Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
Yeah, but this is Europe, the whole of Europe...working together. I'd like to see it happen, but I won't believe in the ability of it happening until it actually happens.
Well, I don't know about the rest of the EU, but we've always had the ability to elect members of the European Parliament.
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I mean look at the modern nation states of Germany and France, they were assembled from component states that had a very complex history.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Every chain, even the longest one, is only as strong as its weakest link. I do not buy the idea of that weak members increase the strength of the community they join. They weaken it.
Hitler learned that the hard way with Italy. The German war was serioulsy hampered by the need to move resources from areas where German military was needed, to places where Mussolini had failed.
Diplomatic stage acts and supercomplex, superclever, super wellmeaning intentions only work as long as it is still the time of playing diplomacy. No treaty paper saves you from injury once they start sending bullets at where your heart is. That is what political appeasers refuse to understand: the very convincing power of naked, raw physical violence. One should never underestimate the forming power of violence in history. It already was the decisive factor that before they invented the wheel and started to type books. Becasue in the en, it comes down to this simple truth: its easier to bring down, than to build.
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That is true for an alliance of independent nation-states and not for the (partial, regulated) transfer of soverenity to a (democratic) super state authority.
The whole reason behind that process is the inherent inability of modern European nation-states to independently maintain adequate ability to use violence (the problem of mass that I have mentioned earlier). To use your comparison European nation-states are Italies of the modern age at best.