At the Munich Security
Conference in February, 2025, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy bluntly asserted, “I
really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be
created.”[1]
He could have said in 2023 after Russia’s President Putin had sent tanks and
bombs into Ukraine; instead, the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S.
that was the trigger. “Let’s be honest,” Zelenskyy continued, “now we can’t
rule out that America might say ‘no’ to Europe on issues that might threaten
it.”[2]
At the time, Trump was planning to meet with Putin to end the war without Britain
and a number of E.U. states at the table. After all, they had failed to push Putin
off Crimea in 2014, and even in 2025, they were not on the same page on how to defend
Ukraine militarily. Amid the political fracturing in Europe, Ukraine’s
president was urging that the E.U. itself have an army, rather than merely the
60,000 troops for which the union was dependent on the states. Even on being
able to borrow on its own authority, the E.U. was hamstrung by the state
governments that were more interested in retaining power than in benefitting
from collective action. It is difficult to analyze Zelenskyy’s plea without
including the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology that was still eclipsing
the E.U. from realizing a more perfect union.
Monday, February 17, 2025
A European Army: A More Perfect Union
1. Joshua Posaner, “Zelenskyy:
‘The Time Has Come’ for a European Army,” Politico, February 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
