Europe's demilitarization

[Dinner]

Europe should expand it's force projection power so it can play a meanful role in unexpected things like the wars of Yugoslav succession. Aren't you the slightest bit embarrassed that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo Europe couldn't handle the situation nor stop the genocide and had to come running to the US for help? Those interventions quickly became shows of American technological superiority while much of Europe was left with nothing to do until the fighting was over.

The recent unrest in Georgia, the unresolved issues in Armenia/Azerbigian, the possibility of several post Soviet Dictatorships falling apart in a messy fashion all point to the need for greater force projection power. Currently Europe has little to no heavy airlift capacity and must rely upon the US to move their forces around. Having the EU develop its own heavy lift aircraft will allow the EU to act more independently of the US and to better deal with problems in Europe's sphere of influence.

[Bereta_Eder]

Washington is of the opinion that Europe should increase its military spending BUT only in the fields that Washington deems appropriate. Which means fields that will give mobility to the europen armies (most are static, defending territory armies) so that it can send it to places and the US wouldnt have to send so much. US also wants that without Europe developing a common voice for where those armies should go. or not go.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DanS
Who thought 5 years ago that we would be fighting in Afghanistan?

Who needs "system of systems", or extremely high-tech drones when fighting in Afghanistan?

The question is not a matter of where the west will intervene. The question is a matter of which military can threaten ours. Except for Russia, I can think of no military (lawful or not) that can possibly match the west's. China and India are decades behind, and they mostly progress thanks to reverse engineering for the time being.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Europe should expand it's force projection power so it can play a meanful role in unexpected things like the wars of Yugoslav succession. Aren't you the slightest bit embarrassed that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo Europe couldn't handle the situation nor stop the genocide and had to come running to the US for help?

It wasn't for a lack of projection power that we didn't intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. The cause was political, as European countries were largely divided on the appropriate course of action, and thus they could do nothing (in a typical European way)

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Washington is of the opinion that Europe should increase its military spending BUT only in the fields that Washington deems appropriate. Which means fields that will give mobility to the europen armies (most are static, defending territory armies) so that it can send it to places and the US wouldnt have to send so much.

Which isn't necessarily a bad idea. Suppose the EU decided it wanted to send a decent sized contigent to Darfur, or something really ugly flares up again in central Africa (I know, splitting hairs saying "again"). It might be nice to be able to get your troops and equipment there, no?

[Agathon]

Europe should expand it's force projection power so it can play a meanful role in unexpected things like the wars of Yugoslav succession. Aren't you the slightest bit embarrassed that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo Europe couldn't handle the situation nor stop the genocide and had to come running to the US for help?

I agree with Spiffor. The causes were primarily political. But how does this equate to needing much more than the standard UN contribution? That's what really happened in the Kosovo case, despite the fig leaf.

[DanS]

Who needs "system of systems", or extremely high-tech drones when fighting in Afghanistan?

I don't even know what a "system of systems" is, so I couldn't hazard a guess. High tech drones have been of great value to us, especially lately. We're now buying drones hand-over-fist. But nothing has been of equal value, especially early on, to the laser-guided and GPS-guided dumb bombs.

AFAIK, the UK can hang with us on all of this stuff. Don't know about France, but the rest of NATO can't really hang with us.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Agathon

Europe should expand it's force projection power so it can play a meanful role in unexpected things like the wars of Yugoslav succession. Aren't you the slightest bit embarrassed that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo Europe couldn't handle the situation nor stop the genocide and had to come running to the US for help?

I agree with Spiffor. The causes were primarily political. But how does this equate to needing much more than the standard UN contribution? That's what really happened in the Kosovo case, despite the fig leaf.

Oerdin's right. There was a lot of Euro wailing and gnashing of teeth about the fact that the US and UK were using weapons to which Europe didn't even have access. Whether or not you think this was just noise is another thing entirely, of course. The defense industry likes to be fed a hearty meal every now and then...

[lightblue]

Originally posted by DanS
Who thought 5 years ago that we would be fighting in Afghanistan? Further, who thought the weapon most used would be dumb bombs guided by cheap high-tech systems (that, as far as I know, is a US/UK capability only)?

We should be humble about the limits to our foresight.

You're fighting in Afghanistan because you decided to (and because you made a good targets for terrorists as you had troops stationed in Saudi and thus made easy recruitment fodder for them). And as a whole europe is sick of foreign military adventures, been there, done that, got the bloody t-shirt. I guess we're just further along our development as nation states, and this is your imperialistic phase (16-19th century for us).

Personally i think our main threat is a fascist (or christian fundamentalist expansionistic) US and even that's not particularly likely anytime soon.

[lightblue]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Europe should expand it's force projection power so it can play a meanful role in unexpected things like the wars of Yugoslav succession. Aren't you the slightest bit embarrassed that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo Europe couldn't handle the situation nor stop the genocide and had to come running to the US for help? Those interventions quickly became shows of American technological superiority while much of Europe was left with nothing to do until the fighting was over.

The recent unrest in Georgia, the unresolved issues in Armenia/Azerbigian, the possibility of several post Soviet Dictatorships falling apart in a messy fashion all point to the need for greater force projection power. Currently Europe has little to no heavy airlift capacity and must rely upon the US to move their forces around. Having the EU develop its own heavy lift aircraft will allow the EU to act more independently of the US and to better deal with problems in Europe's sphere of influence.

Why should intervene in another countries business? As long as it doesn't happen within the EU, why should we care? Why should it be our prerorgative to act? If the US wants to do stuff, feel free, I don't see why we sould be dragged into it, much better places to spend money on.

[DanS]

The ideology of the islamofascists has a certain internal consistency. However, I think it's funny that apparently you believe you could get inside their heads, think like they do, and foresee something like 9/11. It took us a couple years after 9/11 to figure out what was going on. True, we were incompetent on the matter, but I think Europe's plans should contemplate equal incompetency on your side of the pond.

I wonder what would happen politically if a major European country got sucker punched like that, but had to rely on the US almost entirely to deal out its retribution.

[Dinner]

Please don't make the same mistake Bush made by trying to lump Afghanistan together with Iraq. That's simply not an intelligent thing to do.

Afghanistan supported Al Qaeda and was thus directly involved in the 9/11 attacks so it wasn't a war of chopice but was instead the logical result of the US being attacked. Iraq was entirely a war of choice (and a bad one I might add).

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lightblue
Why should intervene in another countries business? As long as it doesn't happen within the EU, why should we care? Why should it be our prerorgative to act? If the US wants to do stuff, feel free, I don't see why we sould be dragged into it, much better places to spend money on.

Yes, of course. Why care if Genocide is being commited in Bosnia or Kosovo or Darfur? Why worry about stopping civil wars or protecting civilians? Why worry about possible governmental collapses in eastern Europe? I mean those are just funny looking foreigners aren't they?

[lightblue]

Wouldn't an easier standpoint be something along these lines:

"If you attack us and it's proven that your country is behind it we will target the biggest 5 cities in your country and flatten them after 5 days warning so you can evacuate civilians."

Note that i am not against the use of military force (nuclear if necessary because they don't have the carriers etc) i just don't think we should really get involved in other countries as well. Money can be better spent elsewhere.

I mean obviously all this is a slight exaggeration, but really, to get and maintain massive projection power just in case someone kills less than 0.05% of our population sounds like an irrational thing to do.

[lightblue]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Yes, of course. Why care if Genocide is being commited in Bosnia or Kosovo or Darfur? Why worry about stopping civil wars or protecting civilians? Why worry about possible governmental collapses in eastern Europe? I mean those are just funny looking foreigners aren't they?

Well.. maybe we (US, Europe, Russia, China) shouldn't sell them weapons before they start the genocides then. And Darfur is a crap example as you're not doing anything about it either, neither did any of us with Rwanda. The only reason people were interested in Kosova and Bosnia wa because they weren't funny looking foreigners. And the only reason you're interested in Iraq is a personal grudge and good investment opportunities.

And in a way why should we worry about civil wars/government collapses? Would you want Russian/Chinese troops on American soil if the US government ever collapsed or if there was a 2nd Civil War (theoretically obviously)? I doubt it, I am sure you'd want to sort things out yourselves. You wouldn't want an outside power interfering and propping up the side they though would suit their goals the best (think pipeline in Georgia and that sort of thing).