Why should they have a "unified front" in an irrelevant peripheral war?
Because the war definitely created issues between states in the EU at the time, between those states part of the coalition of the willing and those states that were not.
Because the "Russian federation" is a viable antagonist for EU?
I don't know why you're scare quoting "Russian federation" - that is the official name of the Russian state.
An economic union and monetary union that can't secure its on borders or have a unified foreign policy is just completely putting the cart before the horse.
>Because the war definitely created issues between states in the EU at the time, between those states part of the coalition of the willing and those states that were not.
Hardly. There were and are tons of issues between EU states, but none of those were created by "the Iraq war" and by whether said states wanted to join the "coalition of the willing (to be led by the US)" or not. The tension at the time was just an expression of pre-existing differences and divergent interests, not something new brought up by the response to that war.
>I don't know why you're scare quoting "Russian federation" - that is the official name of the Russian state
Because unless one is speaking in official capacity, or wants to make it sound scarier than it is, one can just call it Russia.
>An economic union and monetary union that can't secure its on borders or have a unified foreign policy is just completely putting the cart before the horse.
Europe has never shown much of an issue in securing its borders, at least not any more than 9/11 or the presence of millions of latinos in the US is a sign that it cannot secure its borders.
The state is called the Russian Federation. I was referring to the actions of that state, not the actions of a country called russia, which isn't quite the same thing.
Pedantic, sure. Trying to make it sound scarier? Hardly.
Several countries in the EU aim for neutrality. A common front on defense issues is and will always will be difficult to pull of because of that. Additionally some countries have very high barriers for military interventions. Every time the German military does anything outside of German territory they're on questionable ground constitutionally. You either have the EU always be neutral or it will be split on matters of defense. Neither is necessarily bad.
Because the war definitely created issues between states in the EU at the time, between those states part of the coalition of the willing and those states that were not.
Because the "Russian federation" is a viable antagonist for EU?
I don't know why you're scare quoting "Russian federation" - that is the official name of the Russian state.
An economic union and monetary union that can't secure its on borders or have a unified foreign policy is just completely putting the cart before the horse.