The messy US pull-out from Afghanistan has shown Europe must build up its own army, EU internal-market commissioner, Thierry Breton, a close ally of French president Emmanuel Macron, has said. Europe needed “a military projection force” capable of “intervening militarily outside our border”, he wrote in a blog on Friday, adding: “Europe has always exercised its global influence through its soft power … this is no longer sufficient,” the French politician said.
In the meantime an analysis titled “Why Western military interventions remain necessary” by Koert Debeuf published on EUobserver on Monday said since the Afghanistan debacle, more and more analysts have raised their voices against interventions by the West.
According to some, the West should only intervene militarily when self-interest is at stake and if there is no alternative.
For example, many believe that the intervention in Libya was a mistake. That its late leader Muammar Gaddafi would still be in power would not matter to our interest. In other words, they believe that doing nothing is usually better than doing something.
“If Nato had not intervened in Libya, there would have been a massacre of hundreds of thousands of people,” said the analysis. / argumentum.al
