Time for a European army?

[littlebabyjesus]

Sucessive governments cut backs (the tories have been just as bad as Labour) mean British troops have to be under a larger umbrella force be it through NATO, ERRF, UN or coalition of the willing, they don't have man power or equipment to do carryout large scale operations on their own.

Interesting choice of words. I would have said the tories have been just as GOOD as Labour, as I actively welcome the demilitarisation of Britain. It would please me hugely if the British army were reduced to the size of that of another northern hemisphere island, Iceland.

 

[likesfish]

result of the Falklands war fascist tyranny fell and islanders got to rule themselves more or less so a good result.
problem with an ethical foreign policy we are a major arms trader and get our oil
and now natural gas from country's whose heads of state you would'nt trust to babysit
advertsing you want to be ethical when dealing with saudi russia or china for instance don't think it can be realisticly
even george bush snr and major realised trying to liberate iraq would'nt work so did'nt attempt to.
I think keeping people "who had more important things to do when they were of the age to fight" away from making military policy is always a good idea.
military force can deter or can go in and kill people and break things If george and tony dick had seen fist hand the chaos ofmilitary action on the ground they'd have been less keen on using it as an instrument for there ideas

 

[gosub]

Interesting choice of words. I would have said the tories have been just as GOOD as Labour, as I actively welcome the demilitarisation of Britain. It would please me hugely if the British army were reduced to the size of that of another northern hemisphere island, Iceland.

Intresting ignore of message

I think there will be the worlds armed forces will be increasingly calling into action to fight the forces of nature or at least mop up afterwards.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Interesting choice of words. I would have said the tories have been just as GOOD as Labour, as I actively welcome the demilitarisation of Britain. It would please me hugely if the British army were reduced to the size of that of another northern hemisphere island, Iceland.

Sending insufficient forces is an easy way of causing more death and destruction. By encouraging reduced funding but maintaining the same commitments you cause more suffering overall.

Again you're going arse about face. Cut the commitments, then cut the forces. Otherwise the politicians will demand and the army will jsut have to shut up and make do, leading to insufficient troop numbers, kit availability and more deaths (both military and civilian).

You're looking at the result, the demilitarization of the UK and demanding that happens and neglecting the causes that would generate the result.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Intresting ignore of message

I have yet to see a flood that can be held back by heavy artillery.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Sending insufficient forces is an easy way of causing more death and destruction. By encouraging reduced funding but maintaining the same commitments you cause more suffering overall.

Again you're going arse about face. Cut the commitments, then cut the forces. Otherwise the politicians will demand and the army will jsut have to shut up and make do, leading to insufficient troop numbers, kit availability and more deaths (both military and civilian).

I agree. I would like to see the same number of British troops fighting in foreign adventures as there are German.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

@ gosub

It is ridiculous to train people to kill and give them extremely costly arms if they are to engage in humanitarian aid. A humanitarian aid force is what is needed, not an army.

 

[kebabking]

well neither of us can answer that for sure, but yes - i DO think it would be better.

depends on what you class as better doesn't it?

it wouldn't of touched Bosnia with a stick. nor Kosovo.

wouldn't of assisted Sierra Leone - a democratic, liberal state. wouldn't touched East Timor - much to far away. Afghanistan might have got a look in, but only after the US had shaped the battlespace and the political situation making the EU into even more of contractor/client state in A'stan than it is now.

so what you allegedly want is a large standing military that will only ever be used to rescue small fluffy animals - and only when 25 states who barely agree on the date decide to do so unanimously.

what you actually want is to have your personal politics control UK foriegn policy, but because 90% of the UK voting population wouldn't touch your politics with a stick and therefore denying you control democraticly, you want to create some over-arching, unworkable and staggeringly expensive non-system to achieve the same result.

 

[kebabking]

I have yet to see a flood that can be held back by heavy artillery.

i've yet to see the van full of patriotic rapists who can be held back by oxfam.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

i've yet to see the van full of patriotic rapists who can be held back by oxfam.

Where have they ever been held back by a foreign military force? That is hardly an argument for the status quo, is it?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> what you actually want is to have your personal politics control UK foriegn policy, but because 90% of the UK voting population wouldn't touch your politics with a stick and therefore denying you control democraticly, you want to create some over-arching, unworkable and staggeringly expensive non-system to achieve the same result.

How many people though, knowing what they now know (as opposed to the propaganda blizzard that produced a very marginal majority in favour for a couple of weeks prior and a month or two afterwards) would democratically support the Iraq adventure?

How many would be very happy to know that some mechanism, that didn't sacrifice our ability to defend against genuine threats, was in place to stop any stupid shit like that ever happening again?

 

[gosub]

I have yet to see a flood that can be held back by heavy artillery.

The company my brother works for (ACS) does very well out of the UN's need for heavy lift, but C17's are the business.

Nobody with any idea would call the procurement fuck ups a good thing, be they selling off married quarters and not realising that meant paying rent, clansman replacemet or the lack of cannon on the typhoon - which not only ruined the balance, I would assert helped cause the second gulf war - the hydrogen tanks mis ided as chemical warfare agents would of filled a lot of barrage balloons which would thwart Typhoon with no cannon.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Where have they ever been held back by a foreign military force? That is hardly an argument for the status quo, is it?

Read more.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

I agree. I would like to see the same number of British troops fighting in foreign adventures as there are German.

Who the hell are you agreeing with? Read it again if you think that's any way indicative of my opinion or the point of my post.

 

[likesfish]

littlebabyjesus
you appear to be a pacist nothing wrong with that but its an idolical view that does'nt really tally with the world as it is

 

[gosub]

@ gosub

It is ridiculous to train people to kill and give them extremely costly arms if they are to engage in humanitarian aid. A humanitarian aid force is what is needed, not an army.

Read more

concur

 

[Bob_the_lost]

littlebabyjesus
you appear to be a pacist nothing wrong with that but its an idolical view that does'nt really tally with the world as it is

Would be nice if it did though.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

littlebabyjesus
you appear to be a pacist nothing wrong with that but its an idolical view that does'nt really tally with the world as it is

no, I'm not a pacifist. I do, however, think that on balance the UK is a force for the bad in the world and the rest of the world would be better off without the British army's interference.

Regarding the effectiveness of foreign forces in domestic conflicts, foreign forces did not stop atrocities in the Balkans or Rwanda.

And in any case, who are the people who should 'sort out' Africa, for instance? How about Africans?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Regarding the effectiveness of foreign forces in domestic conflicts, foreign forces did not stop atrocities in the Balkans or Rwanda.

What, it didn't stop any!?! [/sarcasm]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What, it didn't stop any!?! [/sarcasm]

In Rwanda, it stopped precious few. In the Balkans, possibly it stopped *some*, while foreign forces let many others happen.

This is not to mention the atrocities that are caused by the presence of occupying troops - both those carried out by them and those provoked by them.

To quibble with this is disingenuous. Have you read up on the legal status of citizens of British dependencies yet?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

In Rwanda, it stopped precious few. In the Balkans, possibly it stopped *some*, while foreign forces let many others happen.

So it stopped some.

Where have they ever been held back by a foreign military force? That is hardly an argument for the status quo, is it?

We clearly disagree about disingenuous then. Personally i find someone who makes a claim they know to be false (namely a rhetorical implication that they never have prevented attrocities) and then tries to shrug off about the good a military can do in a discussion that's evolved into a discussion about disolving the military rather disingenuous.

None of your points counter the inability of OXFAM to do any better, or provide any alternative that could.

To quibble with this is disingenuous. Have you read up on the legal status of citizens of British dependencies yet?

I'll take your word for the status of citizens of British dependencies. It's irrelevant to this discussion. My point was that removing the miltary forces needed to project power would render defending your citizens from invasion/occupation impractical/impossible. You rebutted with a sweeping requirement to carry out forced resettlements of entire islands. It's an interesting little tangent but i'm not seeing how it ties in anymore.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This isn't so straightforward, I don't think. A foreign presence can provoke atrocities in the form of showing off. The famous picture from Vietnam of the man being executed by being shot in the back of the head is a good example of this - this was done because there was a photographer there. I do question the presence of foreign military forces, particularly those of former colonial masters, and I think it can often make a bad situation worse.

It seems to be a British disease to automatically think you can solve the world's problems. Some humility is required, I think - as a former colonial power, the UK lacks the moral authority to sort out many of the world's problems. The solutions must come from elsewhere.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

i find someone who makes a claim they know to be false (namely a rhetorical implication that they never have prevented attrocities) and then tries to shrug off about the good a military can do in a discussion that's evolved into a discussion about disolving the military rather disingenuous.

None of your points counter the inability of OXFAM to do any better, or provide any alternative that could.

.

At no point did I advocate Oxfam as a peace-keeping solution - but it was suggested that the military will in future be needed to sort out environmental disasters. I say that an environmental disaster task force would be a better solution.

A clue to my suggested alternative to the present situation, by the way, is in the thread title.

But yes, I will concede the mistake in my rhetoric. My point was, and is, that foreign military presence at a domestic conflict has a very shabby record of preventing atrocities.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Anything that would enable us to disentangle our affairs from those of the US has to be worth considering

I think there's something to that.

 

[magneze]

Without a proper, accountable European state and parliament I can't see a European army working. Give Europe another 100 years of integration, dissolve all the individual countries into one European state and then ... maybe ... it'll be time for a European army. That's if global warming/nuclear war/kittens haven't wiped out everyone first ...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The Belgians and Dutch are doing it now. Govts can agree on the laws a Euro parliament should uphold. Why can't they agree on when to intervene militarily abroad? I genuinely don't see why it can't be done now.

 

[kebabking]

How many would be very happy to know that some mechanism, that didn't sacrifice our ability to defend against genuine threats, was in place to stop any stupid shit like that ever happening again?

who gets to decide what is a genuine threat - and what happens when this EU state makes an enormous fcuk-up of Iraq scale? do we go for some global authority, and when that fcuks-up we have some inter-stellar arrangement?

you are trying so hard to find a system that can't make a 'wrong' decision that you've missed the fact that a system so paralysed by inertia not only can't make a wrong decision, it can't make any decision.

any Rwandan intervention was sabotaged at both UN and EU level by the French, Kosovo very nearly by the Greeks, many think that the German political requirement to politically support Croation/Slovene independence helped cause Bosnia.

which of these paragons of virtue (by dint both of utterly selfish action and utterly selfish inaction)should get the veto?

as for our friend who thinks former colonial power have no place in Africa, well the citizens (about 80% of them) of Sierra Leone wouldn't agree with you.

perhaps if African states actually did do something about the problems in their own back yard then such things wouldn't have to be considered, but somehow i missed the vast African armies sat on the borders of Rwanda, DR Congo, Zimbabwe and Liberia just waiting for UN approval to sort out problems in their own, far more culturally sensitive way. perhaps you'd prefer that Europe collectively gave its defence budget to the African Union so that they could fulfill the taks that we are far too white to attempt, though of course if you'd ever actually seen an African army in the field - with a few honorable exceptions - you wouldn't give them responsibility for a bag of crisps let alone peacekeeping/peace enforcement/nation building.

 

[likesfish]

simple a military force to be effective needs the ablitly to kill people and break things 24 7.
when you decide the commanders on the ground can't be trusted
or you want to micro manage
thats when the point of putting forces on the ground fails

 

[littlebabyjesus]

perhaps if African states actually did do something about the problems in their own back yard then such things wouldn't have to be considered, but somehow i missed the vast African armies sat on the borders of Rwanda, DR Congo, Zimbabwe and Liberia just waiting for UN approval to sort out problems in their own, far more culturally sensitive way. perhaps you'd prefer that Europe collectively gave its defence budget to the African Union so that they could fulfill the taks that we are far too white to attempt, though of course if you'd ever actually seen an African army in the field - with a few honorable exceptions - you wouldn't give them responsibility for a bag of crisps let alone peacekeeping/peace enforcement/nation building.

Hmmm, the UK has such a good record of nation building abroad, doesn't it?
A little humility is required here, I think.

 

[magneze]

The Belgians and Dutch are doing it now. Govts can agree on the laws a Euro parliament should uphold. Why can't they agree on when to intervene militarily abroad? I genuinely don't see why it can't be done now.

Well, I don't think they could agree - I think you'd end up with an army sitting around doing nothing pretty much all the time. Granted, this is not necessarily a bad thing ...

However, I see the current European framework as much less accountable than national governments and don't think that a body in such a poor state should be given an army.