Last edited Mon Mar 9, 2015, 06:14 AM - Edit history (1)
on the NATO post Cold War mission creep etc...(paragraph 1)
Paragraph 2, I have to disagree with an EU Army plan because I think it's a fantasy. My other posts on thread give my reasons.
Regardless of the validity of their reasons for wanting to concentrate on rebuilding European economies after 1945, the EU nations have ignored foreign policy --- including Russian language learning essential for diplomatic relations and analysis. I read that point in another article about this recent House of Lords report on Ukraine.
The UK report is titled "The Sleepwalkers" - a scathing reference to the book by historian Christopher Clarke about how Europe "sleepwalked" into WWI in 1914. Déjà vu, because the current crisis is occurring on the 100th anniversary of WWI.
Posted by The SAIS Observer Staff on February 22, 2015 in Opinion
By JOSEPH VERBOVSZKY
BOLOGNA — In a bristling recent statement, the British House of Lords accused Europe of “sleepwalking” into the Ukrainian crisis. This slamming of European foreign policy should come as little surprise for anyone following the crisis. What is surprising however, is the British incredulity and shock that this “sleepwalking” occurred in the first place. Undoubtedly, the House of Lords has hit upon something much deeper than recent European foreign policy, stretching all the way down to the roots of the European Project itself.
Since 1945, Europe has, in fact, been in a relatively constant state of sleepwalking. First, as a fragile and terrified Europe navigated the nightmarish landscape of nuclear threat in the Cold War, and then through the manic years of the 1990s and 2000s when delusions of prosperity and the “End of History” blinded a relatively more sinister reality. In the aftermath of World War II, the founders of what would become the EU envisioned a sort of United States of Europe in which war would be impossible. However, their political vision proved equally impossible. After many failed attempts at various political and military unions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the founders considered it far simpler to sell a European political union as an economic union.
http://saisobserver.org/2015/02/22/sleepwalkers/
http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425837184&sr=8-1&keywords=christopher+clark+the+sleepwalkers+how+europe+went+to+war+in+1914
Cheers
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