EU-BREXIT - Page 20 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Political issues and parties in Europe's nation states, the E.U. & Russia.

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By Potemkin
#14891239
Heisenberg wrote:The distinction between NATO and the EU is not nearly as sharp as people like to pretend. Their ideological leadership and strategic goals are pretty much identical. If anything, NATO today exists as a form of plausible deniability for the EU. "It wasn't us, it was them! No, it isn't relevant that the membership of the two organisations overlaps massively, I swear!" :lol:

Besides, the intervention in Libya was primarily led by France and Britain. The US played more of a back seat role.

This is entirely true, but the fact remains that Germany played no role in the ousting of Gadaffi and the destruction of the Libyan nation. Germany's imperial ambitions came to a sudden stop in 1945, for obvious reasons.
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By Heisenberg
#14891244
Oh, I understand that - my comment was more directed at the (typical) assertion that Libya was some nefarious US-UK imperial plot and the poor pacifist Europeans were dragged in against their will. Germany stayed out, but Sarkozy was at least as enthusiastic as Cameron was, if not even more so. And plenty of other EU member states (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece...) took part.

This idea that the EU is a lovey-dovey haven of kindness and peace, while Britain is some warmongering rogue state, needs to die. It's nothing more than propaganda.
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By Seeker8
#14891266
Yeah i should have mentioned France, my mistake. It's still more accurate to say NATO and not the EU. If there was a EU army and France and the UK wanted to invade libya, it would have been vetoed.
User avatar
By Potemkin
#14891273
Oh, I understand that - my comment was more directed at the (typical) assertion that Libya was some nefarious US-UK imperial plot and the poor pacifist Europeans were dragged in against their will. Germany stayed out, but Sarkozy was at least as enthusiastic as Cameron was, if not even more so. And plenty of other EU member states (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece...) took part.

In fact, the whole intervention in Libya was Sarkozy's idea, and it was Sarkozy who cobbled together the coalition to make it happen. Cameron didn't take much convincing, of course, and nor did the Italians, and Obama reluctantly went along with it against his better judgement. The Germans refused to have anything to do with it, of course.

This idea that the EU is a lovey-dovey haven of kindness and peace, while Britain is some warmongering rogue state, needs to die. It's nothing more than propaganda.

Agreed.
User avatar
By JohnRawls
#14891278
Potemkin wrote:This is entirely true, but the fact remains that Germany played no role in the ousting of Gadaffi and the destruction of the Libyan nation. Germany's imperial ambitions came to a sudden stop in 1945, for obvious reasons.


What are you smoking Potemkin. France was the one that started beating the drums of war the loudest, but it was Merkel who basically put a bullet in to Qaddafis head. :eh:

Do not forget that it was her, minister of foreign affairs at the time and Steinmaier that convinced Medvedev/Putin not to veto the resolution in the UNSC.
By foxdemon
#14891378
I think we can all agree the Libyan intervention was ill conceived and poorly executed. It is beyond the scope of this thread to analyse why.


Yet the Germans did support it. So did much of Europe’s supposed left. They are anti war when it comes to America but bay for blood when the idea of war suits them. A similar thing happened in the lead up to the East Timor intervention (though that operation was much better thought out than the Libyan intervention and thus ultimately successful). I lost all respect for the anti war movement in that period. They are’t anti war, just anti American. They don’t mean what they say.


It should be noted that the French have lead successful interventions in Central Africa. It should also be noted the Germans were saying things like “We must break their back” in the Yugoslav intervention.


But back on topic, what does Brexit mean for the UK’s place in European security? Is it just a separation of economies or is it a more far reaching strategic repositioning?
User avatar
By Philby
#14891399
foxdemon wrote:more far reaching strategic repositioning


This
By Atlantis
#14891481
Heisenberg wrote:Oh, I understand that - my comment was more directed at the (typical) assertion that Libya was some nefarious US-UK imperial plot and the poor pacifist Europeans were dragged in against their will. Germany stayed out, but Sarkozy was at least as enthusiastic as Cameron was, if not even more so. And plenty of other EU member states (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece...) took part.

This idea that the EU is a lovey-dovey haven of kindness and peace, while Britain is some warmongering rogue state, needs to die. It's nothing more than propaganda.


What needs to stop is your warmongering and your blaming the EU when your warmongering goes wrong. If the UK and France wanted to bomb Libya, that doesn't mean that the EU or Germany wanted to bomb Libya. If some countries supported the UN-mandate for a no-fly zone because they fell for your humanitarian lies, that doesn't mean that these countries wanted you to go on bombing the Libyan government to kingdom come after that objective had been achieved. Nor did anybody want you to turn Libya into a training ground for jihadists and conduit for illegal immigration to Europe. And you are lying about Italy too. The Italians didn't want you to take their Libyan oil business away from them.

What needs to stop is you starting wars and then blaming countries that didn't want these wars but have the bad fortune of being allied with you.

The US decided to invade Afghanistan. The UK and the US decided to start the war in Iraq against the express desire of NATO/EU members such as Germany and France. The UK and France started the war in Libya with the blessing of the US. The US, UK and France have incited sectarian hatred and civil war in Syria via their proxies in order to topple the Assad regime. The UK is protecting the Saudis from UN human rights investigation of their war crimes in Yemen. The UK and US are aggressively pushing arms sales to the Saudis and are directly implicated in the war in Yemen. That is not the fault of the EU. That is not the fault of Germany. Why do you not stop arms sales to the Saudis like Germany?

What is it exactly you blame the EU for? Should the EU have miraculously pulled an army out of the hat after you have vetoed any military cooperation for over 40 years? Should the EU have prevented the UK from its warmongering? Did you want the EU to be an empire that can dictate its will on its warmongering members like the UK so that you could turn around the next moment to accuse the EU of being an empire? Quite honestly that is sick!

Your country has never given up on its imperialist ambitions as is obvious from these wars, and your defending such a conduct makes you an imperialist too.

The EU has contributed to peace, stability, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Europe and beyond. But to you that is not enough. You want the EU to be helpless and dovish in a world of sharks and war mongers. How thick to you take other people to be? Everybody knows why you direct your hatred against the EU. Sorry, but your divide and conquer strategy isn't working as planned. It's going to backfire in a spectacular fashion.
User avatar
By Heisenberg
#14891482
Thank you for demonstrating my point perfectly :lol:
By B0ycey
#14891488
The war on Libya was the final nail in common sense. No matter the dictator, you cannot win a war without taking the support of "all" the people you are supposely liberating and we had two wars that we should have learnt from prior to this. To this day, I thank the Commons for rejecting a war on Syria. Removing Assad would have meant IS had both Iraq and Syria and they would have been impossible to break without ground troops then. And Osborne has the audacity to say it was the Commons biggest mistake. Just proves you cannot trust a Tory for judgement I guess.

Nonetheless, I do hate blame games. You cannot blame the EU for US wars. Libya was perhaps more France and the UK, but you can't blame the EU for this either; as two member states are not 28 member states foreign policies. Blaming the EU for individual states foriegn policies is the same as blaming Americans for Trump. Not every state backed the Orange Ape so not all Americans are gullible racist imperialists. But I guess this is what you get when you leave a group you know you shouldn't. Any excuse to justify a mistake you refuse to acknowledge I guess.
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By noemon
#14891492
Heisenberg wrote:Oh, I understand that - my comment was more directed at the (typical) assertion that Libya was some nefarious US-UK imperial plot and the poor pacifist Europeans were dragged in against their will. Germany stayed out, but Sarkozy was at least as enthusiastic as Cameron was, if not even more so. And plenty of other EU member states (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece...) took part.

This idea that the EU is a lovey-dovey haven of kindness and peace, while Britain is some warmongering rogue state, needs to die. It's nothing more than propaganda.


The only enthusiasts were France, Berlusconi and Britain, Greece participated because she was forced to due to the NATO naval bases and airfields located in Greece but the Greek PM was the only open-defender of Gaddafi, made several pleas to leave Libya alone and tried to broker peace after the intervention. Gaddafi himself studied in the military academy in Athens. This is the by and by. In general terms the EU is lovey-dovey using mainly soft-power carrots to spread its influence rather than military intervention. That some EU countries like France maintain an imperialist outlook like the UK and the US does not mean that the EU is anything like the US and the UK. It's not. If you want to blame Germany for such adventures then you should look at its role in the Yugoslavian wars when she was the enthusiastic partner of the US trying to destroy the country. Any large European country has the propensity to turn into an imperialistic pig given the opportunity. There is hardly any moralistic difference between France, Germany, the UK and the US just one of scale and power, but there is one between these countries and the EU. These countries are moderated by the EU and the more you get in the EU the more moderated you have to become precisely because in the EU, you have to actually consider countries like Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, etcetera while in NATO only the US and the UK really matter.

The distinction between NATO and the EU is not nearly as sharp as people like to pretend.


The only reason that it is not sharp is because Europe has been at the mercy of the US through NATO. The EU though is in fact antagonistic to the Anglo world and its institutions like the World Bank, NATO, et al as the EU is setting up parallel organisations that if not brought under the NATO(or equivalent) umbrella they will turn up antagonistic to them.
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By Rugoz
#14891503
B0ycey wrote:Nonetheless, I do hate blame games. You cannot blame the EU for US wars. Libya was perhaps more France and the UK, but you can't blame the EU for this either;


The EU has no military to speak of, so you cannot blame it for military interventions.
But, the EU certainly did wage economic war on Libya, because it was within the EU's power to do so:

EU imposes full oil and gas embargo on Libya

The European Union agreed yesterday (12 April) to extend sanctions against Libya, imposing an asset freeze on all of the country's energy companies, in its effort to force Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to relinquish power.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global ... -on-libya/

Can we stop the infantile "innocent EU" nonsense?
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By Seeker8
#14891538
The EU does some shit i don't like, but it's not really comparable to the havoc the U.S + U.K wreak, is it? Sanctions isn't the same as massive bombing campaigns, invasions and overthrowing governments. France is the only EU member who comes close.

I don't know what you have against the EU, Rugoz, smaller countries have got to form blocks to compete with super powers like the U.S and China.
User avatar
By Rugoz
#14891553
Seeker8 wrote:I don't know what you have against the EU, Rugoz, smaller countries have got to form blocks to compete with super powers like the U.S and China.


I'm making fun of people who think the EU is some kind of cure to the perceived ills of contemporary nation states.
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By Seeker8
#14891559
Fair enough, i thought you were generally against the EU. I might have remembered wrongly.
User avatar
By JohnRawls
#14891989
Seeker8 wrote:Image


Rough times are ahead. You can't blame your politicians for this. You can only blame yourself. THE PEOPLE are the ones who voted this idea in to reality. If you didn't vote then don't complain about the result.
User avatar
By Seeker8
#14891996
I'm pro Scottish independence so when things get shitty hopefully it will turn more people off the U.K union. Especially since one the biggest arguments used to keep us in the U.K was the threat of being outside the EU. They told everyone we would never be able to re-join the E.U., and that scared a lot of people.

So yeah, another referendum on independence is the silver lining for Scotland. If we reject another chance then this country deserves everything it gets.

Could also be a silver lining for communists. Things need to get really bad though before British people will rise up.
User avatar
By Beren
#14892026
I'm not sure if Scottish independence is such a good idea, but Northern Ireland joining the Republic of Ireland would be natural I guess.
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