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The European Union - Discussion.

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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Tenshinai   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:23 pm

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Michael Riddell wrote:Well, they assisted in Libya, but it was rather unenthusiastically. IIRC, what that conflict highlighted was poor Command and Control between the NATO allies if the US wasn't involved.


And preventing functional C&C without US is one of the things i was talking about earlier.

And Libya, heck even Sweden sent some stuff there.

Michael Riddell wrote:Impossible. Afghanistan is best avoided by anyone except Afghans. The British Empire tried three times and didn't get anywhere!


In that case you don´t start a war there at all, full stop unconditionally.

At the time, Russia had spent years supporting the N.Alliance there, and Iran was more and more getting serious about whacking Talebans straying near, or smuggling across their border.

Just messing around a bit was never going to be enough there.

You either have a good enough reason to commit seriously to an operation, or you don´t. If you don´t, then you don´t start a war at all end of story.

And with the way the "govt" there behaved, while USA did have other options, they were not much better, so committing seriously should have been the obvious choice.

Had USA focused seriously on Afghanistan completely, it COULD have exploited the early goodwill and made sure to keep the place from exploding again, instead the whole thing was so botched it´s not even funny.

Like one of the ranger units here say, the impossible just takes a bit more time.

Michael Riddell wrote:I'll give you that, I was using some out of date information. However, I think heavy, and blunt, US prodding is having an effect on European thinking on defence:


Of course it has an effect. But it´s too overly simplified to just say that there are large reductions.

For example, some of those reductions in force SIZE pays for some major improvements in aquiring more advanced equipment.

Michael Riddell wrote:As for Britain? Weeellll..... We've been told bluntly that we've cut too far for the US's liking


No surprise there. :mrgreen:


Michael Riddell wrote:I was meaning armed conflict specifically.


Thought so, but it became rather fuzzy as written. :ugeek:
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Invictus   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:26 pm

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Just read something that may help explain our various perspectives: Both Australia, Britain, and the US are pretty much defined by the ocean you have to cross to get there. In all three, we tend to refer to other countries as "Overseas" (The US makes two exceptions to that, Canada and Mexico) In Europe and elsewhere, other countries tend to be much more immediate, and therefore more important. It's a lot harder to ignore your neighbour when they could conceivably march an army to your door within a week.

"When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power." Sam Starfall
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Michael Riddell   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:26 pm

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I think that what the previous posts demonstrate that news coverage by itself is not the best of barometers. I think we can all agree on that! ;)

So, two questions come to mind when discussing news coverage of a foreign country:

Is it accurate?

Is it tainted by national bias?

Nameless did bring up a good point, news coverage gives knowledge, but not necessarily informed understanding. See question two above.

For example, here's an article by the BBC's North America editor on the possible end of Republican House Speaker John Boehner's career:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-26164562

Is it accurate?

Is it tainted by national bias?

The answer to the second question is YES, it's from a non-American viewpoint.

But is it a reasonably accurate assessment? I'll let our American fellows answer that one. ;)

To reciprocate, one of our American member's should post a US news article on the UK, preferably politics, and I'll let you know how accurate it actually is!

Mike. ;)
---------------------
Gonnae no DAE that!

Why?

Just gonnae NO!
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Michael Riddell   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:29 pm

Michael Riddell
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Now, to bring the discussion back to the EU, here's a link to the initial agreement to what the EU's budget will be spent on for the period 2014-2020:

http://www.euractiv.com/priorities/2014-2020-budget-figures-news-517725

This was agreed in principle by the various Heads-of-State in February 2013, but was ratified by the European Parliament in November 2013. Fast, huh? :| This gives an idea as to how the EU itself spends the money it's given. Note however, that the money itself comes from the member nations, not through any form of direct collection.

Here's a link to the latest thing the Euro-Parly has been debating:

http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/parliament-kicks-debate-legal-ri-news-533585

Analyse away! :twisted:

Mike. ;)
---------------------
Gonnae no DAE that!

Why?

Just gonnae NO!
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by namelessfly   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:42 pm

namelessfly

Do not forget that US economic disasters negatively affect Europe.
The classic example is the mortgage meltdown of 2008.
US policies to encourage home ownership resulted in the creation of "Government Sponsored Entities" Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Their mission was to buy mortgages from banks, bundle the mortgages into "Mortgage Backed Securities", then market them to investors to spread the risk and keep the banks liquid. These obviously reduces the incentive of banks to exercise caution in lending. This got even worse because the US political system and social history had resulted in an aggrieved minority that felt entitled to mortgages that they couldn't afford. These were referee to as No Income, No Job, no Assets (NINJA loans). There was even a young, Harvard educated attorney who was traveling the country giving seminars on how to apply political and legal pressure on banks to extort $$$$Trillions$$$$ in NINJA loans. Because some of the politically appointed managers of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were African American or Homosexuals, anyone who questioned this insanity was demonized as a racist and a homophobe.


biochem wrote:The European news sources I read most often are British and most of the European people I know personally are British as well, so my views are a bit biased by that source. The news that I have seen regarding the US is not particularly accurate, especially regarding the coverage of "fly over country". (Worse than the US based media if that is possible). It also tends to be somewhat paternalistic. That's probably inevitable since the US was originally a British colony. It reminds me a bit of how parents would discuss their young adult child. Alternating between exasperated "what is that crazy kid up to now" and acting the proud father. I tend to see the same tone regarding the other colonies as well.

When I do see from the rest of Europe is that they are drifting toward anti-US hostility especially toward military policy. Frankly it is costing us a fortune to protect Europe and they don't want us there anyway. We need to revisit NATO and reduce US involvement. This isn't post WWII Europe in which NATO was founded. The countries are no longer destroyed wrecks, they can now resume protecting themselves. We should still have some treaty arrangements but they need to be re-written, but that's another thread. France is especially anti-US but that seems to be driven by domestic politics. I.e. they need someone to play the role of "enemy" to distract the populace from the disaster they have made of their own internal economy.

From the outside the EU looks more and more dysfunctional. The US experience in confederacy was a disaster, it looks to me as if Europe is following a similar trend. Our biggest problem was fiscal and it seems as if that Europe's problem as well. We solved ours by forming a stronger central authority, the structure of which seems to have functioned well over the centuries. Note that the government that we have now is NOT the same government that we had in 1789. It has changed and evolved for better or for worse to accommodate the desires of the populace. One of the strengths of the government that we have is that it is flexible enough to change over time without armed conflict (for the most part, that slavery disaster was a major flaw in the constitution and resulted in a war that everyone could see was coming for decades in advance).

I don't know how the Europeans will solve their problems, I suspect that they are too different culturally and linguistically to form a single country. But the EU needs fundamental reform. Either a stronger central authority with each country giving up fiscal independence (not likely) or a weaker central authority primarily consisting of free trade agreements etc and each country going back to it's own currency and its own fiscal policy.

As far as the conspiracy theories re the US wants a stronger EU or the US wants a weaker EU etc etc. Frankly the majority of the people in the US don't care if the EU is strong or weak as long as it is stable enough not to cause the US problems. We have our own problems and US domestic issues dominate policy discussions in the US. So it's really up to the member of the EU to decide what they want for themselves. However, the fiscal disasters caused by Greece and Co. did negatively effect the US economy. Too many more economic disasters that negatively impact the US and the sleeping silent majority in US populace may start to care and may start to demand that the US government do something to "fix" Europe. (To the Europeans: Please!! Please!! Fix it so that, that doesn't happen. I can't imagine what kind of disaster would result if an outside entity attempted to impose a solution of Europe.)
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by namelessfly   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:47 pm

namelessfly

More interesting is the fact that some foreign news outlets cover certain events in the US very accurately that are ignored for political reasons. There is a huge and growing problem in the of racist individuals and mobs attacking and often killing strangers at random. This is covered by certain UK newspapers by not by US journalists who donotwish to offend the groups that commit these crimes.


Michael Riddell wrote:I think that what the previous posts demonstrate that news coverage by itself is not the best of barometers. I think we can all agree on that! ;)

So, two questions come to mind when discussing news coverage of a foreign country:

Is it accurate?

Is it tainted by national bias?

Nameless did bring up a good point, news coverage gives knowledge, but not necessarily informed understanding. See question two above.

For example, here's an article by the BBC's North America editor on the possible end of Republican House Speaker John Boehner's career:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-26164562

Is it accurate?

Is it tainted by national bias?

The answer to the second question is YES, it's from a non-American viewpoint.

But is it a reasonably accurate assessment? I'll let our American fellows answer that one. ;)

To reciprocate, one of our American member's should post a US news article on the UK, preferably politics, and I'll let you know how accurate it actually is!

Mike. ;)
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Tenshinai   » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:53 pm

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biochem wrote:Frankly the majority of the people in the US don't care if the EU is strong or weak as long as it is stable enough not to cause the US problems. We have our own problems and US domestic issues dominate policy discussions in the US.


The problem is the minority of people in USA that are convinced that messing with other nations will assist US domestic issues.

Just look at how much USA will screw with the rest of NATO to enforce THEIR military standards.

Just to look at one area, both the 7.62x51 and the 5.56x45 were less than great and outright poor choices respectively, at the same time as UK for example had the vastly better 7x40 ready to go, but was "convinced"(as in "an offer you can´t refuse" style) by USA to adopt the 5.56 instead.

Any why is this done? For US domestic reasons most of the time.

biochem wrote:So it's really up to the member of the EU to decide what they want for themselves.


We wish. Just saying that it is, that´s like saying the US president rules USA like an autocrat. Simply no bearing on reality.

biochem wrote:When I do see from the rest of Europe is that they are drifting toward anti-US hostility especially toward military policy. Frankly it is costing us a fortune to protect Europe and they don't want us there anyway. We need to revisit NATO and reduce US involvement. This isn't post WWII Europe in which NATO was founded. The countries are no longer destroyed wrecks, they can now resume protecting themselves. We should still have some treaty arrangements but they need to be re-written


Technically correct, but you fail to realise just how much current situation favours USA.
And you really need to realise that if USA want´s to quit with the strenous parts of being an empire, that means you´re also going to loose the benefits that comes with being an empire.

You can´t have just the nice parts, it´s a package deal.

And the simple fact is that if USA drops its selfappointed imperial role, that leaves easier room to grow for the wannabe´s, especially China right now, Russia and India to a far lower degree.

Dropping the imperial role means USA becomes vulnerable to the outside world.

Europe has pretty much completely abandoned the idea of security by controlling the world, for the simple reason that it costs more than it´s worth >99% of the time, and it doesn´t work nearly as much better than diplomacy as sometimes claimed.

When USA went paranoid after WWII, it feared that last little percentage of insecurity too much to give up the control.

biochem wrote:France is especially anti-US but that seems to be driven by domestic politics. I.e. they need someone to play the role of "enemy" to distract the populace from the disaster they have made of their own internal economy.


France is generally very PRO-US. You might want to remember that it´s sometimes called the USA of Europe.

biochem wrote:From the outside the EU looks more and more dysfunctional. The US experience in confederacy was a disaster, it looks to me as if Europe is following a similar trend.


Both better and worse. And only very vaguely similar. It´s difficult to make a comparison without adding a lot of "but..." to it.

biochem wrote:Our biggest problem was fiscal and it seems as if that Europe's problem as well.


Nah, at least nothing in the same way. As i mentioned before, the uneveness of how the euro works in different countries is a big problem, but if you look at EU overall, it´s not really a fiscal problem.

The mess that has come out of trying to make a democratic fusion, while staffed by hordes of civil servants(more or less useful), well now that´s where you can find problems.

And a stronger central authority? *shudder*

Very few wants that. And the reactions to attempts at it... Generally not what you want.
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Bruno Behrends   » Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:06 am

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Very interesting thread!

And especially: thank you for providing the above links! Those articles are very informative and also largely accurate in my opinion.

Since a Euro-phile viewpoint has been missing in the thread let me add mine:

I think the EU has four very important functions:

1) By far and away the most important point: to counteract the kind of nationalism in Europe which has led to two world wars in the past

2) Nice to have but less important than no 1: to give the European countries an economic counterweight to the big world powers (formerly just the US but increasinly also China nowadays) which the countries never would have on their own

3) To further the member-countries' development and economic prospects

4) To help integrate central and eastern European countries into the whole of Europe

All problems aside (and the EU admittedly has an abundance of those) these four points and especially points no 1 and 2 are as important today as they were when the EEC was first created. And the EU actually does its job when it comes to these points!
All bickering aside: We have peace here, we have democracy. We have economic development. Our grandparents would have LOVED to have our problems!!
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Tenshinai   » Fri Feb 21, 2014 11:19 am

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Bruno Behrends wrote:1) By far and away the most important point: to counteract the kind of nationalism in Europe which has led to two world wars in the past


Except it doesn´t counteract it at all. In fact i´ll have to say that the kind of attempts at enforcing some sort of EU unity is actually causing a fair amount of additional nationalism instead.

Just look at EU/Europe as it is now. Greece is a blatant example with it´s Golden Dawn party, it is far from the only one.
Here, we´re seeing the relatively "soft" nationalist party SD go up enough to have a chance to get above 10% next election.

Fortunately at least the really despicable party here, SVP, only gets votes in the hundreds(ie irrelevant), in comparison in the last election SVP got about 4 times the number of votes as Donald Duck.
:mrgreen:
(seriously, it´s one of the common protest and joke votes here)

Bruno Behrends wrote:2) Nice to have but less important than no 1: to give the European countries an economic counterweight to the big world powers (formerly just the US but increasinly also China nowadays) which the countries never would have on their own


Sure, but due to realities of the differences between countries, it´s questionable if it´s causing more harm than good right now.
Germany is doing great thanks to the Euro, but the southern EU states are in dire straits in return for that success.

Bruno Behrends wrote:3) To further the member-countries' development and economic prospects


Uh... Not really working very well is it?
It was seriously pathetic some years ago when a machine tool manufacturer here in Sweden moved production to Portugal due to getting subsidies from EU, and then the place where the old factory was got subsidies from EU as well... And quality of the finished tools went down despite being made by a better factory, last i heard the Portugese factory closed down as well, ooops. :roll:

End result, bunch of subsidies paid out from different offices of the EU, for exceptionally questionable reasons, and a company went out of business.

Bruno Behrends wrote:4) To help integrate central and eastern European countries into the whole of Europe


:lol:

That´s just an excuse of the dreadful "oh we´re so much better than them so we must help the poor chaps grow up" type.

I had hoped we had left that behind us.

You realise that most east European nations that have joined the EU have been the LOOSERs of the deal?

Bruno Behrends wrote:We have economic development.


I´m not sure that´s what i would call it. Some EU nations are dangerously close to following USA into the outsourcing trap of deindustrialisation.
And if you discount the euro effects, there´s barely any country doing outright well(as opposed to "ok").

Bruno Behrends wrote:Our grandparents would have LOVED to have our problems!!


I wouldn´t be TOO sure of that. While much of the problems are not as immediately dangerous, many are far more complex and hard to deal with.

For example, trying to figure our how to deal with the insane amount of idiotic regulations and rules within the EU, even if you just look at one small area, when some member nations WANTS them for one more or less nebulous reason or another, that´s just not happening.

A facist regime nation that invades a neighbour, declaring war and giving them a serious smackdown may not be nice, but it´s at least a relatively simple solution that CAN be achieved.

Because even if the problems of today are relatively small, if you can´t deal with the, then eventually they become BIG problems, that still might be impossible to deal with.

That´s when things break down completely.

And i´m seeing a clear risk of that becoming the end result of EU. I´d rather skip following USAs lead in that direction.
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Re: The European Union - Discussion.
Post by Bruno Behrends   » Sat Feb 22, 2014 3:28 am

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At least I provided the opportunity to vent :P

Joking aside: Europe didn't land in the mess of the first half of the 20th century because of some fascist regime smacking down which was a simple solution.

The problem was much, much deeper and more complicated than that and there wasn't a simple solution to it.

The fascist regime you are talking about was the product of the history that preceded it which went back centuries and at last had culminated in the extreme nationalism and power-politics of the late 19th and early 20th century. That produced WWI - no fascist regime needed. The kind of thinking the European nations where in at that time sufficed for that.
And it is very, very important to prevent that kind of nationalistic thinking from making a comeback.

I think the EU has a very important function there. As a framework for working together. As a symbol of common identity and something larger than the national border. As a means to create strategic safety instead of everyone being surrounded by imagined enemies.

Tenshinai wrote:
Bruno Behrends wrote:1) By far and away the most important point: to counteract the kind of nationalism in Europe which has led to two world wars in the past


Except it doesn´t counteract it at all. In fact i´ll have to say that the kind of attempts at enforcing some sort of EU unity is actually causing a fair amount of additional nationalism instead.

Just look at EU/Europe as it is now. Greece is a blatant example with it´s Golden Dawn party, it is far from the only one.
Here, we´re seeing the relatively "soft" nationalist party SD go up enough to have a chance to get above 10% next election.

Fortunately at least the really despicable party here, SVP, only gets votes in the hundreds(ie irrelevant), in comparison in the last election SVP got about 4 times the number of votes as Donald Duck.
:mrgreen:
(seriously, it´s one of the common protest and joke votes here)

Bruno Behrends wrote:2) Nice to have but less important than no 1: to give the European countries an economic counterweight to the big world powers (formerly just the US but increasinly also China nowadays) which the countries never would have on their own


Sure, but due to realities of the differences between countries, it´s questionable if it´s causing more harm than good right now.
Germany is doing great thanks to the Euro, but the southern EU states are in dire straits in return for that success.

Bruno Behrends wrote:3) To further the member-countries' development and economic prospects


Uh... Not really working very well is it?
It was seriously pathetic some years ago when a machine tool manufacturer here in Sweden moved production to Portugal due to getting subsidies from EU, and then the place where the old factory was got subsidies from EU as well... And quality of the finished tools went down despite being made by a better factory, last i heard the Portugese factory closed down as well, ooops. :roll:

End result, bunch of subsidies paid out from different offices of the EU, for exceptionally questionable reasons, and a company went out of business.

Bruno Behrends wrote:4) To help integrate central and eastern European countries into the whole of Europe


:lol:

That´s just an excuse of the dreadful "oh we´re so much better than them so we must help the poor chaps grow up" type.

I had hoped we had left that behind us.

You realise that most east European nations that have joined the EU have been the LOOSERs of the deal?

Bruno Behrends wrote:We have economic development.


I´m not sure that´s what i would call it. Some EU nations are dangerously close to following USA into the outsourcing trap of deindustrialisation.
And if you discount the euro effects, there´s barely any country doing outright well(as opposed to "ok").

Bruno Behrends wrote:Our grandparents would have LOVED to have our problems!!


I wouldn´t be TOO sure of that. While much of the problems are not as immediately dangerous, many are far more complex and hard to deal with.

For example, trying to figure our how to deal with the insane amount of idiotic regulations and rules within the EU, even if you just look at one small area, when some member nations WANTS them for one more or less nebulous reason or another, that´s just not happening.

A facist regime nation that invades a neighbour, declaring war and giving them a serious smackdown may not be nice, but it´s at least a relatively simple solution that CAN be achieved.

Because even if the problems of today are relatively small, if you can´t deal with the, then eventually they become BIG problems, that still might be impossible to deal with.

That´s when things break down completely.

And i´m seeing a clear risk of that becoming the end result of EU. I´d rather skip following USAs lead in that direction.
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