>All those who today find themselves squeezed between the United States and China, only Europeans have the option of becoming a true power themselves.
>We have to decide: do we simply remain a large market, subject to the priorities of others? Or do we take the necessary steps to become a power?” Former Prime Minister Mario Draghi said this while receiving an honorary degree in Leuven, Belgium, emphasizing that to become a power, “Europe must move from confederation to federation.” “Where Europe has federated-on trade, competition, the single market, monetary policy-we are respected as a power and negotiate as a single entity. We see this today in the successful trade agreements negotiated with India and Latin America,” he stressed.
>”The now defunct global order did not fail because it was founded on an illusion,” but “the collapse of this order is not in itself the threat. A world with less trade and weaker rules would be painful, but Europe would be able to adapt. The real threat is what will replace it.” Europe has before it “a future in which it risks becoming, at the same time, subordinate, divided and deindustrialised”. Draghi stressed that “a Europe unable to defend its interests will not be able to preserve its values for long.” “By acting together, we will rediscover something that has long been dormant: our pride, our self-confidence, our confidence in our future. And it is on this foundation that Europe will be built.”
Europeans leaders will reunite 12 of February and they will bring this topic to the table, the federation of Europe in the face of the new threats Europe is facing.
This is a step too far. A line should be drawn here. Europe has been made up of nation states for a reason, there are differences between countries that will emerge if this goes through
I don’t want to be a ‘true power’- or more realistically a province in a greater power- I want us to be one country, one island, with the ability to govern ourselves and make our own decisions, and not get sucked into wars overseas and all the rest of it. We stand to benefit from co-operation and we will need to work with allies and friends to maintain our sovereignty as small nations do, but I don’t want that to happen by having less autonomy in foreign policy and giving power away to a more centralised Europe.
Broadly fine, especially if focused on foreign affairs and eco policies. Would need to remove vetoed for some stuff
I think this is the necessary step, facing the U.S. and China. I think most people will think this undermines their national identities, and this will make it hard to find public support for a federal EU. But in essence, it is not national sovereignty being abolished; we just need a further horizontal harmonisation of fiscal, financial and monetary legislation, as well as production/trade regulation.
Edit: And on defense/security, obviously
Only a fringe minority of Irish people would be in favour of this, but it’ll be very popular on r/ireland. I find it hard to believe people would hand away our sovereignty after all the fighting our ancestors done to achieve independence.Â
I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment in broadstrokes, but I certainly wonder how it would look in practice.
How do you cobble together 20+ different countries into a federation in a way that smaller states don’t feel like they get trampled over, while still being cohesive enough to actually make a material difference in key policy areas? To me it seems like an essentially impossible task considering just how different the priorities of EU member states are.
Hey Mario, put down the vino, I think youve had enough!
what a horrible horrible idea
Nope and I would have supported it before. But if Germany, Austria, Hungary and others in the eastern bloc can’t even bring themselves to condemn a genocide then I don’t want any part of them having decision making powers over ourselves.
“and Ireland long a nation be, a province once again”
Sing it with me lads!
the EU has been fun , but if this the action the EU is taking , good bye EU
Yeah, because things have been going so great for Europe over the last decade since the EU centrists saw off the surging populist right across the continent…it’s only natural that federation is what the people of the continent yearn for in their hearts…A united states of Europe. ^^^/s ^^^in ^^^case ^^^anyone ^^^needed ^^^it.
Funny how we survived the cold war without federation.
There’s still too much “Imperial ambition” in certain European nations, I’d rather not see that ramped up and empowered.
It seems there’s a growing number of people ignorant to the consequences of nuclear weapons. Â
Let the politicians fight each other if they’re not happy. Look at zelensky and Putin sending their countrymen to their deaths. Death match: Zelensky v Putin.Â
Draghi isn’t wrong, he is just too early. Forcing the EU to move before it is ready is, I think, what the US is seeking to accomplish.
The “Donroe Doctrine” is basically moving back to 19th century great power geopolitics where spheres of influence are controlled by great powers.
The US, however, still wants to be the hegemonic great power. That means more than anything combatting the rise of China who are the most likely power to contest their domination in a way that matters to them. In both the US and EU power is to a greater and slightly lesser extent respectively exercised by capital – greater in the US because it is easier there for capital to capture totally the other levers of power vested in the State. In China capital is subservient to the State and almost as direct to the Party.
Trump’s major foreign policy interventions over the past year seem incomprehensible without understanding that they are aimed at preparing the US to counter China, “kinetically” when necessary and with Taiwan as the flash point.
Imagine a Chinese blockade of Taiwan – which is much more likely than an invasion. The US would have great difficulty in actually breaking that blockade with its own ships and planes, it is too close to the Chinese mainland.
The move requires a counter blockade. It requires that because China is in the position that the US once was in the 1940s – it is the manufacturing hub of the world. Wars are won in the industrial era, in the end, by the economy who can out manufacture the other. The US could not today do what it did with the [USS Yorktown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-5)) – it is China who would now be more capable of a similar feat.
Their weakness though is energy. They themselves know this, hence their planning focus on alternative energy sources – but energy independence from that will not happen nearly quickly enough.
So if you want to counter them then you need to be able to disrupt that manufacturing base. The way to do that is to hinder their energy supplies.
So the US seeks to destroy, destabilise, and dominate the places where China can get energy. Huge efforts are therefore being made in both Iran and Venezuela, key sources of energy for China. Huge efforts are made to stabilise the situation for Israel, which has always been a key means for the US to control the straits of Hormuz. Taken together those moves put the US in a strong position to turn off the taps when they need to.
A similar effort is happening with Russia. The US needs to move Russia away from its growing relationship with China resultant from the war in Ukraine, because any blockade will fail if China can be supplied through pipelines and overland generally from Russia.
So where does the EU come in? A blockade that is solely focused on energy will not be as effective as one that cuts China off from global trade and finance. The US cannot do this alone, and an EU with “strategic autonomy” has always been the goal and has been what the likes of Macron have been increasingly pushing for over the past decade.
The EU if it had such autonomy could make itself very wealthy without becoming directly involved simply by remaining neutral in such a conflict and creating a mechanism for China to continue to access trade, payments, and finance.
Trump can’t do to the EU what he does to Iran and Venezuela. He can however exploit a weakness within the EU – it is a comparatively young project of “ever closer union” that can only work if it is allowed to develop along its own timeline of decades. A more powerful executive within the EU would require a more unified polity, and developing that unified polity through cohesion funding, ever closer regulatory alignment, an aligned monetary policy and eventually an aligned fiscal and foreign policy and capital markets is something that can only happen sustainably across such diverse nations very very slowly.
If you turn up the temperature with stuff like his shite about Greenland you can make it so that those who want to move faster feel that urgency. Moving faster though will break the project. Even if it doesn’t break it, the institutions that result from moving institutionally before the political work is done will result in fragile institutions that cannot hold up when pressure is exerted.
The EU needs to be careful and see the wood from the trees here. What Carney in Canada has done, in acknowledging finally that the US is not a reliable partner in multilateralism and instead seeking closer relations between middle powers and being more open to increasing ties with China is the way to break this. It is the exact risk that the US’s strategy has to hope won’t crystellise and the EU needs to see that risk and exploit it rather than falling into the trap being laid for it.
Even more of a European nations sovereignty given away..seems like they only care about other countries sovereignty..or rather they pretend to care,in reality it’s all about control,power,money…and not about the citizens…they are insane and drunk on power…they don’t give a shite about us..if they had their way ,they would send all of us to fight some bullshit war,with the aim to kill off the peasants on all sides,and then they won’t have to pretend that they care anymore..the peasants should not even think about getting above their station..
19 comments
🇪🇺
>All those who today find themselves squeezed between the United States and China, only Europeans have the option of becoming a true power themselves.
>We have to decide: do we simply remain a large market, subject to the priorities of others? Or do we take the necessary steps to become a power?” Former Prime Minister Mario Draghi said this while receiving an honorary degree in Leuven, Belgium, emphasizing that to become a power, “Europe must move from confederation to federation.” “Where Europe has federated-on trade, competition, the single market, monetary policy-we are respected as a power and negotiate as a single entity. We see this today in the successful trade agreements negotiated with India and Latin America,” he stressed.
>”The now defunct global order did not fail because it was founded on an illusion,” but “the collapse of this order is not in itself the threat. A world with less trade and weaker rules would be painful, but Europe would be able to adapt. The real threat is what will replace it.” Europe has before it “a future in which it risks becoming, at the same time, subordinate, divided and deindustrialised”. Draghi stressed that “a Europe unable to defend its interests will not be able to preserve its values for long.” “By acting together, we will rediscover something that has long been dormant: our pride, our self-confidence, our confidence in our future. And it is on this foundation that Europe will be built.”
>”Consider Greenland. The decision to resist rather than settle required Europe to make a real strategic assessment: mapping our levers, identifying our tools, and reflecting on the consequences of the escalation. The will to act imposed clarity on the ability to act.” “By standing together in the face of a direct threat, Europeans have discovered a solidarity that previously seemed unattainable. This shared determination was reflected in public opinion in a way that no final communiqué from a summit could have achieved,” he stressed.
Europeans leaders will reunite 12 of February and they will bring this topic to the table, the federation of Europe in the face of the new threats Europe is facing.
This is a step too far. A line should be drawn here. Europe has been made up of nation states for a reason, there are differences between countries that will emerge if this goes through
I don’t want to be a ‘true power’- or more realistically a province in a greater power- I want us to be one country, one island, with the ability to govern ourselves and make our own decisions, and not get sucked into wars overseas and all the rest of it. We stand to benefit from co-operation and we will need to work with allies and friends to maintain our sovereignty as small nations do, but I don’t want that to happen by having less autonomy in foreign policy and giving power away to a more centralised Europe.
Broadly fine, especially if focused on foreign affairs and eco policies. Would need to remove vetoed for some stuff
I think this is the necessary step, facing the U.S. and China. I think most people will think this undermines their national identities, and this will make it hard to find public support for a federal EU. But in essence, it is not national sovereignty being abolished; we just need a further horizontal harmonisation of fiscal, financial and monetary legislation, as well as production/trade regulation.
Edit: And on defense/security, obviously
Only a fringe minority of Irish people would be in favour of this, but it’ll be very popular on r/ireland. I find it hard to believe people would hand away our sovereignty after all the fighting our ancestors done to achieve independence.Â
I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment in broadstrokes, but I certainly wonder how it would look in practice.
How do you cobble together 20+ different countries into a federation in a way that smaller states don’t feel like they get trampled over, while still being cohesive enough to actually make a material difference in key policy areas? To me it seems like an essentially impossible task considering just how different the priorities of EU member states are.
Hey Mario, put down the vino, I think youve had enough!
what a horrible horrible idea
Nope and I would have supported it before. But if Germany, Austria, Hungary and others in the eastern bloc can’t even bring themselves to condemn a genocide then I don’t want any part of them having decision making powers over ourselves.
“and Ireland long a nation be, a province once again”
Sing it with me lads!
the EU has been fun , but if this the action the EU is taking , good bye EU
Yeah, because things have been going so great for Europe over the last decade since the EU centrists saw off the surging populist right across the continent…it’s only natural that federation is what the people of the continent yearn for in their hearts…A united states of Europe. ^^^/s ^^^in ^^^case ^^^anyone ^^^needed ^^^it.
Funny how we survived the cold war without federation.
There’s still too much “Imperial ambition” in certain European nations, I’d rather not see that ramped up and empowered.
It seems there’s a growing number of people ignorant to the consequences of nuclear weapons. Â
Let the politicians fight each other if they’re not happy. Look at zelensky and Putin sending their countrymen to their deaths. Death match: Zelensky v Putin.Â
Draghi isn’t wrong, he is just too early. Forcing the EU to move before it is ready is, I think, what the US is seeking to accomplish.
The “Donroe Doctrine” is basically moving back to 19th century great power geopolitics where spheres of influence are controlled by great powers.
The US, however, still wants to be the hegemonic great power. That means more than anything combatting the rise of China who are the most likely power to contest their domination in a way that matters to them. In both the US and EU power is to a greater and slightly lesser extent respectively exercised by capital – greater in the US because it is easier there for capital to capture totally the other levers of power vested in the State. In China capital is subservient to the State and almost as direct to the Party.
Trump’s major foreign policy interventions over the past year seem incomprehensible without understanding that they are aimed at preparing the US to counter China, “kinetically” when necessary and with Taiwan as the flash point.
Imagine a Chinese blockade of Taiwan – which is much more likely than an invasion. The US would have great difficulty in actually breaking that blockade with its own ships and planes, it is too close to the Chinese mainland.
The move requires a counter blockade. It requires that because China is in the position that the US once was in the 1940s – it is the manufacturing hub of the world. Wars are won in the industrial era, in the end, by the economy who can out manufacture the other. The US could not today do what it did with the [USS Yorktown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-5)) – it is China who would now be more capable of a similar feat.
Their weakness though is energy. They themselves know this, hence their planning focus on alternative energy sources – but energy independence from that will not happen nearly quickly enough.
So if you want to counter them then you need to be able to disrupt that manufacturing base. The way to do that is to hinder their energy supplies.
So the US seeks to destroy, destabilise, and dominate the places where China can get energy. Huge efforts are therefore being made in both Iran and Venezuela, key sources of energy for China. Huge efforts are made to stabilise the situation for Israel, which has always been a key means for the US to control the straits of Hormuz. Taken together those moves put the US in a strong position to turn off the taps when they need to.
A similar effort is happening with Russia. The US needs to move Russia away from its growing relationship with China resultant from the war in Ukraine, because any blockade will fail if China can be supplied through pipelines and overland generally from Russia.
So where does the EU come in? A blockade that is solely focused on energy will not be as effective as one that cuts China off from global trade and finance. The US cannot do this alone, and an EU with “strategic autonomy” has always been the goal and has been what the likes of Macron have been increasingly pushing for over the past decade.
The EU if it had such autonomy could make itself very wealthy without becoming directly involved simply by remaining neutral in such a conflict and creating a mechanism for China to continue to access trade, payments, and finance.
Trump can’t do to the EU what he does to Iran and Venezuela. He can however exploit a weakness within the EU – it is a comparatively young project of “ever closer union” that can only work if it is allowed to develop along its own timeline of decades. A more powerful executive within the EU would require a more unified polity, and developing that unified polity through cohesion funding, ever closer regulatory alignment, an aligned monetary policy and eventually an aligned fiscal and foreign policy and capital markets is something that can only happen sustainably across such diverse nations very very slowly.
If you turn up the temperature with stuff like his shite about Greenland you can make it so that those who want to move faster feel that urgency. Moving faster though will break the project. Even if it doesn’t break it, the institutions that result from moving institutionally before the political work is done will result in fragile institutions that cannot hold up when pressure is exerted.
The EU needs to be careful and see the wood from the trees here. What Carney in Canada has done, in acknowledging finally that the US is not a reliable partner in multilateralism and instead seeking closer relations between middle powers and being more open to increasing ties with China is the way to break this. It is the exact risk that the US’s strategy has to hope won’t crystellise and the EU needs to see that risk and exploit it rather than falling into the trap being laid for it.
Even more of a European nations sovereignty given away..seems like they only care about other countries sovereignty..or rather they pretend to care,in reality it’s all about control,power,money…and not about the citizens…they are insane and drunk on power…they don’t give a shite about us..if they had their way ,they would send all of us to fight some bullshit war,with the aim to kill off the peasants on all sides,and then they won’t have to pretend that they care anymore..the peasants should not even think about getting above their station..
“The EU has failed. So we need more EU.”?