International commerce and business and shared democratic norms are a fscking good things. We have lost the people who learned that the hard way, and they are being replaced with people who have never read a history book.
Name one country with a large military force that done more good than bad with it? Seems to come with the territory that if you have a large military force, you somehow need to use it for something as otherwise it falls into disrepair, and that "something" tends to be trying to spread your culture one way or another.
Come to think of it, seems China is the only country so far (in modern times) that haven't abused their military to enforce their will on smaller countries, basically every other superpower been abusing their military to make the world worse.
Philippines would disagree with this one.
That's... how EU works, intentionally? It's a decentralized union more or less, we're still independent countries with our own laws and what not, each country have their own command and control structure for their own military, on purpose.
Specifically, the problem of how those states can individually choose to plug their forces into a practiced system of military coordination.
Today, they can do that with NATO, but if they want an alternative, it doesn't exist and it will be difficult to build.