Feb 2
Is this part of the drift to a United States of Europe?
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.
Despite the fact that the Constitution was apparently killed off, these changes have gone ahead across Europe, which raises another interesting question; was this “unifying” plan started in anticipation of the various Nationalities supinely accepting the dictat of their political masters and the EU Bureaucrats. Now they have to rescue the Constitution or face having to explain why the various Defence Forces are no longer able to operate independently! It does highlight the biggest problem faced by all governments and Bureaucracies – once they start a process, it gathers momentum and will continue to happen no matter what changes around it or any attempt to stop it. A bit like the process of setting a large oil tanker in motion and, once it has reached it’s maximum speed, trying to turn it from a straight line or to stop it in a short distance. Neither is going to happen. That is the problem with so much of the short termism in todays politics, todays “big” idea, is tomorrows “headache” simply because, once started, even a change of government cannot stop the cascade started by the previous bunch of idiots – even if they want to.
Guido has no doubt that the Whitehall chair polishers who have all but reduced our Navy, Army and Airforces to Coast Guard and Homeland Defence Forces, did so thinking that it would all be alright because by the time the public discovered what was happening we would be a group of vassal “states” within the Federal United States of Europe with Armed Forces built on the lines of the USA’s and run from Brussels. Well, I suspect that the sudden desperate attempts to revive the Constitution may be connected to the fact that they now stand exposed – but, I wonder what else they have set in motion towards a “Federal” government that we haven’t yet spotted, or perhaps is about to become obvious?
This could be an interesting question for Mr Blair and his chums to answer!
7 Comments so far
I would be grateful if you might provide an example of a regiment that has been recerated and reformed in such a way that it would be a better fit for a pan-European force. I would also be interested to learn why you think doing away with the punching power of the Fleet Air Arm somehow fits into European plans as opposed to, say, saving money.
It is not so much a “specialised fit” as a drift towards the creation of X number of Divisions of Infantry, Mechanised Troops, Armoured Brigades, etc. The creation of our “Super Regiments” is in reality a downgrade overall, since six Regiments become six companies in one Regiment. Cost cutting and reshaping in one move. The loss of the Fleet Air Arm is a move towards the absorption of the air defences into a European Airforce Unit which is also in line with the way most EU Naval forces obtain air support – from Ground Based aircraft. After all, you only need “Navy” air forces if you are operating away from “Home Waters” – and the EU has no intention (they say) of operating outside Europe. Cost cutting? Of course it is, but this is in my opinion, merely serendipitous!
I am also sceptical of the restructuring going on, but Blair’s vision for the ESDP I happen to sympathise with, as a means to strengthen the transaltlantic relationship in general and alliance (NATO) through burden-sharing commensurate with ‘Europe’s’ size. Chirac’s notion of a European defence capablity acting as a counter-weight to NATO is not just undesirable but delusional. Duplication of assets and capabilities will be immeasurably more expensive than the cost of the modest goals agreed in Helsinki which the European states still can’t bring themselves to stump up. Operations Concordia in FYROM and Artemis in DRC were small-scale, and that is all that European force prjection will ever likely be. Britain’s involvement in Iraq shows that there is still plenty of scope for independent action, and the European Security Strategy that developed out of the divisions over Iraq is vague to the point of uselessness. The danger, I agree, is the Constitution which would shift defence and foreign policy from national to federal control. And Britain, as the only power other than France capable of serious force projection overseas, would be seriously constrained.
The real prblem is that we are reaching a critical point in the reductions our Civil Service have set in motion and will soon lose our ability to act independently if it is not arrested – Constitution or no. The real threat to everyone’s independence is the Constitution, and the recent efforts to revive it betray the desperation now felt in Brussels and elsewhere that they stand exposed if it does not come into being and it’s absence reveals the fact that they have already transfered powers they have no authority to move.
“six Regiments become six companies in one Regiment”
I think Blair reduced the number of battallions from 6 to 4, and simultaneously merged some regiments.
He was quite cunning. When he claimed the destruction of historic regiments was to “modernise” the military, he let us all think the real reason was budgetary constraints (i.e. Gordon’s fault). In fact, the desire to create an EU military aside, had he not reduced the number of battallions the remaining units would have become non-functional, such was the level of drop-out after Iraq (Blair’s fault).
Removing the individual identities of regiments has two effects. Firstly we become more like the US military where a regiment is a fixed size unit (2 battallions in their case). Secondly, any links the regiments had with their historic homes are erased, which would certainly be conducive to an EU military.
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