The worst army in the world? Not entirely

From The Telegraph today: "EU leaders want their own army, but can't agree on much else - five things we learned from the Renzi-Hollande-Merkel summit".

In fact the official statement seemed quite vague, but a European Army would plainly be a most ineffectual institution:

• No common language
• No common esprit de corps
• No cohesive leadership
• No common experience of combat
• No overall political master.

Would there ever be political agreement to get this 'army' to do anything involving real combat?

Look on the bright side. It's probably a way to get national armies in Europe to converge to similar doctrines, equipment and command-and-control protocols. European military cooperation will surely be necessary in the future yet today the ability of European nations to fight effectively together (in theory within NATO) is lamentably poor.

The ideology of the 'United States of Europe' and 'no more European wars' is clearly alive, well and part of the rationale for this initiative. Although full federalism a la USA is never going to happen, the 'European Army' project should nevertheless aid national military renewal projects.

In a Europe which is today pacifistic, disarmed and vaguely helpless (leaving aside the UK and France) this is to be welcomed.

At least we know that in principle the Europeans can fight proper state-on-state wars: two world wars proved that.

Compare and contrast the situation with the Arabs. I guess we should be relieved.