European Army? No. A NATO Without the US?

One of the advantages of working at a place like NPSIA is that we have all kinds of interesting people floating through asking good questions and making me think.  Today, the topic of the European Army came up.  I asked our German post doc and she pushed it back at me.  So, what do I think?

First: deja vu.  For most of the cold war and after, the Americans simultaneously demanded that the Europeans do more and opposed efforts by the Europeans to build stronger Euro-defense institutions, fearing that would undermine NATO. So, Macron says European Army, and Trump, who has demanded Europe do more, complains.  Does this mean that Trump gets the tangled tradeoffs?  No, he just thinks the US should get paid for European defense.

Second, I am a long-time European Defence and Security skeptic.  I remember the Europeans trying to take the lead on the dissolution of Yugoslavia and that didn't work out so well.  Thus, I scoff at the idea of the Europeans getting their act together.

Third, as someone who co-wrote a book on how the domestic politics of civilian control of the military lead to difficulties in multilateral military operations, I cannot imagine a situation where the Europeans would form a single military.  They can and have engaged in bilateral efforts and then in multilateral missions where they have to do as much force generation work as NATO--begging to get contributions.  But a standing army under the command of a single officer with the ability to act and react without getting permission from more than two dozen legislatures?  No.  Remember, nearly every European country has a far more complicated deployment approval process than US/CA/UK (and the Brits showed during the Syria stuff that they have their own surprising complexity).

So, what to make of it?  Maybe aim big and then get something in between?  How about an ETO: a European Treaty Organization that looks a lot like NATO but with no US (or Canada)?  That reproduces the "attack upon one equals an attack upon all" and leans on the French nuclear deterrent and German political/economic heft, but does not rely on the US or have to be worried about a Trump blocking consensus?  Still difficult and not likely, but far more likely than a European Army.  Is this what Macron is thinking of?  Probably not, but he might stumble into it.

How does that sounds?  A European Treaty Organization??  That the UK is out of the EU makes it more likely since the UK always blocked this kind of thing.  Greece and Turkey always made EU/NATO cooperation really hard... can they continue their games in the Age of Trump?