Thread: european military strength

Originally Posted by dave angel

after a recent trip to the US i'm starting to question the transatlantic alliance - based on the americans leaving it rather than the europeans leaving it - and i'm intersted in the force projection capabilities of european powers and what it would take to transform european military forces into a expeditionary force rather than a garrison force.

projection capabilities would be all of africa, middle east and various european territories around the world.

the roles would be anti-terrorism, trade protection, peacekeeping/enforcement, stabilisation enforcment (think lebanon) and heavy ground and air forces to prevent china taking eastern and central russia in light of a possible russian collapse. (thats my pet theory, i know others don't think so, but i'm convinced)

big, flash heavy forces would be required, but most operations would be into environments without a traditional heavy military opposition.

Isn't that what ERRF (European Rapid Reaction Force) and NRF (NATO Response Force) are?

Originally Posted by dave angel

based on the americans leaving it rather than the europeans leaving it

Which is a false basis, but it really isn't germane to the discussion anyway.

what it would take to transform european military forces into a expeditionary force rather than a garrison force.

I can't speak to the military side, but on the political side, it needs public will. At the moment there is no such will. A significant proportion of Europeans believe that military force is usually unnecessary. Thus, they are, and will continue to be, unwilling to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on creating and maintaining a standing military.

Originally Posted by Franco Lolan

EU nations are the ones arming the PRC.

No, they're not. No one has yet to break the Arms Embargo, not even underhandedly.

Originally Posted by Franco Lolan

LOL Officer of Engineers,
the EU Arms Embargo means ****. it pertains to the stance taken by security body of EU as a collective whole. it does nothing to preclude individual nations. France has had large transfers with PRC. read the Current History from 2 months ago.

Name one weapon system that has been sold to the PRC.

Originally Posted by -{SpoonmaN}-

I don't think that Europeans are really that much less willing to intervene militarily, it's just that they didn't buy the weapons of mass destruction line, and they were already prejudiced against President Bush, so they didn't support the action in Iraq.
A case in point of European forces operating abroad is the current French peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast, which has been coming up in the news lately. Perhaps the difference between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans are much more sympathetic to fighting on humanitarian grounds (Like the somewhat belated intervention in Kosovo) rather than the more nationalistic grounds upon which Americans fight.

A humanitarian case was made for Iraq. The Europeans ignored it. Many in Europe are ideological pacifists. This number will grow as Europe continues to move to the left.

Originally Posted by -{SpoonmaN}-

I think you'll find that humanitarian grounds was not enough for the American public to go to war in Iraq.

Which couldn't be more completely irrelevant since we are talking about Europe.

But if that was really the reason for going to war in Iraq, why don't we see Delta Force storming the Saudi Royal Palaces, or B-1s dropping JDAMs on the suspected hideout of Robert Mugabe?

First, if the Iraq war was objectively right on humanitarian basis then it is irrelevant if that same standard would apply to other countries. As to the specific things you mention, destroying the Saudi government would be counter productive considering that there is no one but OBL types to replace them. As to Mugabe, I have little know of the situation in Zimbabwe other then that Mugabe is a thug and a racist.

The fact is if we were going to have some kind of war on tyranny, then there'd be an aweful lot of countries getting invaded right now.

As I proved above this is not a valid reason not to invade Iraq on humanitarian grounds.

Originally Posted by Leader

A significant proportion of Europeans believe that military force is usually unnecessary. Thus, they are, and will continue to be, unwilling to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on creating and maintaining a standing military.

Yeah - maybe if we weren’t so crazy about our equal rights for everyone we'd have less money to spend on health care and more money on bombing the **** out of people.

Originally Posted by Leader

A humanitarian case was made for Iraq. The Europeans ignored it. Many in Europe are ideological pacifists. This number will grow as Europe continues to move to the left.

I disagree strongly with this statement, Europe did not ignore it, it's simply the case that if you argue 'a humanitarian case' it means you want to over throw the current form of government which is illegal under international law, (not that the US bothers about such things). I also think that Europe is not pacifist, it's non-violent, it's a fine line but the difference is significant.

Originally Posted by slippery_chimp

which is illegal under international law

If it's illegal to remove tyrants, and I haven't seen anything that says it was illegal, then the criminals are the good guys...

Originally Posted by Confed999

If it's illegal to remove tyrants, and I haven't seen anything that says it was illegal, then the criminals are the good guys...

No, just that you cant go around "removing" leaders, whether they are tyrants or not, if you have not seen anything that says invading other countries to install a new leader is illegal then that to me just highlights one of the failings of the US media. Have you not heard that many groups are preparing to launch cases against Blair and Bush for their illegal activities? I hope that in the future we see them both sitting in an international war crimes tribunal, maybe 30 years from now, but it is looking ever increasing likely.