[Fubar2Niner]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Poland did not invade Russia, nor did Poland attack Germany first. Still Russia had no problem to annex half of Poland, and Hitler and Stalin were two psychopaths who indeed deserved each other since they were brothers in mind and used the same brutality to secure their grabs on power. Both countries planned to attack the other, the only question was who would get the drop on the other's attack first.

But Russia'S history of brute force to supress its own people as well as trying to expand reaches far beyond the second world war, it reaches centuries back earlier. The whole regime of the Tsars expresses that, the whole communist era, and the Stalinist tyranny anyway. And a majority of Russians seems to like it. Stalin is "in" again, and support for Putin as well as for a tough stance in foreign politics seem to rank high. The collapse of the USSR and the end of Russian reign in eastern Europe still is a sting in the self-understanding of many people. The dreaming of that past "glory" (paid for with economic misery and dictatorship) seems to serve as a drug helping to overlook the difficult economic status Russia is in now. Military pomp as a distraction from the depressing realities of contemporary ordinary life.

Stability, predictability look different.

Originally Posted by Skybird

On Europe and the EU, the term "Europe" to me always implies(d) the plural. There is nothing like "one European identity". There nevwer was, that is a fiction of the elites, an obsession to justify their drive for uniformity with themselves leading the one unified collective from the top. The drive behind European innovation and invention was the need to be innovative, was competition, was survival. The local cultural differences within "Europe", are imense, and can be extremely diverse.

If anything, the Brusselian attempt to force all this diversity under one centralised hood with a continental planned economy and one almost feudal government, has led to enormous distortions, rifts, anger, animosity, even hostility. The Euro Union is a cataclysmic disaster. The EU model after 1990 is a failure. We have reached a state where the EU as we know it know could collapse and turn into a thing of th epast as fast as the collapse of the sovjet Union surprised and overrolled us, and German reunification came upon us and left us breathless due to its pace. The situation has become unpredictable - and everything now seems to be possible, for more years of stagnnation and delcine, to sudden, violent collapse. I expect this phase of uncertainty to last for another decade or so - if things do not blow up earlier. In this time, things will not have a chance to turn for the better, but always will turn for the worse.

I said it before, and I stick to it: so often the cause of peace and living-together would be so much better served if we would not fall to ideologies demanding us to forcing the other and everybody else to be all like one and the same, but if we would accept differences, and leave them as that: being differences.

That is called diversity.

Regarding Europe role on the world stage, either way we simply have to accept that the great times of Europe, the centuries of shine and glory, are over. We must stop claiming it our mission to "Europeanise" the world and gift it with our cultural "enrichments". We have enough to do in our own home, and we hardly can manage the problems we already have in there. Being militarily toothless and even unwilling to defend ourselves, we want to mess with al the world and make it our mission to become the savior for all the evils and lows and sufferings around the globe...?

Good luck with that.

@Sky

These two posts are possibly the most profound and IMHO unpredujiced I have read.

In regard to the Russian stance, we all know (hopefully) the diabolical history re Hitlaer and Stalin. One was no better than the other. Stalin just bleated harder and his crimes were discovered later.

Regarding your post about europe and the EU. You summed it up completely.

A great post, thank you

Fubar