European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world

a European Military Alliance would deter Putin and Xi, and could eventually become the most powerful geo-political entity

Jan 18, 2024

Note on this post:

This post was originally going is part of my series Scottish Defence Policy, and you should read that series if you're interested on what the defence policy of a medium sized European state, such as a hypothetical independent Scotland, could be like.

But I've decided to create a new series, European Defence Policy to discuss European defence. This will cover military policy but perhaps more importantly it will cover foreign policy, and what institutions Europe needs to collectively defend itself; as I've mentioned elsewhere, foreign policy is so closely related to defence policy that they could well be two people in a 3-legged race: they'd better be going in the same direction or they'll get nowhere.

Summary

There should be a European military alliance (EMA).

Unlike NATO or the EU it would not be based on unanimity, because when international organisation require unanimity, it can become impossible to get anything done. The more members, the more onerous a requirement for unanimity becomes, and the organisation becomes a victim of its own success.

Countries outside Europe could be invited to join it. If enough do, it would end up with a larger share of world GDP than either the USA or China.

Donald Trump, or someone like him, might become US president, and stop protecting Europe from Russia. This makes the creation of an EMA more urgent.

Could Europe rule the world?

The European Union has 460 million people (5.7% of the world total) and 17% of world GDP. These are sizeable amounts, but less than the 94.3% of people and 83% of GDP outside the EU. So clearly the EU on its own is nowhere near to controlling >50% of the world.

However it isn't on its own. There are plenty of European countries outside the EU but in NATO -- for example Iceland, UK, Norway and Turkey (arguably Turkey isn't a European country; I would argue that it's half in and half out of the European state system and has been for centuries, but in any case that's a separate point and may be the subject of a separate post).

Outside Europe, many people speak European languages, in particular English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Furthermore, many countries around the world have adopted European ideas such as democracy and human rights.

So that's a vast number of people with cultural similarities to us. If a large proportion of those people can be harnessed to common purposes -- which should be doable as many people throughout the world want things like peace, prosperity, freedom and democracy, the same things Europeans want -- then great things can be achieved.

Should Europe rule the world?

Some people, particularly on the left, think striving for power is icky and faintly immoral. They want Europe to be a force for good. To these people I say: in order to be a force for good you don't just have to be good, you also have to a be a force. Whatever goal Europe wants, the more power we have (mostly economic, but also military and soft power) the easier it is for us to achieve that goal.

And other people say striving for power costs money and it's better to have tax cuts (if they're on the right) or better public services (if they're on the left). To these I say: you might not be interested in international power politics, but international power politics is surely interested in you^FN1. Thus we have no choice but to care about these things, given that we live on the same planet as rulers like Putin and Xi, and given that we cannot rely on the Americans (e.g. many in the Republican Party want to stop supporting Ukraine).

So yes, we, along with our friends, should strive to rule the world, or at least be as powerful as possible. Someone will be the most powerful, and if not us, it will probably be someone like Putin, Xi, or Trump. The more powerful we are, and the more determined and united we are, the less likely anyone will even try to attack/oppose us, either militarily, or in some way other than a direct military threat. Si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want peace, prepare for war.

Build it on top of the European Union

possible logo for a European military alliance

What we need is a European political organisation which enables European states to co-ordinate military and foreign policy co-operation.

The EU cannot in itself be used as this organisation, because its rules don't allow it to, and it is too hard to change the rules, since changing them requires unanimity and it would be impossible to get all 27 EU member states to agree to a change.

I therefore propose a federation of countries, including ones inside and outside Europe, to work together on military and foreign policy (and also the unspoken end of preventing Russian and Chinese aggression/expansionism). It will consist of a tight inner core of countries, and more loosely-integrated outer layers. Let's give it the placeholder name "European Military Alliance" (EMA).

(Maybe the actual name, if something like this is ever built, will be something less prosaic, e.g. we could channel both the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire (full name: Holy Roman Empire of the German nation) and call it the "Enlightened Roman Empire of the European Civilisation", and when some non-European countries join, change it to "World Civilisation").

EMA would be two things: within the EU it would be a way for member governments to be bound by tighter co-operation, and outside the EU it would be as thing that countries could join as a way to get closer to the EU without actually being in it.

When the EMA is set up, all EU member states would be invited to join it, except that Hungary would be pointedly not invited, because Orban's a Putin-loving traitor against Europe. It would also be possible for states outside the EU to join, including states inside and outside Europe. There will be lots of options for these states to join: full membership will be possible for states that are democratic, respect human rights and are rich (or at least upper-middle-income), and there will be lots of other tiered options for membership. Full membership will get a country the most rights and most responsibilities, with the other options involving less integration.

At the core of EMA, applying to all membership tiers, is that it will be a defensive military alliance, so that an attack on one is an attack on all.

The EMA will at its start be a bit like a cross between the EU and NATO, and will have the immediate goal of making its members stronger by collective action. It's long-term goal will be for many countries around the world to join, so that it has more resources (for example in terms of GDP) than any other power-bloc including China and its allies or the USA. Once that happens, then it would be very dangerous for anyone to openly oppose it, and also it would be an attractive defence partner for countries worried about being attacked by their neighbours.

How popular would a European Military Alliance be?

Majorities in many European countries want a European army, alongside existing national armies. I expect similar percentages would support an EMA.

Requiring unanimity is bad

There is a failure mode with multinational co-operation where requiring unanimity makes it hard for things to get done. Consider, for example, Turkey vetoing Swedish membership of NATO. Or Germany vetoing Eurofighter sales to Turkey.

Moreover, the more successful an international collaboration is, with more members, the more the requirement for unanimity drags it down. It thus becomes a victim of its own success.

I am reminded of the liberum veto in 18th century Poland. This meant that any parliamentarian could veto any measure (for example if Russia bribed them to do so -- hybrid warfare is not a new phenomenon). This made it impossible to get anything done, which is why there wasn't a country called Poland between 1795 and 1918.

Therefore the EMA should not require unanimity for decisions to be made. Instead, it should be possible to come to a binding decision on something more than a simple majority but something less than unanimity. The requirement of unanimity on foreign policy decisions is why the EU, as it currently stands, cannot perform the functions that I want EMA to perform. And the requirement of unanimity on changing the rules of the EU is why we can't simply reform it so it can do more things in defence and foreign policy areas.

How might this work? One way it could be done is for a binding decision on defence or foreign policy to require:

60% of member state governments,
with 60% of the population,
and 60% of the GDP
and 60% of the MEPs from those countries

(or some other number like 70% -- this is just an example).

For new countries joining the bar should probably be set somewhat higher, e.g. 80% or 90% approval might be required.

The bar for changing the EMA's constitution, for example by adding new areas on competancy, could be the same as for adding new members.

Defensive military alliance

An attack on one member will be interpreted as an attack on all. This defensive military alliance is the cornerstone of what EMA is about.

In order for this to be effective, the members will use common equipment and train together, just as NATO states do. Indeed since most of the members will be NATO states (at least at the beginning), EMA will use the same technical standards that NATO uses (unless there isn't an existing NATO standard in something EMA wants to standardise).

EMA might also have a requirement that members states spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. NATO does this, but it isn't enforced. If EMA did enforce it (by making it a requirement of membership) that would discourage free-riding.

Common foreign policy

A defensive military alliance is all very well, but what if a 3rd party country (or a non-state actor) takes an action against an EMA country which while being hostile, requires less response than a full scale war.

An example of such an action would be in 2018 when Russia tried to assassinate the Skripals by poisoning them.

If something like this happened when the EMA existed, then EMA countries (probably their heads of government and foreign ministers) would meet and decide on a common response. This might include things like trade sanctions, withdrawal of ambassadors, getting the offending country removed from upcoming sporting tournaments, etc.

EMA countries should be happy to slap on sanctions in this manner, because it might be them next time who is threatened by a hostile 3rd country, and if the EMA takes resolute action, this will deter hostile countries from acting against EMA countries. E.g people like Putin or Xi might be a lot more reluctant in future to order assassinations.

Common military procurement

If the nations of the EMA have to fight together, then common military procurement helps because:

if everyone's using the same equipment, it's interoperable
even if they are not operating the same equipment, their equipment will be designed to be as inter-operable as possible

EMA should have rules on common military procurement, so that everyone is using the same (or compatible equipment). (In the following, A, B and C are all countries in the EMA). The rules might include be:

EMA states should have a policy of buying military equipment from other EMA states wherever possible. This helps the defence industries in those countries.
EMA states should have a policy of not refusing to sell to other EMA states. This gives security of supply.
Equipment should be inter-operable, and EMA countries should do everything to make this the case. E.g. if A produces a drone and B produces a missile, then C should be able to integrate them so A's drone can carry and fire B's missile. A and B should not be allowed to use trade secrets of intellectual property to prevent this.
An end to the policy of having end-user certificates, because they made it harder to supply Ukraine with arms. So, if A sells some military equipment to B, B can then supply it to C, regardless of what A wants. Possibly this could be done by having end-user certificates expire after 5 years.

How the EMA might expand

The initial members of EMA will be European, and it will probably be particularly popular for countries in eastern Europe, those most threatened by Russia, to join. Also I can imagine France being an early member as they are always pushing for European military co-operation and reducing reliance on the USA.

Eventually, I expect that the EMA would include all EU countries with the exceptions of Ireland, Austria, Cyprus and Malta (which are neutral) and possibly Hungary (which is pro-Russia, although having said that, Orban won't be in charge forever).

Non-EU European countries such as Norway, Iceland and Turkey (all of which are in NATO) might join. UK might also join once it accepts that Brexit was a pointless failure.

Countries outside Europe are most likely to join if they feel threatened by someone. So Guyana might join if it is threatened by Venezuela. Or Kenya might join if Ethiopia threatens to use force to gain access to the sea. Similarly, South Korea is threatened by North Korea, and Kazakhstan feels threatened by Russia.

One of the most threatening countries is China. It would not be surprising if Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Australia all considered joining the EMA to counter Chinese expansionism.

The USA

How would the USA react to the creation of an EMA? It's unlikely they would want to be part of it as the USA's political culture disdains taking orders from other countries (although it is very happy to give order to other countries, of course).

The USA would probably be pleased that Europeans are taking defence more seriously, something the USA has been urging them to do for decades.

If the EMA got bigger and more important than the USA -- which it might well do if it contained all the EU, European countries in NATO, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and large parts of sub-Saharan Africa -- then eventually the USA might see it as a rival. But it's very unlikely the two would break into an open conflict, as they will have common enemies in Russia and China.

The United Kingdom

If the UK hadn't left the EU it would have been in an ideal place to set up something like the EMA.

But Britain has Brexitted, and the UK's ruling class wants to continue Brexit for the time being. Most of them know perfectly well that Brexit has been a disaster but they realise if they ask to rejoin the EU now they will look stupid. And trying to initiate any other form of European co-operation will equally be met with puzzlement (at best) from Britain's prospective European partners.

So the UK, under its current ruling class couldn't do something like EMA. Nor would they realise the advantages in doing so, as the UK believes it is a big country whereas in fact it is a medium-sized country.

Where would this end?

What I envisage happening is most EU countries, and all the important ones, joining the EMA and it becoming the EU's foreign and defence policy arm.

Eventually the EU and EMA might merge. One way this might happen is if the EMA countries threaten to leave the EU and extend the EMA's competencies to everything the EU currently does.

At the same time, many countries outside the EU will join the EMA. If they are rich liberal democracies they may join as full members. Other countries may join as partial members on various membership tiers. But all membership tiers would include a commitment to mutual defence.

If all EU countries joined, plus Japan, UK, South Korea, Australia, Turkey, Taiwan, and Norway, then EMA would exceed 30% of world GDP, and be clearly larger than either the USA or the China-aligned bloc. At this point it would be hard for anyone to credibly threaten it.

Footnotes

FN1. An allusion to an apocryphal quote from Leon Trotsky. See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/08/02/interested-war/ for details.

Pontifex Minimus

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