A series of bilateral agreements. In Europe.
If that's the standard for pace of action, then Putin will own all unaligned nations in very short order.

Well, that's what he does, I suppose. He always try to find the countries that are least anti-Russian and try to divide EU - usually it used to be France and Germany, now it's Italy and Hungary. And then there is of course the case of the British, who generally are annoying af because they act like they hate being in EU but are to much of a coward to quit. Nevertheless, the bilateral agreements would be a start to create an army for countries that want to participate. Something like EUROFOR but that could actually do something. And even without the British with Germany, Poland, probably the Baltic states, France, Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands on board such forces could pose quite a counterweight for possible Russian aggression especially in cases like we see in Ukraine. Note, that those would not be only used to defend borders, but to "defend European values" in EU, as well as in foreign countries, meaning they could possibly be used in situation like Ukraine now, without actually involving NATO (not to mention for countries like the Baltic states or Poland this could mean actual protection, something we cannot really count on NATO to provide)

How could this united army actually do something?
Don't get me wrong, I support this idea, but do something?

Get real.

For this to be effective against the Russian military Germany,England, and France are needed. all the other Europeans have minuscule to non-existent military forces that would have marginal effect on the military balance of europe and russia. Russia has nearly 2 times the military power of EU if you exclude any one of Germany, England, or France. All 3 are needed for a plan like this too work. Otherwise it will be like adding a 10% troop increase for germany, not nearly enough to make this plan effective. further would a plan like this limit the unit cohesion of the units affected. How would communication work? would individual units be homogeneous or joint? Because the reality is that when in combat people respond to their native language far more accurately than to a learned language so for instance where as now a french unit has complete autonomy and a french officer may order french soldiers to hold their fire (in french) if the units do not remain homogenous then that french officer could end up with German forces and french forces and they may agree on english or french as the official EU military language. In this case a french officer yelling to hold fire in french would likely go unheard or not correctly understood by german soldiers underfire.

Well, homogeneous it is. Seems to make more sense logistically, anyway..

Or, you know, at least make sure that a German is a fluent French speaker before he's allowed in a unit with French language..

I'd say every unit should have an official language and every soldier should be able to sufficiently speak the official language of a unit before being allowed to join it.

Shouldn't that solve the problem, while also allowing enough flexibility in assignment, since I guess some soldiers can simply be put to better use in specific units than others..

This would be a very useful tool, particularly for people like myself on a personal level. As a Lithuanian, due to the increasing tension in Ukraine, the Lithuanian government are planning to impose required army training for all Lithuanian male citizens from 18-26. Despite never having lived in Lithuania, as an 20 year old Lithuanian citizen, that includes me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm patriotic and would go anyway should a conflict start in my country. But if my countries government are looking to impose such laws again, then clearly things are getting dire.

On the other hand, if the Dutch would be drafted for some war in Lithuania, that'd go quite too far IMO..

It will take years to organize a chain of command since it hasn't been that long since some of them were fighting each other. Even then it will be hard to get them to fight when some are reluctant to back up Ukraine against Russia. Unless you see a WW 2 type invasion of a member country, they will waffle.

I love the idea (and if a Western Triple is the core of it, then Russia will be happy if it is allowed to keep StP). I don't see that language should be a major problem. French has traditionally the military language of all of Europe until the mid 19th century (and most German military jargon is French in one way or another) and it worked before.

The greater problem here is indeed what steeph and random wrote. An inherently political problem and why should a soldier from Salerno die in an Estonian forest? It will be difficult to explain this to the public.

Lol if there's to be a universal language, it'd better be English for all our sakes. French isn't spoken by that many Europeans in comparison I believe. Still though, I would have one official language per unit/division rather than one official language for the entire army, since there's enough people only spekaing their native languages sadly.

French as major language is best if it becomes the Euro-African coalition of course.

Yes, let's let Putin be in charge too

@Randomizer, Ukraine is not in EU, nevertheless Europe has already conducted many military operations - Balkans, Chad, Congo etc.

@Steephie22 are you dutch? Are you fucking kidding me? That kind of thinking is why the dutch are one of the worst troops to send anywhere - Balkans, Uganda, you name it. Send them in and watch huge homicides because they don't ever do shit - not their fight. Not only is Lithuania in EU, it's in NATO. The Dutch, just like USA and UK and any other country in NATO has a duty to protect every inch of their soil. As for "how would it actually do something" there have already been European military operations.

@CommanderByron, why? What is your logic behind that? Why do you think UK is absolutely essential? They have no strategic industry (at least not alone as Eurofighter is a shared project), they're location don't present any tactical advantages, unless we are preparing for a war with Iceland (in which case England has already shown us in 1940 in Operation Fork how to do it in the most hilarious way possible). Yes, their army is quite big (150k active duty), but its not the biggest and its about the same as the joined force of Poland (100K), Czech Republic (25k), Slovakia (15k) and the Baltic States (10+5+5 respectively going from south). And having British on board would only mean that the integration process would be slowed down.
As far as I understand the "mixing" would be conducted on battalions or brigades, meaning there would still be division based on language and the direct commander would be of the same nationality.

@yassem - Part of the Ukraine/Russia dispute was that Ukraine was leaning to join the West after several other Warsaw Pact nations had expressed interest in joining NATO or at least getting away from Russian dependence.

Most of those other European operations haven't been great successes. They have been intervening since the UN didn't work out there. They went in because the genocides were too blatant to ignore. It's the same reasoning on why they are helping out against ISIS.

And as for the language, I imagine it would be just as in case of European Commission - on paper every language in EU has the status of official language. However, for the sake of achieving at least some efficiency almost all the work is done in English, French, German, Polish, Italian and Spanish, and only the finished project is translated into the rest of the languages. As I wrote above, at least battalions will be linguistically homogeneous, and higher communication would most likely be conducted in those six languages (even though, as I wrote I doubt the British will be a part of this project, but for communication with the rest of the countries it would be at least at the beginning essential, but so could Russian in case of ex-Warsaw pact countries).

Here's how I see that plan playing out:
Germany allies with Austria-Hungary.
Italy allies with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Russia allies with France.
France allies with England.
England allies with Russia.
Turkey allies with Germany.
Then someone sneezes in Sarajevo, and then it's time for a big party!

@Randomizer, I have no idea what the first part of your post has to do with anything, and not that every country of Warsaw Pact that is in EU has already also joined NATO, so I don't know what you meant by "expressed interest".

As for the lack of success, well that's debatable. For the most part they did relatively decently in Bosnia. And the situation in Ukraine is to blatant as well, Europe just has no means of responding to that - at least now.

Btw, of course in the @Stephanie22 part I meant to write "Rwanda" not "Uganda". I always confuse the -andas.

@yassem: I was talking drafting troops, you know that, right? We don't even have that duty towards the Netherlands, let be some nation that some Europeans may have never heard of.

In any realistic situation, I will NOT kill for my country or its allies. That's just against my principles on so many levels. If I am forced to do so, I'd rather fight my own countrymen and their allies.

The notion that bilateral European brigades should 'start' European military is kind of laughable. Since 1995 - a whopping twenty years ago - there have been initiatives on this front, including quite a lot of joint brigades.

The hot potato that the European leaders are constantly passing on to the next generation is the political issue: who's going to lead?

As long as European politicians keep the European Parliament and Commission on a leash, we're sure to see this pattern repeating.

@Yassem- the real world isn't diplomacy. Conflict today is not about adjacent units and geographic position (If it were the U.S wouldn't have the ability to put forces in Afghanistan or Iraq) Simply put military power can be extended to any area of the world at anytime if the right factors are played in. For example the UK benefits from both a large naval and air presence that can be used to transport and support land forces of the entire combined EU. Simply put UK is one of the few nations in the world (U.S, Russia being the only other two) that can stage an intercontinental land invasion unilaterally. Since you think in terms of diplomacy.... Russia has 13 Centers Germany has 5, England has 8, France has 5, Turkey has 2, and Italy has 2. The whole board could wage war on Russia, but if any one of the 3 big powers chooses to not get involved the rest can not stand a chance. (In the real world stalemate lines do not exist, fatigue and money will eventually play a part.)

The UK is needed for its military complex.

@Stephanie22, well, it's difficult to comment on that because I still don't know where you're from, but this time I'm assuming USA
1. Europeans heard about all the countries - it's Europe not USA
2. You personally don't have duty to do shit, but you government is in an alliance and like it or not its their duty to act on it in case of danger, whether is danger to Washington DC or to Tallinn.
3. Well, seems like you're being a pacifist, it's always fun to watch one. So just to make sure, a country X is invading you country, committing massive genocides in your country, raping and killing its way through and rather then fight against country X you would rather fight against your troops, is that what you're telling me?

European defence is best handled by NATO. The biggest problem is the pitiful levels of defence spending by the likes of Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Some nations deserve to be invaded.

@CommanderByron, don't you patronize me you bigoted virgin.
First of all, "location, location, location" is still a key factor. Example: a couple of weeks ago NATO official admitted that in case of open conflict with Russia NATO has no means to respond quickly enough to defend Poland or even pick up a fight in the Baltic states - that's why they are creating a new rotation-type unit.
Secondly, France is well (if not even better) suited for conducting an intercontinental operation and they have done so in this century many times, very swiftly, very effectively. It was no Iraq, but the tasks of European army wouldn't be Iraq, it would exactly be the type of stuff Mali or Congo was. What England can give? Submarines and SAS, first is not really useful for that kind of missions and second, well, it's a pity we wouldn't be getting SAS but there are many substitutes in other countries. France however manufactures Mistrals, which are one of the the best landing crafts in the world (even Russia's buying), not to mention the beloved Charles de Gaul.

@Octavious- not to argue with you I just find it funny that germany has one of europes largest armies and yet spends the bare minimum.

@yassem- I think that a EU armed force could be efficient and remove the US from european affairs but would be very difficult to implement without the support of the largest military nations.

@Stephanie22- I agree that the people, (the main constituents of the politics behind military decisions) would be against dieing on another nations soil if their nation wasnt at risk. But many of the people in european countries would see russia as a large military threat to themselves and would see dieing on foreign soil as a necessity to keep the war off of theirs.

@Octavious, the main problem with NATO is that you cannot send NATO troops anywhere where the situation isn't full, open war, because once you send them it is full, open war. European forces have experience in peacekeeping (with mixed results but hey, learning on mistakes, right?) and sending such units doesn't necessarily mean exacerbation of the situation.

As for the Germany, what I find funny is that they used to make the best tanks in the world and at the moment they don't have any armored units at an operational level.

Not to mention the video that leaked to the internet about two weeks ago, showing German army using broom sticks instead of real arms at an international training.

@yassem- you are ignoring the actual military spending and size. sure france can hop across the Mediterranean (sure its intercontinental, but about as intercontinental as the U.S invading Russia in Kamchatka ) England can wage war in the Falklands, Iraq, and Afghanistan independent of the US. France requested US support in their Congo (so you DONT KNOW SHIT ABOUT THE CONGO) operation in the form of US air power, which was given in small amounts.England maintains the fourth largest intelligence gathering ability after the U.S, Russia, Israel. In a defense against Russia, submarines would be of very significant use. What I am arguing here is that this EU plan wouldn't work without England, France, or Germany and if any one of them didn't support it it would be ineffective to a russian military invasion. You started this argument with a claim that england was not needed.... i refute that, but I agree france is strong. just not strong enough to negate the loss of english military power.