According to Julian Lindley-French, the formation of a European army is not in the short-term interest of Britain, since Britain does not consider it strategically, politically or operationally viable.
On May 11,1953, after much pressure from France to join the European Defence Community (EDC) Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill rose to his feet in the House of Commons to attack France for its "anti-British" position and said that Britain had done more than anyone to support the EDC Treaty but was getting absolutely no thanks for its efforts and stated famously that "we are with them but not of them", thus ending any chance Britain would join. Scroll on almost sixty years and that is pretty much London's view today and any mention of a European Army is met with howls of derision. The reasons are fourfold: strategic; political; cultural and operational.
At the strategic level almost ten years after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and some eleven years since deployment to Afghanistan the British are firm in their belief that the Europeans talk a lot about defence but rarely deliver and thus cannot be trusted. Indeed, with over seven hundred British dead and some three thousand casualties trust in the willingness of European allies to share risk at the point of contact with danger has all but evaporated.
At the political level without that essential trust no British leader would conceive of embedding Britain's armed forces in a supranational European Army run out of Brussels. It was a non-starter in 1952 when the EDC was born and it is a non-starter now. The idea that some High Representative would decide over the fate of British soldiers themselves embedded in latter day EDC 'groupements' is but pure political fantasy. Indeed, with a widespread sense in Britain that it is the EU that has brought Scotland to the point of departure from the UK London needs to emphasise the very Britishness of its armed forces as one of the few institutions of state almost all Britons believe in.
Culturally of course Britain has a very different relationship with the use of force. The only year a British soldier has not died on operations since the eighteenth century was 1968. There is widespread belief in Britain that Europeans are utterly adverse to the use of force as underlined by the fact that the only country to have met its EU headline goals is the UK, apparently the most Euro-sceptic. Moreover, with the construction of two new super-carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the launch of the six new Type-45 super-destroyers, the current construction and launch of seven new Astute class nuclear hunter-killer submarines with Type-26 frigates and other command and helicopter ships planned (together with the commissioning of the design phase for the four Trident successor submarines) it is clear over the medium-term the UK is fasting leaving its European allies behind. In any case Britain is switching back from a land-centric military strategy to a maritime-centric strategy to ensure it remains firmly alongside its US ally.
At the operational level Britain is also reaching out to the Anglosphere which includes the US, Australia, Canada and others, i.e., those who were really prepared to take the casualties in Afghanistan unlike most Europeans who enmeshed themselves in caveats and red cards. Most of this work is being done in the ABCA grouping (America, Britain, Canada, Australia) particularly as it concerns strategic intelligence and C4ISR. There is some effort to retain some common ground with France in the nuclear and operational domains, which makes sense for Europe's two nuclear powers and in effect the world's second and third most capable military powers. The November 2010 Franco-British Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty and operations over Libya confirmed what is a classical state-to-state strategic defence relationship. However, Franco-British collaboration is not a precursor to a European Army not least because France has no more intention than Britain of subsuming its armed forces within European supranational structures. And in any case with the Euro crisis likely to further marginalise Britain within the EU possibly to the point of departure it is inconceivable that Britain would show any interest in European defence integration.
London might support defence integration of some smaller European powers, possibly via co-operation clusters, if it led a rationalisation of the duplicated defence establishments of countries the armed forces of which are little more than armed pensions. However, Britain would much prefer if such work took place under the aegis of NATO rather than the EU. And, some limited synergy of tail elements, such as defence education and training, might be acceptable.
In conclusion Britain does not believe a European Army is in the short-term strategically, politically, or operationally viable. That is not to say that in time some horrendous and catastrophic disaster would force Britain to change its mind but it would take that.
Julian Lindley-French is Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy. He also member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States as well a Fellow of Respublica in London and Senior Associate Fellow of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.