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United States then, Europe now (2012) [pdf]

24 points by dataker 12y ago

xnull6guest 12y ago
This is quite precisely what Brussels would like to see - federated power over a loose union of nations with the ultimate goal of emerging as a sort of United States of Europe. As NATO is being challenged and Pax Americana not working out the way we thought, this seems smart. I wish the best to our historical allies.
- adventured 12y ago
  NATO is basically the US, France, Germany, and the UK. I don't see there being many changes to that group in the near future, in terms of its counter to Russia (which is of course the primary reason for NATO's existence). They drive NATO, and will continue to stick together in various terms for all the overwhelmingly obvious self-interest reasons. Russia is no challenge to NATO, they're weaker than they've been in terms of being a real threat since maybe before WW2; in terms of scale and capabilities, they're being left behind. Most of the easy gains have already been had by Putin when it comes to re-boosting oil production, ie the party is over, which is why he is shifting to external aggression; the US economy is now nine times the size of Russia's, and that gap will only continue to expand - there's only so much military threat a country can pose when it has an economy that is going to eventually be ~8% your size. I'm not sure what the expectations were on PAX Americana, but the US is in a stronger position today than it has been in nearly 20 years. The dollar and its share of reserves around the globe are higher than they have been in a long time, with the Euro losing vast amounts of purchasing power rapidly, and losing a lot of share of reserves as people seek to dump it (and QE will push its value much lower yet). The Yen is a disaster, as Japan is aggressively debasing it to prevent bankruptcy. The Yuan is a distant second tier currency that still doesn't matter, and won't for a long time yet. Today the dollar reserve reigns supreme in a way few expected it to after the financial crisis. When it comes to China challenging the US - and they are the sole challenger - it's no worse than the USSR from 1950-1980. The US holds vast sway over nearly the entire planet, both financially and militarily; outside of Russia and China it is able to operate almost anywhere and at any time. Able to twist any country's arm financially, including the Swiss. The global surveillance system the US built, is going almost entirely unchallenged (and I'm not saying I support that fact); nothing is being rolled back or stopped, rather it is advancing. And when it comes to Europe, the US has gained about $3 trillion on the European economy since 2008, as Europe has seen net zero growth during that time; that's a vast amount of GDP pick-up, and that spread is likely to get worse in the next decade. Pax Americana is stronger today than it has been in decades, the sole set-back I can think of is the AIIB and that shouldn't be a set-back, the US should have joined it as a founding member to its own benefit.
  - xnull6guest 12y ago
    The challenges to NATO are mostly that the threat (as you so well document and argue) it was originally conceived for is no longer something strong enough to sustain it - it is being perpetuated beyond the context that birthed it. Today's challenges to nuclear proliferation and of globalization and revisionism call for something other than NATO. The US is by essentially every account not in a stronger position. Perhaps we should belabor this disagreement with more discussion. You might have some more to say - let me know if you would like this proposition defended. But getting back to the point, how do you feel this informs an EU headed towards being a United States of Europe? Do you feel that it is a nice addition to an unchallenged Pax Americana? Is it a threat? Can it exist alongside NATO or will it supercede it? Is the USE a bunk idea?
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    >Russia is no challenge to NATO, they're weaker than they've been in terms of being a real threat since maybe before WW2; in terms of scale and capabilities, they're being left behind. I really don't think this is correct. Russia has fielded technologies recently that represent a serious threat to NATO, and they appear to be getting more and more aggressive as a result of the confidence gained from these technological programs. Russia has real experience with War in Europe - something that NATO can only simulate at this point - and it has proven its ability to dominate in the battlefield on the ground in countless events recently. Whereas NATO is continually attempting to encroach on territories previously dominated by Russian military power, it is still not quite in complete control over the Eastern-Europe regions which represent the future stage for conflict between the two entities. I'd really like to understand your argument better - can you explain how you think that NATO has the upper hand over Russia at the moment? Because I don't feel that is the case at all - to me, living in middle-Europe, it seems like NATO is playing a cats game with the tiger.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Going to a war with the world's major powers is not exactly like running roughshod over South Ossetia or Ukraine. By this metric NATO members have proved their mettle by destroying government's like Libya's at very little cost to themselves (disastrous consequences of that action aside).
carsongross 12y ago
And who among us would have guessed that the answer to problems caused by the EU and a single currency is concentrating yet more power in the central government? It is instructive to go back and read the arguments the anti-federalists made during the constitutional debate. As near as I can tell, they were correct across the board. And yet, in the state school I attended, I never read them. Strange, that. Here are some: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/timeline-federalfarmer/ http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/timeline-fed...
- lisa_henderson 12y ago
  "they were correct across the board" That's impossible. The "Anti-Federalists" were a diverse set of groups with no unifying themes other than opposition to the newly proposed Constitution. Southern racists and Northern working class movements made anti-federalist arguments for wildly different reasons. It's impossible for anti-federalists to be "correct across the board" because some of the arguments they made were contradictory. More so, it is trivially easy to find anti-federaist arguments that turned out to be wrong. Several people who identified as anti-federalist predicted that the new constitution would lead to tyranny, and yet, 227 years later, the government retains most of the nominal forms of a liberal polity: a mostly independent judiciary, freedom of media, public criticism, habeus corpus in all but the most extreme cases, etc.
- rhino369 12y ago
  The constitution has stood for over 200 years and even when a sort of anti-federalist civil war occurred, the anti-federalist side adopted it nearly word or word. The failure of the EU proves the anti-federalists wrong. A weak centralized government isn't stable. A US under the articles of confederation wouldn't be recognizable. We would have been picked apart by the British and French.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  > And who among us would have guessed that the answer to problems caused by the EU and a single currency is concentrating yet more power in the central government? The problem is not "caused" by a single currency, exactly -- it's caused by the combination of a single currency and a weak governing body. Disparate currencies, each with their own government -- yes. One currency, controlled by one entity -- yes. A combination of the two? Not so good.

24 points by dataker 12y ago

This is quite precisely what Brussels would like to see - federated power over a loose union of nations with the ultimate goal of emerging as a sort of United States of Europe. As NATO is being challenged and Pax Americana not working out the way we thought, this seems smart. I wish the best to our historical allies.

adventured 12y ago
NATO is basically the US, France, Germany, and the UK. I don't see there being many changes to that group in the near future, in terms of its counter to Russia (which is of course the primary reason for NATO's existence). They drive NATO, and will continue to stick together in various terms for all the overwhelmingly obvious self-interest reasons. Russia is no challenge to NATO, they're weaker than they've been in terms of being a real threat since maybe before WW2; in terms of scale and capabilities, they're being left behind. Most of the easy gains have already been had by Putin when it comes to re-boosting oil production, ie the party is over, which is why he is shifting to external aggression; the US economy is now nine times the size of Russia's, and that gap will only continue to expand - there's only so much military threat a country can pose when it has an economy that is going to eventually be ~8% your size. I'm not sure what the expectations were on PAX Americana, but the US is in a stronger position today than it has been in nearly 20 years. The dollar and its share of reserves around the globe are higher than they have been in a long time, with the Euro losing vast amounts of purchasing power rapidly, and losing a lot of share of reserves as people seek to dump it (and QE will push its value much lower yet). The Yen is a disaster, as Japan is aggressively debasing it to prevent bankruptcy. The Yuan is a distant second tier currency that still doesn't matter, and won't for a long time yet. Today the dollar reserve reigns supreme in a way few expected it to after the financial crisis. When it comes to China challenging the US - and they are the sole challenger - it's no worse than the USSR from 1950-1980. The US holds vast sway over nearly the entire planet, both financially and militarily; outside of Russia and China it is able to operate almost anywhere and at any time. Able to twist any country's arm financially, including the Swiss. The global surveillance system the US built, is going almost entirely unchallenged (and I'm not saying I support that fact); nothing is being rolled back or stopped, rather it is advancing. And when it comes to Europe, the US has gained about $3 trillion on the European economy since 2008, as Europe has seen net zero growth during that time; that's a vast amount of GDP pick-up, and that spread is likely to get worse in the next decade. Pax Americana is stronger today than it has been in decades, the sole set-back I can think of is the AIIB and that shouldn't be a set-back, the US should have joined it as a founding member to its own benefit.
- xnull6guest 12y ago
  The challenges to NATO are mostly that the threat (as you so well document and argue) it was originally conceived for is no longer something strong enough to sustain it - it is being perpetuated beyond the context that birthed it. Today's challenges to nuclear proliferation and of globalization and revisionism call for something other than NATO. The US is by essentially every account not in a stronger position. Perhaps we should belabor this disagreement with more discussion. You might have some more to say - let me know if you would like this proposition defended. But getting back to the point, how do you feel this informs an EU headed towards being a United States of Europe? Do you feel that it is a nice addition to an unchallenged Pax Americana? Is it a threat? Can it exist alongside NATO or will it supercede it? Is the USE a bunk idea?
- fit2rule 12y ago
  >Russia is no challenge to NATO, they're weaker than they've been in terms of being a real threat since maybe before WW2; in terms of scale and capabilities, they're being left behind. I really don't think this is correct. Russia has fielded technologies recently that represent a serious threat to NATO, and they appear to be getting more and more aggressive as a result of the confidence gained from these technological programs. Russia has real experience with War in Europe - something that NATO can only simulate at this point - and it has proven its ability to dominate in the battlefield on the ground in countless events recently. Whereas NATO is continually attempting to encroach on territories previously dominated by Russian military power, it is still not quite in complete control over the Eastern-Europe regions which represent the future stage for conflict between the two entities. I'd really like to understand your argument better - can you explain how you think that NATO has the upper hand over Russia at the moment? Because I don't feel that is the case at all - to me, living in middle-Europe, it seems like NATO is playing a cats game with the tiger.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Going to a war with the world's major powers is not exactly like running roughshod over South Ossetia or Ukraine. By this metric NATO members have proved their mettle by destroying government's like Libya's at very little cost to themselves (disastrous consequences of that action aside).

carsongross 12y ago

And who among us would have guessed that the answer to problems caused by the EU and a single currency is concentrating yet more power in the central government? It is instructive to go back and read the arguments the anti-federalists made during the constitutional debate. As near as I can tell, they were correct across the board. And yet, in the state school I attended, I never read them. Strange, that. Here are some: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/timeline-federalfarmer/ http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/timeline-fed...

lisa_henderson 12y ago
"they were correct across the board" That's impossible. The "Anti-Federalists" were a diverse set of groups with no unifying themes other than opposition to the newly proposed Constitution. Southern racists and Northern working class movements made anti-federalist arguments for wildly different reasons. It's impossible for anti-federalists to be "correct across the board" because some of the arguments they made were contradictory. More so, it is trivially easy to find anti-federaist arguments that turned out to be wrong. Several people who identified as anti-federalist predicted that the new constitution would lead to tyranny, and yet, 227 years later, the government retains most of the nominal forms of a liberal polity: a mostly independent judiciary, freedom of media, public criticism, habeus corpus in all but the most extreme cases, etc.
rhino369 12y ago
The constitution has stood for over 200 years and even when a sort of anti-federalist civil war occurred, the anti-federalist side adopted it nearly word or word. The failure of the EU proves the anti-federalists wrong. A weak centralized government isn't stable. A US under the articles of confederation wouldn't be recognizable. We would have been picked apart by the British and French.
emodendroket 12y ago
> And who among us would have guessed that the answer to problems caused by the EU and a single currency is concentrating yet more power in the central government? The problem is not "caused" by a single currency, exactly -- it's caused by the combination of a single currency and a weak governing body. Disparate currencies, each with their own government -- yes. One currency, controlled by one entity -- yes. A combination of the two? Not so good.