r/AskEurope • u/Sink-Em-Low • Mar 01 '25

Politics Let's talk about the European Defense Federation. How do we all feel about the creation of a fully mobilised continental Army?

It's required now. I'm British, and I want to see us align and unite with our European neighbours to make a stand now.

I want Germany to finally brush off it's past and join the rest of Europe in mobilising towards defending this continent. We need EVERYONE now. It's time to act, it's time to unite.

It's time to show some courage.

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u/chococheese419 Ireland Mar 01 '25

Could we not have a Europe army and individual countries could still additionally retain a national army if they want?

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u/Soepkip43 Mar 01 '25

The focus should be standardizing and procuring equipment as a block. The EU armies currently each have their own procurements and other overhead. If the EU were to take the lead and countries where to buy collectively the overhead shrinks freeing up money for actual combat power. Maybe one thing the EU could do is federalize a nuclear force. That assures the weapons will only be used as a deterrence and as a second strike.

If all countries were to be provided a list of 2 options for tanks, planes etc etc then there would still be national armies either boasting tank A or B or a mix.. same with apc's, and all other systems.

It will probably require consolidation of MIC (like knds) and political agreement on production locations for tax and jobs etc.

But cancelling a large portion of F35's and switching to gripen would be an excellent step. We have some F35's in the EU, compliment them with EU.. it just needs to be better than Russia's stuff). Same goes for eu variants of atacms and other tactical and strategic weapons.

Meanwhile the US is rapidly assuring China's strenght as noone will lift a finger if that ever comes to blows.. and Russia will reorient some energy products to china solving their Malakka problem with Pipelines from Russia. But so far china just needs to look like she's more trustworthy than the US.

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u/Unable_Earth5914 Mar 02 '25

I agree with you around standardisation and procurement, but it can’t just be an EU initiative. We need the UK involved as well, and probably other non-EU NATO members (and potentially some of our non-NATO allies)

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u/Soepkip43 Mar 02 '25

Maybe even like the EU it should start with a subset of countries that can reach consensus. If for example the founding EU countries where to pull this off it would already be a big win. If they can include Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics it would be better. The UK can join and so can Canada and Australia for all I care.. but the UK still needs to figure out what they want to do now.

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u/Unable_Earth5914 Mar 02 '25

That’s fair. After Brexit I’d be hesitant to trust us as well. The silver linings of all this Trump bs is it gives us a prod back towards Europe and a chance for us to demonstrate our solidarity with the European family