Dodgeblogium » 2006 » February

Is this part of the drift to a United States of Europe?

February 02nd, 2006 | Category: Military, Politics

Guido has recently been made aware that the UK’s armed forces are not the only one’s quietly being reshaped and re-organised and this raises an interesting question in his mind. Since the other major stakeholders in the EU and the much vaunted, and rejected, EU Constitution are also reshaping and resizing their military establishments, and given that this started around the time the EU Constitution began to take shape around such ideas as “Joint Foreign Policy”, “Joint Monetary Policy”, “Joint European Defence Force” and all the other “joint” activities that would have shifted all power directly to “Ministers” appointed by Brussels, could this “downsizing” be part of the Federalist dream of creating a USE to rival the USA?

On the surface and for public consumption, both our own government and the EU strenuously deny this – except the French who reply that it is “an inevitable destiny”. Whose I wonder? The long cherished desire to recreate the Empire of the Franks from the period 800 AD perhaps? It certainly begins to look more and more as if the reshaping of our once proud and independent Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force is being done to fit in with a “Master Defence Plan” drawn up in Europe in which the French, British, Dutch, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish and Spanish Fleets will be combined into “National” Squadrons all flying the Flag of the USE Defence Forces. So too with the Armies, all the Regiments in the UK have been recreated and reformed – ostensibly to “modernise” them – and it would seem that they now would make a better “fit” in a larger Pan-European Force than as a stand alone Army. Even the RAF has suffered from this, with it’s frontline capability being steadily reduced, while it’s Transport Wings have been expanded slightly. The RN has lost the strike capability of it’s Fleet Air Arm, now reduced to flying helicopter’s and reliant on pilots and aircraft “borrowed” from the RAF and sent to sea on the one remaining mini-carrier.