In a foreign policy discussion group Tuesday (to which group I have forwarded your article) I postulated that we can't predict what will happen in Europe except that we will be caught unaware and surprised. That we have no choice other than to act as a broker/friend seeking to reduce chance of European war; as a promoter of international collaboration to address international problems (migration and refugees, climate change, nuclear arms control); as a champion of self-determination (even if a populace determines to embrace autocracy.) We should replace militarism with diplomacy, offer refugee sharing and aid, seek to reduce dependence on NATO, renew START and the missile treaties, and banish political-money ambassadorships (no more of Sunderlands and Grenells.)
None of this will happen under the current administration and not quickly under the "defense" industry lobbying pressure. We must change the administration and the Senate by next January. Even then, change in our NATO and European policies will be a fight.
My fellow discussion group members accused me of being a woolly-headed naif hearkening back to wishful liberalism. But what other choices do we have?
The EU today is the same sort of diplomatic congregation of independent States that the US was under its Articles of Confederation. If the EU wants to survive as a nation-state, those independent States are going to have to surrender significant sovereignty to a central government that will have more authority than the Continental Congress had or today's EU governance mechanism has.
There is, though, another barrier at least as tall to the formation of a serious pan-European nation-state. That is the utter lack of homogeneity in political philosophy and in economic philosophy. North and South Europe, excluding France, Great Britain, and eastern Europe from either, have radically differing views of the role of government in men's lives, even of the purpose of money.
Europe would do much better as three, or so, separate nation-states, each consisting of like-minded current nations, then the few tied together in a pan-European free trade zone.
Several generations later--5? 10?--the idea of a single pan-European nation-state could be revisited with some possibility of success.
In a foreign policy discussion group Tuesday (to which group I have forwarded your article) I postulated that we can't predict what will happen in Europe except that we will be caught unaware and surprised. That we have no choice other than to act as a broker/friend seeking to reduce chance of European war; as a promoter of international collaboration to address international problems (migration and refugees, climate change, nuclear arms control); as a champion of self-determination (even if a populace determines to embrace autocracy.) We should replace militarism with diplomacy, offer refugee sharing and aid, seek to reduce dependence on NATO, renew START and the missile treaties, and banish political-money ambassadorships (no more of Sunderlands and Grenells.)
None of this will happen under the current administration and not quickly under the "defense" industry lobbying pressure. We must change the administration and the Senate by next January. Even then, change in our NATO and European policies will be a fight.
My fellow discussion group members accused me of being a woolly-headed naif hearkening back to wishful liberalism. But what other choices do we have?
The EU today is the same sort of diplomatic congregation of independent States that the US was under its Articles of Confederation. If the EU wants to survive as a nation-state, those independent States are going to have to surrender significant sovereignty to a central government that will have more authority than the Continental Congress had or today's EU governance mechanism has.
There is, though, another barrier at least as tall to the formation of a serious pan-European nation-state. That is the utter lack of homogeneity in political philosophy and in economic philosophy. North and South Europe, excluding France, Great Britain, and eastern Europe from either, have radically differing views of the role of government in men's lives, even of the purpose of money.
Europe would do much better as three, or so, separate nation-states, each consisting of like-minded current nations, then the few tied together in a pan-European free trade zone.
Several generations later--5? 10?--the idea of a single pan-European nation-state could be revisited with some possibility of success.
Eric Hines
Bilibin? So, he's at the ready with a bon mot when needed?