European Union Military Ambitions
As expected, the joint meeting of the defense ministers and the foreign ministries of the European Union member countries approved the project of creating a military planning and management center in the EU Military Committee. This was stated by High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.
The new structural unit of the European Union Military Committee will be responsible for managing non-combat missions of the Union abroad, including in Somalia, Mali and the Central African Republic. Key positions in the center will be held by specialists who previously held military expertise and strategic planning.
As Mogherini noted, the decision to establish the center was made later 6 months after “the beginning of work to strengthen the security and defense of the European Union.” According to her, thanks to the active and constructive approach of all member countries, the project was adopted unanimously.
It should be noted that integration in the defense sphere has traditionally been the subject of disagreement between the states belonging to the European Union.
In addition, it was announced the creation of joint branches of military-civil interaction, designed to ensure coordination of the efforts of military and non-military structures to ensure security in crisis regions. This measure, on the one hand, will more effectively manage the process of reconciliation of opponents in those armed conflicts that the European Union seeks to resolve, and on the other hand, can serve as an additional tool in advertising the activities carried out by European peacekeepers to the world community.
Being an official of Brussels, Federica Mogherini could not help but touch upon the issue of paying for future collective military ambitions. Indeed, the question is not idle - according to her own admission, European countries spend 50% of the US military budget on defense, while the effectiveness of these expenses is only 15% of American, which is often criticized by European Union citizens. However, according to Mogherini, the EU has a real opportunity to improve the process of financing the defense sector, which will allow “sharing the burden” of military spending with a transatlantic ally - Washington - and will strengthen cooperation with NATO.
Thus, the statement of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy can actually be seen as an official acknowledgment that the measures currently being taken, which Brussels officially motivates by “the need to strengthen common defense,” are in fact aimed at further binding the states Old World to the North Atlantic Alliance. At the same time, the existence of the only military-political bloc in the world today, in the absence of any real threats to the European Union, does not only raise questions, but, on the contrary, is taken for granted.
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