reminder that the world did not enjoy it the last time Europeans were super powerful
Yeah, they all hated each other and their internal beer hall brawl spilled out over the borders. It wasn’t that Europe was any kind of united force. Maybe it’s time. We’re fucked in the US, now.
Though I gotta admit it’s ironic AF that the Allies set up Germany with a far better constitution/Grundgesezt and government framework than our own Constitution which ended up essentially frozen because politics have gotten so bad that opening it up would have probably destroyed whatever good remained in it thanks to talibangelicals and corporate money.
I think they were talking about colonialism, not WW2
Ah, yeah that was a bad time for the rest of the world too.
But Europeans loved it
Hi Americans!
Not even most Europeans.
Europe is not the Germans.
This time you’ll get the Vikings, the Romans, the Conquistadors, the Spartans and the people who ruled the world by the cunning use of flags all teamed together.
Europe is not the Germans.
The English ran laps around the Germans in terms of human attrocity for centuries.
The French weren’t far behind.
Hey, don’t forget Belgium. They didn’t have much, but it’s quality over quantity!
The British imperialists genocided more people throughout their history than the Germans. Just that the Brits took their time with it. The French, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch and Italians also have many million skeletons in their closet and the French massacred millions of people trying to gain independence after World War 2.
If you go to any place in the world outside of Europe there is a good chance that Europeans committed a massacre there to steal land and resources at some point in the past few hundred years.
But not now, now for the most part they’re all democratic countries.
You hang on to the past so hard and you get Gaza, India Pakistan war, the Middle East etc.
A country being democratic for some people has absolutely no indication of whether it is an imperialist threat to other countries.
Do you think the countries being invaded by the US or having their legitimate governments overthrown and fascist puppets installed care about the US being democratic on the inside? Do you think Pakistan is less threatened by India because it is a democratic country? Do you think the Serbian massacres in Bosnia were acceptable and the Kosovarians were welcoming the Serbian invaders because Serbia became democratic a few years earlier?
Also the Middle East like many post colonial areas in Africa are unstable precisely because the French and British democracies designed artificial countries in a way that will cause tensions by separating people such as the Kurdish people into many states and throwing together different people into single states. Continued military “interventions”, arming groups in proxy wars and other meddling certainly doesn’t help either. Take Libya for instance where France is helping the Haftar regime to continue waging war against the internationally recognized government alongside Russia, Wagner, the UAE and Egypt.
Take Libya for instance where France is helping the Haftar regime to continue waging war against the internationally recognized government alongside Russia, Wagner, the UAE and Egypt.
Pretty sure France is not there to be along with Russia and Wagner but because Russia and Wagner is there. Russia’s interest is to grow influence and cause issues to Europe.
You would be surprised. France and the US are having a proxy war in Africa for decades. When it comes to shady business they don’t give a shit who’s who
But who are they fighting in those proxy wars?
France is there to get cheap Libyan oil from a warlord. If that means partnering with Wagner they are fine doing so.
If France was interested in challenging Russian influence they would support the internationally recognized government and help its fight against Haftar. You know, like how limiting Russian influence in Ukraine is done by helping Ukraine, not by helping Russia allied separatists in Luchansk.
France is there to get cheap Libyan oil from a warlord.
I will need more convincing on that. But I do see that France’s involment does have pretty bad optics - and maybe reasons. But because France is not the only one there, it sure isn’t something black and white.
And I wouldn’t draw comparisons to Ukraine as the Libya has unfortunately have had so much internal instability that is not comparable - though one could say something Euromaiden and the aftermath of it but that is still order of magnitudes different starting point.
So many good points in one post. People have to get off their high horse on democracy. My goto is every US president since WW2 is a war criminal. Do you think the people suffering war crimes care about democracy? It would be laughable if it wasnt infuriating.
Just to bolster your argument on the Middle East all anyone has to do is look at Sykes Picot. The whole middle east is just some brit in an office drawing squiggly lines, so that the west can extract as many resources from them as possible.
Its like people forgot the ottoman empire even existed and instead just get real racist with lines like “prone to war” “stuck in the past”. Bro the US is still creating nation states in the Arab world. Of course they are going to go to war, the west is standing on their neck.
.
deleted by creator
Eh, power vacuums don’t last. You’re basically just asking for a Somalia situation where there’s n small powers continuously at war.
deleted by creator
World federation, superpowers, small powers. As far as I can tell it’s just a question of how big the blocs are. I don’t see how you move laterally to continuum that in any lasting way; humans are going to act like humans.
A unified world power, for instance through a competent UN that is achieved through diplomacy sound pretty okay.
deleted by creator
I didn’t excuse anything. We’re shit. But, it’s the way things are.
Although, come to think of it, we’d probably just elect a world government if we weren’t shit anyway. Just to coordinate things as we’re being understanding and reasonable with each other.
In my uninformed understanding of humans and their history, unifications happen only in the face of crises and threats (and far from all the time, clearly). Maybe–hopefully–the world eventually makes common cause in order to stabilise the world as things spiral out of control in a few decades, but right now our species appears more concerned about whom gets to dictate what and how humans should live and behave like.
Europe is the biggest provider of independence days !
Well, not the EU after the UK left. Spain and France tried but they were up against WASPs and that’s simply not a fair contest of evil.
Power corrupts. No single country should be a global superpower
That’s fine, Europe is several countries.
So was the US. Technically the use of the word “state” implies it still is. What is the line between a bunch of states working together and them no longer being a bunch of separate countries?
You cannot compare the US’ setup to Europe’s. One is a nation that is still incredibly young and was sliced up like a cake for several territories that still are relatively homogenous in culture.
The other is a continent consisting of countries with very diverse cultures and thousands of years of history, who made a union to collaborate on certain political issues.
The two are not even close to being the same. Not even close.
I did not compare them. I asked where the line is between a bunch of countries working together in a union and that union being a new larger country.
The line is when all the countries agree to become one big country. Which will never happen in Europe. The US is different as it never got to be a bunch of individual countries with centuries long history (if we ignore the native americans’ old territories) before becoming the US. That development happened simultaneously while the country and its rules were formed. The concept of country was already well known at the time too, while Europe, like most of the world, figured that shit out slowly and over centuries.
This is why Europe will never become one country. The history is too ancient and the cultures run too deep. There is no way that I as a Dane would agree to become a citizen of United Europe where I lose my identity and history as a Dane and now have to build some new identity with other Europeans. We have many things in common, but we are not the same. The Soviet Union already experimented with this stuff, and it didn’t work out because the countries it forced to become part of a unified nation with the same identity, didn’t agree to it. It was forced and it was damaging to these countries’ identities.
I do not know a single European who would want to become one country and none of us would agree that the European Union’s setup is in any way similar to the US. It is not the same.
There is no way that I as a Dane would agree to become a citizen of United Europe where I lose my identity and history as a Dane and now have to build some new identity with other Europeans. We have many things in common, but we are not the same. […] It was forced and it was damaging to these countries’ identities.
This is an interesting line of arguments that parallels much of the rhetoric that came out of many British during Brexit. They felt the EU had started to dissolve their identity and was forcing policy that was bad for them that they had no representation in. Whether or not they were correct, or making those arguments in good faith, it once again points back to the line being quite blurry
I made a similar line of questioning recently in the anarchy Lemmy, after disagreeing to how anarchists usually approach why community is better than government. “when is a community so large it is no longer a community and it is a state” I think your focus on cultural identity is interesting given they use the same line of arguments to define community vs government. I also wonder if that line of thinking is dangerously close to the kind of thinking that creates isolationism and xenophobia.
Respectfully, I disagree with your reasoning. At no point have I said European countries want nothing to do with one another, just that we want to keep our own identity and sovereignty.
You are making a bunch of assumptions while completely ignoring the fact that European countries have the EU.
We are not isolationist nor are we xenophobic. We just want to keep our countries as they are.
It’s kinda like accusing someone of being anti apartment complex if they say no to move out of their family home that they have lived in for generations, and get an apartment in the complex instead. “Oh, maybe you’re racist because there might be people of different ethnicities in the complex? Or maybe you just hate having neighbours and want to isolate yourself from everybody in your silly little house?”
Or maybe I just have a greater emotional attachment to the house that was built by my great grandfather and I feel more at home in the house I have upkept and renovated myself than some apartment complex where every apartment has the same layout and there are rules as to how much I can modify mine.
Doesn’t mean that apartment complexes are a bad thing. Not at all. But if you already have a house with a garden that is yours and that you have a history with, why on earth would you want to give that up for an apartment in a complex that you don’t have any attachment to?
The only reason something like the US has worked out is because people willingly agreed to the setup and willingly left their old countries to build up something new.
Had the native Americans had the means to defend their lands, then I’m sure there would have been no US and instead a continent with old, independent countries that would hold on to their own traditions and cultures. There may have been a union similar to the EU, but that is not the same as them agreeing to become one big country. That is just collaboration and trying to have some agreements in place that ensures peace and trade between nations. The exact opposite of isolationism and xenophobia.
It’s a thin line indeed. Aren’t the countries in the UK closer to being actual countries than the US states?
Not really. All American States have the same level of inherent sovereignty. There are also a lot of federal programs that rely the individual states performing the work. States also maintain their own militaries under partial or complete state control.
In contrast, UK country sovereignty is a mixed bag, with the largest country in the UK without any devolved powers.
The US generally views American state sovereignty more in line with EU country sovereignty.
The only way to enforce that, is to be a global superpower
On the contrary, periods of imperial hegemony have been some of the more stable and peaceful episodes of human history. One of them is ending right now.
Yeah. People like to complain about American warmongering, but the period between World Wars I and II was orders of magnitude more deadly.
The stability isn’t much consolation to the slaves who die under empires
That’s fair. But history is an uninterrupted succession of empires. Good ones, bad ones, middling ones. It’s the human condition. The USA was an empire founded by enlightenment libertarians, so I’d say there’s a fair chance we’re going to look back on it fondly. Similarly, the EU, if ever it could pull itself together, has the potential to be as good an empire as we’ll ever get. IMO.
The USA was founded by slave owners and for a good chunk of its history anyone other than white male landowners were second-class citizens (and de facto still are). There are no good empires.
The human condition is malleable. A better world is possible. Indeed, sometimes it peaks out from the raging waters. Paradises built in hell, like Barcelona during the Civil War, prosper for a time and flounder. To believe that we cannot make something beautiful is to lack imagination.
Anybody who knows the actual history and current reality of european imperialism will not want this at all.
Only here to say that this picture REALLY makes the scandanavian countries look like a droopy dick n balls.
Why is the forsaken UK still on the map ?
Not only EU beurocrats are slow to process informations 😖
Interesting. Are those poll results sampled amongst the general population, or something more specific like from the parliament ?
Still too close. The mistake of Brexit was taking such an important decision based on a slim majority, you need at least an absolute majority, 66%.
Our island is full of idiots but I swear we can make this up to you
France, Germany and Italy are giving it a good go too. I think our position on Ukraine has made the UK a lot of friends in Europe. That and voting out the Tories.
The continent is full of idiots too. Their are no reasons for us to feel superior about this on this side of the pond.
'cause we know this relationship has its ups and downs but isn’t over yet
Right, like the UK is a sibling that you hated growing up, but as adults it’s not so bad and you know you’re going to be friends again once they go through their binge drinking phase.
Switzerland and Liechtenstein are also not member states, and Estonia’s islands are not shown.
They bothered to remove the non-EU Balkan states and Norway, but filled up Switzerland. This map is just terrible.
Scotland has islands on this map, but in a really weird way: all of the five biggest ones are missing, and I’m 95% sure that one of the two depicted is actually a peninsula that the map has chopped off from the mainland
Alternatively we can just assume Norway took the islands back
Europa is too pure and regulated to be hegemony.
Do you think the US became a superpower by being kind and egalitarian and taking it slow? Nah, they came out the gate swinging, uppercut to Hiroshima and a roundhouse to Nagasaki, and it only got worse from there. They watched the old European powers withering under the weight of colonialism and insurrection in Indochina and southeast Asia and said “I’ll have a piece of that”.
You don’t become Hegemon by standardizing power grids and phasing out coal. You become Hegemon by selling your soul to the MIC, spinning up black site torture rooms in countries most people don’t even know the names of, funnelling guns and drugs to everyone who will take them, and bringing a fucking bandolier of hand grenades to every knife fight.
Maybe Europe doesn’t need to be a hegemony. Maybe instead Europe should just be a self-reliant world power, capable of standing up for itself against other large powers like the US, China, and Russia.
capable of standing up for itself against other large powers like the US, China, and Russia.
To do that, it needs to consolidate power in some way, a way to compile all resources of united/allied countries and leverage them against other powers. IE: they would need to be hegemonic in the exercises of power necessary to maintain control.
People are repulsed by the word “hegemony” because it’s scary and often used to describe authoritarians, but we literally need to get to a single-world-government as soon as possible to secure our survival as a species. The problem is right now if we set that up, the cretins of the world would vote the very worst people to lead that world-government because the very worst people keep shoving propaganda up the asses of our most stupid people and we keep letting them.
Fair enough. I just googled the meaning of “hegemony” and it said “leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others”. So what I mean is that Europe doesn’t necessarily need to be dominant in the world, but it should be able to stand up for itself.
we literally need to get to a single-world-government as soon as possible to secure our survival as a species
I’ve thought about that a little bit. Perhaps such a government could help resolve disputes. It could perhaps prevent terrible wars like those in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. Maybe a single world government will happen at some point, in the distant future.
I must say that I am prepared to die to defend the free people of Europe. It is maybe one of the last causes truly worth fighting for
If even quarter of people feel like me then we cannot be beat, we cannot be defeated. We will meet there on the Vistula river to stand against the darkness
A duty is more fitting word. We ought to protect things that are rare and precious. If everyone simply runs away before aggressor then everything is lost for certain. An orc won’t stop just because you go on your knees and hope they will have mercy. They are not people, they are orcs.
I won’t judge those that won’t be there if the time comes because I understand them perfectly. However, if we all run there will be no one to stop the enemy from destroying our remarkable, precious Europe.
If we just give it up without a fight then we would betray everything we believe in.This isn’t just about land and borders. It is fight for European values against the darkness of Russia. A struggle so our idea of the just, equal and diverse society prevails. We must protect this idea at all costs.
Anyone who is enjoying the accepting queer community and tolerance of Europe should consider to be there if the time comes. This is what we will fight for and die for if needed.
Not because some politician tells us to do it but because there is no other place in the world where people truly can be themselves with dignity and without fear. There is nowhere to run, this is the first and maybe the last place where you can be truly free.
Economically and culturally, Europe is already a superpower. Militarily it isn’t, and maybe that’s not a terrible thing. Politically, it just seems to have a bias for moving slowly and by consensus, although it responded quickly to COVID and the assault on Ukraine, so it can do what’s needed?
The top US export is oil.
If you want to do something, wean yourself off oil. Big push for solar, wind, and anything else that doesn’t rely on digging up bits of dinosaurs.
Electric vehicles, public transport, bikes, walking.
And as an added bonus, the world gets a little cleaner. Might be important, you know.
This is what I always have to bring up when people go “bUt cHInA!”. So what? Energy independence is valuable and should be pushed for.
deleted by creator
In 2022, renewable energy sources contributed 31% of the electricity used in Texas. Fucking Texas.
Get those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
Don’t worry Texas is going to fix that. They’re getting ready to pass a bunch of laws that limit renewable energy usage in Texas.
They’ve been making a lot of threats. But there’s a ton of money in renewables, too. It’s a hard lift
It’s way more than just threats. They’re already passing legislation.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/04/16/texas-senate-passes-anti-solar-wind-bill/
deleted by creator
One of the ironies of the Texas electricity grid - ERCOT - is how it accidentally created huge incentives for new solar and wind energy by trying to prop up the natural gas markets.
ERCOT operates via an auction system, wherein the electricity carriers put in bids for GWhs and producers meet those bids. When demand is low, electricity is very cheap - $10-25 MWh. But it rise rapidly during a heat wave, peaking at $3000 MWh in some instances. Gas plants don’t have any incentive to sell onto the grid at this point, so they turn themselves off until the price rises. But when a bunch of gas plants operate as a cartel, they can coordinate when they release electricity and drive up the price.
The problem is that the auction price is set on the last GWh sold but it applies to the entire sale of energy for the auction cycle. So if you’re selling continuously across the day, you can accidentally trip into a ahem windfall when gas producers surge the price.
Because green producers can’t really control how much they put out onto the grid, they’re at the mercy of the market. But if they know, in advance, that the gas companies are going to fuck with things, they can anticipate enormous profits during these strategic moments. And because wind/solar don’t need a supply chain like gas does, you can just keep building and building and building wherever you find opportune spots for harvesting (which Texas has in spades).
So the gas companies inadvertently kicked off a green energy boom by their periodic price spike scheme.
deleted by creator
Yo when tf did Switzerland join?
Same year that UK rejoined lmao.
deleted by creator
I recognise you’re just expressing frustration towards current affairs – a frustration I often share, but:
Decisions require a mandate and the reason the EU has problems making decisions about some things is that it wasn’t designed to address them in the first place.
It’s simply a slightly over-grown trading union with occasional federalist aspirations.
Responding to tariffs - fast and coordinated.
Responding to external military threats - scattered and complicated.
Tap for spoiler
As a sidenote: According to John Bolton Trump, at least during his first term, was completely oblivious to how the European Union worked and was somehow also under the impression that Juncker, then president of the European Commission, got to decide the NATO budget. Crazy, right?
That’s why the EU’s response to defense was based on financial instruments.
To become a “superpower” and/or make quick decisions regarding e.g. military threats, it would need to actually become a state-like entity and begin building several bureaucratic arms it currently lacks which doesn’t usually happen overnight. Not to mention establishing actual policies.
Before we get to that stage though, a consensus between member states needs to be formed and all manner of legal documents drafted. Centralising power means less independence for member states which is usually a hard sell. It would likely also require member states to alter their constitutions which could be an incredibly slow process even without resistance from all the respective governments. Not to mention the fact that a popular vote in all member states might be a good idea democracy-wise.
I’m not saying necessarily it’s something we shouldn’t pursue and hey, under extraordinary circumstances even bureaucracy can move quickly but it is a huge deal and moving quickly could also mean skirting around established democratic principles. (Actually iirc European bureaucracy is generally quite efficient as is –contrary to popular belief)
I guess I wrote this in the hopes of fighting disillusionment even though it’s not the core message here. We’ll do what we have to and I’m positive we’ll get to wherever we need to be in order to survive and thrive in this century. It will require patience, nerve and active participation from all of us though.
Last thing I want us to become is like the folks over in the States claiming it’s all already over. (A minority, I hope)
Sorry for the wall of text, I guess I had some stuff pent up.
One thing I remember from the Brexit “debate” was that many viewed the prospect of the EU having an army as a terrible thing that couldn’t be allowed.
“It’s the Germans wanting to re-militarize under a different flag”
Fast-forward 6 years and Russia invaded Ukraine and the mood has certainly shifted on that one.
“Come on Germany. Get those factories going.”
The inefficiency of democracy is not a flaw, it’s a fundamental feature
I would say it is more of a tradeoff. Being able to quickly make decisions is nice. But I rather have a strong and democratic parliament than a president as powerful as a medieval monarch.
Double-edged sword, as it were.
True.
Maybe they need to appoint someone to be in charge, who can make decisions and really get things done.
Cant tell if youre being sarcastic or not
Always
I like a democratic parliament more. Otherwise we may have a Trump in Europe. I don’t want a singe person as powerful as a medieval monarch to decide over about half a billion people.
Otherwise we may have a Trump in Europe.
You have at least two, and arguably more, right now. Historically you’ve had some real fucking doozies too, people that make Trump look like a school child.
I don’t want a singe person as powerful as a medieval monarch to decide over about half a billion people.
That’s what you’ll get eventually.
deleted by creator
It’s hard to get them to agree on anything let alone actually coordinate real world actions together. You are going to be waiting a long time.
It already is.
When will humanity mature? I mean really?
They’re working on it
