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From the UK's Daily
Telegraph:
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In 20 years' time, a new study
predicts, almost the only thing British about Britain's Armed Forces will be the
men and women serving in them, and the Union Flags sewn on their Chinese-made
uniforms to distinguish them from their EU colleagues.
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A wealth of evidence has come to
light to show how, over the next two decades, the British Army will have been
almost wholly reorganised and re-equipped as part of the European Rapid Reaction
Force (ERRF), directed from Brussels, using equipment supplied almost entirely
by other countries in the EU. No longer will it be technically or politically
possible for Britain's Armed Forces to fight independently, or in alliance with
those of the US.
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Apart from a few brisk disagreements around the
time of our country's birth, and some indecisive dithering during the
War of Northern Aggression American Civil War, the Brits have
always been able (eventually) to count upon the US in a scrape, and we have been
able to count on them. The NATO military alliance always had a two-fold purpose
- one was political: Keep Germany down, Russia out and the US in (Europe), while
the other was, believe it or not, military: Planners thought it would be keen,
if it came to blows, that the collection of forces defending member nations from
attack could, you know... work together. Common planning doctrine at the top
level, followed by radio's that could talk to each other at the tactical level,
and everything in between, were thought crucial to that success.
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And a common military infrastructure is critical
to the art of warfare these days: Even in the US, service parochialism and lack
of imagination led to what ought to have been, without the intervention of some
unstoppable warriors at the field grade level, a debacle in Grenada: The Navy
and Marine Corps couldn't talk to the Air Force and the Army on the battlefield.
See, the USAF and the Army were thoroughly integrated into NATO, always casting
an eye on those Soviet legions across the Fulda Gap, while the naval forces
considered themselves a kind of global 911 force, charged with independently
maintaining sea lines of communication with Europe and Asia, while conducting
occasional single-service, drive-by shootings of miscreants and malcontents in
other places. We didn't share (or really, have) a common operating doctrine, and
there was no unified command structure which made sense to any of the involved
players. (Military readers will know what I mean, but my civilian friends would
never credit the glow that comes into a flag officer's eyes when he looks at a
well-constructed command and control wiring diagram.) In any case, during ops in
Grenada (and to a lesser extend, Panama) field grade officers ashore found
themselves unable to communicate with fixed-wing close air support assets on the
carriers, unsure of the right language to use once in contact and in certain
instances, ended up dialing (on a commercial pay phone!) contacts back in the
Pentagon to relay requests. The Goldwater-Nichols Defense
Reorganization Act was passed to make us talk to each other, here at
home.
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And this was in a one-nation armed force
alignment. It gets harder, trust me, overseas. Even between two allies separated
by a common language.
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In the old days this sort of thing was much less
important. In World War II style attrition warfare, it was possible to say:
We've got our guns, you bring yours, race you to the top of the hill. But modern
warfare is all about maneuver forces, about sensing the battlespace, orienting
to the friend and foe, deciding quickly and acting decisively. It's very hard to
do so meaningfully if your equipment lash up, from the jeeps that roll-on or off
your transport planes, to the radios you use to communicate to the satellite
services you use to sense the battlefield are incompatible.
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Which is probably the point, according to this
(ca. 2001) Guardian article.
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Critics are worried that the
creation of the ERRF (European Rapid Reaction Force) will undermine NATO,
discourage American involvement in European peacekeeping operations and that
endanger Britain's special relationship with Washington. Supporters of the new
force say exactly the same. That, they say, is why it's a good
thing.
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The US always carried the lion's share of the
European defense burden. In the years shortly after WW II, this was because
Europe had been bled dry by nearly a decade of mechanized warfare and no one
else was really able to contribute much more than good will and local maps. In
the years that followed after, the ever-increasing size and scope of the
unfolding social welfare state on the continent occupied so much of the public
space that there weren't enough resources left over for huge military
contributions, even if there had been the collective will. Which most assuredly,
there was not - there seems to be an interesting inverse correlation between
what a national populace
gets
from the state coffers and what that populace is willing to personally
contribute
in return, absent immediate and dire necessity.
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Forming a "European Army," separate from the NATO
command and control structure has long been the wet dream of the Europhile
bureaucrats at Brussels. And, for certain French politicians, who, when they
sleep at night dream sweet dreams of the
gloire de France
and taking their rightful seat at the
political head of a unified Europe, the ERRF has been seen as a way of gently
shoving the inconvenient giant of the US away from the European political table.
New pole of power, compete equally in policy and economic endeavors, etc. And
that's all well and good, and I wish them the very best, I really do. Americans
love
competition, gets our creative juices flowing.
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But I wish they hadn't taken the Brits along too.
The Brits can actually fight.
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We'll miss the Brits.
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More on the ERRF
here, if you're curious.
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