Imagine some Eurocrat with his finger on the nuclear trigger. If the EU gets its way, it may soon be a possibility. There is a saying amongst diplomats that the EU is an economic giant but a military pigmy. This accusation stings the Europhiles so much that they have decided to address this and create a European Army. As if an army of bureaucrats wasn’t bad enough, now they want to have an actual army as well. Post Lisbon, the EU has harboured fantasies of being a militarised superpower able to project its ‘values’ throughout the world. It now oversees operations with 2,800 troops deployed. Many of these missions, conveniently, have a ‘dual purpose’. That is, that appear to be civilian-military co-operation when in actual fact they are heavily militarised and weaponised. They are also in some of the world’s most sensitive trouble spots like Kosovo and Gaza. British participation in an EU army was agreed at St Malo in 1998, where Tony Blair agreed in principle to an EU army. He did this because he was trying to be seen as a ‘good European’ in light of his desire to be a future EU president. Also, he believed that by agreeing to an EU Army, he could use that as a good will gesture to get France to agree to sweeping CAP reform, knowing that CAP was an unpopular scheme with the UK electorate. France (shockingly) did no such thing, but Blair had already committed. The German think-tank, the EU-funded Konrad Adenauer Foundation, has argued that Germany can get its Euro Army by a different tactic. Instead of going for a Euro Army at one fell swoop, it aims to create ‘islands of co-operation’. That is, to persuade smaller countries in Eastern and Central Europe too co-operate with Germany in creating smaller building blocks of a Euro Army which at a later date can be put together. Given Germany’s economic dominance of these countries, it can easily ‘persuade ‘them to co-operate. In mid-2012, the Foreign Ministers group of the Future of Europe Group produced a report. This is a group of 11 foreign ministers from important EU states, but not the UK. The report calls for the creation of a European Army, with a veiled threat to a UK veto in the Council. The report states it wishes to “introduce more majority decisions in the CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) sphere or at least prevent one single member state from being able to obstruct initiatives”. Guess which member state they mean! Clearly the core EU states know how unpopular a Euro Army would be in Britain, so are making moves to render Britain’s opinion irrelevant. So much for our famed ‘influence ‘in the EU institutions. In October 2013, a spokesman for the British Foreign Service told the international security journal, Courcy’s Intelligence Brief, that “today there is in London a genuine desire and commitment to making CSDP (Common Security and Defence Policy) as effective as possible in supporting international security and protecting Britain’s and Europe’s borders from potential threats. We are now increasingly aware of the helpful role the EU can play in bringing to bear the common will of 28 of the world’s most advanced economies.” This suggests that amongst the Whitehall Mandarins there is a growing appetite to form a Euro Army. The successor to Baroness Ashton is Polish diplomat Radek Skorski. He has said that since America is no longer willing or interested in security crises at Europe’s borders, the EU has to militarise itself so as to deal with these crises. He argues that the EU’s Operation Atalanta against Somali piracy saw a drop in attacks of 70%. In actual fact, the drop was due to aggressive Russian, Chinese, Indian and American anti-piracy patrols. They have a slightly more simple method of dealing with armed pirates, and it doesn’t involve briefing them in detail on their human rights. This reminds me, when I think of the young men and women who died in the British Army. One source of comfort for the family members is that that died fighting for Queen and Country. Very few British mothers would be comforted knowing their loved one died for Herman Van Rompuy and the Single Market.