BENELUX military cooperation

[teutateswolf-n]

What do you think about this file?

soc.kuleuven.be/iieb/docs/IIEBWP015.pdf

[teutateswolf-n]

Based on the 1948 Dutch-Belgian military agreement and extending it to Luxemburg in the frame of BENELUX, and inspired by the Admiral Benelux concept, and by NATO and EU mechanisms, why not creating politico-military pillar of BENELUX?

It would be great to have:
- BENELUX Commission (supreme executive organ at the political level of the BENELUX, also in charge of the security and defense pillar)
- BENELUX Diplomatic High Representative
- BENELUX Military Committee (representing the three armies and their respective national joint staffs)
- BENELUX General-Staff (BENELUX rapid intervention force- BRIF)
- BENELUX defense cooperation agency (including joint R&D)
- BENELUX Intelligence Service
- 1 BENELUX mechanized corps (1 Belgian division including the Luxemburgisch contingent, 1 Dutch division, support units)
- 1 BENELUX airborne division (1 Belgian brigade, 1 Dutch brigade)
- 1 marines brigade (Dutch)
- BENELUX special operations command (mechanized corps, airborne division, marines brigade, and SOF forming the BRIF Land Component)
- BRIF Air Component
- BRIF Naval Component

Something like that.

What do you think?

[AROUETLJ]

Belgian and Dutch defence and foriegn policy used to go mirror each other quite closely, but they seem to have gone their separate ways since the Iraq War.

[teutateswolf-n]

It's too bad. But, it's not a fatality.
That's why we should take the opportunity of strenghtening and making more dynamic the BENELUX.

[teutateswolf-n]

Just to try to define a good pattern for a BENELUX defense cooperation, what would you suggest?
It's just theoretical, but to debate about it can help to develop some patterns that could be suggested later for real.

[teutateswolf-n]

Maybe that one of the good things that we should do is to have a standardization of our main equipment.
For example, in that perspective, Belgium did the wrong choice to take the Piranha instead of the Boxer.
What European or NATO countries are using the Piranha? Canada, USA, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland, and Spain. Is it more important to be in interoperability with North American countries or European countries? And, among the European countries, are the insular and isolated Ireland, or Denmark, or the far away in the South Spain our priorities? What are our best interests in the long-term?! Because we will have these Piranha for decades,...except if there is a big political change in Belgium during that time.
Moreover, in Spain, I think that the Piranha is in service only into their marines.
I think that Piranha and Boxer have similar performances (can you confirm it to me? or correct me?), with maybe more protection with the Boxer and also the advantage of the modularity. and the Boxer is just a very few more expensive than the Piranha, not a big difference.
For interoperability with the Netherlands, and also because it seems to be a very good new vehicle, we should have selected the Boxer.

For the same reason, Belgium should have Leopard 2, CV-90, Pzh-2000, and Fenneck, which seem to be all good vehicles.
Of course, we would need to increase our military expenditures to buy all these things, but anyway it's also another thing that we should do.