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…
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…
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.
Yeah, I do agree. I just… I’d rather not be steamrolled and not be worried about international relations, you know?
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.
Do you know Ursula’s history of corruption? If so, how can you feel good about it?
I think “World Power” is not that desirable. The US was a world power, look what they had to do and what culture they had to develop to become one. Same for the Soviets. Same for a surging China, becoming more imperialist by the day. Your emotions may tell you “yes!!!”, but the reality is - it will not benefit you much, it will mostly benefit your rulers.
I’d rather have the power of the EU in service of getting a proper, international organisation like the UN capable enough to do its job.
The EU is definitively a world power or great power. The EU might rise to the level of superpower, which is where the US is.
Being a great power just means that you can exert influence over events on the world stage. Having a meaningful say in how international organizations are run, or the ability to influence conflicts outside of your direct realm of control.
The EU is not yet at a point where no power can take a meaningful action on the world stage without considering how the EU will react to that action, which is one of the defining criteria of a superpower.
Despite having burnt an enormous amount of soft power for no reason, the US still holds a position where they can’t be disregarded. EU military spending patterns are changing because the US is changing it’s stance on a conflict they aren’t really involved in beyond a “superpowers are involved in everything” sense.
Being either type of power has benefits beyond what it gives to those in control. In general, the leverage is used to effectively bribe the populace of the power. Pushing international organizations to prefer vendors from your country, driving business to it. “Thank goodness that agricultural development program bought their equipment from us, we had a great year, our jobs are intact and we actually hired more people”.
It also brings cheap goods preferentially.
The benefit to the people in control is that it simplifies distributing favors to the people who keep them there, which in part includes the general population. “I’ll let you buy these tractors from me on the condition you sell me every mango in your country for a decade. I’ll even give you the tractor money back over the course of the decade. If you don’t accept the deal no one will make a different one with you for fear of me not renewing my contract with them”.
You don’t have to have our broken internal culture to be a power. That only makes it so people take our position for granted.
4 day old account and this is what you’re going to post? How dare you aspire to be wholesome in a geopolitical context
Funnily enough, I’ve been here for over 4 years, this is just my new account on my own server I’m in the process of setting up/maintaining. I’ve honed the craft of contrarian politics for a long time now, in the waters of .ml no less (no other servers really existed when I joined up)
“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.
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.
Uh… How exactly is China historically expansionist? Isn’t Europe much, much worse by any metric at basically any point of history you choose?
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.
We tried that a few times, and war/imperialism crimes.
But this time it will be diffident. We is evolved now.
(Never mind the rising support of the alt-right parties in the last decade.)
For the love of God Europe, we need a world power that actually respects human rights, not outright rejects them like Russia, pretends to embrace like America, or outright rejects them while tankies pretend that China embraces them.
What do you define as “human rights”? Because I would say that the western ideas of them have failed pretty heavily especially when it comes to deciding who they are enforced for and who they are not.
I think we need to be more critical of past ideas as they are the exact ideas that have brought us here. Doomed to repeat it and all that.
I would say to learn from all of the societies you mentioned instead of simplifying something into “China bad” or “Russia bad” or “America Bad”.
It’s ignorant to look at a world power like China and throw out all of the good they have done for their people. There are absolutely things we can learn from their success and failure. But I guess saying this is gonna make me a “Tankie”.
As Carlin said. If God gave us “rights” he’d have given us a right to a good meal everyday. I think it’s important to not fall into western superiority. It’s especially important for us to rethink what we think of as “rights” because it has not been working that well, no matter the intention.
Jesus christ give it a rest or people will start to think this is your job.
Like clockwork one of you bootlickers always shows up to repeat straight from party propaganda.
Which point of his was “party propaganda”? The idea that any country or region is a fundamental source of “good” or a fundamental source of “evil” is simply wrong.
And if you try to sell to the rest of the world that has been at the receiving end of genocidal colonialism by various European countries, that Europe would now be the “good” superpower, you will be laughed at at best. More likely the countries in question will schedule another meeting with their weapons salesmen from Russia and China to increase their deterrent capabilities against another European invasion.
It is also a bad idea internally to hype up a new “European” nationalism as a response to Trumps and Putins nationalism. We should have learned by now, that this will always end badly.
I mean you could respond to a single point of what I said. That would probably be more productive. Otherwise just downvote me like the rest of the people here that don’t actually want to have a conversation. But responding with “nuh uh” is really kinda sad.
