Article

2003-10-15 Europe

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Bulldog 2003-10-15 5:19:04 AM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Monopoly on the use of force for the UN? Something palatable when you have a tiny underfunded army and you intend to downsize it still further and reequip it with chocolate guns. Something palatable when you intend to handle your freedom and sovereignty to
an assembly where Saudi Arabia gets one vote, Sudan one vote, North Korea one vote, Iran one vote, Egypt one vote, Syria one vote (plus a second one fopr occupied Lebanon), Yemen one vote, Zimbabwe one vote, Burma one vote. It is beyond me how anyone could give some respectability to an assembly dominated by fascist thugocracies

Posted by JFM 2003-10-15 8:20:14 AM|| 2003-10-15 8:20:14 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 The EU already is important. Whenever you want to have a conference that embraces moral equivalency, the EU is there. A mighty force for appeasement, a dynamo of concerned reflection of the problems of the west, a tower of the wisdom of treating terrorists with respect.

Posted by mhw 2003-10-15 9:00:20 AM|| 2003-10-15 9:00:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Mr Schroeder said the UN must have a monopoly on the use of force and that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction could only be dealt with multilaterally.

Just when it seems that the guy might have learned something from his experiences, bingo zippie, he comes out with this crap.

Closing Ramstein just might be worth doing, whatever the expense would be.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2003-10-15 10:25:12 AM|| 2003-10-15 10:25:12 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 If the EU truly speaks with one voice than they should give up a lot of seats in the UN, share the two Permenant seats in the Security Council, and start recalling all the extra Ambassadors and closing the unneeded embassies throughout the world. The world should also respond by closing embassies, why should the US have embassies in every European country when understaffed consulates will do nicely.

Get serious Europe, fish or cut bait.

Posted by Yank 2003-10-15 10:48:39 AM|| 2003-10-15 10:48:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 The voice of the rabbit is heard in the land...

Posted by mojo 2003-10-15 11:11:02 AM|| 2003-10-15 11:11:02 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Appartently,the rumors of plans for a Fourth Reich are not far from the truth

Posted by Anonymous 2003-10-15 12:16:02 PM|| 2003-10-15 12:16:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 NATO is coming out with a new Rapid Reaction Force - a Rumsfeld initiative? The US will only supply 300 of the 20,000 person force. The largest contributor being Spain. I don't think it will fall under EU control soon as Turkey is a contributor, as well.

Posted by Super Hose 2003-10-15 2:49:02 PM|| 2003-10-15 2:49:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Yank> So what is the exact practical difference between an embassy and a consulate?

And it always remains a source of endless amusement how people can at the same time insult Europe for being divided and also for trying to unite.

Yes, if the EU truly speaks with one voice then they should give up a lot of seats in the UN given the 1-nation 1-vote way of vote-counting there, but we have already seen that the UN means squat, haven't we? Countries may find themselves much more powerful internationally when helping form a mutual EU foreign policy rather than when fully form their own individual Estonian or Luxembourgian or Cypriot foreign policies. In short, nations might prefer to have a meaningful vote in the policy that the EU forms, rather than a meaningless vote in the policies the UN approves. If the former ends up indeed being meaningful, of course.

Do you think that Texas would be more powerful than it is today if it had remained independent with an independent foreign policy? It's possible of course - who knows? Still my point remains that things aren't that clear-cut.

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2003-10-15 4:44:17 PM|| 2003-10-15 4:44:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 The way I understand it America will have one Embassy in each country, that is where the Ambassador works, there might be consolutes in other large cities. They have lessor status but from a practical point there is not much difference except staffing levels. Many could be closed down because of close proximity now that they would be in the same nation. As far as I can tell the Europeans still have embassies and consulates in each others countries, if that's true I don't think they've truly thought the whole thing through.

Texas would be poorer than they are today, in my humble opinion, something like Canada in population and wealth. A larger size provides certain advantages.

The US is a bad example for United Europe however since none of the states that have proud histories that date back 2,000 years or farther in a few cases like Greece.

I have no problem with a United Europe in theory, my comments are based more on the fact that we hear about United Europe all the time, but the most basic actions like Embassy status, unified military, unifying debt, etc, has been avoided so far and the big rugged adventurious stuff like unified forign policy is all we hear about (from the Germans and French who don't seem to be asking the rest of Europe their opinions).

On a side note, I'm curious if all of the European embassies in Washington DC closed down (except for one) would the land revert back to US control or would Europe control the land (after all the embassy was soverign territory and all). Same with American embassies throughout Europe. Anyone have any idea how that would work out?

Posted by Yank 2003-10-15 5:13:52 PM|| 2003-10-15 5:13:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Yank

It is near midnight so I don't have to develop (I
already did here a couple times): a United Europe
would be a structural ennemy of the United
States. So better you start having problems with
it.

For the unified European military: I will recall
you the fate of two empires who were a conglomerate of peoples without common language
and (at best) weak loyalties to the Empire.
The first was the Persian Empire, the one who
lost at Marathon, Salamina, Plateas, Cunaxa, Granicus, Arbeles, Gaugameles.

The second one was the Austrian Empire who spent
the 17th, 18th, 19th and early twentieth century
(until it ws dissolved in 1918) flying from defeat
to defeat: it had the dilemma of either having
officers unable to speak to their troops or commissionning officers because they could speak the knowing language of the troops instead of because of their competence.

Posted by JFM 2003-10-15 5:44:40 PM|| 2003-10-15 5:44:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 This debate keeps on turning in circles. There is Henry Kissinger complaining (?) that Europe has no number to call. There is the complaint (of fellow Rantburgers, too) that Europe is weak, passive, appeasing, pacifist, irrelevant, but whenever Europe tries to assert itself the nonsense of "structural enemy" comes up and a united Europe starts to look threatening.

You can't have it both ways. Europe is a work in progress. It can fail or succeed. But if it fails, it will fall back into stupid nationalism of small countries that won't move much in this world and will be dominated by others.

The Persian and Austrian Empires are bad examples: they were held together by force. Europe is not going to be an empire, it is going to be a unity (call it federation or whatever) that is formed by free democratic states which feel that they can achieve more together politically and economically united.

A stronger competitor, maybe. An enemy? Only if the U.S. choses to treat it as one. It is not in Europe's interest. As for the common language: You will find few young people without a workable knowledge of English.

Posted by True German Ally 2003-10-15 6:16:08 PM|| 2003-10-15 6:16:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 TGA, "Stupid nationalism", and small countries "dominated by others"?! These nations are the products of human societal evolution, and "nationalism" recognises differences in culture, language, ethics, history, and law, for starters. Acknowledging and respecting such differences is essential; far from "stupid." You can't pretend that national loyalties are a mental problem that should, or could, be eliminated in order to achieve a homogenous European Union. Besides, smaller states will continue to be dominated and frustrated by the larger ones in such a union, as the less influential members of the eurozone are realising to their cost with the fiscally disregarding behaviour of France and Germany (Gerrit Zalm would have an opinion on that matter, I'm sure).

I'd also disagree with your assertion that Europe will be an enemy of the US "only if the U.S. choses to treat it as one." I think you'd agree that a passion for federalism is highly correlated to anti-American sentiment. The French, Belgian and German governments are the most vocally supportive of shared EU foreign policy, etc. and are also the most noisily critical of the US. Theirs is more frequently coming to resemble an actively anti-US world view, whereas the opposite is simply not the case.

Posted by Bulldog 2003-10-15 7:03:53 PM|| 2003-10-15 7:03:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 TGA, Why would we hate a strong and prosperous friend? Most Americans would rather go see our children sing in a school chorus and let free people everywhere rule themselves.

We plan to go back to our passtimes when these problems get put to bed. Even if did like to mess around outside our borders it is doubtful that we would go to the ME looking for a fight.

We could choose between the following:
the Mexican invasion of our country, the Venezualan formenting of rebellion and drug trafficing in Columbia, the ....

Posted by Super Hose 2003-10-15 7:07:44 PM|| 2003-10-15 7:07:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Bulldog, I mistrust most words ending in an "ism"... such as socialism, communism, and nationalism. All are dangerous exaggerations of something good. For me nationalism has a bad name... for obvious reasons. This has nothing to do with "national loyalties" or pride of the past and presence of your country. I certainly don't want to abolish them... there is something distinctly British, French, Italian or German that will always live, even if Europe turned into a centralized state. The "noisily critical" stance you apply to some European countries mainly applies to Iraq, at least when it comes to Germany. I don't know what you mean by an "anti-US world view": Europe's world view should be European, and in the long run we will always share most values and ideas with the U.S., not with other regions in the world. Differences remain but the majority of people in Boston, New York and San Francisco will also differ in their political views from people in... say Boise, Richmond or Kansas City.

And yes Super Hose, why would you hate a strong and prosperous friend? Only if you are afraid that strength and prosperity would turn this friend into a foe. Which would be stupid. Yet nothing unites friends stronger than a common enemy. And we all know very well where and who these enemies are.

Posted by True German Ally 2003-10-15 7:55:10 PM|| 2003-10-15 7:55:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 > "nationalism" recognises differences in culture, language, ethics, history, and law, for starters.

What does "recognizing" differences mean? The Bosnian Serbs certainly "recognized" that the Bosnian Muslims had a different religion, they simply didn't accept coexistence with said different religion. Or do you perhaps think that Milosevic and Karadjic weren't nationalists, and that it wasn't nationalistic hysteria that they used to create their massacres throughout Yugoslavia?

Your sentence is a bit like saying that racism (or perhaps segregationism, to use the much milder version of "nationalism" you seem to be using) recognizes differences between whites and coloured people.

Yes, it recognizes them. It just doesn't accept that they can coexist in a society.

Nationalists treat the nation as a value higher than that of the individual - and unlike patriotism, nationalism is not a personal virtue but rather an *ideology*.

Everything revolves around the nation in nationalistic ideology, and becomes good or bad depending on whether it promotes or opposes the nation. So disallow foreign languages because they are not of the nation -- Harass and distrust foreigners because they are not of the nation. Harass foreign religions and minorities because they endanger the nation's homogeneity. Because you see, if the nation has a certain religion, people that aren't of that religion are suspect. If they belong in a different linguistic group they are suspect. By saying the-nation-is-this-and-that, individual people that aren't this-and-that, no longer are fully "us". They become "they".

I've not met a nationalist yet who isn't deadly afraid of foreign conspiracies and/or cultural contamination.

And for that matter I've not met a nationalist here who hasn't seen fit to insult my country when attacking me, the same way that a racist would insult a people's race. You see the nationalist/racist idiot thinks that to attack a person's ethnic group/race is useful in attacking the person. Since you can't discuss a person without discussing his nation/race, it being the single highest defining characteristic and so on.

"I think you'd agree that a passion for federalism is highly correlated to anti-American sentiment."

Actually in my country hatred for federalism is highly correlated to communist sentiment. But there you go.

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2003-10-15 10:13:33 PM|| 2003-10-15 10:13:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 I don't see a United Europe as a threat, I see it as a larger version of Canada. Peaceful, unsettled by cultural issues, and defining itself by how it is not America.

I would love to see a United Europe take some responsiblity for Africa, the old European colonial playground.

Posted by Yank 2003-10-15 10:31:52 PM|| 2003-10-15 10:31:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 ..but whenever Europe tries to assert itself the nonsense of "structural enemy" comes up..

Because whenever this happens, chances are that it's going to be at the U.S.' expense.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2003-10-15 11:35:50 PM|| 2003-10-15 11:35:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Hopefully there's some anonymous, industrious little worker bee in Rummy's shop who's busy dusting off old copies of the 1944 Morgenthau Plan. I suppose the part about hanging the leaders and reducing the populace to 'a race of peasants and swineherds" could easily be applied to both the Germans AND the Phrawnch at the same time...

Posted by Earthquake McGoon 2003-10-16 1:23:35 AM|| 2003-10-16 1:23:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#19 Bleieve it or not, Aris, nationalistic feelings exist in the vast majority of people in Europe. To be proud of your nation does not necessarily mean you are a "segregationalist" or "racist," as you want it to. It means recognising the differences between nations and the differences which exist between each. Your narrow-minded view of nationalism concentrates solely on the negative aspects of nationalism (and I freely admit that 50% of nationalism is negative) and not the positives. Negatives and positives aside, you can't simply wish away nationalistic sentiment. It exists, has existed and will continue to exist long into the future, in spite of the best efforts of European federalists to stamp it out.

You say that nationalism cannot tolerate diversity. That's utter rubbish. I'm very proud to call myself British and English, and a member of a very cosmopolitan nation. A nation in which, I'm proud to say, "harrassment and distrust of foreigners" is rare. There's far more to patriotism and nationalism (in my mind the two phrases are effectively interchangeable) than the simplistic differences that you cite, namely race, language and religion.

I've not met a nationalist yet who isn't deadly afraid of foreign conspiracies and/or cultural contamination.

Well, sit down before you faint, Aris. You have done now.

Posted by Bulldog 2003-10-16 7:36:28 AM|| 2003-10-16 7:36:28 AM|| Front Page Top

11:02 Raptor
10:55 Raptor
10:45 Raptor
07:36 Bulldog
05:48 The Dodo
01:23 Earthquake McGoon
23:50 .com
23:39 Korora
23:35 Bomb-a-rama
23:28 Robert Crawford
23:04 Rafael
22:34 Yank
22:32 tu3031
22:31 Yank
22:31 Old Patriot
22:25 Old Patriot
22:19 Frank G
22:17 Frank G
22:14 Frank G
22:14 Old Patriot
22:13 Aris Katsaris
22:12 Frank G
22:10 Zhang Fei
22:03 Mercutio