THIS PIECE in the Financial Times rains scorn on proposals for an EU defense policy:

The latest Franco-German proposals to further the EU’s defence ambitions highlight the follies of the project. In effect, Paris has acquiesced to Germany’s military ineffectiveness in return for Berlin’s acceptance of French institutional obsessions that would disconnect the EU from Nato. . .

Most important, whatever their pretensions to a greater military capacity, the Europeans will for the foreseeable future depend on US military assistance. Yet the Americans suspect that European defence ambitions are motivated by a desire for competition with the US, not co-operation. French demands for European autonomy in military planning do little to assuage US concerns.

The E.U. has committed itself, philosophically, politically and — most of all — economically to a strategy that ensures its military irrelevance. That makes this kind of discussion moot, I think.