The Future EU Army

As I said. I am not doubting the intention but one currency covering that many economies doesn’t work. The Euro should’ve been restricted to a select few. Then it may have worked. The southern countries will bring it down eventually.

 

Agreed but my point is that the EU makes decisions that aren’t theirs to make, like the migrant crisis.

 

No.. the ones you refer as the select few are the very ones designing this whole thing. Once they are out, the lights are out too. You don't want chaos takin over your neighborhood do you now? You seem like you got no problem with the general mechanics of the socioeconomic system. So there's no point to grow an impractical desire to oust the people who feeds the most them mechanics that you are not even bothering to question the existence of. So you basically want to keep this thing but without them illuminati. Should you start questioning the whole inner workings and suggest something much better in return then I guess there'll be a legit base for that desire...

 

You know when Germany first came up with the idea of a European army , I felt it was to protect from the US, and not Russia - and that they couldn't say it for fear of repercussions.

Boy they're sneaky. They took over Europe the way Hitler had planned, but without firing a shot. I read that Merkel wants the EU army to be controlled and led by Germany.

Anyway the EU will cease to exist because of Germany's ambitions. Berlin hasn't forgotten their past and what they suffered from the bombings, but neither have the other nations.

 

Giving more power to the States, meant that the people had more power, and by the same token, giving more power to the Federal Government means less power to the people.

Frankly I think that nations shouldn't even exist, and that each province or city/state should have its own government so that ideals and standards of one group shouldn't be imposed on others against their will. Besides that, each city/state should have a certain amount of self sufficiency to be able to survive in an emergency.

 

Nations should not exist? OK. Suggest that to your favorite national leaders, Putin and Assad, who have no qualms about using military force to force unruly cities/states to fall in line.

 

Hello, I'm french, so I can't pretend to be the ultimate expert on french political matters but there is many things to know about Macron :
1) France is organized on a two round election. At the first round as many members can participate, there is often 3 to 4 main candidates : nationalist, mainstream conservative, mainstream liberal and when they manage to unite like they did those 10 last years, far-left. A lot of candidates reached the second round with around 30 % of votes when Macron had only around 24 % which isn't a lot, especially considering all the media support he got.
2) French don't trust their own politician because of decades of corruption case. Vast majority of french people see the vast majority of politician are corrupted.
3) Macron is an extremly arrogant man which managed to get the power through two tools : 1) An extensive propaganda from medias which are almost all owned by french billionaires. 2) The traditionnal dam to far right. The FN got decades of propaganda and slanders against them which wasn't helped by a bunch of idiots inside the parti, and the former leader of the parti Jean-Marie Le Pen, what I mean is that Macron was elected not because people liked him but because they didn't want the FN to be the parti of power;
Macron is basically the candidate and man of the french (and probably not only french) financial elite. They work for their own good, not for the one of the french people.

 

The EU shouldn't have gone along with Washington's sanctions, then Russia wouldn't have had to retaliate by blocking their goods. The EU lost over $1 billion, while the US lost nothing. And what's worse, it's a market that the EU will never recover since Russia is now producing the very products that they imported - with the exception maybe of Brie.

I don't know, I'm just guessing about the cheese. For all I know Russia might be producing its own Brie by now. What I do know though is that the industrial Veneto was up in arms over the sanctions, and was going to split from Italy.

 

Who cares what criminal Putin does? He desperately wants to be feared and respected by everyone in and out of Russia. It's kind of sad.

 

Bonjour! I completely agree with you. I do follow French politics and am aware of the system but far from an expert. Thank you for your insight. What do you see happening during the next French election cycle? I don’t feel like Macron has the support of the nation and would face an uphill battle to be re-elected. Are you a fan of the EU?

 

Macron's favorables are in the low 20's, just like Merkel's.

On the plus side, I guess we don't need NATO anymore. Bring that money home and let them run around training with broomsticks.

 

No. Absolutly not but I don't like politicians in a general way. I know that the only hope for change would be benevolent work. I see in every side some huge qualities and some flaws. I like the patriotism and realism on border of the far right, the business wisness of the right and the utopism of the far left and there awareness on some issues like ecology.
For me however, the EU is antidemocratic power made to help the financial power to dictate more the policies. The EU is made as a tools for the billionaires and other plutocrats/oligarchs.

About the next election cycle, I don't know. Macron will be very unpopular but people won't vote for the FN. I'm afraid that Marine Le Pen will still parasite the french political life. The french political life has a huge flaws, it's parasited by some professionnal loosers such as Marine le Pen, her father or Jean-Luc Melenchon. Maybe that all the so called "republican" dam will last. And that a pro-plutocrat like Macron will win. The french political life globally stayed in a form of continuity. For instance, Jacques Attali a very important french political personnality who never hold the power himself advised both Sarkozy, Hollande and he is the mentor of Macron.
For me, he is more relevant than them.

What is sure is that, we, the french tend to be more and more angry of the corruption and dishonnesty of our politicians. That angriness will explode soon or later, even if I don't see how for now.

Right now, I think that the nowodays political-financial-journalistic system will work still for a few years.

 

My friend, you sound like a man after my own heart. I am of pretty much the exact same opinion. I find myself in the centre but I have views which would be placed on the right or left by others. I am a proud Brit, that shouldn’t mean I am associated as right wing. I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I do not believe in hand outs and work on merit alone. Skin colour, race, religion etc is irrelevant to me and the most important part is how an individual acts. I am regarded as racist as I want controlled immigration and the people who come here to assimilate. The same dishonesty and mistrust in politics is rife in the UK.

Le Pen is the equivalent of Nick Griffin, a former BNP leader in the UK. Completely unelectable because she is too polarising. European elections in general will be extremely interesting to watch in the coming years.

 

All my posts are the best

Qaddafi...mourned by all birds of a stripe...but maybe that's too subtle even for you.

This is a "wow" kind of statement. Far beyond the regional short term interests that could have influenced your views on EU.

Well...wow.

 

If I had to make a choice, and despite I despise Marine Le Pen, I would choose Marine Le Pen. First because massive migration was a total disaster in France which create a lot of damages because of all the criminality and hatred it created, we will need decades to repair all the division and tensions massive migration caused. Second, because Marine Le Pen ask for popular initiative, referendum decided by the people. I don't believe the people is always right. But I think that the people care of its own good and is more likely to ask for benevolent reasons than politician.
But I don't have any masters. I don't put all my hope in someone else, either a god, a prophet and even less a politician. I don't hope a lot from them.

I'm not very old, but that's now a decade that I'm talking of politics on forum. I went from far left to be much more right winged. But in the end, my conclusion was such : hoping for an outside change make you a child, a slave and a beggar. People are begging for politican to realize their wishes like some people beg their god for the same. Politics are globally an illusion. The way of the true change is through associative investment and day to day action.

In a way, without supporting something else, I don't like democracy. All the hatred and the division it creates, I think it's in a way a disaster. Politician are selected by their ability to be elected. It lead to select people which are liars, manipulative and have connections with plutocrats.
Clearly, there is very few hope to have in politics. I suppose however that if a society change in a positive way over time, those positive changes will be reflected in the political life. The opposite is true too for negative changes. By the way it works in the other way, change in the political life will reflect in the day to day live. But I renounced to have a real influence on that.

Maybe someone will ask me why I am on a political board then ? It's just a pleasant way for me to get my little brain stimulated.

 

Is the corruption really that bad? People are quick to distrust others in a position of power. We're naturally paranoid and distrusting creatures that way. Paradoxically, we trust more genuinely corrupt leaders more than we do honest ones, at least if those more corrupt leaders play the nationalist and populist game well.

 

Oh man, this post is so Putinist that I can even see his black lab sniffing around the room...
You should calm down because Merkel's leaving the office soon... You can have your little AfD boys kissing your ass all you want



Watch it tho... When they say hilf they usually ask for some rubles from Moskof, just like those poor Saxony STASI guys used to do... And that means a lot of economic trouble for Kremlin. Imagine printing rubles to get the Saxony when you can't even profit out your Siberian oil..
Another Ruble crisis? I think so... You'll miss Merkel a lot... : (

 

Yeah sure, 500 city/states with unique ideals and standards, therefore different understanding of economy, therefore 500 different currency, therefore 500 different trade regulations, and 10^500 restrictions for trading goods... Atop shining the brutal consequences of geopolitics in between each and every one of the 500 and regional wars with dog eats dog concept...

Seems it's all like a simple board game to you but the fact of the matter is this global peace (yes it is peace unless any existence of full fledged conventional world war) was reached after many great wars fought and hundreds of millions of lives buried under the soil... What is preventing the globe from bleeding like a huge open wound is the very standards and ideals you think are mere joke... They make together an international order that keeps anarchy away... You want it challenged? Then be ready for trouble because that's exactly what you're going to get, actually that's what you've already begun to get in many different parts of the world but you only haven't realized yet... Sad...

 

Wait what? I thought he was first for the Arab Union and then for the "United States of Africa", not African Union... The latter is for integration primarily, which makes it more practical...

 

There's this theory - to which I hope you don't subscribe - supported by you-know-who, that Qaddafi was killed to prevent him from establishing a single pan-African currency. You know, like the euro, the single currency imposed to European countries by evil EU, but the whole brouhaha taking place in Africa, the single currency would've been a good thing in you-know-who's opinion.

By the way, there already are two regional currency unions in Africa, and there are proposals for a common pan-African currency, but nobody seems to care.

There's such an avalanche of anti-EU, anti-US, anti-common-decency posts on the site lately, far beyond any legitimate criticism of one deed or another. But we'll always have Qaddfi's dead gold dinars to guide us through hypocrisy and hidden agendas.

 

It's very elaborate forms, but I think, yes it tend to be that bad. Sarkozy just after finishing his mandate got millions of euros for "conferences" when he said for one half a hour banal things. Who paid ? Countries he favoured like Qatar. It's not even illegal, but I think it highly suspicious that some of our politician get that much money from big corporations and foreign countries just after their mandate. Our former prime minister, Manuel Valls, had a wife, his wife was leading an orchestra, and it's strange all those business man and rotten figures of Francafrica which found a sudden interest in music, and gave a lot of music to this orchestra, so to his wife and so to Manuel Valls.
One of the four candidates F.Fillon was shown corrupt the last mandate. There is many rotten member of governments right now, but the official medias don't speak that much of it.

There is dozen and dozen of cases.

I'm afraid that corruption is the nature of democracy.

 

No, it doesn't! The EU wanted to have quotas for migrants but several countries refused it and the EU accepted it and is now looking for alternatives.

All trouble Poland and Hungary have with the EU are related to their shreddering the independent justice.

Merkel's approval rating is at 44%.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/

 

The idea of a European army is not new, and in some cases even in the implementation, but everything within NATO about it.

Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium already have common command structures and mixed units.

In view of your reference to the German armed forces, it is the case that we have adapted our constitution and all missions within the framework of the Alliance obligation require parliamentary approval by a simple majority. So ... of course, as in any country, always with the restriction "depending on who has won the last election and then ruled the country"!

As for the troop strength of the Bundeswehr, there is no real upper limit. Compulsory military service is suspended in Germany as in almost all European countries and thus all soldiers are volunteers who have committed themselves for a different number of years, or even professional soldiers! As a result, there are automatically smaller personnel and, depending on the economic situation and working condition, the armed forces have problems getting enough soldiers. Currently, the Bundeswehr has a troop strength of nearly 180,000 active soldiers... normally not enough!

Germany was only given the reunification and full sovereignty of the 4 victorious powers in 1990 if they remain a member of NATO and in the East (former GDR) no other NATO units are permanently stationed.
With regard to nuclear armament, no one wants Germany to become a nuclear power ... not even the majority of the German population wants that. But it is always possible, that is, we can easily build atomic weapons ourselves whenever we want or it requires the situation.
That's why the accusation made in the USA is that you can not defend yourself atomically and that's why you need us, just ridiculous! The US does not want us to do it ... but technically it is possible for us at any time and at very short notice!

Your last question "And in what world would the EU need to defend against America?" I want to answer as follows:

It's just the right-wingers in the US who insult us and who talk about "NATO is superfluous" and "the bad Germans" over and over again. And if then jerk like Trump sits in the White House and accuses us of not fulfilling the 2% duty and outrageously demanding, we have to do it immediately ... even though we loud - also signed by the US - Treaty of Wales 2014 it will not have to be done until 2024 ... then it does not make the US a friend anymore, Paertner and allies!
Apart from that, what the US has stationed in Europe is just ridiculously low, and the National Guard of Texas has more troops and supplies ... and your huge military budget is about two-thirds of the cost, just because of your claim of the World Police have nothing to do with NATO.
Likewise, the US clearly misuses NATO for its own interests, which have nothing to do with the interests of its partners. In short, trust in the US as a partner and ally is largely badly damaged!

I strongly support a common European force without involving the US and at the same time dissolving NATO. Whoever wants to join in Europe and who does not ... or who you want to be part of, is another question! Personally, I prefer the old axis of the founding members of the EU and every other country should be considered carefully!

 

Broomsticks with tactical white handkerchiefs attached!

 

Broomsticks with "tactical" white handkerchiefs attached!