MUNICH, Germany — European countries need to create a “rapid reaction force” of up to 100,000 troops to replace American soldiers currently stationed on the continent, EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said in an interview with POLITICO on Friday.

Kubilius shied away from calling such a force a “European army,” a term that is rejected in many countries and even causes deep dissent among his fellow European commissioners.

“We need to have clarity about what we are talking about, because this title of ‘European army’ has some kind of historical legacy and sometimes it’s misleading,” he said, speaking at the POLITICO Pub during the Munich Security Conference.

He recalled the term originally arose in the 1950s, when Europe was beginning to unify in the wake of World War II and leading politicians raised the possibility of creating a non-national military representing the whole continent but not individual countries.

Today’s Europe is very different. “If somebody was asking me: ‘Do you want to create such a European army as in the 1950s, abandoning national armies?’ I would say that I’d be quite skeptical, at least at this moment,” he said.

It’s not a new issue for Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister who is acutely aware of the threat posed by Russia and of Europe’s deep dependence on American security guarantees.

Last month, he said:  “We need to start to invest our money in such a way that we would be able to fight as Europe, not just as [a] collection of 27 national ‘bonsai armies.’”

But fellow commissioner Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, has cast cold water on the idea, calling it “extremely dangerous” by potentially undermining NATO.

That pushback is prompting Kubilius to more precisely define his idea.

“What we are talking about is a rapid reaction force of 100,000 or 80,000 capability, which should replace American forces,” if and when they reduce their presence in Europe, he said. “That’s why I started to use much more this terminology of rapid reaction force, in order not to make this misleading connection with the European army.”

However, he acknowledged that even such a force would face difficulties as it would be controlled by member countries, making rapid and coherent action very difficult. He did not address whether such a European force would be part of NATO, although he did underline that Europe should continue to rely on the alliance.

To get around the problem of leadership, Kubilius suggested creating a European Security Council, made up of five or six big EU countries, possibly plus the U.K, as well as smaller EU countries on a rotating basis and the Council and the European Commission.

Such a body “may be the answer” to the leadership issue, he said.