What's the future of europe going to be?
I think the EU, the way it is organised is a huge monstrosity.
Yet, i think we europeans need eachother if we want to ensure next generations europeans can also live in a safe and politically and economically stable place. We need eachother if we want to make this world more fair, if we want to ban polution, products made by child-slaves, if we want to deal with human trafiking, if we want a sustainable way of living.
-Even the larger european nations are internationally speaking, quite small. Within 20 to 30 years, there will be no european nation in the top ten of largest economies. In this light, the idea that european nations can have their own individual foreign policy makes no sense at all. Especially the superpower aspirations of france, britain and germany are totally unrealistic in every way.
-Britain for instance, fools itself in thinking that it has a powerfull international position, also as a result of it's alledged 'special relationship' with the USA. America on the other hand has found itself a replacement for the G7 and G8: the G2. And guess what...britain isn't part of it. China has become america's most important ally and this will only become more and more so. Britain will become only less and less significant in american eyes.
-That two european nations that each represent less than 1% of the global population have a permanent seat in the UN security councel is also insane in my view, and represents a worldview based on that of the old empires.
-Without america, britain and france would absolutely not have been able to conduct these minimal military operations in libya, in spite of what british and french politicians say. Both nations have only one small aircraft carrier for instance, so even at this very moment an independant british and french defence policy is a total illusion.
European nations are increasingly becoming small and insignificant, from an international point of view. On their own they won't be able to have ANY say in what's going on in the world and even what's going on within europe itself.
Despite the fact that the EU is a monstrosity, it is still a relatively young project compared to that of the nationstate. Changing the EU will therefore be a piece of cake compared to changing individual nationstates.
The nationstates of europe are beyond fixing. The incompetence of their leaders is shocking: Belgium doesn't even have a legislative branch of the government for more than one and a half years right now; poland has been lead for years by two kazynsky's who where even more insane than the unabomber..they held heated political debates about whether teletubbie tinkywinky is homosexual; british government is a sort of inverted robin hood in that it steals money from the poor to pay for the bonusses of gambling bankers; The direction of angela merkels policys seem to be decided with tossing coins; in italy, the president is a servant of the maffia with obvious fargoing delusions of grandeur that make moamar gadhafi look like a modest man....
Most shocking to me is that europeans find their national soevereignty of more importance than whether their childeren will grow up on a politically and economically stable continent. Nationalism has repeatedly plumethed europe (and the rest of the world i might add) into total chaos and destruction.
We europeans need eachother and we need to reform the EU. That our failure to see this combined with the incompetence of our leaders is bringing us all as well as other non-european nations, closer to bankrupcy each day deeply worries me.