Gestapo

A new and sinister development is beginning in the EU, sinister because it is small and unlikely therefore to cause immediate alarm and because it is capable of infinite expansion.

It is a rapid reaction armed police force based in Vicenza, Italy. It has a professional permanent staff but no standing body of men at its disposal at present although it is declared to be operational. It can call on personnel, presumably on short notice standby, from the smaller nations of the Union such as Holland and Portugal (in itself intended to look non threatening). The only major nation involved, perhaps inevitably, is France. Its commander is French.

The stated goal of this force, estimated at present to be able to call on 2,300 men, is to provide the international community with a valid and operational instrument for crisis management first and foremost at the disposal of the EU but also of NATO, the UN, OSCE and ad hoc coalitions.

Its role will be to facilitate handling of crises that require police management usually in a critical situation. All this is difficult to understand particularly on the scale envisaged.

It is to be recognised that the UN, having no force of its own, might welcome such a body immediately available but even then its expected manpower would be small in relation to the problems that the UN has faced in the past.

On the other hand, all the states of NATO and those outside it have adequate armed forces of their own to back up their regular police, some of whom are routinely armed. The circumstances in which they would require the services of a couple of thousand men who were maybe unused to working together and amongst whom there would be problems of language are difficult to imagine.

All the more reason to expect that its numbers will expand. The only way such a force would be useful militarily would be in single language units with well founded internal discipline and in sufficient numbers to be effective. None of these requirements are to be found in a polyglot force of 2,300.

Then there is the question of what it is to be used for. It is stated that it is first and foremost at the disposal of the EU. To do what? Internal security in each member state is taken care of in normal circumstances. I suppose that if the population in a particular state revolted against its local government and the forces it controlled, those forces, recruited from the population, might not be a willing instrument of repression under EU control. In such a case the EU force would have to be big enough to take on the population and possibly its army. 2,300 men would not be of much use. It would have to expand unless it were only to be faced by the possible secession of Luxembourg.

Another possible use would be to undertake the tasks presently taken on by NATO outside its remit as a defensive alliance just for the sake of something to do. United States involvement in NATO is resented, certainly by the French, and such a force independent of the USA might be thought desirable. On the other hand a nascent European Army already exists and numbers would still be the vital factor

My own best bet would still require much larger numbers and not on an ad hoc basis. It is police work concentrated on detecting and repressing subversion within the EU, detecting and suppressing breakaway movements and dealing with local opposition to particular projects.

There is no shortage of unemployed in the EU who would welcome secure employment with career prospects for those with the right mental attitudes. Furthermore if Turkey were eventually to join there would be an endless supply of janissaries who would have little knowledge of or sympathy with the people they were suppressing. It was an ancient ploy in Italy for Naples to recruit its police in Venice and vice versa. In that way separation of the police from the population was assured.

Given the history of autocratic governments in Europe of which the EU is just the latest example what we have here is the beginnings of a new Gestapo.

NOTE. Since this essay was written I have learned that Vicenza can recruit not only from Member States but also from Candidate States which means that the moment Turkey is accepted as a candidate that reservoir of Turkish Muslim Janissaries will become available