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Maybe we don’t want to do that again… people have some really short memories.
You need to allow for the possibility that you’re surrounded by nazis
they’re living within.
You guys don’t have the same suprise factor anymore. Europe will never be a long term power. True Power is moving back east
In your dreams maybe.
Clearly the other commenter is biased but to deny it’s looking like China will be The Next Great Superpower™ in the 21st century is a bias all its own.
“Become a world power”
You know, we’ve had that experience before, “everywhere else” would pretty much prefer that didn’t happen again, thank you very much.
lol yea. I’m an American and fully support other nations boycotting our goods but I’m noticing an overlap with these boycotts and nationalist-imperialist sentiments.
Weirdly enough, from what I’ve seen, European nationalists tend to be very much against the EU.
That’s not entirely true. Europeans tend to dress up racism as national pride and concern for cultural norms (with a few exceptions). So it isn’t so much “I’m proud of my country” as “I don’t want Arabs and Africans on my street”.
A lot of European countries have a long and detailed history that paints a grim picture that most people like to distance ourselves from.
you’re missing Euronationalism as category.
THIS; I feel deranged, not hearing anyone else say they’ve noticed it.
Seriously. Why do people genuinely think this is a good idea? Colonialism and imperialism is bad.
People should have learned after the US’s faults, and overreliance of it due to being a world power; but people just want to do it again???
Yes and no. Countries like Russia and China are always going to exist. That means places like the Philippines, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Georgia are always going to need a strong ally if they don’t want to be invaded. There are a lot of countries that are going to be very worried now that America has turned heel (Especially Taiwan). Europe has mostly grown out of the need for constant expansion, so having them take on the role of world police wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.
Yeah, i know ☹️ Life’s unfair. While the idea of one incredibly powerful union scares me (see what they did in the middle east) the other countries are always going to fuck up the balance.
Yeah the middle east is a giant shit show that’s about to get even worse if trump has anything to say about it. But if it were a union of smaller countries like the EU, they’d (hopefully) keep each other in check.
But if it were a union of smaller countries like the EU, they’d (hopefully) keep each other in check.
Since the Romans withdrew circa 450 the European Nations were almost always at war with one another until 1945; nearly 2,000 years of conflict! The peace they’ve enjoyed post WWII is because they were focused on an external threat (U.S.S.R.) and the United States functioned as a playground monitor.
So historically speaking they will absolutely NOT “keep each other in check”.
We have 2 external threats now. Russia and the USA.
While the idea of one incredibly powerful union scares me (see what they did in the middle east)
America’s adventurism in the ME was but a blip compared to the literal centuries that the Brits and the French have spent fucking up that area of the world. Does no one study history anymore?
Until the 1st world war most of the middle east was controlled by the ottoman empire.all that fucking up by Britain and France was managed in a couple of decades.
I was talking about the french and british, though?
Uh… How exactly is China historically expansionist? Isn’t Europe much, much worse by any metric at basically any point of history you choose?
Annexation of Tibet (1950-1951)
Invasion of Paracel Islands (1974)
Southern Mongolia Annexation (1947-1949)
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute: China claims the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands), which are currently controlled by Japan but also claimed by Taiwan.
PROC claims Taiwan as a province, but Taiwan operates as a de facto independent country.
South China Sea (Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia), PROC claims nearly the entire South China Sea under its “Nine-Dash Line”, leading to conflicts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and others.
India - China claims Arunachal Pradesh as “South Tibet.”
But it’s important to point out that “China” isn’t a country, rather a region. The country people generally refer to when they say “China” is the PROC. If you go back 1000 years there was no “China” country, there was the Ming Empire in the China region. I understand this perspective bothers people, but consider this, if you need to reduce countries to regions then you’re going to be bothered for the rest of your life.
Annexation of Tibet (1950-1951)
Southern Mongolia Annexation (1947-1949)
Civil-war era. Calling the liberation of Tibet expansionism is wild.
The rest are basically border conflicts which literally every country in the old continent have.
If you go back 1000 years there was no “China” country, there was the Ming Empire in the China region
You’d be hard-pressed to find a big country with such preservation of language, traditions, culture, architecture and artistic styles, etc. the way China does, idk what’s your point
How exactly is China historically expansionist?
Tibet used to be a seperate contry. The Uygurs were a Turkic Khanate to themselves.
Bejing’s aim is to homogenise those regions instead of preserving their culture and integrate them further economically to China as a whole, which would have the benefit of improved economic outcomes to both “parties” and maintain arts, culture and liberties of the people there.
Not to mention China making artificial islands around it’s coast line to expand it’s territory. Boarder clashes with India, territorial disputes with the Philippines, taking over Hong Kong, and ofcourse the constant threatening of taking over Taiwan.
Tibet used to be a seperate contry
300 years ago
and the rest of my post regarding how they’re being treated?
As far as I know, they Tibetans still speaking Tibetans and practicing their own religion, unlike Okinawans or ainus in Japan who culture and language got wiped out so clean that they couldn’t even sing their old folk songs in their native languages.
Tibet used to be a seperate contry
Tibet used to be a feudalist dictatorship where 80% of the population were essentially slaves legally bound to the land of landowners.
Bejing’s aim is to homogenise those regions instead of preserving their culture
How many official languages are there in your country?
How many official languages are there in your country?
a million billion
Nah, I’m not doing a whataboutism, I’m saying that your white ass doesn’t have a remote understanding on what “homogenisation” means. Go to a history museum in China, and in most exhibits they’ll have some remarks of the history in different places of modern China, and to the different ethnicities of the country, to the point that it would be categorised as PC-inclusivism in the west. And they don’t have a far right party fighting to destroy that :)
You don’t know much about history of China do you?
How does this have anything to do with colonialism?
Have you… studied history?
Is being a super power inherently inclusive with having colonies? I have never heard of that definition before.
People should have learned after the US’s faults
The U.S. huh? That’s who you are going to go with during a discussion of European Imperialism and world power? The Euro’s were out fucking up the world before the United States existed and a full half of the world is still desperately fucked up from literal centuries of horrifically brutal European Imperialism.
If you need lessons on anti-imperialism you don’t need the United States, just take a gander at the Europeans own histories.
? I think you misunderstood me. I know, the british and french have caused way more damage than the US has caused here. By the US’s faults specifically, i was talking about it caving into fascism (arguably has been rotting for a long time, just finally shown face) and europeans getting away from it. And since the US is a global power, they overrelied on it. Their solution? Just be their another global power, surely nothing bad will happen.
You can do it, Europe. Everyone that cares about “the west” is rooting for you.
I’m not getting out of bed for anything less than spices or gold.
shakes baggie of chiles
Cause it worked out so well last time…
It’s nazis all over here, that said, it can’t be worse than United States of Gilead right now
They need to poke the planet, then we can all work together to get the fuck off this rock. We’ve fucked it up enough and there are plenty of planets to mine resources from. Let’s all band together for an exit. Then go our separate ways after launch.
Perhaps let someone from global south take the controls (if humans even have more than few decades as species)
Like who? Which bloc is economically as large as the EU and is considered a full democracy. Like we’ve seen what happens when an economically powerful nation with a weak democracy becomes a super power.
I remember watching Gundam 00 and thinking “man, the US being in a separate power block from Europe sounds crazy!”
As an American, yes please, because we can’t get our shit together as the mutated, corrupt, idiotic half’s monster is running roughshod over our wishy-washy, whiny, “centrist” half’s.
It always has been…
Europe needs to be strong enough to stand on its own at all levels, but I think it’s a pretty bad idea for it to become a neo-Imperial power in the style of America.
For all the great things of Democracy, the one thing people forget in their rosy propaganda-tainted view of it (living inside of it, we’re constantly bombarde by political messaging about its greatness) is that by definition even the most perfect Democracy only has the duty to represent the will of its citizens, not of people who are not citizens of that Democracy.
So there is no ideological element in Democracy to make it less nasty at exploiting people from other countries than authoritarian regimes.
All this to say that Europe shouldn’t get into the business of power projection like the US has done for decades (leaving a long trail of death, suffering and destitution all over the World, especially the Middle East and Latin America).
And I say this as an European and somebody who would stand to gain indirectly from Europe going systematically (it’s already done by businesses and some governments in it, just not openly and systematically) into the business of exploiting non-Europeans.
A peacefull when not provoked giant would probably be the best philosphy for a strong Europe, IMHO.
(Edit: for avoidance of doubt I want to state that for me Russia trying to advance westwards by invading Ukraine counts as a provocation)
And I say this as an European and somebody who would stand to gain indirectly from Europe going systematically (it’s already done by businesses and some governments in it, just not openly and systematically) into the business of exploiting non-Europeans.
One great myth of imperial power plays is that the exploitation benefits the imperial power. It often doesn’t. The scramble for Africa, for example, was a net economic drain for all the great powers that participated. Every little thing they gained was generally lost as they spent immense amounts of money on being manipulated into useless conflicts by client chiefs. Similar dynamic for England in India during the later periods and associated areas (the British conquest of Myanmar was particularly useless). The only real benefit is economic dominance and the ability to trade (like that was seen in Singapore and Canton). For all it’s imperialism and interventionism from the Philippines to Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, America hasn’t seen a gain. Most of the moves by the great powers only benefits a select few of private citizens while the state spends lives and treasure on conquest and subsequent administration for an illegitimate government that becomes corrupt and fragile.
Are you fucking kidding me? Britain stands where it is only because of wealth it looted from its colonies.
If course, I’m sure it has little to do with readily available coal veins and early centralization that allowed for rapid industrialization that then powered the colonial boondoggle in the first place that primarily enriched private interests. That’s why the empire still exists right? It couldn’t be a prime example of imperial overreach.
For folks that don’t know. This is what colonial power propaganda looks.
I think you’re mistaking my intention. I’m saying that imperialism is ultimately self defeating and has been throughout history. It’s a fundamentally doomed path.
That will never happen because EU has already failed multiple times.
The 2008 recession and accompanying austerity was the first. This austerity is directly responsible for the rise of far right in EU.
The second were the multiple economic crisises from EU countries like Greece, etc.
The third was Brexit.
The fourth was China dumping all its steel.
The fifth was it failure to hold Poland and Hungry accountable for democratic backsliding, which continues to this day.
The sixth was the abysmal handling of refugee crisis.
The seventh was Ukraine.
The list goes on.
EU will never work because majority of EU countries are center right (including neo liberal) or far right. As such regular EU citizens have little to no faith in the system and do not want to die for EU oligarchs
It’s a little unfair to blame the EU for the credit crunch. Most of that was due to the Americans. Likewise, Brexit was a democratic action. The British wanted Brexit at the time.
The UK under the conservatives was the member state that applied the strongest austerity measures and it has been subsequently shown to be a mistake economically but it was a great excuse to advance their agenda.
Old and ignorant people voting against their own interests, populists and first past the post are the current villains. The British ruling class are all educated in the same few schools on the same topics, e.g. the classics and liberal arts. They have created a fetish out of business, home ownership and cars. The rational humanist does not have a place in this society. At least the EU is defending human rights and basing it’s decisions more firmly on enlightenment values.
That’s basically a “You stubbed a toe hence you failed” tribalist take, cleary spinned along Russian Propaganda lines.
The spin is painfully obvious by the very first example being the 2008 recession, which was a problem for the whole World hence by your definition the whole World failed. The rest is just a mix of consequence of the former (Greece crisis, Brexit), not an EU thing (China steel dumping, Russian invasion of Ukraine), outdated-info/lies (Poland is no longer ruled by the Far-Right), your pure opinion (that there was an actual crisis with refugees and the quality if its handling).
You claim the “The EU will never work” even whilst it keeps on working and has worked for decades: you’re fantasising.
That shit is pure “you have to give up and die (and let us get our fill from whatever is left)” anti-EU propaganda straight out of Moscow.
The fourth was China dumping all its steel.
You had me in six of these, but how on earth does the EU suffer from cheap steel? For all the sins of the member states and their collaborative governing efforts, I’ve yet to see “too much industrial development with low-cost raw materials” on the list.
EU will never work because majority of EU countries are center right (including neo liberal) or far right.
I could see a future in which the white supremacist strains within the EU create an ideological confederacy through which a unified nationalist identity forms. Simply hating Africa, Arabia, and East Asia might be enough to galvanize large coalitions of Europeans together. But what are they unifying into, if not a bitter, hostile, solipsistic, rump?
The EU without an eye towards free Mediterranean trade and travel is just a suicide pact. Might as well go full Hermit Kingdom, rebuild the Iron Curtain, and stop pretending to matter globally,.
deleted by creator
United European Federation When?
Never Europeans are racist even against themselves 😹
Moldova will join the EU, which will allow a Romanian and Moldovan union. They will be able to take over Europe and then the world using vampires and deadly lasers and stuff
Good. Been looking forward to getting sucked off till I pass out.
One could argue it already is - mainly on a soft power level. Now that Ursula has chopped the chains off the war chest we can get back the hard power as well. I feel very good about this, it’s rare to feel optimistic about the way your country and union is going…
Yup yup… A little scary though…
That is the reason why I gotta just trust that the people running the country and EU know what they are doing.
I am in Finland and I really do trust we are doing what we need to, our defense forces and government is very shush shush regarding defense, every government and defense outlet was adamant that we weren’t joining NATO until the foreign minister and president announced the move. At least in a country of 5 million we are really thinking of each other here. Let’s just hope that is the case for the rest of the EU and the overall union.
Slava Ukraini
Trust? I don’t trust any politician… Here in Portugal we’re almost certainly going for early elections because the government is gonna fail a confidence vote…
Having lived over 2 decades in a couple of countries in Europe (including Portugal, were I hail from), lets just say that Portugal is quite a lot more corrupt than average, sort of half-way between Western Europe and Latin America.
Mind you, that it’s a scandal this kind of funny business (the family of the PM buying almost a million euros of realestate in cash using money undeclared to the political transparency authority) and that the Government is likely to fall for it, is actually a step forward from the Past - in the old days there wasn’t even the obligation for sitting Government politicians and Parliament members to declare their incomes and the sources of it in an open way, so this would have never have come to light.
So this is an actual positive and reflects an improvement in Portugal (though painfully slow as it’s fought every step by the two main parties who pretty much only ever vote together when it’s to stop anti-corruption measures).
Hmmm I wonder about that… What you’re saying about corruption is true, of course, but I wonder to what extent this is really a step forward and not just a nothing-burger from the opposition…
Well, it does seem to be already decided, anyway.
I’m curious; what party do you think will win the early elections? PSD? PS? Something else? I fear that this whole debacle might embolden Chega, which I think would be terrible… Though Chega has had some issues recently, so maybe they won’t benefit from this, I don’t know.
Who are you thinking of voting for? I wonder about Volt.
Sorry about all these questions, I just don’t have a lot of people that I feel too comfortable talking about Portuguese politics with, IRL…
I’m thinking about the trend over time when I talk of improvement, rather than just this one event as especially meaningful - 2 decades ago not a single politician in Portugal had ever been convicted of Corruption but nowadays governments can fall for suspect funny business before anybody is convicted of anything (mind you, it would be an even greater improvement if Justice was swift rather than the incredibly overwhelment and slow-moving thing it is in Portugal).
As for parties, I’m still on the sidelines though a cursory reading of the Volt site does indicate they’re aligned with my principles.
As for Chega, two points:
- First from my own experience living in other countries of Europe, that kind of party tends to get stuck at around the 15% of votes and if they ever get power they fail miserably since their entire schtick is to critize others from the sidelines for not doing things perfectly, so when they themselves are in a position where they’re the ones having to do things, they’re seriously bad at it.
- They’re not the only Far-Right party in Portugal: we also need to worry about IL, who are a Hard Neoliberal party aping the views of the most rightwing part of the Democrat Party in America (and probably the recipients in Portugal of the money Steve Bannon brough to Europe some years ago “to start far-right parties”) and who even had Privatisation Of Healtcare (i.e. the end of the National Health Service) in their original Electoral Program but took if of when it turned out that was wildly unpopular. The Fascist-style rightwing of Chega would be bad for most people, as would the pro-Oligarchy Democray-undermining ultra neoliberalism of IL.
2 decades ago not a single politician in Portugal had ever been convicted of Corruption but nowadays governments can fall for suspect funny business before anybody is convicted of anything
Fair point…
IL
Yeah, I don’t know much about them… The general idea I had of them was that they were libertarian. Sigh…
Because no one wants to work with Chega. No one trusts them with their luggage, much less with political power
Because no one wants to work with Chega.
That’s the reason the government is falling? I’m not sure that’s true…
No one trusts them with their luggage, much less with political power
Hilarious AND true!
Well it’s either that or we’ll end up being steamrolled by Russia, China or the US
Being able to defend your territory does not make you a “superpower” being able to step on other peoples territory does. The EU needs to build up good defensive capabilities, but it should refrain from offensive capabilities to project power like the US or Russia. Instead we need to focus on improving diplomatic ties with Africa, South America and non-China Asia to become the forerunners of a new Third World.
Okay, but let’s say one of our allies gets regime changed by Russia for aligning with us and not them. Do we help them? If we do, how is that not a proxy war?
BTW my opinion is that there are just proxy wars, like Ukraine.
A proxy war comes from a fundamental power imbalance on each side. The proxy is at the whim of the power behind them. If we have a globally distributed alliance of equals, then the power imbalances will be much less pronounced.
This is also why the EU should be a forerunner, but not a leader of such an alliance. It is crucial that there is no one nation or block “leading” the alliance, also not informally. We see the US being the de facto leader of NATO now risking the entire alliance falling apart and of course making any war in that context subject to being a proxy war.
Okay, but how do we avoid these situations? Let’s say we’re in this big alliance, and Kazakhstan becomes a big trading partner in an effort to rid itself of corruption and Russian influence.
Russia keeps trying to influence politics in Kazakhstan, more and more overtly, and when the Kazakhs elect a government who are fully committed to join our alliance, Russia invades.
Do we (the EU) defend Kazakhstan, which would be a proxy war in your definition, as without us they have no chance of even staying independent so the power imbalance couldn’t be greater?
This is not a hyothetical, but a close parallel of what’s happening in Ukraine by the way.
Such an alliance would not be lead by the EU. If it would lead to half of Africa, most of South America, most of West Asia and the EU to apply meaningful sanctions to Russia (e.g. not buying Russian oil through the backdoor and buying gas directly) that would be a strong deterrence w.o. sending military or weapons directly.
Yeah, I do agree. I just… I’d rather not be steamrolled and not be worried about international relations, you know?
Interesting times we’re living through indeed …
Too many interesting times. Life was better when it was dull, when politics was boring.
I’m glad Europe is finally getting it’s act together on trying to defend itself.
But i’m not a fan of the EU itself being too involved - the EU is not democratically representative enough to be getting involved in military stuff. If the EU is going to militarise, then the commission and the president need to be directly elected by the people, and the parliament needs to be given proper power.
Instead we have the continued messy system of horse trading of power between governments based on national interests rather than the overall interests of EU citizens. And also we have Hungary which has slipped into an authoritarian regime, and Poland that has just skirted past descent into a right wing nightmare (it’s not even clear yet if the current centre left government can undo the damage wrought by right wing, nor what will happen in the next election).
Personally I don’t want to see the defence of our continent in the hands of the EU. Either it should stick to running the single market OR it should be a fully democratic superstate. This in-between quasi nation state is undemocratic and constitutionally weak. it has no way of dealing with Hungary, it had no way of dealing with Poland, it would have no way of dealing with France should Le Pen win power.
I’m in the UK; I’d support the EU becoming a full superstate and I’d want my country to rejoin. But I can’t trust what the EU is currently is to achieve that. We’ve all seen in the last year how weak the US constitution really is - it’s enabled an autocrat to take power. The EU is weak too - it can’t be taken over directly by an autocrat which is good, but it’s failed to deal with Putin up until now (Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again in 2022), it’s unable to do anything about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Hungary has already held the EU’s response to Ukraine back, and the Czech republic looks set to elect a pro-Putin populist party to power too.
European defence being dependent on an organisation that is unable to be decisive and is unable to be truly representative is weak. We need decisive and unified decisions in an emergency, not paralysis and not to be held back by outlier nations.
If you want to see why the EU is not the route to go to strengthen defence just look at the calls already to use the supposed defence spending boost to instead shore up healthcare spending. It’s a laudable aim but when the wolf is as the door this is crazy way to divert defence spending.
For the EU to be a super power, it needs to first become an actual superstate. It needs to be the democracy it purports to fight for.
stares in jealous American
Do you know Ursula’s history of corruption? If so, how can you feel good about it?
Ursula is a muppet, but it wasn’t her decision alone, or even at all.
