Italy Calls for "European Army" - The New American

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : "Eventually, the EU approved the establishment of a common defense strategy last year, which enabled the setting up of a 5,000-strong "rapid deployment" force -- falling considerably short of a common army.
48% : Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Italy's La Stampa newspaper on January 7 that European Union leaders should set up a common European army.
46% : In an interview with Die Zeit published on December 3 last year, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer asserted that the EU has to get its own nuclear arsenal to better deter Russia.
45% : After Poland took a $2 billion loan from Washington to overhaul its military and welcomed the first permanent garrison of American troops to a base in Poznan, then-Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak stated in November that "any competition between [NATO] and the EU when it comes to security is a very bad thing," and that Warsaw had opted for a close partnership with the U.S. over "some imaginary European army.
44% : When talk of an independent European army first surfaced 20 years earlier, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen was more direct, lambasting the idea as "a threat to the very existence of NATO.
36% : The diplomat went on to highlight that these developments forced Moscow to "resort to compensatory measures amid the general increase of threats posed by NATO."
34% : When questioned by Die Zeit as to whether he thought that Germany should acquire nuclear weapons, the former politician replied in the negative, stating that it should be the EU instead.

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