The European Union has been moving toward disunion, with Brexit and member states such as Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Austria opposing Brussels’ Muslim migration schemes. But now, perhaps in a move designed to shore up EU unity, a group of its states has reportedly agreed to create a joint force that would be, say observers, a step toward a “European army.” According to Sputnik:
After agreeing on military cooperation in 2017 when 25 bloc members signed a defense pact, a smaller circle of EU members are going to take formal steps to create the European Intervention Initiative. This force is designed for responding to natural disasters, crisis intervention or the evacuation of Europeans.
France’s Defense Minister Florence Parly has told the French newspaper Figaro that her country, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Estonia, Spain and Portugal are to sign a letter of intent for the creation of a joint military intervention force on June 25.
According to a source close to a French top official, cited by the AFP, the goal of the initiative is “joint planning work on crisis scenarios that could potentially threaten European security.”
While some EU tactical interventional groups exist in principle, so far they have never been used.
Since the proposed force, known as the European Intervention Initiative, would stay separate from other EU defense cooperation programs, Britain, which has always resisted the idea of an “EU army,” will be able to take part even after it has left the bloc.
The plan is led by far-left French President Emmanuel Macron, who “laid out his vision for an independent European defence force and policy in a staunchly europhile speech last September,” reports Breitbart. The site continues:
The demands were perceived as a challenge to NATO, where officials are concerned about the EU duplicating the purpose of the defence pact, and isolating itself from the U.S.
… Since 2007, the EU has had four multinational military “battlegroups” at its disposal, but troops have never been deployed due to political disagreements.
President Macron hopes that by focusing a smaller number of nations, the force will be more easy to control and deploy, free from politics of so many member states, AFP reports.
Italy had initially been interested in the initiative, and the new populist government “is considering the possibility of joining” but has not made a final decision, Mrs Parly said.
Critics are wary of anything that buttresses the EU, an autocratic entity that some have likened to the “Soviet empire.” And just consider the 2016 criticism of Charles Moore at the liberal Telegraph. He wrote that “the EU’s price for the reunification of Germany — the creation of the single currency — has been the most destabilising act in the history of Europe this century. Germans nowadays tell Greece (and Spain and Portugal and Italy) what to do.” While too weak in a way, the EU is also “too strong — imposing regulations, telling member states how to run their economies, ignoring its own laws when it suits it, [and] thwarting the results of referendums and even elections,” he also wrote.
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But the even-bigger picture is seldom discussed. The EU is, like the Roman Empire, a multicultural entity comprising very different nations, from Germany to Greece, Sweden to Portugal, Denmark to Latvia. How can they all “be one” unless their distinctions are blurred into one?
Mind you, this process has been a major part of world history. Charlemagne forged modern Europe, a process that saw the end of its various tribes — e.g., Goths, Saxons, Marcomanni, Franks, Angles, Alans, Burgundians, and Lombards — as distinct peoples. China was once a group of competing regions until all were vanquished and united by the Chin (hence the nation’s name). And Otto Von Bismarck united Germany in 1871. Of course, dissolution can also occur when the unity is political but not religious/cultural/demographic, which is why the Roman Empire, the USSR, and Yugoslavia fell apart.
The desire to avoid this can lead to cultural-amalgamation schemes and an effort to break down national unity, as when the Romans scattered the Jews throughout their vast empire to forestall rebellion. And some argue that the Muslim wave migration into Europe is designed to do just that. Of course, multiculturalism certainly works toward this end. Swedish social engineer and politician Mona Sahlin admitted this in so many words in 2001, saying that “the Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.”
China’s unification and the medieval European tribes’ subsumption is water under the bridge and might have, on balance, been good or bad. But the question is: Should a given European culture favor such amalgamation and its own extinction? Moreover, what of the bait and switch? The “old Sweden” is what joined the EU; if it becomes a “new Sweden,” what is essentially a different country will then be a member. Since citizens (including “new” ones) of any one member can travel throughout the union, isn’t this a concern?
Philosopher G.K. Chesterton once noted, “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. [Instead,] we are always changing the vision.” The EU’s actions — notably the mass Muslim migration — serve to effect cultural change. But since vision-shifting modern Westerners are awash in moral relativism, which correlates with cultural relativism, they’re the last people who could assess whether a given cultural change is positive. They are mad chefs haphazardly tossing ingredients into a pot oblivious to whether the result will be a delectable delight or a devilish brew. Thus is the scheme they’ve cooked up an unstable mixture that appears destined for history’s dustheap.
