Six o'clock in the evening of the Cold War. The European Army as a Giant Bureaucratic Exercise...
Articles | 02 April, 2025 at 9:02 | 519 | Author: Olena Zelenina
Collage by Olena Zelenina.
“Today at six o'clock in the evening, the heads of delegations of the six member states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg initialed the text of the treaty establishing the European Defense Community with common administrative and military national defense authorities, a common budget, common uniforms, the same length of military service and a common military charter...”
That “today” came in May... 1952.
Now, perhaps, only historians remember that in May 1952, a treaty was signed establishing the European Defense Community, an attempt by Western European states, with the support of the United States, to create a supranational army.
Against the backdrop of Trump's calls for EU countries to increase their military budgets, there is growing uncertainty among European politicians that the United States can still be counted on as a NATO ally, as well as fears that Washington is establishing ties with Moscow. Our fate is also at stake.
Will we this time witness the full transformation of the European Union from an economic and political association into a defense alliance? What does this story tell us?
Read more in the Ukrainian edition…
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