DAVID Roberts accusing Remainers of doctoring history brings the words pot and kettle into my mind.
Yes, NATO has done a lot in the post Second World War period, and the protection of Kosovo in the Balkan civil war is a good example.
However, if memory serves me right, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo weren’t actually in the EU in 1991.
Although Croatia joined much later (2013) most of the Balkans was not even regarded as in Western Europe.
The EU was not set up as a global policeman. Its forebear the ECSC, as a previous contributor has pointed out, was set up ‘to make war between member states impossible’. Principally of course, Germany and France, who had been at each other’s throats for centuries.
Succeeded, didn’t it? Yes it did.
We’ve had 75 years of peace.
I agree with Mr Roberts that the idea of an EU army is contentious.
However, it’s probably not a bad idea to start thinking about it, as Donald Trump keeps threatening to pull the US out of NATO. (And of course Putin would stir the pot; why wouldn’t he?) Finally, Mr Roberts dismisses the notion of not being able to go to live in other EU countries post-Brexit with a brisk ‘nonsense’. He doesn’t tell us why it’s nonsense, when residency rights have not yet been agreed.
And if Prime Minister Johnson takes us out without a deal, they won’t be agreed for a long time, if ever.
Geoff Holman Knutsford
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