Joining forces to give Europe its own army
Countries take step toward uniting as Trump tears at NATO
LOHHEIDE, Germany — On a former Cold War base, German and Dutch soldiers, serving together in one tank battalion, stood to attention one recent morning and shouted their battle cry in both languages.
“We fight —,” their commander bellowed.
“— for Germany!” the battalion replied in unison.
“We fight —,” the commander shouted.
“— for the Netherlands!” his soldiers yelled back.
They are not shouting “for Europe.” Not yet.
But the battalion — Europe’s first made up of soldiers from two countries — is an important baby step toward deeper European military cooperation. First floated after World War II, the idea of a European army is as old as the European Union itself, but has yet to become a reality.
Now, though, the idea has taken on new urgency because of the Trump administration’s threat to withdraw the continent’s security guarantee if it does not spend more on its defense. At a high-level security conference last weekend, the breach between the United States and Europe burst into the open, leaving many European officials feeling increasingly on their own.
“Everyone is talking about a European army,” Lt. Col. Marco Niemeyer, the German commander of the battalion, said. “We are pioneers.”
Yet if some powerful European leaders are talking more loudly about a European military, the political moment is fraught. Moreover, the practical challenges to more credible European defense cooperation are immense.
For any progress, analysts agree that Germany, Europe’s biggest and richest country, must do more, including overcome its post-World War II reluctance to lead in strategic matters. The German military already has too few soldiers, too little equipment and faces shortages of just about everything, even thermal underwear, which in some cases is being reclassified as “functional” so that it can be reused by others.
Given this backdrop, Tank Battalion 414 has become an informal test case for what needs to be done to achieve greater efficiencies and broader cooperation.
‘A gigantic mismatch’
The military base in Lohheide is the continent’s difficult history writ small. Built by the Nazis in the 1930s, and used by Allied forces during the Cold War when West Germany was still NATO’s eastern border state, it is now home to an experiment in postnational defense.
The battalion is German, but 1 in 4 of its soldiers are Dutch. The tanks are German, the radio system is Dutch and the language of command increasingly English. Often Germans and Dutch ride in the same tank.
“We already work much more closely together than the politicians had envisaged,” said Niemeyer, the German commander.
But the contrast between the idealism on display in the barracks and the absence of political leadership remains striking, analysts and defense experts say — especially in Berlin.
“There is a gigantic mismatch between the tactical-military and the political level,” said Jan Techau, director of the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.
Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, conceded in an interview that 25 years of downsizing had hollowed out structures. But she insisted that “we have passed the bottom and are on the right track.”
Military spending has increased for five straight years, she said, up 36 percent. Germany is NATO’s second-biggest contributor of funds and troops.
But critics say that is not good enough.
On average, only 1 in 3 of Germany’s Eurofighter jets and combat helicopters fly, according to figures published last year, the latest available. In January, just three of six submarines and well under half of the two dozen A400M transport planes were fit for purpose.
“In all areas there is a shortage of material,” Hans-Peter Bartels, Germany’s parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, wrote in a report this month.
‘We need to get involved’
Battalion 414 showcases the necessity of European cooperation: Germany has too few soldiers, the Dutch lack a tank program. But together they can make a battalion.
“It is two fragile parties propping each other up,” said Thomas Wiegold, a respected military blogger.
One reason Battalion 414 has been so successful is that northern Germans and Dutch people are culturally close.
Despite talk by Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron of France about a “real European army,” the experience of a FrancoGerman brigade in Alsace has been very different.
“The Germans don’t speak French; the French don’t speak English,” Bartels said.
Even more significant, he said, “the strategic cultures in France and Germany are very different, although there is the political will to compromise.”
To make a European army work, Germany will have to overcome an innate caution since World War II about military intervention.
“For a long time there was a view in Germany that we must not get involved in conflicts because of our history, but that is changing,” the defense minister, von der Leyen, said. “It is precisely because of our history that we need to get involved.”