It was the summer of 1987 and the attack helicopters were sweeping low over the fields of southwest Germany; beyond the hedges the rumble of approaching tanks could be heard. Two armies were about to clash. Their composition was ominously familiar - French and German - except that for once both were on the same side.
Operation ‘Kecker Spatz’ (Cheeky Sparrow) was widely feted in both countries, with a field day for cartoonists. The Germans portrayed French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (then at the height of their ‘bromance’) sharing wine instead of bayonets and bombs.
French newspaper Libération showed tank commanders hugging, the French saying ‘With you we’d never have lost Algeria or Indochina’, the German wryly responding, ‘Nor Alsace or Lorraine.’
The operation was considered the starting point for a European Union army, even though both sides knew they would face British opposition. But within two years that was irrelevant: the mock enemy had been a Warsaw Pact army, and by the end of 1989 the Warsaw Pact was falling apart.
In the decade that followed, Germany was reunited and the former Warsaw Pact countries, including unimaginably the Baltic states which had been part of the Soviet Union itself, were falling into Nato’s arms and joining the EU. It was seen as consolidation of Nato, not a threat to it, a sign of Cold War victory.
Last week, however EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker formally called for renewal of plans for an EU military with headquarters in Brussels, just down the road from that of Nato. He stressed that this was ‘no threat’ to Nato, but insisted a main incentive was to avoid wasting money on duplicate structures.
The EU already has a loose structure of 18 ‘battlegroups’ of about 1500 men each drawn from member states, but these have yet to see action and have no common headquarters. Juncker’s plan would change all that.
The plan has been on the drawing board for over a year, but was kept under the table in the fear it would influence a UK vote towards Brexit. That is now settled, and the EU leaders, will have discussed it at least informally when they met without the UK in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Friday.
One of the key advantages to be touted for a European Army would be a fixed force able to guard the frontiers of the Schengen passport free zone, a particular concern, given the past few years’ influx of refugees. This will be even more pertinent as the refugee exchange agreement with Turkey looks increasingly likely to fail.
Turkey is a concern in other ways too: despite Recip Tayyip Erdogan ‘sclaim that he suppressed a coup against a democratically elected government, his government has behaved increasingly autocratically and suppressed freedoms the EU - and Nato - is supposed to uphold.
Turkey’s reliability as a Nato ally has also come into question after its erratic reaction to Russian operations in Syria, first shooting down a Russian aircraft, then welcoming President Vladimir Putin as an ‘ally’.
French support for an EU army is already strong, but could depend on next year’s elections. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is intending to stand again, formally brought France back into Nato’s military command structure in 2009, after an absence of 43 years.
Nonetheless, despite having been a founder member of Nato, there has continually been suspicion in France about the alliance’s domination by the US. This came to a peak in 1966 when General de Gaulle closed NATO headquarters, then located in a suburb of Paris, and forced thousands of US troops to leave the country.
Sarkozy, if elected, would be unlikely to reverse his earlier decision, but he would also be extremely unlikely to oppose a parallel EU military structure, in which France, with the largest standing army and as the sole EU nuclear power, would be the dominant partner, easily overshadowing Germany for once.
The Germans on the other hand, fed up with being criticised within Nato for not contributing more men to operations outside Europe, would be more than happy to participate in a military force confined to a defensive role within EU borders. That would chime with the quote attributed to the great ‘peacemaker’ Chancellor Willy Brandt, that war should ‘never again begin from German soil.”
The attitude of other countries is less certain. Spain enthusiastically joined Nato in 1977 after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, but also retains a certain wariness of a US ‘cavalier’ attitude to military adventures. In particular the Spanish have never forgotten the 1966 incident when two US B-52 bombers refuelling over Spanish soil collided, dropping four nuclear bombs near the Spanish fishing village of Palomares west of Malaga.
Luckily the weapons were not primed - had they been, large parts of Andalucia and Murcia would have been wiped out - but the village was bombarded with flaming metal from the aircraft, non-nuclear bombs on board did explode, and a vast area was contaminated with nuclear material. As recently as October 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry promised 50,000 tonnes of remaining contaminated material would be removed.
And then there is Ireland. The Republic is officially neutral and although it has a policy of cooperation with Nato, it has refused to join the organisation and popular opinion is strongly against. As one of the EU’s most enthusiastic members, which was quick to adopt the Euro and converted all road signs to kilometres, it is unlikely to opt out of any new EU structure.
Irish troops already participate in the ‘Battlegroups’ structure and have signed up on the rosters - to date never deployed - along with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic. It is highly unlikely not to sign up to a common command.
There is no question of supplanting Nato overnight, particularly for those countries bordering Putin’s Russia, but an EU army that would arguably give them a standing force along that border, if at present primarily concerned with migration, would be considered reassuring.
The writing is on the wall, but for now nobody is quite sure what it says.
