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Originally Posted by Bleudrgn2010
Of course the EU cannot match the US militarily at the moment, the whole topic was about in the future. If the EU uses its combined economy, which is massive, to build up their military, could it overwhelm the US in the future? Does it have the potential to, not just militarily but economically also?
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The thing is European contries spend a larger part of their budget on social services than the US. To match the US military spending they'd have to cut that. Not to mention a military build up by the EU would be seen as a threat by Russia. If the EU were to suddenly become hostile to the US and build it's forces, Russia will as well. Plus when you look at natural resources, the EU simply doesn't have as much domesticly.
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And I'm pretty sure several EU countries have access to nuclear weapons. When we talk nuclear weapons, it's not really he numbers that matter. It's whether you use them or you don't.
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It is a matter of numbers though. The EU has total about 500 nukes. The US has about 2000 operational nukes. More importantly though, delivery systems. France, the nation with most of Europe's stockpiles only has air and submarine launched weapons. Now I'm sure you'll agree that France's current stocks of aircraft are unable to attack targets in the US from bases in Europe. This leaves their SLBM and planes from their carrier as their sole method of delivering them. They have a handfull of balistic missile subs and 1 carrier. It's possible they'd sneak a sub in range to launch, but most likely they'd all be hunted down quite quickly by US attack subs.
Now the UK is the other EU nation with nukes. Currently the UK only has nukes on their ballistic missile subs. Now the Royal navy can protect them better than the french navy, but it's still not very likely they get in range.
@ Woxxy
Are you seriously claiming the EU has over 20,000 combat aircraft and a navy of over 2500? Cause they don't. I don't even want to think about where you got Spain and Sweden are more culturally similar than New York and California.
