Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "A European Army? | #GME" video.

WWIII anyone?
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@Mattie_Man one of the reasons the EU has lived in peace for the last seventy years is because it does not have an army and does not represent a threat. In has also significantly benefited financially from not having to spend money supporting an army. The EU will rapidly acquire enemies once it represents a military threat. It will be decades before an EU army will be anything more than symbolic. Should it start to deploy medium range nuclear weapons, it will make itself a target. Since the French are the only remaining nuclear power within the EU, either the EU must break nuclear proliferation treaties or they must rely on the French for defence. That is significantly worse than relying on the Americans for a number of reasons, not least of which is the significant difference between the level of technology that each can deliver. The US is decades ahead of the French in military technology, not least because they spend so much on R&D. I cannot see France being willing to turn itself into a nuclear ash pile in defence of the rest of the EU. An EU army that does not have the full range weapon systems is just a joke, only able to fight police action against significantly weaker opponents. It might even be used to control rebellion in the member states.
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@MelkorPT externally it could be Russia or the Chinese. They are currently the most likely, despite the denials. There area number of scenarios that will result in conflict that will escalate to a nuclear exchange. The most likely is conflict over land or resources, increasingly in demanding the 21st century. The next most likely is being dragged into a conflict in support of the US. The French want an army as a symbol of the EU becoming a world power and Merkel has suggested that the EU army would work together with NATO. Then we have conflict in Africa. The French have an ambition to use an EU army to gain influence in Africa. Last we have conflict with a religious background. Pakistan is the only known nuclear armed Islamic power, but there maybe others. A number of Islamic states have ambitions of global domination on religious grounds. The EU might find its self drawn into a future conflict between one of the Islamic states and Israel, though it is not clear which side they will be on. EU global ambitions all ensure it get involved in any one of a number of proxy wars. It is impossible to imagine the EU having a standing military force and not using it, failure to do so will quickly see tax payers calling into question its existence. If internal conflicts are considered, it is not difficult to imagine an EU army being used to impose federal government will and a rebellious state, much like the USSR imposed its will on Czechoslovakia.
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