Britain’s Nigel Farage (shown) was not holding back at the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Thursday when he blasted the call for creating a European Union army in response to Russian support of the armed insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. The proposal for creating an army of Europe was made by none other than Jean-Claude Juncker who is the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.
“We ourselves in the European Union provoked the conflict through our territorial expansionism in the Ukraine,” said Farage. “We poked the Russian bear with a stick, and unsurprisingly, Putin reacted. But this now is to be used as an opportunity to build a European army…. And, Mr. Juncker said, we must convey to Russia that we are serious. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Juncker? We do not want any part of an EU army and I doubt the rest of the people of Europe do, either.”
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Farage, founding member and current leader of the United Kingdom Independent Party, left the Conservative Party in 1992 over the creation of the European Union and the adoption of a common currency for member nations. Though the U.K. government has publicly dismissed the idea of an EU army, Farage accused Prime Minister Cameron of the Labor Party of paving the way for it by cutting the nation’s spending on its own military to below 2 percent of GDP.
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“I’ve been wondering why David Cameron’s been slashing our armed forces,” Farage said. “He’s happy for us not to be able to defend our islands…. We’re going to do it at the EU level. We’re going to have a European Army.” U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg dismissed that idea on his weekly radio talk show that day.
“Jean-Claude Juncker and Nigel Farage are both dangerous fantasists when it comes to this issue,” Clegg claimed. “It’s not going to happen.” The only European nations with “any military clout to throw around” are Britain and France, he said. “If you really want Europe to punch above its weight militarily, the way to do it is not to create these fantasies of European armies, you have got to get the French and the British defence arrangements and establishments working more effectively together.”
Farage insisted the coming of an EU Army was not a fantasy, but something already underway. “We already have a European Defense Agency, we already have European battle groups in active service all over the world, we already have a European navy active against the Somali pirates,” he said. “And who can forget the Eurocorps here in Strasbourg last year, virtually goose-stepping that ghastly flag around the courtyard outside.”
Things got a bit testy when Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, leader of the Liberal and Democratic Alliance, interrupted and attempted to talk over Farage.
“I know that by heckling you increase your hits on You Tube,” Farage shot back, adding: “Nobody in Europe wants to listen to you”
Later, Doru-Claudian Frunzilica of Romania rose to direct a question to Farage.
“What do you think we should have to do Mr. Farage when Russia, for example, is supporting with the most modern armaments the separatists?” asked Frunzilica “Do you think the European union has to do something to support Ukraine to fight in the Eastern Ukraine or do you think we should wait to have to fight in the western Ukraine for the stability of Europe?”
“We through our territorial ambitions provoked the overthrow of an albeit corrupt but democratically elected leader in the Ukraine. We promoted this crisis,” Farage replied. “My view, sir, is if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at Iran, if you look at Libya and you look at the attempt to back the rebels in Syria, many of whom have now morphed into ISIS, we see that our recent foreign military interventions have made things worse, not better.”
The European Commission president issued his call for an EU army in an interview in the British newspaper the Guardian last Sunday. “Such an army would help us design a common foreign and security policy,” said Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg. “Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously.” Juncker said his idea was not to challenge the role of NATO, the U.S. and European political and military alliance formed in 1949 for the stated purpose of providing a defensive shield against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance. It has since expanded from 12 to 28 nations, and now includes former Warsaw Pact nations at or near the borders of Russia.
Britain’s Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative member of the European Parliament and a party spokesman on defense and security, told the Guardian that an EU army would be “detrimental to our national interest, to Nato, and to the close alliances that Britain has with many countries outside the EU — not least the United States, Gulf allies, and many Commonwealth countries.” If EU members faced a serious security threat, he said, “who would we want to rely on — Nato or the EU? The question answers itself.” he said.
Another Brit, Conservative Party member Dr. Julian Lewis, a Member of Parliament as well as the Commons’ Defence Committee, said a defensive alliance for Europe that does not include the United States amounted to “foolishness [that] strikes at the heart of European security.”
“Having blundered in making clumsy overtures to Ukraine, the EU now wants to tell President Putin that it will stand up to him without the support of the United States,” said. Lewis. “The whole basis of Nato’s existence was to show any potential aggressor that an attack on any of its European member states would instantly trigger a conflict with America.”
That should raise serious questions in America about the wisdom of continuing in an alliance where an attack against any of 27 other countries must be treated as an attack against the United States. Should any of them come under attack, regardless of who is to blame, the United States, which has the lion’s share of military muscle in NATO, is required by treaty obligation to come to the defense of the member nation, contrary to the U.S. Constitution, which assigns the war declaration power to Congress. Europe has a greater population and larger GDP than the United States and member nations should, after 66 years behind an American shield, be ready and able to provide for their own defense. That might well require that they spend more on their military forces instead of perpetuating cradle-to-grave welfare states. It might also concentrate European minds wonderfully on the old-fashioned notion of national defense as a means of defending their nations’ independence and their people’s freedom — rather than relying on either the United States or the European Union.
Photo: Nigel Farage
