What's happening with the European Union? Why is it swallowing up swathes of countries at different levels of social and economic development?
It occurred to me that some of those driving the EU project may be working with the aim of developing a power block to rival the US - now that the US dominates a unipolar world.*
So. The thought for today: on the basis of world events of the past few years, is the European Union a more ethical power block than the US?
If the answer is yes, then a corollary: is it so only because it can afford to be, as a relatively junior entity?
*Of course, it won't be a unipolar world for long. Even without the EU, China and India are rapidly emerging forces that will play major roles on the world stage within the next few decades.
2 comments:
This post is timely. What with terrific leaps of science and tech each nation is trying to cash in on and be viable. Age old balance of power of nations on mutual cultural sympathies has to be thought in a broader terms: megabucks. Remember the time Bush tried to impose 15% duty on steel coming from EU? If EU didn't retaliate Bush would have got away with it. The USA had to think of its fruit and meat products. What EU imposed would affect the fruit growers in Florida for example. In my opinion narrow national identity has no longer any place in a future world. Australia will have to follow suit.
benny
Benny, you're braver than me to predict how nations will interact in the future.
The best I can say is that, for all its faults, the EU is the most sophisticated political structure in the world, by the simple fact that it has united erstwhile sparring partners more successfully than the United Nations.
(that's not to say that its internal political processes are a paragon, just that it presents a largely united external face and has largely eliminated borders.)
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