Leaving Nato is 'Key to a European Defence Policy' Says Former French Defence Minister
VADUZ, Liechtenstein, June 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
An inner circle of European countries, excluding the UK, and departure from Nato's military command, is required if Europe is to create a Common Security and Defence Policy.
That is the view of Charles Millon, former French defence minister and author for World Review, who says that the inner circle should include the core six or seven countries which founded the European Union. The UK should be excluded from this inner circle because it is so integrated into Nato.
He said Europe is currently condemned to bow to US policy which does not necessarily line up with Europe's interests in the face of Russia's current interference with Ukraine.
'Europe has been ordered by Washington to impose economic sanctions which will damage Europe's economic area far more than the US', he writes.
He says Europe's defence policy and its lack of military muscle is failing to deter anyone. 'The Ukraine crisis attests to this absence of military power,' he adds.
Mr Millon believes that common European defence does not hinge on the technological development of a common arsenal or in creating shared standards, as has been thought for decades, but rather on the political will to intervene in the wider world, in the name of superior values.
'It is not a matter of wanting war,' he says, 'but rather of preventing through thorough preparations. This may be a cliché but remains true.'
'There can be no common defence without a common foreign policy. What is the point of creating a common economic area if not guided by an articulated, over-arching, shared vision of its place in the world?'
Read the full World Review report here.
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About the author
World Review author Charles Millon is a French politician who served as France's Minister of Defence from 1995 to 1997 in Alain Juppe's government and French Ambassador to the United Nations from 2003 to 2007.
He is the founder and trustee of the Thomas More Institute, a European Think Tank in Brussels, Belgium, and founding partner of the Cabinet Intelstrat firm in Paris.
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