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"Become a world power"

You know, we've had that experience before, "everywhere else" would pretty much prefer that didn't happen again, thank you very much.

Maybe we don’t want to do that again… people have some really short memories.

One could argue it already is - mainly on a soft power level. Now that Ursula has chopped the chains off the war chest we can get back the hard power as well. I feel very good about this, it's rare to feel optimistic about the way your country and union is going...

Europe needs to be strong enough to stand on its own at all levels, but I think it's a pretty bad idea for it to become a neo-Imperial power in the style of America.

For all the great things of Democracy, the one thing people forget in their rosy propaganda-tainted view of it (living inside of it, we're constantly bombarde by political messaging about its greatness) is that by definition even the most perfect Democracy only has the duty to represent the will of its citizens, not of people who are not citizens of that Democracy.

So there is no ideological element in Democracy to make it less nasty at exploiting people from other countries than authoritarian regimes.

All this to say that Europe shouldn't get into the business of power projection like the US has done for decades (leaving a long trail of death, suffering and destitution all over the World, especially the Middle East and Latin America).

And I say this as an European and somebody who would stand to gain indirectly from Europe going systematically (it's already done by businesses and some governments in it, just not openly and systematically) into the business of exploiting non-Europeans.

A peacefull when not provoked giant would probably be the best philosphy for a strong Europe, IMHO.

(Edit: for avoidance of doubt I want to state that for me Russia trying to advance westwards by invading Ukraine counts as a provocation)

You can do it, Europe. Everyone that cares about "the west" is rooting for you.

Cause it worked out so well last time...

I think "World Power" is not that desirable. The US was a world power, look what they had to do and what culture they had to develop to become one. Same for the Soviets. Same for a surging China, becoming more imperialist by the day. Your emotions may tell you "yes!!!", but the reality is - it will not benefit you much, it will mostly benefit your rulers.

I'd rather have the power of the EU in service of getting a proper, international organisation like the UN capable enough to do its job.

For the love of God Europe, we need a world power that actually respects human rights, not outright rejects them like Russia, pretends to embrace like America, or outright rejects them while tankies pretend that China embraces them.

We tried that a few times, and war/imperialism crimes.

But this time it will be diffident. We is evolved now.
(Never mind the rising support of the alt-right parties in the last decade.)

It always has been…

On a tangent, is it possible to block/ignore lemmygrad and it's users? They are obviously trolling here with good old whataboutism and russo talking points

Edit: corrected the stupid spelling of this stupid place

Moldova will join the EU, which will allow a Romanian and Moldovan union. They will be able to take over Europe and then the world using vampires and deadly lasers and stuff

I'm not getting out of bed for anything less than spices or gold.

Sad that picture doesn't include UK - like it used to.

And will do again, if we get a grip.

I remember watching Gundam 00 and thinking "man, the US being in a separate power block from Europe sounds crazy!"

They need to poke the planet, then we can all work together to get the fuck off this rock. We've fucked it up enough and there are plenty of planets to mine resources from. Let's all band together for an exit. Then go our separate ways after launch.

Perhaps let someone from global south take the controls (if humans even have more than few decades as species)

As an American, yes please, because we can't get our shit together as the mutated, corrupt, idiotic half's monster is running roughshod over our wishy-washy, whiny, "centrist" half's.

United European Federation When?

It’s nazis all over here, that said, it can’t be worse than United States of Gilead right now

We've done that already a few times. After over 3000 years of empires must we really? Again? The Greek empire, the roman empire, the spanish empire, the holy roman empire, the dutch golden century, the British (largest globe spanning empire ever) and French empires, Austria Hungaria and I'm quite certain even Portugal had its day. And let's not forget Germany. Or the Soviet union and tsarist Russia. Also nice as far as empires go.

Anyway..

Sigh.

Fine.

But dont come crying if you dont like the outcome.

Pax Americana only ended because you guys voted for it. We where fine with it, hanging out, buying your shit. Using your tech.

Just for clarification, that's EU and not Europe. Yes, i'm in the hole in the center.

They let themselves be subservient to the Americans cause they didn't trust each other (understandable given the shared history of the continent).

Now that the USA has flipped the switch so dramatically given Trump is unpredictable and incompetent, I hope the Europeans realise they can trust each other more than their far away who doesn't give 2 shits about them. I'm optimistic but whilst they can do stuff for Ukraine, I'm not sure how they will go about EU reform (if they can even get it done given Orban exists). They need to be bold and I'm not sure they will all be on the same page for that