Cobalt wrote:
The twist is – to make any material change (pass new laws, rather than just keep the budget rolling and keep everything the same), you would still need a majority and the empty seats count.That would sort the legitimacy issue. If the politician’s can’t get people to positively vote for them, they have NO MANDATE to make change and everything stays the same until a party gets enough votes from the population to drive their agenda.
Love the idea – not that easy, unfortunately, as also “keeping the lights on” technically needs passing new laws and it is quite difficult to ex ante define, when a law is “new new” or just “keep the lights on new”.
Whatever system we come to agree on, all I ask is that we try it out on a small scale at first.
kwlf wrote:
Whatever system we come to agree on, all I ask is that we try it out on a small scale at first.
So let’s pick a small country an try it there. How about Switzerland? If we agree we only need someone to tell the Swiss ;-)
Seriously: The challenge with such systems is, that the dynamics and therefore the way they work is very different depending on the scale. Direct democracy e.g. seems to work better the smaller the the area is where you try it…
So we shouldn’t test it on a small scale because if it only works at a large scale we might conclude that it doesn’t work and miss out?
arj1 wrote:
Jujupilote, I think now (as the UK is out) EU has a chance of creating EU military union. And that would help its countries to start thinking collectively as a military power as well as a soft power. And that EU army can be part of NATO. Not going to be popular with current UK establishment. :)
An EU army would be the most sensible way to spend European defense budgets since the Cold War ended. There is absolutely no justification for maintaining national armies in this time, since the only reason for doing so would be if we expect to fight against each other again at any point in the future, which – I hope we all agree on – nobody wants to do.
So the only sensible approach is to pool defense budgets and capabilities into a larger force, one that is actually able to defend the EU and project power abroad wherever needed (remember, as a union we are quite dependent economically on international trade, and cannot expect the US to protect our trade routes alone).
Just by pooling the existing EU member state armies, we would have the second largest armed forces in the world overnight. Of course, just adding up the number of soldiers and weapon systems does not make an effective fighting force. That would take a lot of time and need to overcome a lot of hurdles (which language to use? which rank system? which doctrines?). A lot of these issues are more cosmetic than they sound, in my opinion, because armies have consisted of people from different regions and often with different languages for millenia, and still fought together…
MedEwok wrote:
There is absolutely no justification for maintaining national armies in this time, since the only reason for doing so would be if we expect to fight against each other again at any point in the future, which – I hope we all agree on – nobody wants to do.
Nobody wants to do that right now, but that does not exclude it to happen in the future.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Nobody wants to do that right now, but that does not exclude it to happen in the future.
Well, I argue in favour of a conscious decision by our (=EU) governments at this time to exclude this happening in the future. The more we integrate the EU, the more unlikely any intra-European war will become in the future. The EU is already the most successful entitiy at keeping the peace in Europe since the Roman Empire, by soft power alone.
MedEwok wrote:
An EU army would be the most sensible way to spend European defense budgets since the Cold War ended.
i think there are many advantages.
If I have a concern, which Covid in its way has also exposed, it is this – the larger the organisation the less nimble it would appear it is able to be. When it comes to the military, being nimble is one of the very important attributes. As much as we might all like to believe wars result from rising tensions, and are predictable, the reality is this is only part of the story. Rarely is a war ever predictable, and often the most nibble adversary is the one likely to succeed.
There are different points of view on why we have not had WW3 
The by far dominant one is nuclear – mutual assured destruction. Stalin said after WW2: we will need 10 years to rebuild, and then we will have another go. He died before the 10 years was up, but that’s not the point, which is that America – and its nuclear weapons stationed in Europe under NATO – would have prevented a victory.
Trade has never stopped wars. The USSR, and later Russia, always ran a totally pragmatic policy on this, keeping its trade relationships and its foreign policy (including war where they thought it would be useful) totally separate. Something which its trading partners – basically all of Europe – always quietly appreciated
Russia can do what it likes around the edges of Europe, because Europe’s “green” movements have ensured that its biggest members are a big customer for natural gas 
The only place Russia will not mess is where America would get involved.
When the sh*t hits the fan, practically all countries revert to national / nationalist positions, which is what we are seeing right now with CV19, and stuff like vaccine procurement. And you can’t blame them… politicians are responsible for, and answer to, their own country only, not to the ones next door.
As has been said decades or centuries ago, in international politics there are no friends. There are only strategic alliances. The EU is one of these, and it works as long as it is useful to all parties. It has been particularly useful – in the short term at least – to the South, which got a big injection of capital… the long term benefits are less obvious (Greece?).
So I think a European (or EU) military force would be ineffective, for anything other than peacekeeping, and then only when there is nothing actually happening (look at Yugoslavia). This is not to say it can’t be created, and for sure it will be capable of absorbing a lot of money. It may even lead to the development of some good weapons, which can then be sold to “currently useful” 3rd World customers, which is the only way to get production volumes and to make sure they actually work for real, because Europe will never have the money to test them regularly because there will never be a consensus for any real military action.
The most sensible way to spend a defence budget is to buy off the shelf American hardware, but (as one former UK defence secretary observed) this is not really possible politically
Peter wrote:
There are different points of view on why we have not had WW3The by far dominant one is nuclear – mutual assured destruction. Stalin said after WW2: we will need 10 years to rebuild, and then we will have another go. He died before the 10 years was up, but that’s not the point, which is that America – and its nuclear weapons stationed in Europe under NATO – would have prevented a victory.
I agree that the Cold War going “hot” (= WW3) was basically prevented by MAD. But WW3 is not the only possible conflict. There are still lots of ancient rivalries and disputed borders in Europe. Populist politicans can flame feelings of revanchism basically everywhere. As someone who was born in Czecheslovakia, you will be well aware of some of these “hotspots”, e.g. the Sudetenland or the wounds created by the Treaty of Trianon in S-E Europe. To take an example closer to your current homeland: Northern Ireland! The conflict about it became largely meaningless because N. Ireland and the Republic of Ireland belonged to the EU customs union and the population could travel freely between both territories, work and shop on both sides of the border, thus constantly reducing the very meaning of that border and thus increasing the feeling of “belonging together”. Hence, even after Brexit there are no border controls between these territories.
From a German point of view – living in the middle of Europe, in a country that borders 9 other countries, all of which (except Switzerland) we had some form of border dispute or war with during the last 200 years, it is imperative that our borders are open to trade. Not just because it is convienient, but because it elegantly solves the age old “German question” with elegancy. Who needs new “Lebensraum” if you can just move the borders as you want and are able to settle in any other EU country by virtue of being an EU citizen?
Peter wrote:
Russia can do what it likes around the edges of Europe, because Europe’s “green” movements have ensured that its biggest members are a big customer for natural gas The only place Russia will not mess is where America would get involved.
Yes and no. The Russians are actually more dependent economically on selling their energy resources (natural gas) to us than we are on buying it. The threat of turning of the supply is a hollow one, as it will bankrupt Russia fairly quickly. Germany has strategic reserves for 3 months without any gas imports, and less than half of our gas is from Russia. The main reason Russia can “do what it likes around the edges of Europe” (probably refering to Ukraine and Georgia) is the lack of political will in Europe to oppose Russia with force. And, the lack of a credible force to oppose them with, which leads us back to square one…a possible EU army.
Peter wrote:
So I think a European (or EU) military force would be ineffective, for anything other than peacekeeping, and then only when there is nothing actually happening (look at Yugoslavia). This is not to say it can’t be created, and for sure it will be capable of absorbing a lot of money. It may even lead to the development of some good weapons, which can then be sold to “currently useful” 3rd World customers, which is the only way to get production volumes and to make sure they actually work for real, because Europe will never have the money to test them regularly because there will never be a consensus for any real military action.
You are pointing out the main problem: Building a consensus on the strategic goals of the EU and on the tools and methods to achieve them. If such a consensus would be reached – perhaps forced by continued withdrawal from the American strategic “umbrella”, then an effective force could concievably be created, albeit not overnight.
Peter wrote:
The most sensible way to spend a defence budget is to buy off the shelf American hardware, but (as one former UK defence secretary observed) this is not really possible politically
Yes and no. I was surprised that even our own government is planning to buy some F18’s , but then again the Americans are buying a lot of stuff from us too. And a lot of European made weapon systems are on par or superior to American made counterparts, e.g. Leopard 2A7 tanks, PzH 2000 howitzers, H&K rifles and pistols etc.
