EU vs NATO

the European Army is a way to avoid members states from buying military equipment from the US, and buy it from Europe itself, thus accelerating the development of Europe's Military-Industrial Complex.

As to threats to the EU, only one comes to mind, the US.

I do think that NATO is useles, as we can see from the conflicts in the midle east.
The think is that Europian military will eventualy be created due to the fact that EU is fast moving toward becoming a federation, as a single constitution was signed in Rome only couple of weeks ago, which efectivly giving it more power then the member states. Give it 20 years.

Originally posted by UK Wizard


Europe has had it's internal military fighting beaten out of it in WW2

Im sure they said the same thing after WW1 (the war to end all wars) and you didnt even wait a 50 years for another go.

Yeah the UK can do it on their own,

but EU > UK

sorry

An EU army is inevitable, IMO, only now is a wrong time to start forming it.
The world is too polarised and is on a verge of a greater global conflict, deffinitely a wrong time to dismantle unions and start an administrative nightmare of forming something like EU army. It would take months if not years to develop a treaty to which all member states would agree and such waste of time is not needed right now.

Originally posted by paperclip
An EU army is inevitable, IMO, only now is a wrong time to start forming it.
The world is too polarised and is on a verge of a greater global conflict, deffinitely a wrong time to dismantle unions and start an administrative nightmare of forming something like EU army. It would take months if not years to develop a treaty to which all member states would agree and such waste of time is not needed right now.

Currently wrong time to form it? I wouldnt say so, look the talks how US been getting distance from Europe for few years and developing countrys arm em self to theeth. Euro comission start to lose its power even when its growing, what we do same thing as Japanese pay while US test its new guns where ever it wishes to without any control. Who wouldnt be pissed if nothing is enough you can set charge on any other country citizen but not US military, envitorement is thrown out of window cause it doesnt benefit US economic view.
Think how much Germany, French, UK alone could make profits by just staying on old energy ways and running everything like russia, when soil is spoiled move the factory elsewhere, let the future generations take care of it. EU is cow that is milked by all sort of agreements. for example why i pay for Russian 5 million people town water cleaning factory bills to keep our sea clean while Finland has only 5 million citizen.

Seems none appreciate how EU countrys pay others after gaining wealth.
Japanese goverment does same way, goverment pays all sort of projects and theres also always some charity running people too, still doesnt goverment policy reflect better what country think than random charity organizations?
For example US pays mainly for military purposes or deals that allow it to exploit country natural resources, seen raports how some african or south american countrys get exploited and its not even corporal policy its US foreign policy, i totally got out of subject but had to say it.

This if you cant talk reasonable on table, you have to arm yourself and prepare for worst, still i dont believe EU is aiming for major military power title and i lose all faith if they start to upgrade possible nuclear weapons instead protection agaisnt em.

Originally posted by Tartessian
the European Army is a way to avoid members states from buying military equipment from the US, and buy it from Europe itself, thus accelerating the development of Europe's Military-Industrial Complex.

Sounds great if you happen to be French, but for Britain, that's a bad thing. You see, military sales work both ways. If the UK were to be slaved to French demands, not only would we not be able to buy US stuff, we couldn't be involved in US projects (Rolls-Royce make the lift fans and GKN make the canopies for the JSF). British arms companies have billions invested in the US.

French and other EU military gear is fairly good but is not quite cutting edge. Add to that all the cutting-edge research is often done in the UK (like the stealth aspects of Storm Shadow, the research on ALARM..)

Losing the alliance with the US to satisfy some silly EU federal dream (which, by the way, a heck of eu countries don't want) would be suicide for Britain both technologically, politically (can you imagine having to folow french policies?!?) and militarily. We don't even speak the same language never mind like each other....

[edit on 13-11-2004 by Cjwinnit]