There are three good reasons to support the development of an EU army

Over the past two years Ukraine has been – literally – the first line of European defence against Russian predation. The more support it receives from the EU, the better the EU can potentially defend itself in the future. But support for Kyiv remains subject to national whims, differing strategic defence cultures and collective dysfunction.

The recent Munich Security Conference played out against this grim background. The atmosphere darkened again when it was announced that Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, had died in a Siberian prison camp. This coincided with the announcement that Ukrainian troops had pulled out of Avdiivka, after months of brutal attritional battle with Russian forces.

Since 1949, European security has been underwritten by Article 5 of the Nato Charter – the mutual defence clause. Article 5 was the principal reason the Soviet Union did not attack western Europe after the second World War.

The threats facing the EU will become much more urgent if Donald Trump returns to the White House in November. He has said repeatedly that Trump 2.0 will be much more radical than his first term. He hasn’t just hinted at pulling the United States out of Nato. At the world Economic Forum meeting in Davos in 2020, he told Ursula von der Leyen that “Nato is dead, and we will leave” and Washington “would never come help” if Europe was attacked. A few weeks ago, Trump went further and said he would encourage Russia to attack any European Nato members that do not meet the minimum threshold for spending on defence. Thus, for the first time in three generations, Europeans have to face up to the fact that they might have to be able to defend themselves.

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Poland is on course to increase spending on defence to 4 per cent of GDP and double the number of members of its armed forces

Many EU member states have already taken the hint. Finland has joined Nato, and Sweden will join once the Hungarian parliament votes its consent, which is expected to happen today. Poland is on course to increase spending on defence to 4 per cent of GDP and double the number of members of its armed forces. The Baltic States have also ramped up spending. And although the German “Zeitenwende” – announced within weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – has been slow to materialise, even in Berlin the realisation is setting in that things cannot go on as they are.

The missing link here is at European Union level. The EU has often been described as an economic giant and political pygmy. The pejorative formulation refers in the main to the repeated failures to establish the EU as a global power in the realms of defence, security and foreign policy.

Beyond the prospect of US retrenchment from Europe, there is a number of reasons to support the development of an EU army. First, the threat landscape is real, varied and accelerating. This ranges from the direct military threat of Russian attacks on the EU’s eastern members, to the pressures from elsewhere of climate change, migration and inter-ethnic conflict. Cyber threats attributable mainly to Russia and China constitute a real and present danger, not just to individual member states but to the EU as a collective body in international affairs.

[ Italian foreign minister calls for formation of EU army ]

Information has been weaponised to an unprecedented degree by Moscow. The EU is continually playing catch-up, in good part because of the continuing inability to create an effective collective response architecture. This is despite the recent enactment of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and an important new legislative initiative on artificial intelligence.

Second, the crumbling of the post-1945 rules-based international order is proceeding apace. That order was one that was largely consistent with EU norms and values. But the world beyond the borders of the EU is no longer one converging with Europe. Rather, we are seeing an existential battle play out between the forces of autocracy and democracy.

The United States is likely to become more autocratic if Trump wins in November. The EU does not make a good fit in that Hobbesian world. But it will have to respond.

[ Tusk calls on EU to increase military capabilities in response to Russia threat ]

The third reason to support the introduction of a European army is the need for the Europeans to put an end to the duplication of activity and resources that characterises the current nationally located and disparate defence landscape. Between them, EU states spend about €240 billion annually on defence and security. That is almost as much as China spends and about two and a half times more than Russia. But much of that spending is wasteful.

Fragmentation means that European military capacity is considerably less than the sum of its parts. European armies have 17 types of main battle tank and 20 different fighter aircraft. In contrast, the United States has one tank and six types of fighter aircraft. The complications this presents for logistics and supply chains, command and control operations and training of personnel are considerable.

A complete ban on selling arms beyond the EU would go a long way to providing reassurance to citizens that the EU has no intention of seeking to become a rival to China and the United States

There has also been a pronounced tendency for member states to favour their own defence production companies without thinking about the collective European interest. EU attempts to use regulation to open up defence markets have thus far largely failed, with a continuing pattern of protection of national defence industries.

There are many who will look at the prospect of a European army as their worst fears about the EU project realised. Some will worry about the development of a European version of the US “military industrial complex”. But they have to recognise the vastly changed circumstances Europeans now confront. One way to deal with this is to ensure that all arms production in Europe is centralised under a single production model and that no arms company is allowed to manufacture arms for anything other than EU self-defence. There are vested interests in many member states that would oppose such a radical move. But they should be faced down.

A complete ban on selling arms beyond the EU would go a long way to providing reassurance to citizens that the EU has no intention of seeking to become a rival to China and the United States. Its interest should lie exclusively in providing for the security of the EU and its member states.

The EU has never before faced such a convergence of security crises on its doorstep. The European tendency towards “muddling through” will not cut it in a world of predatory Chinese and Russian power. The EU needs to rapidly embrace the need for a European army in an increasingly fluid and dangerous world.

John O’Brennan is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University and Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies