The crisis in Afghanistan has implications outside of Afghanistan beyond the obvious. I also wonder if this situation will lead to another surge of refugees headed for Europe.
From The Express:
BRUSSELS' calls for the formation of an EU army in response to the Afghanistan crisis have sparked the fury of Nexit campaigners in the Netherlands. Anger over the US approach to Afghanistan sparked plans for a European defense force from EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell this weekend. He wants to assemble an EU force of 50,000 men and women. He said Afghanistan could be the wake-up call for Europe. Nexit Denktank campaigners said: "You have to hand it to them: these unelected Brussels bureaucrats seize every opportunity to exploit a crisis for their own political schemes. An EU army is the end of Dutch sovereignty: no more own army, is the end of the Netherlands.
Letha what is the real political stengh of "Nexiter" beside being headline troll?
Situation like Afghanistan, Malia, Irak show to me that we (UE) need indeed a European Army of sort(or a very interconnected coalition).
@Bartimeus I was just going to comment lol
To be honest I've never heard about the Nexit denktank (thinktank), but it doesn't surprise me that they even find a reason for Nexit in Afghanistan of all places. In other words I don't take them seriously and I wonder why The Express chose to interview them about this specific topic. Without trying to steer into politics I don't take the Nexit movement that serious; we are a trading country and have massive trade with EU. Access to internal market is crucial for us and I don't think we would have a stronger negotiation position compared to UK in Brexit, probably to the contrary. Plus there are no clear arguments what would defacto improve after Nexit.
Coming back to the EU army, I don't see that happening on the short/middle term. I don't think the EU bureaucracy is ready for it, let alone that the majority of EU will support it. That is unless the EU uses some of that big emergency funds to buy out Executive Outcomes to start a mercenary army. It would probably be an effective military though ;-)
Personally I think it would be good if the EU would operate more as a single bloc with regards to foreign policy. The internal divide makes it easy for other powers to split the EU and play it's members against each other, for third parties interests. And obviously a credible force would need to be able to put weight behind the EU foreign policy. How does one raise a 50k strong army though? And how would the army be politically controlled?
Perhaps a more realistic and or wise idea for the short term, would be to create a sort of EU-NATO. There is a already a lot of cooperation between armed forces of the EU memberstates. I think the issue isn't with the armed forces, but rather the memberstates agreeing on what the correct political action is.
Anyway I do think that the Afghanistan bailout might shake up international relations quite a bit. If USA withdraws before many of the 'coalition countries' are able to withdraw their personnel, it might have very serious consequences. Because in simple speak, the reason for most countries to even be in Afghanistan is to support USA. Now if the USA helps themselves out, while leaving a lot of the coalition partners with too little time to evacuate; I guess that the coalition partners wouldn't be happy about it and look at USA like 'I support you then you leave me in the shit'.
Which might indeed have it's influence for any future coalitions, which won't really hurt USA military imo but it might hurt them geopolitically / strategically.
