One could argue it already is - mainly on a soft power level. Now that Ursula has chopped the chains off the war chest we can get back the hard power as well. I feel very good about this, it’s rare to feel optimistic about the way your country and union is going…
That is the reason why I gotta just trust that the people running the country and EU know what they are doing.
I am in Finland and I really do trust we are doing what we need to, our defense forces and government is very shush shush regarding defense, every government and defense outlet was adamant that we weren’t joining NATO until the foreign minister and president announced the move. At least in a country of 5 million we are really thinking of each other here. Let’s just hope that is the case for the rest of the EU and the overall union.
Trust? I don’t trust any politician… Here in Portugal we’re almost certainly going for early elections because the government is gonna fail a confidence vote…
Having lived over 2 decades in a couple of countries in Europe (including Portugal, were I hail from), lets just say that Portugal is quite a lot more corrupt than average, sort of half-way between Western Europe and Latin America.
Mind you, that it’s a scandal this kind of funny business (the family of the PM buying almost a million euros of realestate in cash using money undeclared to the political transparency authority) and that the Government is likely to fall for it, is actually a step forward from the Past - in the old days there wasn’t even the obligation for sitting Government politicians and Parliament members to declare their incomes and the sources of it in an open way, so this would have never have come to light.
So this is an actual positive and reflects an improvement in Portugal (though painfully slow as it’s fought every step by the two main parties who pretty much only ever vote together when it’s to stop anti-corruption measures).
Hmmm I wonder about that… What you’re saying about corruption is true, of course, but I wonder to what extent this is really a step forward and not just a nothing-burger from the opposition…
Well, it does seem to be already decided, anyway.
I’m curious; what party do you think will win the early elections? PSD? PS? Something else? I fear that this whole debacle might embolden Chega, which I think would be terrible… Though Chega has had some issues recently, so maybe they won’t benefit from this, I don’t know.
Who are you thinking of voting for? I wonder about Volt.
Sorry about all these questions, I just don’t have a lot of people that I feel too comfortable talking about Portuguese politics with, IRL…
I’m thinking about the trend over time when I talk of improvement, rather than just this one event as especially meaningful - 2 decades ago not a single politician in Portugal had ever been convicted of Corruption but nowadays governments can fall for suspect funny business before anybody is convicted of anything (mind you, it would be an even greater improvement if Justice was swift rather than the incredibly overwhelment and slow-moving thing it is in Portugal).
As for parties, I’m still on the sidelines though a cursory reading of the Volt site does indicate they’re aligned with my principles.
As for Chega, two points:
First from my own experience living in other countries of Europe, that kind of party tends to get stuck at around the 15% of votes and if they ever get power they fail miserably since their entire schtick is to critize others from the sidelines for not doing things perfectly, so when they themselves are in a position where they’re the ones having to do things, they’re seriously bad at it.
They’re not the only Far-Right party in Portugal: we also need to worry about IL, who are a Hard Neoliberal party aping the views of the most rightwing part of the Democrat Party in America (and probably the recipients in Portugal of the money Steve Bannon brough to Europe some years ago “to start far-right parties”) and who even had Privatisation Of Healtcare (i.e. the end of the National Health Service) in their original Electoral Program but took if of when it turned out that was wildly unpopular. The Fascist-style rightwing of Chega would be bad for most people, as would the pro-Oligarchy Democray-undermining ultra neoliberalism of IL.
2 decades ago not a single politician in Portugal had ever been convicted of Corruption but nowadays governments can fall for suspect funny business before anybody is convicted of anything
Fair point…
IL
Yeah, I don’t know much about them… The general idea I had of them was that they were libertarian. Sigh…
IL are Libertarian in the American sense (i.e. against the State, including those whose leadership has been elected by voters - i.e. Democracies - using its powers to regulate Money), and yeah, they’re also morally liberal as part of the package, but their focus is on making sure the Power Of Money is not constrained by the Power Of The State (which in Democracy means the Power Of Voters).
It’s not really about Freedom because in their worldview most people should still be constrained by the Power Of Money, most notably via things like maximum rights for ownership of exclusive resources such as Land - you can’t be Free if you’re born outside the Owner class in a World were all Land has an owner.
Essentially they’re Reaganism (which ultimatelly brought us present day America, which is quite behind the America from when it started in terms of Social Mobility, Equality and even Average Quality Of Life), but even harder that it was.
Being able to defend your territory does not make you a “superpower” being able to step on other peoples territory does. The EU needs to build up good defensive capabilities, but it should refrain from offensive capabilities to project power like the US or Russia. Instead we need to focus on improving diplomatic ties with Africa, South America and non-China Asia to become the forerunners of a new Third World.
Okay, but let’s say one of our allies gets regime changed by Russia for aligning with us and not them. Do we help them? If we do, how is that not a proxy war?
BTW my opinion is that there are just proxy wars, like Ukraine.
A proxy war comes from a fundamental power imbalance on each side. The proxy is at the whim of the power behind them. If we have a globally distributed alliance of equals, then the power imbalances will be much less pronounced.
This is also why the EU should be a forerunner, but not a leader of such an alliance. It is crucial that there is no one nation or block “leading” the alliance, also not informally. We see the US being the de facto leader of NATO now risking the entire alliance falling apart and of course making any war in that context subject to being a proxy war.
Okay, but how do we avoid these situations? Let’s say we’re in this big alliance, and Kazakhstan becomes a big trading partner in an effort to rid itself of corruption and Russian influence.
Russia keeps trying to influence politics in Kazakhstan, more and more overtly, and when the Kazakhs elect a government who are fully committed to join our alliance, Russia invades.
Do we (the EU) defend Kazakhstan, which would be a proxy war in your definition, as without us they have no chance of even staying independent so the power imbalance couldn’t be greater?
This is not a hyothetical, but a close parallel of what’s happening in Ukraine by the way.
I’m glad Europe is finally getting it’s act together on trying to defend itself.
But i’m not a fan of the EU itself being too involved - the EU is not democratically representative enough to be getting involved in military stuff. If the EU is going to militarise, then the commission and the president need to be directly elected by the people, and the parliament needs to be given proper power.
Instead we have the continued messy system of horse trading of power between governments based on national interests rather than the overall interests of EU citizens. And also we have Hungary which has slipped into an authoritarian regime, and Poland that has just skirted past descent into a right wing nightmare (it’s not even clear yet if the current centre left government can undo the damage wrought by right wing, nor what will happen in the next election).
Personally I don’t want to see the defence of our continent in the hands of the EU. Either it should stick to running the single market OR it should be a fully democratic superstate. This in-between quasi nation state is undemocratic and constitutionally weak. it has no way of dealing with Hungary, it had no way of dealing with Poland, it would have no way of dealing with France should Le Pen win power.
I’m in the UK; I’d support the EU becoming a full superstate and I’d want my country to rejoin. But I can’t trust what the EU is currently is to achieve that. We’ve all seen in the last year how weak the US constitution really is - it’s enabled an autocrat to take power. The EU is weak too - it can’t be taken over directly by an autocrat which is good, but it’s failed to deal with Putin up until now (Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again in 2022), it’s unable to do anything about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Hungary has already held the EU’s response to Ukraine back, and the Czech republic looks set to elect a pro-Putin populist party to power too.
European defence being dependent on an organisation that is unable to be decisive and is unable to be truly representative is weak. We need decisive and unified decisions in an emergency, not paralysis and not to be held back by outlier nations.
If you want to see why the EU is not the route to go to strengthen defence just look at the calls already to use the supposed defence spending boost to instead shore up healthcare spending. It’s a laudable aim but when the wolf is as the door this is crazy way to divert defence spending.
For the EU to be a super power, it needs to first become an actual superstate. It needs to be the democracy it purports to fight for.
One could argue it already is - mainly on a soft power level. Now that Ursula has chopped the chains off the war chest we can get back the hard power as well. I feel very good about this, it’s rare to feel optimistic about the way your country and union is going…
Yup yup… A little scary though…
That is the reason why I gotta just trust that the people running the country and EU know what they are doing.
I am in Finland and I really do trust we are doing what we need to, our defense forces and government is very shush shush regarding defense, every government and defense outlet was adamant that we weren’t joining NATO until the foreign minister and president announced the move. At least in a country of 5 million we are really thinking of each other here. Let’s just hope that is the case for the rest of the EU and the overall union.
Slava Ukraini
Trust? I don’t trust any politician… Here in Portugal we’re almost certainly going for early elections because the government is gonna fail a confidence vote…
Having lived over 2 decades in a couple of countries in Europe (including Portugal, were I hail from), lets just say that Portugal is quite a lot more corrupt than average, sort of half-way between Western Europe and Latin America.
Mind you, that it’s a scandal this kind of funny business (the family of the PM buying almost a million euros of realestate in cash using money undeclared to the political transparency authority) and that the Government is likely to fall for it, is actually a step forward from the Past - in the old days there wasn’t even the obligation for sitting Government politicians and Parliament members to declare their incomes and the sources of it in an open way, so this would have never have come to light.
So this is an actual positive and reflects an improvement in Portugal (though painfully slow as it’s fought every step by the two main parties who pretty much only ever vote together when it’s to stop anti-corruption measures).
Hmmm I wonder about that… What you’re saying about corruption is true, of course, but I wonder to what extent this is really a step forward and not just a nothing-burger from the opposition…
Well, it does seem to be already decided, anyway.
I’m curious; what party do you think will win the early elections? PSD? PS? Something else? I fear that this whole debacle might embolden Chega, which I think would be terrible… Though Chega has had some issues recently, so maybe they won’t benefit from this, I don’t know.
Who are you thinking of voting for? I wonder about Volt.
Sorry about all these questions, I just don’t have a lot of people that I feel too comfortable talking about Portuguese politics with, IRL…
I’m thinking about the trend over time when I talk of improvement, rather than just this one event as especially meaningful - 2 decades ago not a single politician in Portugal had ever been convicted of Corruption but nowadays governments can fall for suspect funny business before anybody is convicted of anything (mind you, it would be an even greater improvement if Justice was swift rather than the incredibly overwhelment and slow-moving thing it is in Portugal).
As for parties, I’m still on the sidelines though a cursory reading of the Volt site does indicate they’re aligned with my principles.
As for Chega, two points:
Fair point…
Yeah, I don’t know much about them… The general idea I had of them was that they were libertarian. Sigh…
IL are Libertarian in the American sense (i.e. against the State, including those whose leadership has been elected by voters - i.e. Democracies - using its powers to regulate Money), and yeah, they’re also morally liberal as part of the package, but their focus is on making sure the Power Of Money is not constrained by the Power Of The State (which in Democracy means the Power Of Voters).
It’s not really about Freedom because in their worldview most people should still be constrained by the Power Of Money, most notably via things like maximum rights for ownership of exclusive resources such as Land - you can’t be Free if you’re born outside the Owner class in a World were all Land has an owner.
Essentially they’re Reaganism (which ultimatelly brought us present day America, which is quite behind the America from when it started in terms of Social Mobility, Equality and even Average Quality Of Life), but even harder that it was.
Because no one wants to work with Chega. No one trusts them with their luggage, much less with political power
That’s the reason the government is falling? I’m not sure that’s true…
Hilarious AND true!
Well it’s either that or we’ll end up being steamrolled by Russia, China or the US
Being able to defend your territory does not make you a “superpower” being able to step on other peoples territory does. The EU needs to build up good defensive capabilities, but it should refrain from offensive capabilities to project power like the US or Russia. Instead we need to focus on improving diplomatic ties with Africa, South America and non-China Asia to become the forerunners of a new Third World.
Okay, but let’s say one of our allies gets regime changed by Russia for aligning with us and not them. Do we help them? If we do, how is that not a proxy war?
BTW my opinion is that there are just proxy wars, like Ukraine.
A proxy war comes from a fundamental power imbalance on each side. The proxy is at the whim of the power behind them. If we have a globally distributed alliance of equals, then the power imbalances will be much less pronounced.
This is also why the EU should be a forerunner, but not a leader of such an alliance. It is crucial that there is no one nation or block “leading” the alliance, also not informally. We see the US being the de facto leader of NATO now risking the entire alliance falling apart and of course making any war in that context subject to being a proxy war.
Okay, but how do we avoid these situations? Let’s say we’re in this big alliance, and Kazakhstan becomes a big trading partner in an effort to rid itself of corruption and Russian influence.
Russia keeps trying to influence politics in Kazakhstan, more and more overtly, and when the Kazakhs elect a government who are fully committed to join our alliance, Russia invades.
Do we (the EU) defend Kazakhstan, which would be a proxy war in your definition, as without us they have no chance of even staying independent so the power imbalance couldn’t be greater?
This is not a hyothetical, but a close parallel of what’s happening in Ukraine by the way.
Yeah, I do agree. I just… I’d rather not be steamrolled and not be worried about international relations, you know?
Interesting times we’re living through indeed …
Too many interesting times. Life was better when it was dull, when politics was boring.
I’m glad Europe is finally getting it’s act together on trying to defend itself.
But i’m not a fan of the EU itself being too involved - the EU is not democratically representative enough to be getting involved in military stuff. If the EU is going to militarise, then the commission and the president need to be directly elected by the people, and the parliament needs to be given proper power.
Instead we have the continued messy system of horse trading of power between governments based on national interests rather than the overall interests of EU citizens. And also we have Hungary which has slipped into an authoritarian regime, and Poland that has just skirted past descent into a right wing nightmare (it’s not even clear yet if the current centre left government can undo the damage wrought by right wing, nor what will happen in the next election).
Personally I don’t want to see the defence of our continent in the hands of the EU. Either it should stick to running the single market OR it should be a fully democratic superstate. This in-between quasi nation state is undemocratic and constitutionally weak. it has no way of dealing with Hungary, it had no way of dealing with Poland, it would have no way of dealing with France should Le Pen win power.
I’m in the UK; I’d support the EU becoming a full superstate and I’d want my country to rejoin. But I can’t trust what the EU is currently is to achieve that. We’ve all seen in the last year how weak the US constitution really is - it’s enabled an autocrat to take power. The EU is weak too - it can’t be taken over directly by an autocrat which is good, but it’s failed to deal with Putin up until now (Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again in 2022), it’s unable to do anything about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Hungary has already held the EU’s response to Ukraine back, and the Czech republic looks set to elect a pro-Putin populist party to power too.
European defence being dependent on an organisation that is unable to be decisive and is unable to be truly representative is weak. We need decisive and unified decisions in an emergency, not paralysis and not to be held back by outlier nations.
If you want to see why the EU is not the route to go to strengthen defence just look at the calls already to use the supposed defence spending boost to instead shore up healthcare spending. It’s a laudable aim but when the wolf is as the door this is crazy way to divert defence spending.
For the EU to be a super power, it needs to first become an actual superstate. It needs to be the democracy it purports to fight for.
Do you know Ursula’s history of corruption? If so, how can you feel good about it?
Ursula is a muppet, but it wasn’t her decision alone, or even at all.
stares in jealous American