Will a United Army Emerge in Europe?
Numerous statements by the new US administration about possible withdrawal from NATO, withdrawal of its troops and refusal to maintain military bases in the European Union have caused an increased interest of European states in creating their own collective security system, more focused on the local continental level rather than transatlantic cooperation.
Over the past few weeks, the EU has intensified its efforts to strengthen defense cooperation, but the creation of a single army, where all countries will have a common command and structure, faces numerous obstacles. First and foremost, they are related to political differences between EU member states and the prospect of incurring high costs for creating a single army.
Currently, the EU countries have their own armies and cooperate through the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), which includes peacekeeping and crisis operations. There are also initiatives, such as the European Corps (Eurocorps), where several countries combine their troops, but it is not a full-fledged single army. Let's analyze the feasibility of transforming current security instruments into a single European army.
The history of the creation of a unified armed forces in the EU: attempts and failures
For almost half a century, the Western European Union (WEU), established in 1948 to ensure the security of Western Europe, has been the structural basis for the European security and defense function. Subsequently, its functionality was somewhat expanded, and the WEU performed a number of specific tasks, primarily in the area of post-war arms control mechanisms in Europe.
However, its role was limited, and its membership differed from the European Union’s. Almost all WEU member states (with the exception of Luxembourg) were also NATO members. Given this institutional background, questions were raised about the need for a more even distribution of the financial burden of European security between the United States and Europe. This was usually discussed at the level of bilateral political relations.
Many respected initiatives were taken by European NATO member states to dispel US doubts about the readiness of European countries to assume security and defense responsibilities. However, no multilateral or institutional mechanisms existed to create separate armed forces outside of NATO and national armies. As a result, for practical reasons, European security guarantees remained the exclusive prerogative of NATO.
After the collapse of the USSR, NATO and WEU held regular working meetings, and the cooperation agreements reached between 1991 and 2000 laid the foundation for further development of relations between them. In practice, these mechanisms were intended to ensure that if a crisis arose and the Alliance decided not to intervene, the WEU could request NATO forces, funds and resources for an operation under its own political control and strategic direction.
The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992, contained an agreement between EU leaders to develop a common foreign and security policy “including the possible establishment of a common defense policy, which could eventually lead to a common defense.”
The initiative to create Europe's defense capabilities through the Western European Union was later implemented based on the EU's 1997 Amsterdam Agreement. This agreement, which entered into force in May 1999, included the so-called “Petersberg tasks” of the EU - humanitarian search and rescue missions, peacekeeping missions, crisis management tasks, including peace enforcement, and environmental protection. This laid the foundation for the rapid development of a common European defense policy.
Around the same time, in 1994, at the NATO Summit in Brussels, it was decided to create a European Security and Defense Component within NATO. This decision led to the creation of practical mechanisms that allowed NATO to support European military operations conducted by the WEU. These mechanisms contained several provisions in the Final Communiqué adopted in June 1996.
These included the provision of NATO capabilities to the WEU, the development of appropriate multinational European command arrangements within NATO for WEU-led operations, the concept of multinational joint task forces to create rapidly deployable forces to meet emerging needs across the full range of NATO tasks, and separate but not separate rapidly deployable headquarters that the WEU could use.
These decisions were also approved at subsequent meetings at the level of NATO Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers in Berlin and Brussels in June 1996, as well as at the 1997 NATO Summit in Madrid. Thus, the WEU was developed simultaneously as a defense component of the EU and as a means of strengthening NATO's European “pillar.” It was then that the European NATO member states recognized that in creating a European military capability, unnecessary duplication of NATO's existing structures of military command and control, planning bodies, and military forces, means, and resources should be avoided. In fact, these decisions marked the beginning of the end of the WEU, which was finally dissolved in 2010.
The War in Ukraine as an Incentive to Reshape the Transatlantic Security Space
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference, held on February 14-16, 2025, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled the resumption of political discussions in the EU on creating a single system of collective European security. “Many, many leaders have said that Europe needs its own armed forces, an army - the army of Europe. And I really believe that this time has come. We need to create the armed forces of Europe. It is no more difficult than to resist Russian attacks, as we are already doing resolutely,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
After all, the main catalyst for the start of these discussions was the policy of the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, which is based on reducing the United States of America’s international obligations, even towards its allies.
In October 2016, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker noted that the EU needs to revise its defense strategy and work on creating a European army. “We have a lot to thank the Americans for... but they will not take care of Europe's security forever. We have to do it ourselves, so we need a new approach to building a European security union with the ultimate goal of creating a European army,” Juncker said.
Two years later, in November 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a radio interview with Europe 1 that Europe needed to be less dependent on America and called for the creation of a “real European army” to allow the EU to defend itself against both Russia and the United States, if necessary. “We have to defend ourselves against China, Russia and even the United States... We will not defend Europeans if we do not have a real European army,” Macron said. At that time, his idea was supported only by German Chancellor Angela Merkel because no one in the EU thought about the possibility of a confrontation with the United States and did not foresee such a risk.
It is worth noting that even though the United States is the largest contributor to NATO and its army is ranked first in the world's strongest army, other strong NATO armies are stationed in Europe: the United Kingdom (6), Italy (10), France (11), Germany (19), and Spain (20). If we add to this list Ukraine (18) and Poland (21), which, due to the reduction of the US presence in Europe, will have to spend even more money on its own defense due to the high risks of the Russian threat, as well as Turkey (8), without which it is difficult to imagine the European security space (despite the fact that only 4% of Turkey's territory is located in Europe), and Canada, which, after the US trade war declared against it, has also begun to think about a new security strategy and is gravitating towards a joint project with Europe, the prospects for a new military and political alliance to replace NATO (from which the US has already expressed its desire to withdraw) are becoming more and more real.
According to estimates recently made by French President Emmanuel Macron, it will take Europe 10 years to free itself from US influence by investing in security and defense at the national and European levels. In his opinion, the EU countries will have to find an additional €200 billion.
European military contingent in Ukraine: prospects and consequences
Perhaps the first step towards the institutionalization of a pan-European army will be the formation of a military contingent of European countries that will be involved in helping Ukraine as a security guarantor.
At the security summit in Paris in mid-February, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schouffe acknowledgedthat Europeans “have to come to a common conclusion about what we can do, and then we will eventually get a seat at the table,” adding that “just sitting at the table without contributing is pointless.” And the military contingent is such a contribution.
At a conference in London in early March this year, the Netherlands' position was supported by the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine if Moscow agreed to a deal that included the presence of European troops. This is the first time that a British leader has explicitly stated that he is ready to deploy the British army to Ukraine.
The British initiative to form a military contingent has already been joined by other countries:
- Sweden, whose Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, said that Sweden would consider participating in a post-war peacekeeping force;
- Australia, whose Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that his government would consider any proposal to send troops to Ukraine as part of a multinational military force, as Europe believes that a “coalition of the willing” would ensure that any peace agreement is implemented;
- Lithuania, whose Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys emphasized that Lithuania remains open to considering the possibility of sending troops to support peacekeeping operations in Ukraine, but it will depend on the position of the major powers on this initiative;
- Turkey, as noted by the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they are ready to provide troops for the peacekeeping forces in Ukraine;
- France, whose President Emmanuel Macron said that the British-French plan, which is just emerging, will begin with a month-long truce between Ukraine and Russia. Any deployment of military contingent will take place only after that.
The use of military contingents is regulated in international documents, in particular Article 51 of the UN Charter, but so far it is only an idea at the level of political intentions, the realization of which requires certain stages. However, the position of both the UK and France, as well as other countries that have expressed their readiness to join the initiative to send a joint military contingent to Ukraine, is that this joint mission is possible only after peace agreements are reached, and the creation of such agreements will require the support of the United States.
Uncertainty remains, it is too early to summarize
There is a general discussion of the possibility of creating a single army in Europe, but it is being split into separate discussions on strengthening defense cooperation. And it looks more like negotiations on the integration of individual national units into a common command and control hierarchy than on the creation of a single pan-European army.
Against the backdrop of such discussions, the security of Ukraine can be an excellent collective case study for the new Europe, showing how to comply with international agreements and form a single system of collective security independent of both NATO and the individual whims of some national governments.
This case may be the first step towards creating a unified army in Europe, but we are only at the beginning of this journey. The speed of its passage from discussions to actions will depend on several factors and actions by various geopolitical players, as the world is now so globalized that even such an important security decision as creating its own army goes beyond the limits of the political will within Europe.
Anton Kuchukhidze, United Ukraine Think Tank expert