That's why Germany to the very last moment was opposing arms sale for Ukraine and until the 3rd day of the Russian invasion on Ukraine was opposing sanctions. Blinken was not getting off his plane for good three weeks while traveling to convince European partners from Italy, Germany, France, Hungary that Russia is a real danger and has to be stopped. Long time has to pass before Germany will be consider to be a trusted partner, their silent support for Russia was clear not only to Poland or Baltic countries - Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Moldavia, they all have seen what is happening and will think twice before trusting Germany.
Nobody sane will undermine the role of NATO and USA/UK when it comes to European security, over my head I see US and UK spy planes and drones that are flying all days and nights over eastern Poland, providing intel for Ukrainian forces.
No country in Europe is capable of pursuing large military operation, France stumbled over their own feet when trying to change ruler in Libya several years ago and France has the best army in continental Europe. Go figure that! They needed US support at the end.
Another big problem is the pathetic state of German army, especially heavy component, luckily they have just decided to put significant amount of money on making Bundeswehr a real force since right now with its 300 tanks (three times less than Poland) it is a sad joke.
>Another big problem is the pathetic state of German army, especially heavy component, luckily they have just decided to put significant amount of money on making Bundeswehr a real force since right now with its 300 tanks (three times less than Poland) it is a sad joke.
Tanks seem to be more and more of a joke in a modern symmetrical conflict right now.
I wish we didn't buy Abrams, but more jets and SAMs.
If you are suggesting that because of missiles, you should take a look at Trophy which can shoot the missiles down before they hit the tank.
Many held the view that a more interdependent world is a safer world.
Without such interdependence, the West wouldn't have the ability to impose economic sanctions.
If those sanctions wind up having the effect of shortening this war or lessening the likelihood of future war, then this view will be vindicated.
If not, then we've got a very dark future ahead of us as military conflict (and possibly the end of the world as we know it) will become ever more likely.
When a country so flagrantly violates those rules with the consent of other large nations like China, and does an enormous amount of harm, extreme threat (or use) of force is the only valid response.
EU militarization is near certain to happen. And hopefully much of Asia too. Taiwan needs a militarized Japan
That's not a fact but pure speculation which I find very far fetched considering how pro Putin half of Germanys ministry was.
I find it much more likely that they're simply paid off as most of them have already been proven to be corrupt with various scandals. Heck, the green party was on television shilling for Putin and how overblown the fear of war is on the weekend before the invasion.
Eg. a non-NATO EU army could get more involved in Ukraine, and maybe other wars int the Middle East and Africa to, if it weren't tied down to the big heavy NATO that would always go "but muh, can't do that, because global nuclear war".
What do you envision a non-NATO EU army would be doing in Ukraine that isn't currently being done?
Without the United States backing up the EU wouldn't Russia just threaten EU member states and make them back off? It kind of seems to me that NATO is what's keeping Europe from breaking out into a war outside of just Ukraine. Why wouldn't Russia invade Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia? What would Germany do about it? What if Russia sank France's aircraft carrier? Would they still continue the fight? Not to mention the ability of the U.S. to do logistics to help European countries supply weapons to Ukraine to help them fight. Hell, nobody in Europe believed Russia was going to do it while the United States and United Kingdom were screaming bloody murder about it.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/why-has-france-been-war-decade...
And North Korea, and soon possibly Iran.
It's not clear how much longer the nuclear genie can be kept bottled up. Belarus is already asking for its nukes back from Russia. It's likely that other countries that feel threatened may start pursuing their own nuclear programs now that they see how vulnerable non-nuclear nations are to attack.
In the long term, technological advances will concentrate ever more power in the hands of the few, and MAD may start applying to other technologies, not just nukes.
I am Czech and this war convinced me to be against our membership in NATO, which I think is ill-conceived, for the following reasons:
1. We should have our own defense, both on national and EU, and not rely on USA, who might have different interests, and is not always making us safer. USA might accidentally provoke Russia (their archenemy) or they might decide not to get involved in our defense for political reasons (actually, in democracy, it should be their right), leaving us exposed.
2. NATO causes proliferation of nuclear weapons, by expanding the trigger area, and also stations nukes in countries that don't own them. I favor a complete denuclearization of the world, IMHO MAD is a crazy theory that relies on rationality of people involved too much.
3. European NATO members are at this moment incapable of stronger (military) help to Ukraine, because of the nuclear (MAD) threat. NATO is now actually a reason why we cannot fight Russian invaders the same way Allies did fight against Nazi Germany.
MAD is only the problem here to the extent one assumes that the US nuclear shield, and MAD, still protects you from nuclear escalation by Russia in the event of nuclear escalation by Russia if you are out of NATO.
Otherwise, the problem shifts from MAD to unilateral assured destruction, which is an even bigger constraint on your action against Russia’s whims.
A non-nuclear coalition faces unilateral assured destruction against a major nuclear power unless the latter is deterred from nuclear escalation by an outside force (in practice, another major nuclear power.)
> As I said, long-term, I favor complete nuke ban
Sure, and once you have accomplished and permanently secured compliance with that, your non-nuclear coalition could work for situations like the present one (but then, all existing coalitions would also be non-nuclear.)
I think all the game theory "rationality" is off the table anyways, because the very act of Ukrainian uprising against Russian invasion is already irrational (see ultimatum game). And the act of some other countries acting on Ukraine's behalf is irrational too.
MAD is just a THEORY. Very nice mathematically, but the real world is much more nuanced. And IMHO it's a scarecrow used to justify ownership of nuclear weapons, which are just horrible and should be banned.
Addendum: Hitler actually wanted to destroy Paris (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Decree), but it, almost by miracle (in reality it was brave work of different people involved) survived. We need to have a hope, but also get rid of all the nukes.
There has been some progress on this in recent years, see https://www.icanw.org/. And in fact the nuclear arsenals of USA and Russia have been (albeit too slowly) reducing over the past 30 years. But more governments (NATO expansion) relying on nukes for their security (which is a false sense) is a pretty big setback.
The USA and Russia reduced their arsenals primarily as a cost savings measure. Keeping the weapons systems operating is shockingly expensive. Modern delivery systems are more accurate so we can now ensure MAD with fewer warheads.
That would trigger a nuclear bomb from Russia, the same as with NATO's involvement. When a nuclear power gets involved (and an EU army would posses nuclear weapons) then we enter the MAD scenario even if we want it or not. Re-labelling the Europe-based part of the NATO forces as "EU Army" I'm afraid won't foul the Russians.
In practice, humans are neither entirely rational nor entirely irrational. Humans occupy different positions on this spectrum according to genetics, culture and circumstance.
If we want to avoid triggering escalation events that may lead to an eventual nuclear episode it seems sensible to avoid certain emotionally-charged and chaotic situations such as having the armed forces of nuclear-armed states or their close allies in direct combat with each other.
That's true, yes. But in an alternate reality, where NATO doesn't exist after Cold War, the European countries have built up their own defense (maybe shared to an extent to allow compatibility), and they create an ad-hoc pact based on situation presented, this would, I believe, give us better options to help defend Ukraine. And maybe, who knows, Putin wouldn't even go crazy being paranoid about NATO.
There is no reason for Russia to do so. Ukraine is not part of Russia. There already is a precedent for military operations in a country occupied by Russians (when Trump bombed Syria).
I think we currently have 2 submarines with 150 nukes each around the world. Probably not enough to end humanity, but enough to ensure mutual destruction.
For example is a large difference between massive retaliation [1] which the US uses to deter North Korea, and minimal deterrence [2] used by China (during the cold war), or Pakistan currently.
Secondly it's not just the amount of nukes that influences deterrence, it's how one says they will use them. For example China has pledged "no first use" from the moment they got their first nuclear weapons, whereas the Russia and the US both adopted official policies stating the right of first use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
Now the EU Army being a non-nuclear entity would make anyone using nuclear army against them "the villain" and onward one could easily justify using "all means" (there's stuff there I'd say even nastier than nuclear...) against them, so a "moral" deterrent could work fine in practice (since everyone knows you're technologically capable of developing the really nasty stuff if anything motivates you to...).
Which "stuff" is even nastier than nuclear? Chemical weapons aren't very effective against modern militaries. Biological weapons are nearly as dangerous to the user as to the target.
That's not true, Macron explicitly stated he's open sharing the responsibility and power of French nuclear power with the EU.
probably it's more like sharing "the COST of maintaining and upgrading it" :)) ...EU Army funds would probably be better spend on tech for urban/guerrila warfare + next gen UAVs, eg. stuff you'd actually end up using in a real war!
Heck Russia would probably have the military capability to actually win this war cleanly and quickly of they didn't have to invest billions in their strategic weapons that will (hopefully) never be used. If the current world leaders are competent, they are probably only pretending to properly maintain and upgrade strategic WMDs while covertly diverting the funds to other secret operations... If WMDs are actually used, we've all lost anyways, so it probably only makes sense to keep a huuuuuge stash of the cheapest + most destructive and suffering-maximizing stuff around (I imagine some hellish bio thing) for pure revenge end-game.
I don't see how that follows.
It makes little sense for small EU countries to do that by themselves, when the whole of Slovakia will have like 6 fighter planes and 20 IFVs. At the same time, procurement is pretty political, since many countries are deep in weapons trade, so maybe it wouldn't work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_training_ship_Gorch_Foc...
Portugal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRP_Sagres_(1937)
US Coast Guard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Eagle_(WIX-327)
Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_training_ship_Amerigo_...
Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS_Mir
Peru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAP_Uni%C3%B3n
See:
Austria is an odd example, given that it's completely surrounded by "friendlies". What would the Austrians gain by joining NATO? It's fairly clear what they would lose, which is the ability to stay out of a future NATO conflict.
Thought experiment: let's imagine the UK or the US were to somehow kick off a hot war with - let's say - Chinese forces, on/around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Do any of us seriously believe that the UK or the US just press some magic "Article 5" button and troops from all over NATO just grab their weapons and set off round the world to join in the fighting?
Looking back at the history of NATO's Article 5 it's clear it has more holes than a Swiss cheese. It's political theatre.[0]
> Austria is an odd example, given that it's completely surrounded by "friendlies".
This kind of thinking has produced the current nightmare IMO. The unwillingness to invest in common security has enabled Russia.
Without wishing to get all silly, most wars tend to involve both sides fighting.
What's the actual threshold for a NATO member declaring "an attack" to be able to claim assistance under Article 5? Their first ship sunk? Their first aircraft shot down? Their first casualty on the battlefield? First civilian killed in terrorist attack? First cyber-attack?
“A serious cyberattack could trigger Article 5, where an attack against one ally is treated as an attack against all” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General[0]
It would appear to be a completely blank cheque for military action, based on suitable political theatre. Think Wag the Dog (1997 movie).[1]
[0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_168435.htm?selectedL... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
> demilitarize EU member states so that they can't start a war with one
> another as they no longer have a military to directly control.
That would have the advantage of removing the most common source of coups - a corrupt military leadership.
As it is, a current corrupt European military is constrained to a single nation, and would have to coup that nation before conquering the continent. There would be no such natural constraint for a unified EU military.
If this sound far-fetched to you I implore you to look at the last decades' relations between the countries.
The same way individual US states defend against coups, presumably.
- They become your military adversary.
- Some autocrat-minded person gets elected as President of the US and refuses to provide the EU money, services, and weapons until the EU complies with some demand against it's own interests.
- Perhaps in combo with the second item, the US could lead the EU on, to further it's interests, and let the EU down at the worst possible times.
Why is that? I personally would love to see an EU army formed with no backing whatsoever from the US (this would probably mean that NATO would have to be dissolved).
Personally, I'm tired of paying for Europes security and want us out of there as soon as possible.
That's already on the cards, as Trump so helpfully demonstrated. Also, the US cooperates with Japan, SK and other countries without them being in NATO, so I don't see why they'd consider an EU Army as an enemy if they're strategically alined - and if they're not, it won't change anything because the Americans will do whatever they want anyway.
So yes, all for an EU Army that doesn't rely on the US.
The US has bilateral treaties in which the US undertakes NATO-like commitments to Japan and South Korea, and bilateral or multiteral (e.g., AUKUS, Rio Treaty) agreements with US-outward or mutual defense provisions with others, sure.
Are you imagining a similar relation with the EU replacing NATO, and, if so, how is that substantively different from just keeping NATO?
How did the US act as an "enemy" under Trump precisely ?
In practice a prospective EU military would probably just copy most aspects of NATO, just with a slightly different set of missions and member states.
Sufficiently fueled nationalistic sentiment can break through any attempt to "hide" it. Not even financial interdependence could keep the country together (plenty of companies depended on sourcing parts in other republics).
We already have armies at the country level, plus NATO, creating an EU army seems like a way of saying "yeah this EU army here is totally different from NATO" which I doubt Russia will really be swayed by.
I say the following as a former officer in the French army, which I'm sure you'll agree is one of the more active armies in the EU. We nominally have country-level armies. Their funding is consistently reduced and their numbers regularly downsized, and this trend exists across Europe. One might nitpick by pointing to specific budget increases, but the trend is undeniable if you look at it on any reasonable time-scale.
I can think of no European country that has an autonomous standing army, capable of deploying itself to the theater of operations, resupplying and sustaining combat efforts without the support of US logistics. To point at the mere existence of national armies is to play word games. The EU members have outsourced their defense to the United States, and are now paying the price.
EDIT: to be clear, I am quite skeptical of an EU strategic command.
There is no inherent weakness of Europe. It has far more people than the US. All that welfare state makes it far more efficient too in many matters.
A little "Military Keynesianism" would, frankly, be really good for solving Europe's problems of higher unemployement and whatnot too. I am generally against such things, but the welfare states make the risk of runway jobs guarantees and military industrial complexes less bad.
In general, Europe missed out on Keynesianism it seems (the military or non military varieties). 70+ years of welfware states is being undone by stupid austerity. They figure out how to be good to the poor (unlike US) and not do austerity (like the US, despite what you may think), and they should leap ahaed of us.
The "US-lead world order" is Europe's choice.
If you go back to the decades in which the US became the world hegemon (post-war era) the difference is way more stark. It's not that the EU resigned - it's that the US muscled them out!
One theory is that in Europe in the 1980s, workers became so much more empowered that the private sector lost the will to invest. Start with https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf for the basic concept here, but there are many more examples.
A VAT-funded balanced budget welfare state is a purely redistributional mechanism which, while great, is not sufficient to undo this sort of thing.
Direct government spending like the military sort is a way around this. Maybe the workers are militant, but will the democracy just allow itself to decline military because you don't feel like dealing with that?
Workers vote too, so I don't think so.
I think the US is a very weird state - it's probably the most consistently old-school liberal state in the world, it has negligible worker activism, colossal natural resources, and its position as world hegemon gives it all sorts of non-imitable economic advantages. I don't think you can copy the US if you're not the US - the closest in terms of economic policy is the UK, and the UK economy is kind of like a corpse in a bin bag.
The EU is barely a confederation, let alone a federal state.
Is how a military industrial complex starts. Then it seeks to justify its existence by either meddling everywhere.
If people simply don't need jobs as much, on the margins, it's much easier to have healthy conversations about what investment is actually good, vs what is just make-work or worse.
How so? The Suez invasion didn't fail because the British (or the French) didn't have the logistics to supply their forces. It failed because the US wasn't OK with it happening.
The point is, France could build whatever expeditionary force it could fit within its national budget, and it would still be completely useless for national strategic interests, because you could only really use it if the Americans agree you could use it. Thus, it would just end up doing stuff that fits in with American strategic imperatives.
Yeah, I was kind of glossing that over. I don't know if French military involvement in Africa has been particularly helpful to France, and it seems less likely still that it has been helpful to Africans (with a few exceptions, Jean-Bedel Bokassa comes to mind).
I think you're underselling the effectiveness: there have been many post-colonial interventions by european forces that have ended in the european's favour. Sri Lanka's genocidal suppression of the Tamils, for example, or the propping up of Bahrain.
The broader point is, at no point do these actions run against US interests.
A number of African countries continue to store their reserves in France and work with the CFA Franc, which makes it worth it.
> there have been many post-colonial interventions by european forces that have ended in the european's favour
Yeah, but they are all in the past. It's today's news that the French failed in Mali. The combination of increasingly-difficult asymmetrical warfare (with guerrilla becoming more and more effective) and practical cuts to national budgets make such interventions increasingly ineffective. If even the superpowers cannot pacify medium-sized nation-states anymore, individual states have no realistic chance to achieve anything alone.
My sort of uninformed reading of the problem in Mali / Sahel desert insurgencies is just that the French didn't do a very good job at a strategic level, which isn't really the military's fault.
It strikes me that most of the western debacles have been essentially down to a pretty thin understanding of how to discover and support regional partners. There's no quantity of bombs or boots that would make the Afghan kleptocratic torture state command a plurality of support, and worse, the Americans were temperamentally incapable of building bridges with the kind of people that could form a stable government.
My feeling is that resources aren't the problem: the problem is that (for a number of reasons) western policy making elites are just making the wrong decisions, both in terms of how ambitious their projects are (the post-invasion Iraq project was insane), and in terms of who they choose to work with.
If you take Iraq for example, the US chose to marginalize Iran early on, despite the fact they would have been (practically speaking) a great partner, who were more than willing to involve themselves in Iraqi regime change.
You have that exactly backwards. The French expeditionary force can only be deployed with American approval because it requires American logistics. If this were not the case, you would have something approximating Russian expeditionary capabilities.
No, my point is that the Suez crisis proves that even if you do have logistical independence, it doesn't matter, because the US can crash your economy and excoriate you in the UN if you do something they don't like.
At no point in either the french nor the british military operations do you see either tactical defeats or supply issues.
That has been intentional. Deploying forces outside your borders is what empires do. It's out of scope for the military forces of ordinary countries.
Most military forces only exist to defend their own territory. For most West European countries in the past 20-25 years, the only realistic threats were their neighbors and the US. Because all of those were allies, the primary purpose of the military was maintaining the readiness to scale up in case the world becomes more dangerous again.
It will be interesting to see what will become of Europe now that Germany has decided they are allowed to act like an empire once again.
Yes, the US can take over countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. And then what? Is there any net gain for the US? On the other hand, NATO bombings in former Yoguslavia led to a situation that is still more or less stable today.
Russia quickly took over Crimea, which has strategic value and has support of the local population. But now they are stuck with a nasty and costly war in Ukraine.
So it is not clear where in the world Germany would play 'empire'.
I wonder to what extend an army can maintain an effective defence if there no need for any defence for many decades. Many western European countries have not been attacked since the end of WWII.
What you're describing is taught to us as the difference between an occupying force and an expeditionary force. Occupying forces don't really need to be trained on seizing forward air bases because someone else does that. That kind of army functions a lot more like well-armed police. The Marines has a different decree, which holds most units at a high level of unit readiness because the president has the capacity to deploy them for 30 days at any given time. We operated most battlefield functions as internal jobs, aside from ships logistics, and cross-training is heavily emphasized to combat cost. Interestingly enough, the Marines is the smallest and least funded branch in the armed forces - so it would appear the difference is primarily in culture, logistics, and tactics.
Edit:
All this said, we operated and trained with British, Korean, Aussie, and Dutch military components that had and trained on these capabilities.
I guess that depends on what you consider to be logistical independence, but at the theater scale, the answer is "no". Physically moving personnel and materiel to Africa, say, is almost always handled by the U.S. Air Force to a very large degree. See for example, Operation Serval.
Could you unpack that? I don’t know what you mean, but it sounds interesting.
My MOS was a 2844, which was a Ground Radio Technician. I could repair and operate every radio the USMC had at an advanced level. I then received courses on how to provide EMT-level care on the battlefield, machine gunners school, vehicle operations (command, gunning, operation, egress, maneuvers), basic generator troubleshooting, vehicle maintenance training, artillery/medevac coordination, advanced SatComm training, etc... This is specifically so that teams are a) self-sustaining (one team can accomplish many jobs outside of their primary job) and b) to reduce the number of on-hand resources the USMC requires to function.
The EU has many more people than the US, and is still fairly wealthy on the main. If there is a relatively big EU military, we in the US have a chance of reforming and shrinking our monster.
The point of an EU army is not to appease Russia --- that indeed wouldn't work. The point is to give Europe some real sovereignty whereas today it has a hugely captive foreign policy.
Read the thread! The EU and many small allies like South Korea and Japan have absolutely ROSEY relations with The US because they need The US.
This is a massive strategic advantage that no sane American wants to give up.
It's also one of the few things in politics that is a win win. It largely discouraged bad actors from war(despite Ukraine rn we have still lived in relative peace for a long time). EU gets defense, US gets clout to negotiate with everywhere. Best friends.
I'm sure you are saying this from a point of privilege. If you are upper middle class or higher in the US you are benefiting from this arrangement.
Otherwise you are in an endless treadmill of barely surviving with the fear of no safety net and one missed paycheck away from ruin. I'm sure this vast underclass would say that instead of wasting money on this military instead a proper safety net + opportunities for advancement (eg. free college/healthcare) should be created...you know all the benefits that Europeans have and take for granted(built on the backs of Americans in a way).
>It's also one of the few things in politics that is a win win. It largely discouraged bad actors from war(despite Ukraine rn we have still lived in relative peace for a long time). EU gets defense, US gets clout to negotiate with everywhere. Best friends.
Yes it has made a lot of despicable people in the US very rich.
I don’t think more subsidized communication and psychology grads would make the US a better place.
If you treat it as an investment in your citizens that on the average will bring a return on the investment(in the form of a better educated workforce able to contribute to the country's bottom line) then you can have a scenario where some major in underwater basket weaving while others take a chance on STEM degrees. On average, the country is better off. In the end, the opportunity was there for all.
If you make things completely free then they will just be abused and wasted.
So we have Biden to thank for moving the needle a tiny bit further (lets ignore all the lost time and opportunity by not even having these basic options until 2021) but things still fall massively short.
I'll just take NJ as an example since it is a more liberal state and is generous with its welfare.
In 2021 Gov Murphy signed a law that gives students in a household earning 65k a year or less free community college.
Off the bat: It excludes people who did not complete high school. There is no guaranteed avenue for them to complete the GED tuition free, some can get Pell grants, others can get other various grants but this goes back to the point I was making that the opportunity is not there for everyone. I guess they are just losers and should be thrown on the side of the road right?
For background, I used to work with community college teachers and so I have some background on how the entry level classes are run. They have basic math(pre-algebra), basic English and basic history classes that are requirements for all degrees and are typically remedial classes that require 2 or more subsequent classes afterwards to satisfy what is typically the first math/english class for STEM degrees. (The sequence is typically Basic Math -> Pre-Algebra > Algebra2 -> Pre-Calc -> Calc and only STEM take the later classes).
The college purposely runs dozens of sections all through the day for these classes to help give the utmost flexibility to students who are trying to get back onto the right track. Every semester without fail 80%+ of the students either drop out, fail, or otherwise do not complete the courses. You have no freakin idea how difficult it is for someone who has fallen by the wayside and is struggling to survive to then have to learn these subjects from scratch on top of their existing obligations. The amount of privilege you have to just casually brush aside how serious the problem is proof positive that we as a country are screwed long term. Its going to end up like Brazil, a large underclass with a small lucky elite.
Lets continue with Gov Murphy's bill.
Requires you to take 6 credits at a time, potentially further excluding people who may have to work multiple jobs or have other obligations just to survive. I guess they should just keep working and maybe something will change in their lot down the road so they can take the 6 credits.
If you do not maintain satisfactory academic progress, you are booted out for good. So you have to remain in good standing and not have any screwups (ie. things like losing your job on top of struggling in difficult classes). I know many people that ended up on probation in their first semester and they were lucky enough to afford to remain in college and eventually complete their degrees(many of them are software developers now). Poor people? Well screw them. Unless they are perfect they don't deserve success.
NJ has the concept of dual enrollment where if you are super bright and motivated you can enroll in CC classes while in high school and earn credits. Those students are not eligible for this grant. So anyone who is poor but motivated will have yet another hurdle. Maybe they can find other avenues to pay but the point is that this system is not as straightforward as you are so casually describing.
The following fees are not covered:
• Books (purchased or rental)
• Equipment/Supplies/Uniforms (purchase or rental)
• Insurance/Health Fees
• Application Fees
• Library Fees
• Late Fees or Fines
• Testing/Portfolio/Audit Fees
• Licensing/Certification Fees
• Criminal Background Check Fees
• Parking Fees
• Gym/Fitness Fees
• Aviation/Flight Time Fees
• Change Fees
• Graduation/Diploma Fees
• Transcript Fees
• International Fees
• Out-of-state or Out-of-county Fees
• Curriculum Review Fees
• Payment Plan Fees
So like I said, finally some progress after so many years of struggle by activists to get something but not quite there yet.
>which can be followed up by state colleges that admit almost anyone
You are clueless as to what real Americans have to deal with on a day to day basis and here you are thinking that those state schools admit just anyone. We should give as many tools as possible to help people be successful but they still have to put in the work. With all of the issues I described above, these odds of success get worse the more you have on your shoulders. Maybe if you don't have to worry about income yeah you can get into a third tier state school with little effort(Rutgers requires a B/B+ avg for STEM so maybe something like NJCU or Montclair state or worse) but you don't seem to have an internal understanding at how much harder it is for people with all these other burdens.
>If you make things completely free then they will just be abused and wasted.
Of course there will be some people who go and earn multiple degrees. This happens in Europe. Do you really think this abuse is worse than the waste in the military, all the pork that is in every freaking bill, and the corruption in just about every industry? This is an INVESTMENT in the people of the country. Whichever way you look at it, it is a net benefit for the citizens to get more educated, even if it is in underwater basket weaving. You casually dismiss the fact that people still have to spend 4 years earning the damn degree so its not even like typical entitlement programs where supposedly free money is just handed out. There is still a massive opportunity cost for the person wanting to get the college degree.
It sounds like you want adult daycare where everyone gets an A and can then continue on to Berkeley.
If you actually spent time around a CC then you would know that there are lot of unserious people that come through and refuse to put in the minimal effort and fail for that reason. What usually happens if that they grow up (e.g. get a job and get married) and come back later and do much better.
Cheap is relative depending on your income level. Prices have also been going up year after year so when you went to school may not reflect current prices. Seeing as you seem to have a mentality that is not considering of facts on the ground, it appears like you went to school quite a while ago.
>I spent a year at a CC so I know what it’s like
So did I, In fact I worked with CC professors and administrators. I mentioned that in the reply you clearly didn't read.
>and you are doing a lot of exaggerating. E.g. listings a bunch of bogus fees that would never all apply to a single person and are typically small.
Of course not every fee applies to every student but the point was that all these fees are a further hinderance to paying for that tuition. Furthermore, if the fees are supposedly so cheap, why aren't they covered? Surely if you think it isn't an issue then just extend the full coverage to all students no?
> And it’s not hard to get exemptions for hardship or retake classes… you don’t get booted out forever.
I'm not sure if you just misread my statement or just don't care but I am referring to NJ's specific program. Of course you don't get booted out of CC, it is open enrollment! But this rule is just another way to filter out even more people, like I said, screw up your one chance and you are finished, on to the street with you.
>Also, complaining about a 6 credit hour minimum, really?
Yes because about 13M people hold two or more jobs.
[1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/about-thirtee...
Sure it won't harm every applicant but yet again for the nth time, the point is that it is another hurdle preventing people from escaping their current conditions. Again if this is such a non-issue to you then surely you'd agree the rule is dumb and should be removed no?
>It sounds like you want adult daycare where everyone gets an A and can then continue on to Berkeley.
I don't know where these smug idiots crawled out of after Trump got elected but I remember a time on HN when your kind of personality wasn't constantly roaming around and acting in bad faith.
>If you actually spent time around a CC then you would know that there are lot of unserious people that come through and refuse to put in the minimal effort and fail for that reason. What usually happens if that they grow up (e.g. get a job and get married) and come back later and do much better.
Completely disagree: The majority of the people who were failing out of those remedial courses were middle age or older. Yes there are young people fresh out of HS flunking out but they are a smaller percentage of people and typically do not take those remedial courses. Those courses start at more of a high school level. Thats how bad it is although it seems like you live in a different universe so I wouldn't expect you to realize it anyway.
Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, MediCal, Unemployment, EBT (food stamps / free food), Welfare, pandemic stimulus checks, etc.
US social spends more, by % of GDP, higher than Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Israel, Switzerland, Iceland, Ireland, South Korea, and more. And we have certain differing classically liberal economic policies that have bolstered our GDP considerably, so 18% of $60k is even better than 18% of $40k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...
Yeah this gets trotted out every time. The requirements and hoops you have to jump through for all the Medi* programs makes it such that unless you are destitute + cross your i and dot your t you will not be entering those programs. I went through this very scenario when I as a developer ended up in a situation without income a few years back. Coverage does not start for many of these programs until you have passed an income year where you are under the threshold. So for that gap you are on your own. Failure to make sure you application perfect is also cause for fines and backpay down the road as my mother experienced (she got a multi thousand dollar bill from our state's Medicaid program two years after the fact just because her application was not perfect and they discovered the issue later on.)
Medicare is an exception as it is a simple age based formula but it still has premiums. Furthermore as my Father who passed away 1 month before his Medicare eligible date can attest, many people need the healthcare before they reach 65. It is a complete scam that there isn't adequate coverage before that date and it serves as a funnel to limit the amount of people who make it to that date(but still pay into the program despite not ever benefiting).
>Social Security
Is not adequate to provide benefits for the vast majority of counties in the US. You must supplement with additional retirement. Again my parents living in a liberal state with higher than average(but no where near highest) cost of living would be screwed. They are lucky that they worked as Engineers/Developers so they could afford to save up money but most are not that lucky.
>Unemployment, EBT (food stamps / free food), Welfare
Again, suffers from the same needs based testing as the Medi* programs. It is designed such that unless you are a perfect applicant, you are not getting in and the wait list for some of these programs are so long that it is pointless. This situation has resulted in a massive underclass that is barely ineligible for these programs yet are not wealthy enough to lead a basic dignified life.
>pandemic stimulus checks
You seriously trotting out the one time check? This shows how privileged you really are that you have no clue whatsoever as to how a large chunk of America is really living.
>US social spends more, by % of GDP, higher than Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Israel, Switzerland, Iceland, Ireland, South Korea, and more. And we have certain differing classically liberal economic policies that have bolstered our GDP considerably, so 18% of $60k is even better than 18% of $40k.
Like everything in this country, all these programs are abused by anyone who can benefit: contractors, bureaucracy, and politicians who can use it to pad re-election hopes. I'd bet money that the majority of the American underclass would GLADLY swap seats with someone in those other countries yet I bet the opposite is not as true.
Who would one put in charge, though?
I'm not sure getting the 27 member states (who are already very much individually sovereign) to pool their sovereignty is going to be quite as easy as some think.
The EU can't even agree on how to pick the President of the European Commission - see the statements in February 2018 by the EU Parliament on how this should be done, followed by nomination of the 'Spitzenkandidaten' and debates between candidates in early May 2019, followed by the elections at the end of May 2019, followed by ... Ursula von der Leyen getting the job in July 2019. Not exactly democracy at its finest.
Our military's size and capabilities seem to be more a function of job-creation, rather than actual military need.
Obviously we can't know for sure what a world without a large American military would be like, but a big goal of that force projection is to reduce the chance of major conflict from bad actors.
Nuclear deterrents and the United States' military dominance have done a fairly good job of keeping peace in large parts of the world. Russia attacking Ukraine is the first major war in Europe in decades.
But getting rid of this "world police" "free world" bullshit will still help a lot. Consider, right now the US military budget is bound to balloon some more because of this war, without us doing any fighting. Military Keynesianism --- chest puffing handshake.
Finally, if are allies can defend themselves, they will have more spine to call out our bullshit with things like Iraq.
We are sending actual weapons and machinery, which need to be replaced by new weapons off the factory line. One Javelin missile costs $175k.
"In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/politics/us-ukraine-we...
I noticed that recently my local dollar store has now become the 1.25$ store. This can't bode well for the future...maybe we are experiencing the fall right now. You wouldn't really know until after the fact.
The US Dollar can only collapse if the federal government defaults on its debts, or institutes currency controls which make it no longer convertible. The government only accepts tax payments in Dollars, so anyone subject to US taxes has no choice but to hold some Dollars.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...
If your goals are just coastal defense and prevention of invasion from Canada and Mexico, then that's significantly easier. Those aren't the US goals and haven't been for a long time. And it seems to be overwhelmingly the case that any potential defense partner for the US (aligned interests, not judged to be themselves a threat) can successfully pass off military spending to the US.
We have created economic dependencies on our vast military spending. At a fundamental level, the $1 trillion spent on defense ends up in the hands of US service members and defense contractors. They spend that money back in the US economy.
When viewed from that (cynical?) perspective, it isn't surprising that the military's spending and scope grow year after year.
But some would say at present, the EU is the junior power in the EU-USA military relationship, despite its greater GDP; and that it's embarrassing we can't do our fair share.
And America is a democracy - so at any time they could elect someone who puts America first and doesn't value an alliance with a bunch of weak, argumentative allies. Or someone with an appetite for spreading freedom abroad, who resents their allies not being at their side.
Even so, U.S. military spending is $768 billion or ~3.7% of GDP, while E.U. spending was around $220 billion in 2020, or about ~1.5%.
This will not happen at least until the baby boomer generation dies off. In the last election we saw clear as day how suppressed any candidate outside the mainstream really is. (Not talking about Trump but Sanders).
I believe there is a large population of pissed off Americans that want to end this arrangement but they are not going to be able to exert their power until the generation that greatly benefited from the US being world police finally kicks the bucket.
Their economy is less linked to the global economy than almost any other big economy, they definitely have enough resources to sustain themselves and Americans in general are becoming more inward focused.
The US could modestly reduce its global military footprint, and refocus those resources better on Europe (Russia) and Asia (China), and that would probably work out just fine.
Most Americans like their big military, even though they gripe about its cost. If there were a strong majority sentiment to reduce that military or pull out of the world, Trump would have done better against Biden.
Americans are tired of the stupid shit - invading & occupying Iraq; invading and occupying Afghanistan (occupying it for two decades for nothing). That money we poured into nothingness in Afghanistan, could have plausibly done wonders for Ukraine in numerous ways. Our attention and those resources would have been vastly better spent shoring up the new, fragile democracy in Ukraine than on an Afghanistan that was very unlikely to have a positive outcome.
That isolationism lean, which is a modest minority group politically, will tend to come and go. It's amplified currently due to the stupidity of what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US also had some of that culturally after the disaster of Vietnam. Overall it's a good thing to have that minority isolationist political wing, it might help tilt the US toward not doing the next Iraq. Some counter-weight to our rah rah rah global adventurism is important.
The sad part is that you didn't even gain an ally at the end.
The kind of money you invested in Afghanistan, spent wisely in Ukraine, would have yielded a nation of ~45 million people eternally grateful to the US.
In an immensely strategic location in the world. A Western power controlling Ukraine really does control Russia and these days the Middle East, too.
And that's from a base that is culturally and stability-wise much better than toxic allies like Saudi Arabia.
The 2020 election was a referendum on COVID so it is not a fair comparison. Trump was on track to defeat Biden before COVID hit and he totally bungled the response. In addition to that Trump increased his turnout significantly (as did Biden but I attribute that to COVID and hatred of Trump's personality). If another well mannered populist comes along during non pandemic times, I fully believe he/she would mop the floor with the establishment. Trump laid out the map for a path to break through establishment stranglehold on the white house. Its unfortunate that Bernie couldn't get past the DNC's attempts to pull the rug from under him but Trump showed that the Republican party does not have as many roadblocks so you cannot be as dismissive of populists as you are given the facts on the ground.
They’d much rather have America sink into debt than touch the sacred cow of EU social spending.
Didn't Germany, Denmark, Romania, Austria (and possibly others I'm forgetting) already announce increases in military spending?
As a German, each one of those points is really far out of what used to be the political mainstream for many, many decades, and has broad support. It feels like things really are shifting.
The US isn't sinking into debt (just) because of the military...
The US is choosing to overspend to help grow its economy and maintain a very lavish lifestyle for its population. It's banking on its currency being a global reserve currency.
The US already has by far the world's most expensive healthcare system. Building a lot more hospitals would be a cost nightmare that would further drown the system.
US households are in excellent financial shape in terms of debt at both the median and the average, better than many of its peers (if you want to see horrific household finances, check out Scandinavia). US household monthly debt costs as a share of disposable income remain near the lowest levels in 40-50 years.
You could immediately reduce US military spending by $300 billion and it wouldn't make any consequential difference in the deficits problem the US is facing over the next 30 years, because it's overwhelmingly caused by required entitlement spending. There is no scenario where the US doens't run perpetual trillion dollar deficits, unless entitlements are reformed or taxes go way way up. We could already entirely get rid of the military and we'd still be facing enormous deficits in the coming decades, that's how bad it is.
...regardless of what the US does or doesn't do. NATO serves a different purpose.
If we ever want to get close to the dream of an European Federation we need to get the Army done. Then maybe some EU equivalent of the FBI (no Interpol doesn't cut it, something with trained men with guns and bugs and all, and EU only).
Even a possible future improvement of the relationships between Europe and Russia is contingent on this: we need to be able to talk with Russia without the US sitting at the table, and to have the option to also act against the interests of the US. Which, frankly, don't really coincide that much with that of Europe anymore.
If we want an EU army, we need a single EU foreign policy first. Otherwise who decides when to use it?
And if we have a single EU foreign policy, how do we deal with NATO? Do state that are non-aligned just have to suck it up? How do we deal with France's military adventures in Africa? Do the countries that object to them have to suck it up and Françafrique quickly collapse? What's the EU position on the Carlingford Lough Dispute? Is Imia in Greece, or not?
> Then maybe some EU equivalent of the FBI (no Interpol doesn't cut it, something with trained men with guns and bugs and all, and EU only).
This bit is ongoing; The European Public Prosecutor is the first step in this, and frontex are already armed. Note that despite the EU having armed forces, the oversight mechanisms for them are, so far, atrocious. Perhaps we should fix those before expanding to an army?
> Even a possible future improvement of the relationships between Europe and Russia is contingent on this: we need to be able to talk with Russia without the US sitting at the table, and to have the option to also act against the interests of the US. Which, frankly, don't really coincide that much with that of Europe anymore.
Do you have a course of action that you think we should be pursuing that we cannot currently? I can't think of one, but it may exist. And if you do, is it one that would command support in all EU states, or is the first step getting foreign policy to move to QMV? And if that's the case, how do you plan to win a referendum in Ireland to (effectively) abolish Irish neutrality?
And on the EU/Russia/US thing, I think the "goal" should be of "maximizing the possibilities for future actions", no actual goal in particular should be pursued.
And mindset wise, I think we should try and rid ourselves of this quasi-hyper-rationalist analysis-paralysis inducing mindset where one needs to answer a zillion questions before being allowed to do anything... Sometimes where you have high uncertainty in all directions the best thing to do is just ACT as long as you can guess around the overall direction of action, and let some of the consequences handle themselves. Action will generate more information, and hopefully that information will de-balance the probabilities and future decisions will be obvious once some of the fog clears. If you just "sit and think" entropy just increases around you, things fall apart more and more, the information you get is even more murkier and require even more analysis and discussion and negotiation and you just get paralyzed and decompose...
> The oversight mechanisms for them are, so far, atrocious. Perhaps we should fix those before expanding to an army?
All the stuff you talk about should be coupled with EU parliament > inter-governmentalism, and then the answers should be clear.
[0] https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/03/14/what-wou...
Unless the EU gets a tier one strategic nuclear power as a member (which, short of radical regime change in Russia, a radical expansion of the EU’s geographic focus, or the emergence of a new major nuclear power doesn't seem likely), the motivation for wanting a permanent US tripwire force doesn't go away with an EU army.
But let's say Russia uses tactical nukes to kill a Polish air base or an Italian carrier or an Estonian infantry division? Would BoJo or Macron press the button and consign his nation to nuclear destruction? No he certainly wouldn't.
If France won't launch their 300 warheads, they wouldn't launch if they had 3,000 either.
I said that, if MagnumOpus believes the French wouldn't launch, that's not relevant to dragonwriter's observation the EU doesn't have many warheads, which DrBazza was replying to.
This is inaccurate.
MAD applies with progressively decreasing strength to:
(1) Nuclear conflicts, (2) direct conflicts between nuclear powers, (3) direct conflicts between a nuclear power and the powers with which a nuclear power has a firm defense commitment, (4) direct conflicts between parties where a different nuclear power has firm defense commitments to each, ... (there are more categories where it has some attenuated impact, but it gets pretty weak beyond this point and the heirarchy becomes murkier)
Tripwire forces are a means of moving category #3 into category #2 as a means of deterring them (also, #4 into #3, which is sometimes also of perceived importance.)
The whole WWIII argument against NFZ in Ukraine is that it elevates a conflict that is not on this chart at all straight to a #2. If you think MAD applies only to nuclear conflicts, you don't understand the role of MAD.in deterrence very well.
Europe's past history of war and military technology is what allowed it to advance faster up to the point of industrial revolution and then to colonize most of the world...
Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe. An EU Army would at the same time make internal conflict exceedingly unlikely (no/impotent national armies, all resources dedicated to EU Army), and allow Europe to start re-involving itself productively in external conflicts.
A de-militarized Europe is a castrated Europe, doomed to lag behind and wither away.
Got it: go fight people away from home for benefit and profit. The logic of empire or, if you prefer, the greatest good for the smallest number. This is precisely the approach being followed by Russia in Ukraine, and I would very much not like it if Europe returned to it too.
I don't see anything wrong with Russia's goals per se... only in how they choose to pursue them: everybody was playing an economic and psychological game for the `minds & wallets` of Ukrainians, and Russia got mad because they were loosing and strolled in with tanks...
Russia is like that kid on the playground that always got mad when he lost at a game and went violent on everyone smashing the toys and swinging fists around...
The only thing this turn is that the unruly kid actually did get cheated on (wrt. the promises to limit NATO expansion after '89), so you can't just tell him to put down... you'd need to appease him with something to make up for it. But Europe has the (understandable) "never appease expansionist tyrants again" stance, so we're stuck in this bloody mess...
Eh, I'm not sure you get the tech benefits of a war when it's a foreign war of choice.
I mean, WW2 coincided with computers, radar, rocketry, modern control theory, jet engines, and so on because in an existential war you throw everything you've got into winning it.
But you look at wars of choice, like Iraq? All that came out of it was moderate upgrades to prosthetic limbs and drones. The major innovations of the period, like smartphones and cloud services, were unrelated to the wars.
The whole investment in computers is so bombs can be more precise.
Look at rocketry for example. The moment the impetus of a serious threat is gone, the US decided to put all their space money into a useless boondoggle that was more about spreading the pork around into the right congressional districts than seriously advancing rocketry or space exploration.
Translation - lets go kill some foreign people so we can live better. Disgusting.
Some kind of Military EU coordination of forces, yes, but 'EU Army' - no. Almost nobody is going to fight for the EU flag. Also, nations want to maintain some kind of control over things like 'Intervention in Libya'.
But - we already have defence, it's called NATO, and it includes Norway, the UK and the USA.
Even with an 'EU Army of Sorts' - there is no clear leadership. Germany has the political and economic power, but little in the way of forces. France is probably the most prepared but are still small. Absent the UK which would probably be a helpful leader ... there's not much there.
In the end, NATO is well designed for that, it includes the US which is important for now.
It will take a decade at least for EU to sort itself out in that area and it may never happen. It also does not need to happen.
As for clear leadership, it must be the EU parliament. You cannot put a military under inter-governmental control. Which is good, as inter-governmentalism is bad in general.
"As for clear leadership, it must be the EU parliament."
This is a misunderstanding of how leadership works.
'Parliament' cannot provide real military leadership.
The EU Parliament above all, is an effete bureaucracy incapable of 'doing' most things.
Yes - of course the political body must be responsible and direct the military objectives etc., there is no doubt there, but that is not nearly enough.
There needs to be a very well organised and experienced body military personnel who can basically form the basis of leadership, and it needs to be effective.
The US has that, the UK and France have that at least at some scale.
If the EU said 'we're going to have an Army and pool all of our budget' and then every soldier, officer and seaman were under this 'single integrated unit' - instead of national Armies - and - if it was well managed and coordinated, then sure, that would be a path.
But it won't happen for so many reasons.
And especially, it doesn't' need to.
Most EU citizens do not want a Federal State let alone 'more integration', most efforts for rather integration are driven by EU elite, and young ideologues who also don't really understand the nature of what is going on.
What is possibly in the cards, is an EU-like NATO, i.e. a more comprehensive EU defence organization.
But as long as NATO exists and is functional, wise Europeans may prefer to have the USA 'on board' because they are 3x more powerful when the US is involved, at least for now. And European nations right now are 'taking up the slack' and investing more heavily, Poland, Germany, Sweden etc. are really stepping up.
The defensive roles of the army are (broadly) to protect the sovereignty of the government, and to protect the borders. Though most European borders are accepted by the governments controlling both sides of them, the sovereignty of the governments is far from assured. Every generation, heck every decade, sees new challenges, new techniques to subvert and undermine, and new foreign political change campaigns. The army protects against that. Broadly.
If you're thinking about an EU army being used to defend non-US nations (e.g. Ukraine) then I beg you to consider that the purpose of the army is to defend the nation. An army that puts its nation at risk by going out and protecting others is actually harming the nation. Even if the US likes to do it, but the US can afford to do it because it has two nice big oceans buffering it from aggression.
No. What we need is nukes. As we've seen many times so far, no country can be truly sovereign without nukes.
European countries should spend more on their respective militaries though (I notice this sounds suspiciously like things Trump said).
Helping France keep control in Africa somewhere I can see there being less enthusiasm.
Also, I'm not so sure European identity is receding anymore, although that narrative is of benefit to other large powers.
People join the military for multitude of reasons, including just to have a job that isn't working a till. No one is joining the French Foreign Legion to die for France, no one joins a mercenary company to die for stock holders. It's a job, yes for some it's a pure calling but often more than not, it's a place to work and pick up new skills.
As has been the case for the vast majority of wars throughout human history.
There is no sovereignty without some ability to defend oneself on ones own. And personally, I think a major problem with the EU is too much intergovernmentalism, and not enough direct EU parliament power. Putting a military under their control can help that.
"We don't need a Military" is the same happy go lucky thinking as "we'll just close all the nukes, do more renewables, and worry about storage later". It's just blatantly irresponsible, and undermines genuinely good things (less war, more renewables) into mere virtue signalling.
EU is economic union and should stay as such
So in the end this army would be used 90% to stop protests against EU in countries, losing their sovereignty in the process
100% wrong.
Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage, and with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are considered the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's.
In fact, there's a protest going on right now in my city over mental health care.
But as somebody from V4, I don't feel that we have big enough representation there to trust them with "EU army".
Look at Germany, how reluctant was to even start doing sanctions or distribute arms. The eastern countries see this, and they just don't trust Germany will have their back. Same with France or Spain or Italy.
Also, the Bosnia war/genocide, and the late intervention is a clear failure of European policy. The US had to step in to make it stop. Same during the Kosova ethnic cleansing.
The Eastern Block members know their only single reliable partner is the US and not the other large EU members who are always late to do anything.
An EU army is the worst idea i've heard and the biggest counter-argument of being pro-EU.You talk like we don't have armies: we do, and strengthening them is the priority instead of creating more super-national entities which will have no effect pragmatically speaking, and a lot of overhead in terms of wasted money.It will open loopholes where people who hold more power at an EU-level will abuse the army for doing their bidding.As a matter of fact, EU can demand nation-states to do economic & regulatory measures between countries as long as nation states continue with their membership,but it does not have any power over sovereign states in most matters, especially military & security-wise.
Anyway, every country in the EU has a military, and many are in a defensive pact called NATO. Two NATO countries in Europe are nuclear armed. Russia would have no hope of touching us. This seems fine to me.
My own opinion is that the EU should handle economic, military, and foreign policy issues. It should have centralized funding for common goods like research and environmental issues, but not to the exclusion of local funding. It should have a minimum bar for local democratic governance, but it shouldn't be very high. It should stay away from social issues, which are best handled locally.
Scope of the EU is a valid area for debate. The above is my opinion. You're welcome to argue your own, but perhaps with logic, rather than as "scope creep."
I fear EU politicians that lobby for billioneres to make EU authoritarian China like than I fear China or nearby countries.
At least in US they can vote with bullets if things go off.
Unless capable and able to autonomously decide to use lethal force against anyone threatening you freedom, you're not really free.