Eurodefense Nederland nieuws

Picture courtesy NL MoD Afghanistan: Can history tell us what to do? No, but history can certainly tell us what not to do! A personal view of Iric A. van Doorn ( Vice President Eurodefense Netherlands) Wassenaar (NL) 18 September 2021 The West, and in particular the USA, has a long history of often violent and usually unsuccessful attempts at regime changes. After the Cold War the US-neo-conservative global strategy was based on US supremacy and exceptionalism and its goal was global control. The act of terrorism of 9/11 was a consequence of the role of the USA in the Middle East; blind support for the State of Israel, the first Gulf war, activating Muslim activists to get the Russians out of Afghanistan and support for dictatorial regimes. 9/11 was utilized to realise US-expansion plans. The military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq had a tenuous link with “hunting” a group of terrorists. That is a professional job for the police and the “Services”. We now know the consequences: Al Qa...

While the European Union’s defence-aerospace ambitions are clear, industrial fragmentation and conflicting national imperatives continue to act as impediments within the sector, explain Douglas Barrie and Niklas Ebert  from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. This continues to provide the United States with a large window of opportunity in the European market. 

The French military currently is one of Western Europe’s most capable, and it boasts a range of capabilities that enable it to engage in the full spectrum of operations, including high-intensity conventional warfare against a peer adversary. In this report , RAND researchers examine the role that the French military might play as a coalition partner in a hypothetical high intensity conventional conflict in Europe. Researchers drew on a wide range of publications in French and English, as well as on conversations with French defense experts to understand not just the French military’s capabilities and capacity to wage war in general but also its ability to wage high-intensity conventional warfare in particular. Photo credits: Contando Estrelas, Flickr.