Because that's connected to this discussion how?

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

The EU is at the very best a tower of Babel, at worst a sneaky "nazi" project. In any case only mental retards can come up with the idea of merging 28 divergent cultures (+ an indeterminate number of future entrants) into one (monster) multi-cultural entity.
Napoleon, the dictator, the thief, the guy who did not give a f***about the French so-called revolutionary ideals (fraternity, egality + one more buzz word), and only pillaged the countries he invaded, (all of the Louvre is Italian stuff robbed by him) needed to use FORCE to temporarily create a "fake" common entity (under French rule).
Ask the Maltese what they thought of French rule between 1799 and 1801 before the Brits kicked them off the island.


Whither an EU police force and a standing army when the Eurozone financial regulatory system collapses?


The Romans did infinitely better, and gave the Roman citizenship to rather huge numbers but, there again, they needed legions.
How many “legions” does the EU require today?
And when the legions were no longer effective, because of the perverse Christian religion, the self-serving, thieving imperial bureaucracy back at HQ (like that in Brussels) and most of all the dramatic acceptance of the barbarians (Goths) inside their borders (perhaps Muslim culture today), everything broke down.
The consequences of the break down we still call the "dark ages".


One of the key elements of the fall of Rome, was because numerous Emperors chose not to balance the books. They issued more and more coinage (with their head on it) with the hope that just the name alone would support its value ( think of QE x 1000) Eventually, that bluff was called by all those armies and governors and regions that were "Roman" by order, but without a single Italian-like bloke in the ranks.
Maybe a Western European "club" (not federal) that consisted of the traditional power nations of Europe is a tolerable concept - mixing their talents and general moral commonality.
This would, of course, exclude the EBloc/Balkans and the periphery toward Turkey. Is it likely? No.

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Dave

Okay, I'm out.

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

Splitter!

Andy

I liked your post very much, Walkabout and the falacy of the EU was born precisely from where you said, from the utopia of being viable to put 28 countries together, twenty eight different histories, different interests, different geopolitical influences, different all. It never was and there were already several warnings on that respect. The war on Iraq was perhaps the most notorious but there were several others thru times and right now the refugee thing is the most important but there are several others in the shadows but nevertheless present. The Russian sanctions, for instance.

All in all I'm in agreement with what you wrote. Let me put a small note on something you wrote at the end of your post.


Since the beginning I've always had the implosion of the European Union as a matter of when, not an "if" thing. For a long time I hoped that from the rubble it would be possible to recreate the EEC which, indeed, was a good thing. Nowadays, although I am still hopeful, rationally I don't see it happening. It's a sort of wishful thinking, let's call it that. With time countries and societies developed resentment against each other due to perceived injustices. In certain country pairs this grew way too big to allow any sort of Union in the near future. Even a mere commercial union. And that I regret.

In that respect, Napoleon was right - traditionally, it takes brute force to bang together the heads of established nation states or other societal entities.
(my earlier post about the USA civil war, the establishment of a single form of government for China and the USSR refers).

Today, the EU, via the ECB and the Euro experiment that remains in progress, is using economic warfare to beat the southern Europe countries into submission.
What happens if that fails is yet to be seen: the Euro experiment continues.

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Dave

You have a much closer example in the heart of Europe, the unification of Germany by Bismarck. From the start of the customs union between the German States, the Zollverein, to the effective unification under Prussia required three wars: the Schleswig-Holstein Question War (between Prussia and Austria on one side and Denmark on the other), the Austro-Prussian War and, finally, the Franco-Prussian War in which the remaining states resisting unification under Prussia lost their main backer, France, when this was defeated in 1871.


The Euro is an example of the application of the utopia. Northern and Southern countries have radically different approaches to money. A German and a Portuguese see money in radically different ways. For Germans (and others) money is something that you earn, conserve and invest in order to multiply the original amount. For Portuguese (and Greeks and others) money is something that when you have it you spend it in order to live the good life. The problems surrounding the current trouble in Southern European countries arise mostly because of this. The likes of Portugal, Greece, even Spain and Italy did not know how to live with a strong currency given that their whole recent history had been lived with the cycles of devaluation-inflation. When, all of a sudden, these countries started living with a strong currency they really didn't know what to do with it so they did what they knew better: borrow and spend. It was not surprising, at all.

I started writing about the possible bankruptcy of Portugal around 2000, 2001. Already then with what was being done it was clear where it would lead.

The only time in the last 200 years when the Portuguese lived with a strong currency was during the Salazar dictatorship and it worked under that regime. Even so the PTE wasn't nearly as strong as the Euro but strong, nevertheless, compared with what the PTE became in democracy. With each party having to earn (read, buy) votes among the populace there was financial and economic insanity and it quickly collapsed. In 1973 1 USD equaled around 24 PTE. In 1980 it was around 1 USD for 50 PTE. In 1985 around 170 PTE. From then onward it appreciated slightly and when of the introduction of the Euro the exchange rate hovered around 1USD for 150 PTE.

Good examples of the split personality of the EU.

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Dave

The Germans spoke the same language, had similar cultures and still didn't manage to bring Austria, half of Switzerland, a chunk of the Czech republic etc. onboard. The successful federal states start with an almost empty landscape.

Andy