Comment by pembrook

> “Diversity” is a nice positive spin on what is an extremely fragmented/disjointed/nonexistent energy policy, military strategy, technological cooperation, consumer markets, etc. Like I said, the average European cannot converse with his/her neighbor even at a 1st grade level in a common language. These are obviously not strengths in the context of the current international order, and to try to brush that away with platitudes is to live outside of reality.

I don't think we should be a geopolitical strongman like America though. The world has seen enough of America oil police. Blowing up half the middle east under the guise of 'freedom' and leaving power vacuums that caused nasties to bubble up like ISIS. Which hurt Europe a lot more than it did the US (think mass refugee exodus, attacks etc). They caused these problems.

I think it's great that Europe has more ideals than just money. We still care about all our citizens, not the top 0,01% that has all the money.

> If the EU had a cohesive strategy on these things, you can 100% guarantee Russia wouldn’t be starting wars along its borders. Russia is a small, weak economy compared to a theoretical unified EU (the irony of that phrase!)

Well especially because we don't have a good nuclear deterrent. And this is nothing new. Putin has been massacring ex-soviet states during all of his career. Checznia, Georgia etc. But nobody gave a crap in Europe. Part of this is that the EU had their designs on Ukraine also and this is why we suddenly care. I don't like this expansionist EU. Yes, I do think the Ukrainians should be helped and they should be free to choose who to align with. But it's a bit hypocritical that we didn't help the others before them.

For the nuclear deterrent we should have worked on that more but America was always against that and they assured they would protect us. Clearly now we can stop trusting them. Even after Trump I don't think relations will ever be the same because we know there can always be another Trump.

But with a deterrent we will be fine. Putin is not going to invade Poland if he knows Moscow will be nuked the same day.

> Also, the reason Finland didn’t join NATO before is not because Finland felt they were so strong on their own. It’s because Finland didn’t want to piss off Russia in the slightest way and end up like Ukraine. An inability to make formal alignments comes from a position of weakness, not strength.

So, in other words appeasement. Which is something that you are accusing the EU of now.

I just don't think you can expect the strongman EU to emerge and there are many people like myself that don't want that to happen.

Also, military blocs (NATO) and economic (EU) are very different things. After NATO we should just form a new military one.