Europe Creates an Army

Sally McNamara / February 20, 2009

The European Parliament has voted in favor of creating a European army. Although the initiative has a typically innocuous sounding acronym, SAFE (Synchronized Armed Forces Europe) it represents a major step toward the EU’s takeover of Member States’ armed forces.

SAFE will be directed by an EU directorate, with its own training standards and operational doctrine. It will advance a dream long-held by European elites to create a separate EU military identity outside of NATO. But in the absence of additional defense Euros and additional European manpower, the advancement of EU military arrangements can only come at NATO’s sacrifice.

It is no coincidence that it comes at the same time that France is proposing to rejoin NATO’s integrated military command, which is set to be announced at the 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg in April. As France is likely to acquire one of NATO’s two supreme command posts (the Allied Command Transformation), it is perfectly placed to destroy the Alliance from within. Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, a British Conservative Party member and retired Brigadier-General, has criticized the initiative, stating: “We are giving a nation, which for nearly 50 years has been committed to marginalising Nato and building European structures to exclude the Americans, the job of re-jigging the transatlantic Alliance.” (more…)