Comment by joe_mamba

>The EU policies makes sense if the goal is peace and prosperity.

How can EU maintain peace and prosperity with no military? With hugs and kisses?

Because if that was their goal, then they really fucked up because they delivered the exact opposite: war next door and lowest purchasing power of the working class in years/decades.

You see, people like this are so detached from reality, they don't understand that peace and prosperity comes from strength, not from weakness. When you don't have military strength you invite conflict, since everyone else now sees you as an easy target and wants your slice of the global GDP.

The world leadership is composed of competitors and bullies fighting for dominance of land and resources, not of nice guys who bend over to your demands just because you're nice and peaceful. If you don't have any leverage, you get run over and colonized. It's wild this hasn't sunk in yet, especially given Europe's colonial past.

>If you're going to blame someone, blame the Great Powers

Ah yes, it's always everyone else's fault that the EU kicked its military, IT, energy, economy, manufacturing industry (and now farming too) in the balls for the past 20-30 years, allowing the US, China and Russia the opportunity to exploit this self inflicted weakness for their own benefits.

All countries are economic competitors to each other. Every fuckup you make is an opportunity for the rest to enrich themselves from your stupidity. They aren't obliged to save you from your mistakes when they can profit from it. It's how Europe got rich in the first place during colonialism.

>who have suddendly gone ballistic and can only talk of war, War, WAR, and nothing else.

Doesn't matter what other sovereign countries choose to do on the global stage, they're not accountable to you. But it's your job to have a strong military to deter others from having chimp-outs with you or in your backyard. Unless you live in a fairytale, you would know that world peace was never the default state in human history, but only a temporary state created by wielding orders of magnitude more force than everyone else who will then have to follow your rules and ideologies creating a state of compliance which you interpreted as peace. You should prepare for the worst even, or especially in times of peace, as other countries won't keep world peace for you or in your favor, but will try to free themselves from compliance to your game and try to enforce their own rules that benefit them. It's the EU's fault it slept at the wheel in terms of defence and lets itself get bullied around.

>Oh, sorry, President Trump is all about trade... tariffs.

For all Trump's problems, the US still got TSMC to build a cutting edge fab there, they're getting south Korea to build new ships there, and attract cutting edge tech companies like Infinera to close shop in EU and move everything to the US. What did EU get from being nice and generous with others? Other than illegal welfare scammers.

>don't blame the EU for trying to be sane.

I CAN blame the EU since that's where my taxes go so they're accountable to me. Being weak and powerless is not being sane. There's no virtue in letting everyone walk over you and exploit you. "Turn the other cheek" does not work in competitive international politics. Your weakness and complacency will always be used against you. I know what I wrote above isn't popular to hear but it's how the world works. Ignoring it doesn't help anyone.