadership of a de facto dictator, would continue to take the piss and to an even greater extent. Instead of Crimea or South Ossetia, it would be be a bit of the Balkans or down through Ukraine towards Romania – whatever they thought they could do without prompting a full-on reaction from NATO.
I don’t see that the Putin regime has made any kind oif claim on territories without a russian-speaking minority. So I don’t doubt he would take the whole of the old USSR territory if he could. (And likely Gotland, to make it more difficult for NATO to intervene on behalf of its Baltic members.) But the Balkans and Romania? Why? How would that be in his interest?
