Tuesday, November 16, 2021
5000 soldiers by 2025
EU countries want to build their own troops
The European Union has been discussing the establishment of a joint reaction force for decades. Now there seem to be concrete plans for this. The impetus for this is likely to have been provided by the experience of the evacuations from Afghanistan.
The EU states are considering building their own troops with up to 5,000 soldiers by 2025 in order to become militarily more independent from the USA. This emerges from a confidential document that the Reuters news agency was able to see. The defense ministers of the 27 member states discussed this in Brussels.
Italy and France welcomed the plans. How a new German federal government consisting of the SPD, Greens and FDP would stand is still unclear. The European Union decided in principle to set up a rapid reaction force two decades ago, but this has not yet been implemented.
So far, it should be avoided to form military competition with NATO. The experiences with the evacuations from the Afghan capital Kabul after the takeover of power by the radical Islamic Taliban have apparently triggered a rethink. The Europeans were unable to secure Kabul airport without US help and had to stop evacuations when the US soldiers withdrew.
With a view to Afghanistan, the German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer recently pleaded for “coalitions of willing” – that is, groups of EU countries that could pool their military forces. In the past, French President Emmanuel Macron in particular had urged the establishment of a common European army.