Brexit.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Chin Rey]

it's a lot easier to decide an organisation is dysfunctional and you want to leave it than it is to decide what you actually want to put in its place.

I think that's the problem of the world today in a nutshell: People defining themselves by what they are against rather than by what they are for.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

We need to get rid of stupid decision making, like some EU countries bought JSF jet fighters in the USA (including my country), while excellent fighter planes where available in the EU.

Well we could all buy military hardware from France. France still produces all major military weapons on their own, so that they are not dependent on any foreign country! This includes jet fighters, tanks, submarines, ships, rpgs, firearms and so on.

The problem with the US Army is: it is the best funded army on the planet, and probably the most powerful as well. But as an organization in terms of money spending it is not very efficient. And it really has the bad tendency nowadays to build totally overengineered Death Stars like the F35 instead of reasonable priced weapons which can be mass produced cheaply enough.

 

[Chin Rey]

France still produces all major military weapons on their own, so that they are not dependent on any foreign country!

So does Sweden.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

You've still got to decide what sort of role you want for a non-NATO EU military alliance, though, before you start deciding what to buy and where.

I mean, presumably everyone's military aircraft procurement policy will be affected by the number and nature of aircraft carriers available from which to fly, so does losing access to the US' large fleet of carriers (and the UK's two) may mean that the EU (or member states?) would need to commission some more. Or it might be that people will decide that, without the NATO alliance, the EU no longer needs to be able to mount operations in far-off places and doesn't now need so large a fleet, thus making redundant some of the French and Spanish carriers currently in service.

I have no idea, but I'd have thought any discussion about how to replace NATO has to start with a discussion of what the future role of the European military should be, what kind of equipment the various service branches will need to fulfil it, how much this is all going to cost, and how it is to be paid for.

First decide what you need and want to spend, I would have thought, before deciding where to buy it.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Michel Barnier: why is the EU’s former Brexit chief negotiator sounding like a Eurosceptic?

Tough controls on immigration, a restricted role for European courts, a new politics of patriotism: why is the EU’s former Brexit chief negotiator, now running for the French presidency, sounding more and more like a Eurosceptic?

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

If Barnier sounds testy, it may be because he has endured a difficult month. At a hustings in the southern city of Nimes, he expounded on what the lessons of Brexit might be, delivering a series of proposals that were greeted with disbelief by former colleagues in Brussels. The restoration of sovereign powers to the French state was the theme. In certain areas, he said, France should no longer be subject to the rulings of the European court of justice or the European court of human rights. French influence in Europe needed to be reasserted, in the face of an unacceptable level of German domination. Perhaps most strikingly, he would hold a referendum on migration policy and aim to introduce a moratorium on all immigration, including family reunions, from outside the EU. A “constitutional shield” would be put in place to allow France to develop its own non-EU immigration policy without interference from the European courts. It all sounded, well, pretty Eurosceptic.

 

[Grey Mars]

Speaking as a citizen of the United States, I'm perfectly happy to shift some of the military woes onto the EU. It will be pretty expensive for you guys to start, but once you've caught up to the hardware needs I suspect you can keep it running cheaper if you keep on top of the arms makers. 500 billion or so can be split up among the member countries while we downshift our contribution to a more EU level. Your kids can replace a lot of our kids in various war torn hell holes. The world will adapt, and eventually the traditional middle east greeting will change to "Death to the EU!"

And we... We might actually get health care and social support programs. Everyone wins!

I know it sounds rather sarcastic, but absolutely am I saying bring on the EU war machine. We're tired. I don't think you're going to have quite as much fun as a military superpower as you think you will, but who knows. Act now, and we'll throw in the ability to exterminate all life on the planet a few hundred times over!

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Speaking as a citizen of the United States, I'm perfectly happy to shift some of the military woes onto the EU. It will be pretty expensive for you guys to start, but once you've caught up to the hardware needs I suspect you can keep it running cheaper if you keep on top of the arms makers. 500 billion or so can be split up among the member countries while we downshift our contribution to a more EU level. Your kids can replace a lot of our kids in various war torn hell holes. The world will adapt, and eventually the traditional middle east greeting will change to "Death to the EU!"

And we... We might actually get health care and social support programs. Everyone wins!

I know it sounds rather sarcastic, but absolutely am I saying bring on the EU war machine. We're tired. I don't think you're going to have quite as much fun as a military superpower as you think you will, but who knows. Act now, and we'll throw in the ability to exterminate all life on the planet a few hundred times over!

More to the point, though, there are some parts of the world where a European, rather than NATO-led, defence force makes a lot of sense.

I mean, I doubt many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians feel too confident that any US President is going to risk too great a confrontation with Russia, and that's an added concern because of the continued repression and protest movements in Belarus. The Poles are likely to feel rather nervous, too -- much of western Ukraine was, within living memory, part of Poland, and Russia and Poland have a history, to say the least.

Obviously no one's suggesting that such a European defence union or force could take on Russia, but I can see how limited peacekeeping interventions when Russia's proxy militias are at work would be lot less provocative if it wasn't a superpower vs superpower issue.

However, "nice to have" doesn't always mean "possible to achieve in practice anytime soon."

 

[Sid]

Russia will not invade the EU. Atomic bombs will fly in that case from both sides and that's it then.

Besides: Russia and the EU know exactly from each other what they can and can't do.
And there is no longer a communist idea about bringing a new order to the world for years already. There is no invasion of the EU foreseen in the Kremlin.

If the EU would start their own army and if I had a say, they should concentrate on the principle that if you stand on our doormat uninvited, you will feel the pain in your own living room and kitchen immediately. We never attack first but when attacked we destroy your place severely first and talk later.

And China handles things smarter than the former USSR. They spread their influence by giving aid and support to African countries that the Western world was never really interested in and only threw their bread crumbs at if looking the other way was not longer an option.
I only see a possible economic threat in the next decades, no military one.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Russia will not invade the EU. Atomic bombs will fly in that case from both sides and that's it then.

Besides: Russia and the EU know exactly from each other what they can and can't do.
And there is no longer a communist idea about bringing a new order to the world for years already. There is no invasion of the EU foreseen in the Kremlin.

If the EU would start their own army and if I had a say, they should concentrate on the principle that if you stand on our doormat uninvited, you will feel the pain in your own living room and kitchen immediately. We never attack first but when attacked we destroy your place severely first and talk later.

And China handles things smarter than the former USSR. They spread their influence by giving aid and support to African countries that the Western world was never really interested in and only threw their bread crumbs at if looking the other way was not longer an option.
I only see a possible economic threat in the next decades, no military one.

I'm sure Russia won't invade the EU.

However, having seen what's happened in Russia's "near abroad," to use their phrase, in Ukraine and Crimea over the last decade, and how Russia uses separatist militias for (intentionally implausible) deniability, I would, I think, be feeling rather anxious by now if I lived in any of the Baltic republics, and probably if I lived in eastern Poland, too, about what separatist militias might get up with Moscow's backing.

Russia doesn't want to invade the EU, certainly (it could probably achieve quite a bit simply by turning the gas off) but they would quite like bits of the EU back, as they see it, I think, since in their view Ukraine has always been part of Russia and so, too, are the Baltics.

I don't say it's likely to happen, but if it did, I think an EU force rather than a NATO one might be better placed to help the local military keep the militias under control.

 

[WolfEyes]

I'm glad you two are so confidant that Putin (or his successor, if there ever is one) won't ever invade another country/countries. I've had to live with that fear ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I'm glad you two are so confidant that Putin (or his successor, if there ever is one) won't ever invade another country/countries. I've had to live with that fear ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I am not at all confident Putin or his successor won't ever invade another country or countries.

I am confident they won't launch a military attack on Europe as a whole, but many people in Europe -- including me -- have been pretty sure ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union that, in the event they ever did Russia to re-annex Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, many US presidents, regardless of their country's NATO commitments, would seek to dismiss the matter as "a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing" (as the then British PM, Neville Chamberlain, described Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia) in which they didn't want to get involved.

Even the UK has never really regarded the US as a reliable ally unless the US's own interests are at stake, and we're among the US's biggest fans in western Europe.

 

[Sid]

Speaking as a citizen of the United States, I'm perfectly happy to shift some of the military woes onto the EU. It will be pretty expensive for you guys to start, but once you've caught up to the hardware needs I suspect you can keep it running cheaper if you keep on top of the arms makers. 500 billion or so can be split up among the member countries while we downshift our contribution to a more EU level. Your kids can replace a lot of our kids in various war torn hell holes. The world will adapt, and eventually the traditional middle east greeting will change to "Death to the EU!"

And we... We might actually get health care and social support programs. Everyone wins!

I know it sounds rather sarcastic, but absolutely am I saying bring on the EU war machine. We're tired. I don't think you're going to have quite as much fun as a military superpower as you think you will, but who knows. Act now, and we'll throw in the ability to exterminate all life on the planet a few hundred times over!

It is not so that the EU members don't have an army. But each member state has his own one.
That makes it partly inefficient because we have that way too much of some elements and maybe too little of others. And the overhead is enormous that way compared to one united army. We don't need a gazillion tanks any longer. Air to ground wins easily from them. So these armies have to unite IMHO, and thought over and modernized.
I think we should concentrate on air to ground (including all kinds of missiles) and flexible quick intervention teams with combat helicopters, light tanks, jet fighters and whatever is needed to fight terrorists and militias (Innula has some good points in her posts above).

The fact that the USA is still present in the EU is not really because we can't defend ourselves without the USA, but because the USA wants to be present.
Just like the USA wants to be present in all parts of the world with distribution points and military bases.
We don't have problems with that, because friends.
But what if friends start to betray us, as now seems to be the case (even with a Democratic president)?
That is my main pet peeve , not having no army. We have IMHO even partly too much and partly of the wrong kind.

And the fear for Russia invading is more an image that the military promotes as a bogyman to get higher funding, than a real threat and that fear is much stronger indoctrinated\ kept alive in the USA than in the EU.

The American defense budget is not so astronomically high because they need to defend Europe, but because the USA wants troops and equipment everywhere where they can have strategical use.
Because the USA thinks they need to be the bullies the police of the world and have the right to invade whenever it suits their goals.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The American defense budget is not so astronomically high because they need to defend Europe, but because the USA wants troops and equipment everywhere where they can have strategical use.

And also, I think, because massive public expenditure on further education, health, housing and welfare are patriotic rather than socialism when applied to the forces, and because massive public support for particular industries and job creation programmes are similarly patriotic rather than socialistic when it can be presented as vital defence spending.

 

[Sid]

I'm glad you two are so confidant that Putin (or his successor, if there ever is one) won't ever invade another country/countries. I've had to live with that fear ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That the EU let central European countries become part of the EU so quickly is not because of economical reasons, but pure strategical against possible future annexations. Russia is not 100% reliable (like with the annexation of the Crimea) but invading the EU, the UK or the USA would be biting off far more than they ever can chew.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Turkey is not, of course, a member of the EU, while Greece is, but both are members of NATO. I assume the decision is, at least in part, France's response to the AUKUS deal:

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I considered dropping this in "Food" but decided it should go here because it illustrates, to my mind, a point I think those of us who supported Remain didn't really get, or a lot of us didn't.

The invisible migrant workers propping up Ireland’s €4bn meat industry

There has been a chronic mistreatment of workers in the country’s meat industry, according to unions

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

That is, while I am a great supporter of freedom of movement and am generally opposed to immigration controls -- let people live and work where they want to, bearing in mind that people tend not to want to relocate between countries in any great numbers, and deal with the consequences -- I'm very aware that, if this isn't combined with strong local legislation to protect the rights and social benefits available to everyone, you end up with people trying to explain the benefits of the ERASMUS programme to people are not particularly interested in university study anyway and who probably rather see the money spent on local schools, while not seeing the opportunity for a few thousand students a year to study elsewhere in the EU, while doubtless very fulfilling and beneficial for the students, as in any way counterbalancing the disadvantage of competing with desperately poor itinerant workers for jobs at the local Amazon fulfilment centre or Sports Direct warehouse.

If asked, I'm pretty sure people would be happy if their children stood a better chance of attending a decent university anywhere, and probably feel their children's life chances would be far more greatly improved by the provision of better equipped schools with smaller class sizes now than by the opportunity to study at the University of Utrecht or Charles University in Prague or wherever.

The disruptions caused to normal distribution and working patterns by Covid have exposed, it seems to me, should help us recognise that, at some level, they depend on the insight of employers in certain industries (meat packing clearly being one of them) that, no matter how poor the pay and conditions on offer, some people will accept them while they try to find something better.

Obviously, though, they're not going to want to do those jobs longer than they need to, so you expect a high turnover of staff, but that's not too great an inconvenience so long as you have a plentiful supply of new and desperate workers to replace the ones who leave for better jobs. Disrupt the supply of replacement workers, as both Covid and Brexit have done, and you very quickly have the sort of supply chain difficulties we have in the UK, but which I think people are seeing all over Europe, just as they're seeing problems with the hospitality industry.

In short, supply chain difficulties and shortages remind us, yet again, that Freedom of Movement, while undoubtedly a good in itself, has been used to underpin a system that delivers huge economic benefits to the many (the ability to buy a wide variety of inexpensive goods) at the cost of making a proportion of the workforce accept pay and conditions they don't (and we wouldn't) consider in any way acceptable long-term.

ETA

‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

Unions are calling for a Europe-wide ban on the use of subcontracted workers, kept on lower pay and conditions

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

Every inch of Margot’s body hurt from the unrelenting work. Her hands bled from blisters that burst as she repeatedly hauled carcasses, but she would wait until she got home to sterilise her wounds with ammonia. “If you didn’t do your job well, you’d be pushed – they didn’t care if your hands were full of blood,” she says.

This wasn’t the life Margot* imagined when she left her job in a clothes factory near her home village in Romania in search of better prospects for her young family in western Europe. She thought labour conditions in the Netherlands – where she worked for three years in a meat factory – would be much more favourable than in her home country. “I didn’t expect it to be so awful.”

Life as a meat worker can be brutally hard. But Margot soon realised there were two types of workers: employees, who she says were mainly Dutch; and precarious workers, mostly migrants like herself, who had to work harder and faster but earned less. “The ones hired directly by the company have more rights, get more relaxed work, stability and hours,” she says.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Speaking as a citizen of the United States, I'm perfectly happy to shift some of the military woes onto the EU. It will be pretty expensive for you guys to start, but once you've caught up to the hardware needs I suspect you can keep it running cheaper if you keep on top of the arms makers. 500 billion or so can be split up among the member countries while we downshift our contribution to a more EU level. Your kids can replace a lot of our kids in various war torn hell holes.

You forgot one important piece: war torn hell holes, which were mostly created by the USA upfront.

And no, it's not our duty to clean up the mess your country made in the past few decades all around the globe. But that's exactly what your country right now is trying to do, outsourcing the military costs for that.

 

[Grey Mars]

You forgot one important piece: war torn hell holes, which were mostly created by the USA upfront.

And no, it's not our duty to clean up the mess your country made in the past few decades all around the globe. But that's exactly what your country right now is trying to do, outsourcing the military costs for that.

I do so love the "We can do better than you, but we're not going to" crowd.