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The question has been in my mind for a long time: why eu has been created and where it is all going?
(Of course there are many answers ie not wanting another war, economic relations etc. )
It is not hard to imagine US's hegamonia over the world and a powerful EU; Their interests will be at conflict at some stage.
Iraq war was a great example: with usa/uk occupation of iraq, france and germany losing some of their interests/business!
I am still wondering with a eu constution, trying get T Blair as a high profile new EU leader, expensions etc.
I guess we may end up with an ampire challenging the US's world order.
Anyway some higlights article from the guardian itself:
Of course, this is not a new challenge for Europe's east, where western Christendom, Slavic Orthodoxy and Turkic Islam have clashed for more than a thousand years. But the European empire is a new solution.
for thousands of years, empires have been the world's most powerful political entities, their imperial yoke restraining subjugated nations from fighting each other and thereby filling people's eternal desire for order. Empires may not be the most desirable form of governance, given the recurrence of hugely destructive wars between them, but humankind's psychological limitations still prevent it from doing better. Big is back. It is inter-imperial relations that shape the world. Empires, not civilisations, give geography its meaning.
Europe has its own vision of what world order should look like, which it increasingly pursues whether America likes it or not. The EU is now the most confident economic power in the world, regularly punishing the United States in trade disputes, while its superior commercial and environmental standards have assumed global leadership. Many Europeans view America's way of life as deeply corrupt, built on borrowed money, risky and heartless in its lack of social protections, and ecologically catastrophic. The EU is a far larger humanitarian aid donor than the US, while South America, east Asia and other regions prefer to emulate the "European Dream" than the American variant.
For many Europeans, the US-led war in Iraq validated their view that war is not an instrument of policy but a sign of its failure. The al-Qaida attacks on European soil served to heighten this disdain. It is often said that America and Europe make a strong team because America breaks and Europe fixes, but this cliche has long begun to grate on Europeans, who would rather spread their version of stability before America destabilises countries on its periphery, particularly in the Arab world.
The EU is easily the most popular and successful empire in history, for it does not dominate, it disciplines.
Turkey has a mind of its own, and will not be easily subdued;
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..I have checked the book again...
