The building blocks are being put in place for a war between Europe and Russia. A new report from European Council for Foreign Relations makes calls for a “two speed” European defence policy - effectively urging certain nations to proceed with one of the key tenets of the Lisbon Treaty / European Constitution without the need to wait for agreement from the rest. To hell with you, Ireland!

The report is written by ECFR Senior Fellow Nick Witney. Educated at Oxford, Witney is a career diplomat for Britain, among other things he supervised the Al Yamamah contract (BAE) for the U.K. Ministry of Defense, before becoming the first head of the European Defense Agency, the EU’s mini-Pentagon.

The report (pdf) calls for the reduction of the total number of Europeans in uniform, the reduction in “useless” military equipment such as tanks (consolidation), and the creation of a cartel of streamlined defence industries which are, he says, presently too focused on sovereign national priorities. He demands that “pioneer groups” of countries, with their expeditionary force capabilities, pool together around the EDA.

Although there is no requirement for EU countries to participate, he writes, they then have no right to interfere with EU “pioneer group” decisions on sending troops abroad.

There should be the creation of an EU headquarters in Brussels, which would integrate civilian assets for crisis management (such as police) with the military. (Are this weeks events in Italy a trial run, do you think?)

The report also urges the creation of a civilian reserve corps, to ensure the right personnel are available.

On the same day the Witney report was released, his colleague, Mark Leonard, Director of the ECFR, had an anti-Russian propaganda piece published in Newsweek. He rounded off by saying “This one lingering issue [the Litvinenko affair] is but a glaring illustration of the kinds of problems Russia poses to the rest of Europe. It is therefore time for the EU to agree, at least on principle, to a common response to these shows of Russian aggression. The EU’s population is more than three times the size of Russia’s; its economy is 15 times larger. But its biggest strength lies in interdependence, solidarity and consensus. When the next crisis comes, all European states will need to be prepared.”

Is it a coincidence that these two reports from the same think tank were published on the same day?

I think not.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Conspiracy, Dictatorship, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.