Europe in the New World Order

[Vekseid]

Best to make a new thread for this.

I know it's a bit off-topic (perhaps way too much) and I apologize for that, but... do you really consider EU as one of the poles in the new world order? I have troubles with seeing EU, in its current shape, as an autonomous actor on the world scene. I'll admit this might have to do with my views on EU institutions and policies, which are in turn influenced by living in Southern Europe.

Nations are built through shared experience, and things like the refugee crisis and Russia's invasion of Ukraine are certainly shared experiences for Europe as a whole. Putin has made it very clear he does not consider the Baltics, Finland, or Georgia as legitimately independent, much less Belarus or Ukraine. One way or another, this isn't going to stop with Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, the EU is having a steadily growing impact as an autonomous actor e.g. with trade, privacy, and consumer laws. There's stuff like the cookie law, but also new legislation mandating better clothes, more repairable electronics, etc. They're more unified in some of these regards than the United States is. Occasionally you see US states jumping on the bandwagon - for example California's and other privacy laws - which is an example of soft power being exported from the EU to the US.

These things don't happen overnight, of course, but the conflicts with Russia are still in very early stages, and most of their knock-on effects, such as rising food insecurity, haven't been meaningfully felt yet.

[gaggedLouise]

Yes, over the last few years the EU (as a "federal" actor) has come around to flexing its control muscles more. The extended crisises of Covid, energy and climate and now Ukraine/Russia have framed opportunities for this. The Trump presidency was another powerful trigger, because it pushed to the surface a question most people had long avoided: if we suddenly can't fully rely on Washington to play the (mostly) considerate grown-up man in the room of international relations, the ultimate security guardian of Europe and the western world in times of crisis, and our cousin, sort of, in terms of basic values and liberties - then what do we do?

Europe (at first west of the Iron Curtain, and then nearly all of Europe west of Russia) has relied on the US as the guarantee of her security ever since 1945. There's been seventy-five years mostly without open wars and with a great deal of peaceful economic integration - and more trade than ever before, not just because of the power of the US and NATO, but also because WW2 weakened the old empires of Europe to the point where none of them could afford to launch major wars against each other. and still less to pitch a war against the US or the USSR/Russia.

Britain hasn't attempted to intervene in a major war against a powerful country, without the approval of the US, since Suez in 1956. The US stopped Britain and France from joining forces with Israel at Suez, because it could have meant a war with the Soviet Union, and they had to obey: that's why people were saying, even at the time, that Britain as an imperial power died with the Suez crisis. (I'm not counting the Falklands war, forty years ago this weekend, as a major British war, because a) Argentina wasn't a major military power and didn't have the backing of major allies, and b) I'm fairly sure Thatcher got a go-ahead from Reagan to fight a war that technically infringed the Monroe doctrine).

So there's been a potential security vacuum, or global power grey area, because if the US would not be as steady and dependable as before, in European eyes, and China and Russia are becoming more assertive, then who's going to help safeguarding auntie Europe and work for her in war and peace? No single country over here has the military or financial clout to do it on its own - and Germany, the most powerful economy within the EU and a leading power in science and technology, doesn't want to be seen as a no.1 military power, for understandable historic reasons. So that's where the EU is looking for a new role. The trouble is that the EU, seen as some kind of true, effective federal superstate, is not very trusted by most people on this continent - we mostly want political and military power to rest with our national governments, not with an EU super-level - and the governments themselves are notoriously slow to unite through the EU on most issues that really matter.


I'm really not sure whether the crisises since around 2014, and now Ukraine, can change this. We will propably get to see more coooperation on the EU level (and sometimes also including the post-Breaxit UK) and the beginnings of building some sort of EU armed forces,  but the Ukraine war and the face-off with Moscow is hardly going to be enough to build a solid sense that Europe/the super-EU matters more than the country you happen to live in and whose language you're speaking (most of us, at least, are native speakers of the main language of the country aside from speaking English, French or whatever else...). Yes, the Ukraine war and the impact of it in economy, migration and so on is a bit of a shared experience, but people from different parts of Europe are not going to see it or read it the same way, within the same frame of mind, It's going to be shared in the sense that the world wars were shared experiences - a multiplicity of experiences and issues rather than just one single big story agreed on by everyone.

I don't think we're going to see an overall feeling that Europe (the EU) exists as a single demos - a people and a public sphere that can become the foundation of a "United States of Europe" - and it looks like that kind of unity is under threat in the US as well. When we Europeans see ourselves as a shared people, it's more about a cultural community, and being able to travel and work across the continent, than about politics.

"Europe has a language problem" Scottish band Simple Minds sang forty years ago. It's only now that I realize that the lyrics continue: "Talk, talk, talk.../ And in Central Europe, men are marching". The language problem means both politics and the absence of a unifying first language. Unlike in the US, where nearly everyone speaks English as their first language, over here we exist in a maze of first and second languages - all sometimes a bit "lost in translation". :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6MwzSaBBQY

[RedRose]

What bothers me is that we were told it's all worth it, losing our money, bailing other countries out, because peace. And now, there's not even that, and some countries want out.

[gaggedLouise]

What bothers me is that we were told it's all worth it, losing our money, bailing other countries out, because peace. And now, there's not even that, and some countries want out.

Yes, the EU has been kicking a number of financial cans down the road for more than a decade. The finance crisis from 2008 on generated huge debts and loans to bail out Greece, Ireland and various banks; fighting Covid led to massive loans and stuff to help pay for vaccines, medical equipment and support packages, this is still ongoing even if the pandemic is less severe now (because there will still be need for repeated vaccine shots and more research) - and now Ukraine and an economic war with Russia. It's not strange that people in several countries are asking: do we really have to do it like this? why are we pbliged to pay dozens of billions of euros to prop up Greece, Romania or whatever?

[RedRose]

Some laws have also been pushed/forced on countries by the European court.

[gaggedLouise]

Some laws have also been pushed/forced on countries by the European court.

Agree, and I think that's really a fuzzy area. Cooperation shouldn't have to mean that all states within the EU have the same laws forced on them.

[Vekseid]

I don't think we're going to see an overall feeling that Europe (the EU) exists as a single demos - a people and a public sphere that can become the foundation of a "United States of Europe" - and it looks like that kind of unity is under threat in the US as well.

Nearly 90% of the country backs either current or stronger measures against Russia. Of those that don't, half still hold an extremely unfavorable view. This has notably shocked a number of people out of their information bubbles over here.

We'll see how the midterms turn out, I suppose, but I suspect come the elections in seven months some of our more Russia-friendly politicians may pay the price for it.

As for a united Europe polity, this sort of thing plays out over decades. I doubt, at the eve of World War I, anyone would consider the EU to be remotely conceivable. The situation in Ukraine is probably the key counterexample to Europe's language problem as you put it. Support and supply to Ukraine is evolving based on its needs, not just in terms of material but volunteers as well. What language barriers exist don't appear to be stopping anything.

Meanwhile, Russia has no way out of this.

There are nationalists who consider admitting Ukraine's existence to be unthinkable. Stalemate would be humiliating. Russia is retreating from an entire wing of its front, routing, even.

Meanwhile, in the coming months, Russia will be unable to secure the entirety of its border from reprisal by Ukraine.

This is going to shock Russia like nothing ever before it. 

Putin has cultivated a very limited sort of 'acceptable opposition' - the hyper-nationalist sort. The crazed lunatics that Putin is 'keeping in check'. Once his legitimacy collapses, they are the only voices remaining in power.

Again, what is going on in Ukraine is the infant cries of a far larger catastrophe.

[Chulanowa]

Veks...

What's happening in Ukraine is not a great thing. But it's also not going to define the future of the rest of Europe. It actually makes it pretty unlikely that Ukraine will join, since the EU just doesn't want to pay to rebuild - especially not for a nation in Eastern Europe. Gotta remember that the EU is mostly an economic construct, less than a political one. And the economics of it are mostly about trying to bring as much money into Germany, France, and Benelux as possible. An output of money from that imperial core (and yes, it IS imperial) is basically entirely backwards to the idea.

Similarly the idea of a unified "European country" is laughable. Both for the reason I just noted and because a lot of these countries kinda... sorta... worked really hard to BE countries?

I figure the opposite is more likely, long term. But part of that is because most empires trend towards collapse rather than consolidation. Brexit already happened, of course. Two strong economies in Europe - Norway and Switzerland - seem to have no interest in joining the rest of western Europe's club - and most of the eastern members are just there because they fucking hate Russia rather than any interest in the rest of the EU. Which means that if your MSNBC fanfic holds up, then it's likely that several EU members will see threats from the East as no longer dangerous enough to justify exploitation from the West. Especially since anti-EU political sentiments are still on the rise, from right and left.

leave "The Federation of Europe" along with "The Republic of Deseret" in the Harry Turtledove-style AltHist pile of never-will-be countries.

[Vekseid]

If you see Russia having a peacable path ahead of it I'd love to hear it.

Otherwise no, this is absolutely going to be a defining moment for Europe's future. Russia's nationalist wing is currently frothing at the mouth, a thousand little Hitlers all primed to take the helm after Putin loses the Mandate of Heaven. That is, once Ukraine is able to conduct ground operations in Russia unchallenged, or they lose control of Belarus and/or the Caucuses.

And the economics of it are mostly about trying to bring as much money into Germany, France, and Benelux as possible. An output of money from that imperial core (and yes, it IS imperial) is basically entirely backwards to the idea.

You forget Scandanavia. And Austria, if you were separating it from Germany. Ireland also recovered quite well. Some 'core'.

Ignoring that, to fit the definition of empire, the imperial core is a single, dominating culture over several others.

So. If it's imperial, which culture is the dominant one?

[gaggedLouise]

Veks...

What's happening in Ukraine is not a great thing. But it's also not going to define the future of the rest of Europe. It actually makes it pretty unlikely that Ukraine will join, since the EU just doesn't want to pay to rebuild - especially not for a nation in Eastern Europe. Gotta remember that the EU is mostly an economic construct, less than a political one. And the economics of it are mostly about trying to bring as much money into Germany, France, and Benelux as possible. An output of money from that imperial core (and yes, it IS imperial) is basically entirely backwards to the idea.

Similarly the idea of a unified "European country" is laughable. Both for the reason I just noted and because a lot of these countries kinda... sorta... worked really hard to BE countries?

I figure the opposite is more likely, long term. But part of that is because most empires trend towards collapse rather than consolidation. Brexit already happened, of course. Two strong economies in Europe - Norway and Switzerland - seem to have no interest in joining the rest of western Europe's club - and most of the eastern members are just there because they fucking hate Russia rather than any interest in the rest of the EU. Which means that if your MSNBC fanfic holds up, then it's likely that several EU members will see threats from the East as no longer dangerous enough to justify exploitation from the West. Especially since anti-EU political sentiments are still on the rise, from right and left.

leave "The Federation of Europe" along with "The Republic of Deseret" in the Harry Turtledove-style AltHist pile of never-will-be countries.

Yep, I agree, lots of good points there.

The EU is ultimately based on economic rather than political motives - there's been a mix of motivations since the 1990s but the main drivers are still about economy, generating wealth and improved trade, within the EU and outside of it. They're not going to want Ukraine as a full member, plainly because it would be very expensive and with its population it would be one of the biggest members of the union, and together with Poland a potential leader for a new eastern power bloc, challenging the traditional dominance of what you called "the imperial core" from the river Oder to the Bay of Biscay. That's something the leading circles of the EU really don't want. They've long seen Poland as a troublemaker - not without reasons! - and they wouldn't want Ukraine on board too.

And it's very true that many countries in Europe worked reallly hard to be countries, to achieve statehood and build a national culture. Sometimes for hundreds of years: Poland even died and was reborn, then suffered a new disaster in WW2 and forty years of Soviet domination. Italy only became a unified country in 1870, for the first time in almost two thousand years. These past experiences are burnt into the DNA and the heritage of many European countries. They're not going to set them aside for a "euro-identity" that doesn't speak their own language and where the spectrum of ongoing political debate across the continent is impossibly broad and conducted in like thirty different national languages (and after the UK left, there's no EU country that has English as its first and official language - it's now become the unofficial second language of many member countries: I suppose the EUP will fix that with a special law at some point, so that all offical EU documents continue to appear in an English version too!) :).

[Bezukhov]

Wow, I just noticed my question sparked a whole thread... and with lots of greats inputs, too!

Best to make a new thread for this.

Nations are built through shared experience, and things like the refugee crisis and Russia's invasion of Ukraine are certainly shared experiences for Europe as a whole. Putin has made it very clear he does not consider the Baltics, Finland, or Georgia as legitimately independent, much less Belarus or Ukraine. One way or another, this isn't going to stop with Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, the EU is having a steadily growing impact as an autonomous actor e.g. with trade, privacy, and consumer laws. There's stuff like the cookie law, but also new legislation mandating better clothes, more repairable electronics, etc. They're more unified in some of these regards than the United States is. Occasionally you see US states jumping on the bandwagon - for example California's and other privacy laws - which is an example of soft power being exported from the EU to the US.

These things don't happen overnight, of course, but the conflicts with Russia are still in very early stages, and most of their knock-on effects, such as rising food insecurity, haven't been meaningfully felt yet.

Veks, it's always a pleasure reading you – and I do agree with some of the points you make. Europe is an unfinished adventure, as Bauman once put it, but what truly worries me is where such adventure is currently headed. Of course, there are good policies pushed forward by EU institutions which might set an example for other countries, too.

I partially disagree with you when you bring in the concept of 'nation', though. I'd say "partially" because, like you point out, such processes take decades at best. This said, I can't really see how EU Member States could end up becoming, at some point, a nation. Shared history, perhaps. But... language? Shared cultural traditions (and mind you, I'm a Hobsbawmian myself!)? I believe Louise covered such points.

All in all, I do tend to agree with Chulanowa's views, when he says that:

Gotta remember that the EU is mostly an economic construct, less than a political one. And the economics of it are mostly about trying to bring as much money into Germany, France, and Benelux as possible. An output of money from that imperial core (and yes, it IS imperial) is basically entirely backwards to the idea.

One might perhaps disagree with using the word "empire" – let's use "economic and financial core", instead. I think the actual borders of the core (and those of the periphery) do transcend national borders: Northern Italy is well-integrated within the core, the same cannot be said about Southern Italy. There are other examples, too: see Catalunya. Russian actions in Ukraine did spark some sort of a rally-around-the-(European)-flag effect, but how long will it last? And the refugee crisis, if anything, sparked the rise of right-wing populist movements and widespread national egoisms across Europe. If I recall correctly, not long ago the social-democratic government of Denmark toughened up their immigration policies.

I'll keep this shorts as I've got to go, but I'll leave you with a hopefully interesting read, and that's...

...what Curzio Malaparte wrote back in the Fifties about West Germany

The other night I was driving down from Munich, on my way to Frankfurt: at a certain point, frightened, I stopped the car on one side of the highway. A rushing river of huge trucks was coming towards me, with a roar not of a river in flood, but of thunder. And another river of cars came whirling down behind me, passing me with a high scream of engines, with a sharp hiss of wheels on the wet asphalt. I seemed to be in the rear of an immense army, in the days of an offensive. And that was nothing but the usual aspect of the West German freeways, the usual traffic that, day and night, takes place uninterruptedly between the Ruhr and Bavaria, between the Rhine and Hamburg, between Basel and Cologne, between Mannheim and Kassel, between Bremen and Düsseldorf. Nothing, more than this extraordinary spectacle, can give an idea of the immense effort to rebuild Germany from Bonn.

I do not know whether the power of German labor constitutes a danger to the Europe of tomorrow. But I do know that there is no country in the world today (including America) that can hold a candle to Germany (in a relative sense, of course) in terms of the pace and quality of industrial production. The Americans, and Eisenhower first, are deeply impressed and, I would add, pleased. If Hitler had not unleashed his stupid, hateful war, today Germany would be, peacefully, the mistress of Europe.

There is almost (if I may be allowed the paradox) a need to "thank" Hitler for the enormous mistake he made. But this "thanks" freezes on the lips, when one reflects that, if one continues at this pace, Germany, in about ten years, will be peacefully the mistress of a divided Europe, exhausted by political and social struggles, by mismanagement, and by the fatal inertia of governments and peoples.

I was talking the other day with a large industrialist from the Ruhr.

"Probably," he told me, "the function of Germany in the Europe of tomorrow, will be to restore order, perhaps on behalf of the UN, in the European countries broken up by communism, and in the grip of anarchy and chaos."

"You mean that Germany will not need to wage war to occupy Europe. It will occupy Europe to ensure social order and peace."

"Exactly," he said.

"What about the dream of a united Europe?" I asked him.

"It will no longer be a dream, it will be a sad reality," he replied, not without irony.

(Battibecco, 1953-1957 , Vallecchi editore, 1967)

[CopperLily]

If you see Russia having a peacable path ahead of it I'd love to hear it.

Otherwise no, this is absolutely going to be a defining moment for Europe's future. Russia's nationalist wing is currently frothing at the mouth, a thousand little Hitlers all primed to take the helm after Putin loses the Mandate of Heaven. That is, once Ukraine is able to conduct ground operations in Russia unchallenged, or they lose control of Belarus and/or the Caucuses.

You forget Scandanavia. And Austria, if you were separating it from Germany. Ireland also recovered quite well. Some 'core'.

Ignoring that, to fit the definition of empire, the imperial core is a single, dominating culture over several others.

So. If it's imperial, which culture is the dominant one?

It was really fun to be in Ireland the first year that they were a net contributor to the EU. There was a lot of pride about that.

[GloomCookie]

... There's stuff like the cookie law, but also new legislation mandating better clothes, more repairable electronics, etc. ...

I got summoned by Cookie law

My understanding of the European Union (and do forgive me I'm not as up on the EU as I am US affairs) is that the EU acts more as a strong confederation rather than a proper federal system like the United States. There are definite pros and cons to both systems, as a confederation isn't as tied to a central government as a federal system is, but that also means getting all your ducks (yay duck reference) in a row is a lot harder. For example, there are a ton of regulations in the EU, but some nations have exemptions from them, where in the United States a law passed by Congress usually has a similar effect throughout the nation and the number of exemptions is low.. at least, in most cases, there are always BS laws.

But I will definitely give the EU props for their pro-consumer attitude. Companies like Apple and John Deere piss me off to no end because as someone who likes to do my own repairs, they go out of their way to make it harder just to turn more profit. Capitalism isn't a bad thing on its own, but corporate greed definitely needs to watch it. We used to have anti-trust presidents like Theodore Roosevelt who wasn't afraid to take a stick to companies like Standard Oil, and now we have corporations that can directly influence elections one way or another.

I do think the EU is doing wonderful things, and the US will benefit from that, as well as the EU will benefit from the US benefitting from that. It's a positive reinforcement loop that I think will be beneficial in the long run for more people, especially since two powerful economic superpowers will put pressure on governments around the world that are anti-freedom.

It was really fun to be in Ireland the first year that they were a net contributor to the EU. There was a lot of pride about that.

I love Kerrygold butter ♥ I don't know what you lovely Irish folk do to make it but it's amazing. I really want to visit some day, and not just for the butter. Ireland always makes me think of this beautiful, unspoiled little island ♥