Update 21-05-2022
– In 2045, NATO will no longer exist. Even though it now thinks to be alive again because of the conflict in Ukraine after the French president Macron recently called NATO brain death…now the EU seems to become brain death after taking a wrong turn. But this is an apparent phase…just like the earlier claimed NATO successes of its missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria…and so now Ukraine. The organisation took the wrong turn by collaborating with US and UK and their sympathisers in their egocentric nationalistic project against Russia…and the EU(!!). And will, unlike the EU, not be able to come back and recover from that.
(In het Nederlands – Strategische visie EUropese Defensie Unie – EDU)
In my opinion, the future of the EU’s security and defence policy lays within a newly established European Defence Union (EDU) as a part of the EU and to be modelled on the (classical) NATO structure. It should have a deliberate and primary focus on the collective defence of the EU treaty area. Within a non-provocative and defensive structure and doctrine.
An element of this EDU could be the stationing of multi-national military units along the borders of the EU. (As NATO now has her forward deployed elements, then EDU elements). Such units can be stationed there permanently or circulate and train + exercise with the host countries. The EU maritime borders can be patrolled by EDU naval forces.
To me, this seems to be the best way forward given the growing differences in the strategic interests of the EU on the one side and the largest NATO member-state the USA on the other. This evokes more and more friction within the existing NATO structures. The EU and USA are economic competitors with security interests of their own. Samsung for instance would not guard the buildings of Apple either, would they?
Suffice to say that the transatlantic relationship with the USA and Canada is and remains very important. So in my perspective these relations remain within a reformed NATO structure with or without an article-5 construction.
A NATO structure In which the EU on one side and the US and Canada (and possibly other countries, Australia?) on the other can talk about security issues and can collaborate on security and military operations. This can be done collectively or in a “Coalition of the Willing”, under the NATO flag or within an UN mandate and operation.
The EDU will in my view not focus on out-of-area operations. EDU countries can therefore use existing UN and new NATO structures or proceed to a Coalition of the Willing within for example the European Intervention Initiative (EI2). This gives room for the differences in security interests, thinking and policy between EDU members. Guarding and securing EU strategic locations and interests in the world can again be an EDU task.
After a peace deal in the Ukraine war and democratic, economic and military reforms implemented, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarus EU/EDU membership will become an important goal in de direction of 2045, 100 years after the end of the Second World War. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will before that also become members of a reformed NATO.
I think and am convinced that this new EDU and reformed NATO vision and structure can deal better with the mentioned fields of tension than the existing structures in Europe today. With first of all the focus on the EU’s own strategic interests. In Europe and elsewhere in the world.
EDU part of EU vision 2045 >> Vision European Union 2045
RONALD J.H. ELZENGA 