How far do the ­European Union’s ­military ambitions go?

Imagine telling a European bureaucrat from the 1990s what the European Union, conceived as a peace project, would be doing three decades hence. Warships under EU command would be zapping ballistic missiles out of the sky in the Red Sea. The bloc would train more than 86,000 Ukrainian soldiers, handing them two million rounds of ammunition, to kill Russian invaders more efficiently. One of its bigger spending programmes would be a €150bn loan package for member states to buy arms. All of it wo...