Many were shocked on May 9 at the size of a Russian Victory Day parade, the greatest display of Russian military power since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As great as Russia’s military might is, however, the combined military might of Europe has the potential to be greater.

The European Union has a population almost 3½ times the size of Russia’s and a gross domestic product over 1,200 percent greater than Russia’s. The only reason Russia is currently considered a greater military power than Europe is that Europe’s military resources overlap and are divided 27 ways.

The combined military spending of all 27 EU member states in 2007, according to the European Defense Agency (eda), amounted to $308 billion—second only to the $752 billion spent by the United States. The fact that this money is being spent by 27 different nations on 27 different national militaries, however, dilutes the cumulative effect of these expenditures. Logistically, this represents an enormous waste of resources.

This is why German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for accelerated efforts to integrate Europe’s armed forces into a common European Army on May 6 at a Social Democratic Party (spd) security conference.

German leaders from both the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union want to do the same thing with national militaries as they did with national currencies: create a single European entity. Such a force would be able to tackle modern “security threats” now considered to be beyond the scope of national armies.

As Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported May 8:

“International terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and regional conflicts outside our borders are all dangers that we can only tackle together,” said Peter Struck, the spd parliamentary group leader and a former defense minister.According to Hennign Riecke, head of the European foreign and security policy at the German Council on Foreign Relations, fighting terrorism requires cooperation since networks can exist with state sponsors, and tackling proliferation with an actor such as Iran requires political weight.”There cannot be any effective national security policy any longer,” he said. “Whatever you do, it must be done in cooperation.”

In order to accelerate the integration process of Europe’s militaries, Steinmeier is working with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner. These two countries have maintained a common German-French brigade since the early 1990s, which could serve as a sort of nucleus for a common European Army. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified by the end of this year as planned, nations like Germany and France would have more freedom to establish such an army. Current plans call for an EU air transport command, a Ministerial Defense Council, and even an EU military academy.

Integrating the military forces of the European Union’s 27 member nations would give Europe a global military status even greater than Russia’s and could eventually even surpass that of the United States.

For more information on Europe’s rising military might, read “The Return of Imperialism” by Ron Fraser.