Discussions of the EU seem to me to omit its most important functions:
1. Prevent war. The EU was designed for this purpose, after centuries of European warfare, by the survivors of WWII. You can't overestimate the damage WWI and WWII did to Europe; the next one would utilize more powerful means of destruction. You can see the problem with European conflict in the news right now.
2. Power: In a world of giants, with power already in the relatively massive US (fortunately an ally to EU countries), and shifting to some degree to China and India, little Croatia (or UK, IMHO) is a tiny minnow. The EU is a major power - the world's largest economy, IIRC.
#2 also impacts the US, and freedom and democracy, considerably. China's population relative to the US is about 4x, which is not far off the US relative to the UK. If China develops to even half the per capita productivity of the US, its economy will be ~twice as large. The same goes for India (which IMHO is a greater danger - people have their heads in the sand about Modi's openly aggressive nationalism). Without the EU as an ally, the US may be too small to compete.
I'd caution people against forming strong opinions about Indian politicians based on western coverage of them. It comes across as uninformed and politically motivated.
I don't understand what you mean by nationalism here. Modi has made no attempt at expansionism or hawkish interference into other nations. Unlike the Congress, they have not sent in military to suppress political insurgencies in other nations (LTTE & Srilanka), and hasn't been putting opposition in prison (Indira Gandhi & Emergency).
Modi has maintained a cordial relationship with Sheikh Hasina's Bangladesh, send aid to Srilanka during their political implosion & has kept things generally quiet against Pakistan (a terror state). Each of the altercations against China have come after the CCP initiated aggression. On the economic front, he has opened the nation up to foreign investment in a way that rejects nationalism derived isolationism. India has also refused to engage in economic-warfare through sanctions like most countries in Europe.
The only nations that can afford to not be nationalistic are nations with no real threats. European egalitarianism came from the knowledge that the US covered its defense and strict immigration protocols keep non-Europeans out rather effectively. Now that we have seen a wave of unforeseen immigration & Russian military activity, the dormant nationalism among these same nations that lectured the world has sprung into action once again.
Name a country with real threats that is less nationalistic than India. It isn't a dirty word. There has been wide-spread bi=partisan agreement on this in India [1]. The only reason Modi appears nationalistic, is because of the wanton disregard Rahul Gandhi (and specifically him, less so than the party) shows towards the geopolitical interests of the nation.
> I'd caution people against forming strong opinions about Indian politicians based on western coverage of them. It comes across as uninformed and politically motivated.
I'd caution you about assuming where people get their information, or trying fruitlessly to reject all information in a very broad category.
> It isn't a dirty word.
It very much is a dirty word, that leads to war and brutality (including against Muslims in India). It was a/the primary cause of WWII, according to people like Churchill. It was outside mainstream politics for generations until the recent far-right nationalist-populist movement, which got power and - predictably for nationalists - try to overthrow the democratic power of the people. It leads to the worst of humanity.
Your portrayal of Modi is bizarre misinformation. Modi and the BJP openly sell themselves as open, aggressive Hindu nationalists.
Modi and the BJP arrests opposition voices, limit free speech, and most of all promotes brutality against a religious minority. India is a declinining, less free country.
Some people still use stats from 2008. Since then EU is flat, both USA and China growing like crazy. India might catch up with EU in the next 20 years as well.
Between 2010 and 2018, no country in the Eurozone increased their GDP per capita by 1% or more annually. Finland and Italy both experienced negative GDP per capita growth. The actual reality is that Europe is the single most economically stagnant region in the world. Whether that is due to the EU or not is absolutely an open question though.
Romania experienced extreme per capita growth over that period ~51%, or 5.3% ish per year.
But if you want to cherry pick a few years it’s worth understanding the details. Germany’s per capita income increased from 41,572$ in 2010 to 47,974$/year in 2018 that’s a 15.4% increase despite a 14.4% drop in 2015. Notably that 14.4% 2015 drop was was linked to over 1.1 million asylum seekers from the Syrian War and part of a huge wave of legal and illegal immigration. Exclude that 2015 and Germany saw roughly the same per capita growth rate as the US.
> Some people still use stats from 2008. Since then EU is flat, both USA and China growing like crazy. India might catch up with EU in the next 20 years as well.
They are a member of the EU, but the seven non-eurozone members of the EU are Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden.
I also pointed out that BlueTankEngine‘s statements about the eurozone was also wrong.
The EU should be an independent power standing on its own two feet, it has the size and strength for that, and should seek its own profitable relations with both the US and China, and other powers like India, equally.
The idea that the EU is to be 'allied' with the US against China is an US-centric view, and implies subservience to the US because the goal really is to protect the US' position in the world. The EU should do what serves its interests best and that is not as hard a stance on China as the US would like.
Europeans can defend themselves against all realistic threats. Through France they even have an independent nuclear deterrent.
The claim that Europe needs the US is like an abusive relationship where the abuser keeps devaluing its victim to maintain dominance: "you need me, you're nothing without me, you can't look after yourself without me"...
More generally, be it with the EU, China, or even India, the US need to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer the 'capo di tutti capi' and should treat others as equals.
I realise that this is a position that is in China's interests but that is also in Europe's interests and, really in "anyone that is not the US"'s interests.
> I realise that this is a position that is in China's interests but that is also in Europe's interests and, really in "anyone that is not the US"'s interests.
It's not in the interests of people who want to be free, and desire peace and prosperity.
The subtext of these arguments is that there is no difference between China and the US, their vision, their goals, etc. It's demonstrably untrue. You can see it in the number of allies China has, even in their own neighborhood - they all much prefer the US.
> The EU should do what serves its interests best and that is not as hard a stance on China as the US would like.
This might be unpopular, but I think you are right. The EU must not be too aligned with the US, lest it gets dragged in the next Iraq. And, to be fair, it is valuable for the US to have an external point of view they can still more or less trust, but that can still be critical. You need friends to tell you when you’re doing a stupid mistake. At the same time, the interests of the US and the EU converge very often and unfriendly relations would be counter-productive.
It’s also useful to be able to play good cop/bad cop, with one partner being more accommodating like during the negotiations of the Iran nuclear deal (which failed in the end for unrelated reasons, but I believe we would have avoided a lot of grief regarding drones in Ukraine if we’d have kept the Iranian government on board).
> The idea that the EU is to be 'allied' with the US against China is an US-centric view, and implies subservience to the US because the goal really is to protect the US' position in the world.
The goal is to protect and grow freedom and democracy, and prosperity. Those require the international rules-based order (essentially, the equivalent of rule of law internationally) or you end up with rule by force, including war and oppression. To support that, you need a power able to act effectively and in a timely manner. The US has been the only option for that role since WWII, and Europe has strongly supported it.
Right after WWII, Europe was much too poor and devestated to play that role. Now they have the resources but not the political ability to make decisions and act: The US needs one person, the president, to act (within the law and in concert with others to make it politicaly viable). The EU requires approval by the leader of every country. As Kissinger famously said (paraphrasing): 'If I want to call Europe, who do I call?'
> Despite EU having 100+ million bigger population than USA!
Because it took in a lot of poorer nations after the fall of the wall. Especially those who were in the Soviet block. The USA had nothing like that. The USA has a single market and the leading currency. Without the single market Europe would be much further behind.
Part of the attraction of the EU for those countries was and is that trade and economic development is easier for those nations inside the EU.
I would suggest that NATO was the main reason for relative peace in Europe from 1945 up to 1991.
After that things went very wrong, culminating in what we have today. Russia could have been part of the EU, as was certainly possible especially given the completely new dynamic that existed after the fall of the soviet union. That would truly have been a positive project.
I don't know if we could ever have undone the mistakes that were made from 1991 onwards, plenty of people tried to include Russian nationalism into international politics, but by then it was far too late, we were dealing with a mess that we had created.
For the last 10 years they have done the opposite and tried to legitimise themselves against this bogeyman i.e. implicitly stating that your only alternatives are a socially and economically liberal democracy that seems powerless to address systemic issues, or socially reactionary forces.
But the later keeps becoming more prominent due to the failure of the former.
Not in the time frame you're implying. In 1991, the EU did not even exist in its current form (it was established in 1993). Eastwards expansion only started in 2004, when Poland and Czechia were among the first former iron-curtain countries to join. Putin became PM of Russia in 1999.
Is only the US allowed to be nationalistic? India isn't actively destabilizing the middle-east since the 2000's, but they are the ones being agressively nationalistic?
No, the EU started as a trade alliance and evolved into the bureaucratic behemoth it is today. It's a large part of why they have so many issues they've basically created the problems we had with the articles of confederation. A federal power without enough authority to resolve a lot of issues.
> No, the EU started as a trade alliance and evolved into the bureaucratic behemoth it is today.
This a very limited reading of History. The main purpose of the coal and steel community was to make war between France and Germany impossible by making both countries dependent on each other. Read the Schuman declaration and the first Rome treaties, they are not that complicated. It always was political.
the original impetus being to use trade to solve a political problem, but the original impetus was not federalism, although I imagine there were federalists around at the time.
at some point it became about free trade. and then there was a realisation that free trade between unequal economies was not sustainable. And similarly that consumer rights in a world where infrastructure and technology barriers had been removed, were also not sustainable via the protectionism that public ownership and state control provided.
There was then a need to control the excesses of free markets and the four freedoms in general, and the need to liberalise sectors that were not in the private space.
Well, yes and no. What actually happened was that a united Europe was the desired outcome, with some discussion about the degree of unity. But they realised back in the 1950s that it would take some time, and they started doing it by steps, starting with the industry. So in that sense it was both. But that’s not what people mean when they moan about the EU being a perversion of the EEC which was supposed to be purely economic. It is usually followed by how the evil EU duped them and stole their sovereignty. It was not. The economic policies were tools to achieve a political goal.
> but the original impetus was not federalism
The original impetus was a political union to avoid war and an “ever-closer union”. While federalists were never the majority, the target was clearly integration. Again, this is in the preamble of the Rome treaty establishing the EEC.
> Hence the need for political union.
Again, this is backwards. Political union required economic union as a first step.
What was in the public realm is the only thing that matters.
The votes in the 70s / 80s, which were the basis of what we have now were about trade, not peace via trade.
you are referring to 'they' without qualifying 'they'.
Political union was never on a ballot paper in most countries. In the cases it was (Maastricht referendums) then it was not conclusive .
EDIT:
Apologies for being anglocentric, but the Labour (dominant political party in UK at the time) didn't seem to include inter-European aggression in its arguments against a supernational state in 1950
I see this argument about the bureaucratic Europe being presented a lot.
Please consider EU is not a de-facto federation, nor many of its founding members wants that.
So I am curious:
How would you envision the daily activity of an EU that should satisfy at least the following points:
- Countries does not want to delegate their full decision power to EU
- Each country wants to keep as much as possible their specific laws, habits, quircks while also wanting _easy_ access to the other country market, lands, citizens
- No country wants to be treated less equal then the others
- Still all countries wants to be together for a greater good (or maybe for the fear of what would happen if they will be alone - see UK now)
Thus I don't see any other way than having a big organisation that handles every small details, that handles with care each national pride and find the best way forward.
It might not seem that way but European countries still have in their collective memories both their own national pride, old disputes with neighbours and the memories of some extraordinary damaging wars.
And the reason it might not seem that European countries are still individual entities is EU. It managed to find the best path that is does not generate conflict.
It's the usual argument of EU hater but it's not based on any fact. The are 2800000 in US Federal government and 32000 in European commission. Lots of cities have more employee than the European commission. For example, New-York city has 325000 employees !
Yeah, always wonderes about that one. The US started as a loose confederation of nations (states), and that was solved by our Civil War. IIRC, that cost more American lives than every other war combined, including the unofficial ones.
EU countries also have huge taxes, taking 50% of your income directly and if we also calculate VAT and all indirect taxes like for electricity, taxes will be something like 80%. So basically for the most people in countries like Germany work doesn't worth it, because you can get almost the same income from the state as social help without doing any work at all...
But people in Germany do work. You could hardly pick a worse example for the claim than the German economy. The EU in general is incredibly productive. Last I knew (awhile ago), the only difference between EU and US productivity was that people in the EU had longer vacations.
Also, the wealthiest, most productive and innovative parts of the US have the highest taxes.
1. We can’t know for sure if the EU is preventing war. Smaller countries might think the EU is not serving them well and revolt. Germany might flip and decide to invade the other countries again. These things happened in a cascading and fast fashion in the past. There is no reason or proofs that suggests it can’t happen again. Of course, people who sells the EU will try to convince you of this, but they offer no detailed explanation of why it’s the case.
2. This is over-generalizing. A country like croatia might benefit more from being not into the EU. As an EU country they have to play by EU rules and standards. As a non-EU country, they can instead undermine EU policy (ie: lower taxes, cut standards, etc..) in order to attract companies (near-shoring).
> Without the EU as an ally, the US may be too small to compete.
The EU needs the US more than the US needs the EU. People who think the US is an ally to the EU are delusional. The US is undermining the EU to reduce its power and to reduce its dependency to it. The US will be happy to see the EU crash into a thousands easily manipulated city-states than the current status quo. Of course, there is the Russian threat for now which justifies the existence of the EU. But they are working on that (at the expense of the EU of course).
> There is no reason or proofs that suggests it can’t happen again
What we have seen is that EU-Europe has after hundreds of years of war now has a long period of stability. We see that it also has an effective EU-wide political moderation system for common values.
> As a non-EU country, they can instead undermine EU policy (ie: lower taxes, cut standards, etc..) in order to attract companies (near-shoring).
Taxes are not generally EU-wide regulated.
Near-shoring is much easier INSIDE the EU - being a near-shore offering company is inside the common market MASSIVELY simpler. That's for example why many German companies build factories in neighboring countries.
Countries geographically/economically next to the EU, but not inside the EU, are still under massive influence. Before the EU, most European countries synchronized their currency with the German DM (Deutsche Mark). There was also a monetary mechanism to do that. Basically the German central bank dictated much of the currency policy in EU, more or less indirectly. Nowadays that power has been delegated to the European central bank, where the German influence is reduced.
> The US will be happy to see the EU crash into a thousands easily manipulated city-states than the current status quo.
Not at all. Maybe the populist right of the republicans. Other than those, both Republicans and Democrats see the EU and its member states as allies. The EU provides stability and that is in the interest of everyone.
> the Russian threat for now which justifies the existence of the EU
The Russian threat justifies the existence of NATO. The EU has an independent justification of its existence. The existence of the EU is also a 'threat' to the Russian political system, since it exposes its lack of freedom, lack of democracy and the lack of prosperity of its people. Russia has nothing comparable to offer to its people and also not to the countries it tries to control.
These are all just words with no basis; stating something is 'possible' just because we can type it doesn't mean anything.
> We can’t know for sure if the EU is preventing war. Smaller countries might think the EU is not serving them well and revolt. Germany might flip and decide to invade the other countries again. ... There is no reason or proofs that suggests it can’t happen again.
We can't prove anything about politics, if you mean 'prove like mathematical theorems', but we are hardly completely in the dark. Nothing like what you describe has ever happened in any mature democracy, as far as I know.
> A country like croatia might benefit more from being not into the EU.
You can type 'might', but what does it mean? I might win the lottery. Putin might become a Quaker and reject war. Who knows?
1. Prevent war. The EU was designed for this purpose, after centuries of European warfare, by the survivors of WWII. You can't overestimate the damage WWI and WWII did to Europe; the next one would utilize more powerful means of destruction. You can see the problem with European conflict in the news right now.
2. Power: In a world of giants, with power already in the relatively massive US (fortunately an ally to EU countries), and shifting to some degree to China and India, little Croatia (or UK, IMHO) is a tiny minnow. The EU is a major power - the world's largest economy, IIRC.
#2 also impacts the US, and freedom and democracy, considerably. China's population relative to the US is about 4x, which is not far off the US relative to the UK. If China develops to even half the per capita productivity of the US, its economy will be ~twice as large. The same goes for India (which IMHO is a greater danger - people have their heads in the sand about Modi's openly aggressive nationalism). Without the EU as an ally, the US may be too small to compete.