The Ukraine war has been a strategic disaster for the Continent, quashing any lingering aspirations for Europe to achieve genuine strategic autonomy.
  • @lil_tank
    15•2 months ago

    Far from a bad article but I’m skeptical of its angle. It is rehashing the euro’s “populist” (for a lack of a better word) obsession about loss of sovereignty at the hands of the ominous EU.

    The interests of the western ruling class isn’t to subjugate European nations, that is merely a mean to an end. Having a united Europe is good for preserving imperliast interests, but it’s not a necessary condition, let alone a sufficient one. Let’s remember that colonialism was achieved at a time where European nations went at war with each other.

    Ukraine is key for the US to contain Russia and Europe is a US vassal since the Marshall plan. I think that’s the better interpretation of the situation

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆M
      18•2 months ago

      I personally think that EU has been the worst thing to happen to Europe because it creates a central bureaucracy that largely aligned with US interests, and puts them over European ones. It’s also very problematic that a lot of the decision makers in EU aren’t really accountable to the people of any European nation. EU is also a full on neoliberal project and would never allow countries to pass any sort of socialist policies such as nationalization of industry.

      EU made sense as an economic bloc in times of plenty where wealth could be spread to support different countries in Europe. However, when 2008 crash happened EU promptly sacrificed countries like Greece to prop up northern Europe. Now EU policy is to keep pushing economic war with Russia and China which is to direct detriment of the countries in Europe. I think that exiting the EU is likely the right thing for countries to do because that’s the only way to regain the ability to make sovereign decisions in their own interest. At that point countries can start joining BRICS and restore trade relations with the east.

      • @cfgaussianOP
        12•2 months ago

        There used to be a time when i believed in the EU as an internationalist project but over the years i have come to the same conclusion as you. I think the first wake up call was seeing what they did to Greece. It was all downhill from there. The EU is irredeemable.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆M
          11•2 months ago

          Yeah, how they dealt with 2008 crash was the turning point for me as well.

      • @Shrike502
        8•2 months ago

        It’s also very problematic that a lot of the decision makers in EU aren’t really accountable to the people of any European nation.

        As opposed to the national bourgeoisie governments which are also not accountable to their people?

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆M
          11•2 months ago

          Wrestling control from domestic bourgeoisie is a much easier task than doing it with international ones. One trick international capital uses is to ensure that no single country can be self sufficient. So, even if there was some sort of a worker revolt, they don’t have the means of production to seize domestically. This is the trick the west has been using with great success in the colonized countries of the Global South.

    • @cfgaussianOP
      12•2 months ago

      I guess i should have prefaced this post by saying that I don’t much like the article either, for a number of reasons one of which being that it muddies the waters of an otherwise interesting argument with some trite conservative whinging about liberal identity politics. But i did think it was worth sharing because it has a unique geopolitical perspective on Europe’s relationship to this conflict. It’s not a Marxist perspective and the analysis is certainly not properly dialectical materialist but it does imo contain an interesting kernel of truth to think about. It is not too far from how a certain segment of the European political elite think about the European project.

      The question is whether this European perspective really even matters anymore considering that they have all but given up their autonomy to be subordinated to US imperial interests. And unlike their European counterparts the US ruling class certainly does not view the conflict in the terms that this article puts them.

      So yeah i just thought this article was interesting more as food for thought, and maybe a coherent dialectical argument can be salvaged from it, maybe not…

      • @lil_tank
        7•2 months ago

        I agree, it was worth sharing for the conversation