“The 19th century concept of the nation state will never take us across the threshold of the 21st century [..] We need a strong Europe if we don’t want to become the plaything of world politics” – Helmut Kohl



https://v.redd.it/v3lnanbrmphe1

by EUstrongerthanUS

35 comments

  2. We can have both, a strong united Europe and a concept and identity of nation states.

  3. It’s a major ask that Europe becomes a state of many nations where the collective rights of nations are to be abolished in favour of individual rights. It has far reaching consequences for Europe’s influence in an international system that is still designed for the 19th century concept of nation states.

    I’m all for integration, but the member states must remain sovereign in international relations.

  4. Look what happened to the United America. One man is now rummaging through government services and shutting them down at will while looting data like personal information of US citizens or even US nuclear weapons information. Imagine Hungary but it’s the whole European Union.

    There will never be the United States of Europe, ever.

  5. How are the interests of Hungary in line with Portugal’s? Why would Spaniard soldiers want to die for Poland? You need some kind of common value to bring everyone under a single military flag. You can’t do it through nationalism because as you’ve said EU is a (pseudo) confederacy and national identity is still largely prominent. You can’t do it through “Europeanism” because it’s already a concept facing serious skepticism across all EU member states. Liberalism and freedom aren’t real concepts we’ll all die fighting for. That leaves religion. You can potentially have a Christian nationalism type of political discourse soar across Europe and end up with a Crusader army. Good luck remaining a secular union if that happens.

    We need something that unites us and the more we remove our history and past the less will unite us. I agree 19th century nationalism was idiotic but we need something *real* to believe in and not just the latest definition of freedom from a ThinkTank in DC. What is Europe? Where does it end? We don’t even have these questions answered yet, that are the foundation of any nation.

  6. But seems like Europeans prefer to believe the comfort of the lies of the nationalists. So they’d just choose what master to serve: here in Italy looks like it’ll be Trump, Eastern Europeans will fall into Putin’s lap and China will look from distance and smile.

  7. They don’t make politicians like that anymore. Time to change it!

  8. Fuck this Federalisation brain rot.

    The 2008 recession told me everything I needed to know about the people who run the EU commission. Unsecured bond holders in Europe were bailed out and the bill was levelled at the Irish people. People who never even had a loan in their name are now handing over money to someone who took a risk, was fully aware of that risk and chose to do it anyway.

    You’ll never convince me that my interests are served better by a person who I didn’t vote for, never met and has never even lived in my country.

    EU has a long way to go to instill any sort of confidence that it’s primary interest is the well being of it’s citizens and not just the GDP line on the graph or lining the pockets of whoever is closest to their ear.

  9. Well, he was right – Europe is a ragdoll for actual global powers.

    It will either profoundly embrace convergence or learn how it was to be African colonies in the days of the European heyday.

    There are no alternatives.

  10. There’s room in the world for both, strong nation states can cooperate just fine. Please don’t turn us into USA 2.0, were seeing in real time how that is working out.

  11. Has anyone read the old nazi plan for a “united europe” just like they are asking for now?

    Think they called it “The New Order of Europe”.

    One thing that sucks about not having the people ruling you anywhere near is that the workers are then left with no option to protest them directly, just ask americans living far from the capital

  12. Unite europe and let shit sort itself out. If people are so desperate for national identities they will prevail as (then) regional identities. If they disappear, they weren’t all that important to begin with.

  13. On a smaller scale you have Belgium with it’s French and Dutch speaking parts as well as the German area near Aachen, and the United Kingdom with it’s 4 component countries. It can work, as long as people want it to work.

  14. Maybe do it in steps?

    Like first give the Rhineland, Hessen and Westfalen to France.

    Baden and Bavaria join with Austria and switzerland to form a union.

    All of old East Germany goes to Poland.

    Schleswig Holstein becomes Denmark.

    Lower saxony joins the Netherlands and Belgium.

    That’s one Nation less standing in the way of a true United Europe.

    Maybe every 50 years we can split one Nation up among neighbouring countries/unions until just one big United Europe remains. But absolutely Germany first.

    You can just form local identities in the new countries if it’s important or else it doesnt matter anyway.

  15. A United States of Europe is no more of a nebulous concept than the United States of America. Each US state has its own flag, culture and identity. It’s just a US of E would be organised differently with no President a la Trump.

  16. I know Meloni very well: she has been shouting “out of the EU!” for years while she was seating in the opposition to the center-left governments and even to Draghi’s “national unity” one that her party was the only one not to support (and took electoral advantage from it).
    Don’t trust Meloni’s new face: she’s smart and likes her new power position, so now she’s SHOWING moderate and pro-EU, but her party is still full of real fascists who are pure nationalists.
    And I don’t see any better around: AfD wants Germany out of the EU and RN in France is acting like Meloni (hiding their nationalism behind a moderate facade).

  17. Would you guys still support this idea of the elected official was from a conservative party? I know europe is usually left leaning but the right seems to be winning more. 

  18. Right, that is why EUSSR is on the brink of collapse…. what nonsense.

  19. Then we should have stopped riding that US pole some 20 years ago and said no to Iraq invasion

  21. This is a very tricky question. Literally every major superpower in the world is hardcore nationalist, so the concept of nation itself is *not* the enemy. The trick lies in learning how to cooperate effectively.

  22. Another day, another bit of voltshist federalist drivel.

  23. Yeah, see i always hear people talk about this united European state and how it is needed but i never hear how they are gonna get the national unity to actually create and support such a state. Because yes thats what it would require. Some form of Euronationalism on par with 19th century movements. What will inspire it? The Commission perhaps? The treatise most average people couldn’t name?

    Unfortunately for the EU it’s current iteration is ill prepared for nation building within Europe. It also dosen’t help that nationalism even in an EU context is a dirty word and the EU and it’s institutions are incapable of taking inspiration for it’s project from anything before the ECSC was formed because it is just not modern enough.

  25. I’m pretty pro-European, but I’m gonna put it in here:

    >Though, earlier in March of that year, Kohl caused a diplomatic firestorm when he suggested that a reunified Germany would not accept the Oder–Neisse line, and implied that the Federal Republic might wish to restore the frontier of 1937, by force if necessary.

    >Last Friday, Kohl heightened the dispute by demanding that any treaty recognizing Poland’s borders be linked to Warsaw’s waiving any war reparations and guaranteeing the rights of its German minority.

    >Helmut Kohl, the conservative chancellor at the time, rubbed his allies the wrong way when he conditioned West German acceptance of the Oder-Niesse line on Polish reparations for the Germans who had been expelled in 1945. An international backlash forced Kohl to reconsider.

    He was such a good man, blackmailing Poland to get an upper hand, exploiting Polish fears of renewed Germany wanting to take back it’s lost land, so Germany could get everything it wanted from Poland, without giving much back

  26. Leading by germany with there Green gas which is not Green and coal not and there electricity price and there rejection to put nuclear electricity as Green because they don’t want country Who were not stupid to close there nuclear plant to have an advantage. Germany politician know only one thing there economic gain.

  28. They found millions of stolen money in this guys garage.

  29. Exactly why certain external influencers from the west and the east seek to feed nationalist parties. They all claim to be constructive ( on the own identity ) but in reality are a danger for the european project. Protecting European hegemony means fighting right-wing nationalism whenever we can.

  31. Helmut Kohl was very bad. The annection of East Germany, former GDR caused poverty in that region. Many people are now far right, thats a problem we can not ignore, when europe is about to split in society.

  32. some kind of USSR 2.0, some ideas, oppression of nationalities, power in the hands of Brussels, etc.

  33. Known for alot of things, but the only thing I remember is when former swedish PM Göran Persson vividly describes how Kohl starts to eat butter during a meeting after he reluctantly agree to allow the eastern Europeans into the EU.

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