Reuters:

The European Union needs its own army to face up to Russia and other threats as well as restore the bloc’s foreign policy standing around the world, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a German newspaper on Sunday. Arguing that NATO was not enough because not all members of the transatlantic defense alliance are in the EU, Juncker said a common EU army would also send important signals to the world.
”A joint EU army would show the world that there would never again be a war between EU countries,” Juncker told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “Such an army would also help us to form common foreign and security policies and allow Europe to take on responsibility in the world.”
Juncker said a common EU army could serve as a deterrent and would have been useful during the Ukraine crisis.

Really?

Perhaps Juncker would like to explain how an EU army would have been “useful” during the Ukraine crisis when countries such as Germany are already clearly uncomfortable about NATO extending its presence within NATO’s eastern borderlands, let alone beyond them.

And how willing would a Greece run by that country’s new pro-Putin government have been to approve anything “useful”?

Here’s what the man who is now prime minister of Greece had to say about post-Maidan Ukraine in May 2014:

“We should not accept or recognize the government of neo-Nazis in Ukraine..”

Back to Juncker:

“One wouldn’t have a European army to deploy it immediately. But a common European army would convey a clear message to Russia that we are serious about defending our European values.”

European values? Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think that many young Europeans would be willing to die for post-democracy. That Juncker (who hails from Luxembourg, a country with an army roughly 900 strong) thinks, by implication, that they might, reveals a great deal about the arrogance of those now running the EU.

Juncker’s idea was rapidly rejected by countries such as Poland and the UK, but that Juncker even put it forward sends an interesting message not only about the arrogance of the EU’s elite, but also its ambition, an ambition bizarrely combined with a frivolous refusal to face the reality of an increasingly dangerous world outside (where is Putin, by the way?).

It ought to go without saying (although it was said by quite a few) that any EU army would also be a menace to NATO unity, something that only underlines the strangeness of the State Department’s long-standing insistence that an “ever closer” EU is in America’s interest.

In that connection, note this from the Reuters report:

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen welcomed Juncker’s proposal: “Our future as Europeans will at some point be with a European army,” she told German radio.

Atlanticism, who needs it?