The EU thread

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Much depends to what extent our politicians are capable of taking the big decisions rather than cucking themselves for the  orange utang in the white house.

Playtime is over, but much of Europe (and that includes its citizens) doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

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Beware the Europe You Wish For
The Downsides and Dangers of Allied Independence
Celeste A. Wallander
July/August 2025
Published on June 24, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/JZlfvFLrdKA

hopefully this works

[The Minsky Moment]

So apparently the US National Security Strategy calls for:

• Pulling Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Italy away from the EU.
• Forming a new grouping of countries - the C5 - consisting of the US, Russia, India, China, and Japan as an alternative to the G7 (and unconstrained by G7 rules).

Link here: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/12/10/fuller-version-of-trump-security-strategy-reportedly-calls-for-pulling-poland-away-from-eu/

It's a Russian wet dream.  An English translation and touch up of something that could have come right out of the Kremlin.

The idea of Russia being of the world's five powers steering the global economy is utterly laughable; their economy is barely larger than to Mexico. It's smaller than Canada.

The US national security establishment has become a straight-up mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda.  It's heartbreaking to see.

[Jacob]

Much depends to what extent our politicians are capable of taking the big decisions rather than cucking themselves for the  orange utang in the white house.

Playtime is over, but much of Europe (and that includes its citizens) doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

---------------

Beware the Europe You Wish For
The Downsides and Dangers of Allied Independence
Celeste A. Wallander
July/August 2025
Published on June 24, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/JZlfvFLrdKA

hopefully this works

It worked, reading it now. Thanks

[Jacob]

It's a Russian wet dream.  An English translation and touch up of something that could have come right out of the Kremlin.

The idea of Russia being of the world's five powers steering the global economy is utterly laughable; their economy is barely larger than to Mexico. It's smaller than Canada.

The US national security establishment has become a straight-up mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda.  It's heartbreaking to see.

IMO, it shows the value of seriously investing in influence operations. Russia has - I think - put much more concerted effort into wooing influential individuals (Murdoch, Musk, Orban, etc etc), financing allied parties, and pioneering online internet influence operations.

By any rational metric, Russia does not belong at that table. Except the one metric that lots of influential parties and individuals feel it serves their own interest to act as if Russia does belong at that table.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Russia is absolutely winning the influence game. Social media, and our unwillingness to do shit about anything, will be the West's downfall.

[Sheilbh]

Trouble I see is there are European firms operating I most of those spaces.
Eutelsat, STmicroelectronics... But these tend to be also rans at best. Something is stopping them ever reaching the heights of the American companies.
When we do get genuine world leaders like Arm, we sell them off.

Yeah I like the idea but the lack of support and capital for building up is a big challenge, plus Europe is the only part of the world that genuinely, ideologically, naively believed in the "liberal rules based order". So until recently we didn't block takeovers. I think that has shifed a bit - see the recent kerfuffle over Nexperia in the Netherlands (and interestingly the Chinese firm involved tried to buy a British chips firm and was, after a big campaign, blocked by Johnson's government on national security grounds for fears it would try to do exactly what it seems to have been doing with Nexperia).

But also over-regulation and risk averseness is a real problem in this area. I think the EU understanding of itself as a "regulatory superpower" means it sees regulation as an end in itself. Particularly in the context of digital stuff and particularly after the experience of GDPR which was a ground- breaking piece of law which was copied (with adaptations) by jurisdictions all over the world.

The EU keeps chasing that high and passing very sweeping tech regulations. I've mentioned before but I was at a conference recently with other European tech lawyers and a knowledge lawyer from one of the law firms did a slide of upcoming EU tech regulations and there was an audible groan. There's a huge volume of regulation coming down the pline and we already deal with a lot in this area.

In part I think it is precisely because Europe doesn't have those companies that we instead "lead" by regulating. Thierry Breton who was the Commissioner in charge of the AI Act made this point. He basically said that lots of EU institutions and politicians were celebrating the fact that the EU had passed the world's first general AI law, but that it is very much second prize to actually having European AI companies. He called for massive investment annd building of sovereign digital infrastructure - and in fairness Mistral AI is French and good (but it's the only one off the top of my head). A lot of the European institutions I think are fundamentally more comfortable regulating the American and Chinese companies providing the services than creating a looser, riskier regulatory context in which European coumpanies could more easily experiment.

I also think as well as the slight high on their own supply approach post-GDPR it sort of goes to the nature of European politics. Because it relies so much on "output" legitimacy it is normally framed around doing "something" - that is the mark of being effective in European politics and in part that there isn't a European demos politics can appeal to or make their case to.

[Sheilbh]

IMO, it shows the value of seriously investing in influence operations. Russia has - I think - put much more concerted effort into wooing influential individuals (Murdoch, Musk, Orban, etc etc), financing allied parties, and pioneering online internet influence operations.

By any rational metric, Russia does not belong at that table. Except the one metric that lots of influential parties and individuals feel it serves their own interest to act as if Russia does belong at that table.

I kind of disagree on this. I think we're moving into a hard-edged, hard power multipolar world.

You don't get a seat at the table because of who you are, or who you were or the values you believe yourself to embody, or because of "international law" but because of agency. You can decide to do something and can then do it - I'd point that even on the tech front. Russia, like China (and to an extent Iran) have built their own digital infrastructure (payment systems, social media, search, AI etc) precisely because they've had to or want to avoid reliance on the US.

It's not a positve actor in my view, but whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East or Africa, Russia is a state with agency in the world in a way that Europe simply isn't (possible exception for the French). I'd add the Caucasus, Middle East and Africa are particularly striking because I think they're regions where there has been Euro-Russian competition.

[Sheilbh]

Much depends to what extent our politicians are capable of taking the big decisions rather than cucking themselves for the  orange utang in the white house.

Playtime is over, but much of Europe (and that includes its citizens) doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

I'm fairly pessimistic. I think there's a lot to Jacques Delors' line that Europe advances through crisis (also the framing of Luuk van Middelaar's very good Passage to Europe). I'm not sure we've seen the type of sudden advance or "coup" in van Middelaar's framing. Instead I think so far I'm not seeing those leaps forward or urgency.

I'd add this is one area where I think the "poly-crisis" framing is useful because I actually think it causes inertia. Faced with all of these intersecting crises (war and energy, US and security, China and de-industrialisation, migration and a chaotic near neighbourhood - and, across it all, climate) I'm slightly sorried Europe's like prey hypnotised by a snake. Just one more colloquia to victory.

[Jacob]

That's definitely Putin and Thiel's read on Europe.

[Jacob]

I kind of disagree on this. I think we're moving into a hard-edged, hard power multipolar world.

You don't get a seat at the table because of who you are, or who you were or the values you believe yourself to embody, or because of "international law" but because of agency. You can decide to do something and can then do it - I'd point that even on the tech front. Russia, like China (and to an extent Iran) have built their own digital infrastructure (payment systems, social media, search, AI etc) precisely because they've had to or want to avoid reliance on the US.

It's not a positve actor in my view, but whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East or Africa, Russia is a state with agency in the world in a way that Europe simply isn't (possible exception for the French). I'd add the Caucasus, Middle East and Africa are particularly striking because I think they're regions where there has been Euro-Russian competition.

I don't disagree that hard power and the ability to project influence matters, and increasingly so. And that being a superpower in the areas of nice intentions, flowery words, and sitting around talking about things is receding in importance these days. That's absolutely the case, IMO.

Where you and I do have a long standing disagreement is on the impact of propaganda and active undermining of competitors' civil societies. Maybe it's a cause and effect thing. I see it as one of several significant causes, whereas you seem to think of it as primarily a symptom.

[Syt]

I think that's a chicken/egg discussion, but the two do reinforce each other.

[Sheilbh]

I don't disagree that hard power and the ability to project influence matters, and increasingly so. And that being a superpower in the areas of nice intentions, flowery words, and sitting around talking about things is receding in importance these days. That's absolutely the case, IMO.

Where you and I do have a long standing disagreement is on the impact of propaganda and active undermining of competitors' civil societies. Maybe it's a cause and effect thing. I see it as one of several significant causes, whereas you seem to think of it as primarily a symptom.

Sorry I hadn't actually been thinking about that when I was saying I disagreed I was thinking more that I don't think Russia's role in the world right now is down to propaganda or influence operations. I think it is that it's a state with agency which we're seeing it use in all of those areas. Is it up there with the US and China - absolutely not, but, bluntly, neither's India.

I'll think about what your point on the propaganda side of things because I'm not sure. I think that disagreement is probably right on the causal element but I'm not sure how I'd frame it. My initial instinct is that I think propaganda and civil society is also downstream of the more "hard power" factors, such as capacity for economic autonomy, the failure of a generation of European politicians faced with, say, the financial crash, the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis etc. But I also think part of it is downstream of cultural shifts and the point that Macron's made, which I think is really interesting, on Europe's post-modernism and de-mythologising instinct/disbelief in grand narratives.

I'd also add that I think relevant here is Valmy's comments on age-gating and regulating the internet. Where I think a lot about Clinton's comments dismissing the Chinese approach to the internet as trying to nail jello to the wall. I think there's a learned helplessness (and incuriosity) in Western politics about the internet. I'm increasingly of the view it's less about regulation and more about control - and we live on America's internet.

In conclusion, I am once again calling for the return of Minitel and BBC Computers produced in state-owned European factories, with a unionised workforce

[The Minsky Moment]

It's not a positve actor in my view, but whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East or Africa, Russia is a state with agency in the world in a way that Europe simply isn't (possible exception for the French).

I think that's a mirage.

Russia has agency in the Ukraine in the sense that they can and have chosen to burn the lives of hundreds of thousands of men to occupy some extra square miles of dirt and wrecked urban infrastructure, and manifest their frustrations in mass civilian atrocities.  But they utterly failed to impose their will on a smaller, weaker, and political fragile nation.  Being willing and able to do utterly stupid and counterproductive things isn't a sign of agency.

The Middle Eastern policy is shambles; they put their chips on Assad and went bust.  They are dicking around pointlessly in Libya.  They are basically meaningless in Africa; a handful of the more unsavory dictators have used some of their pseudo-mercs to bully the locals.  No one takes them seriously compared to China.

In a hard-edged, hard power multipolar world, Russia is a Chinese vassal, transferring oil at below market prices in return for some diplo cover and desperately needed imports. Russia is leaning hard on China to make its play for some continuing relevance in the West as Chinese commercial interests tighten their grasp on the resources of Russia's far eastern provinces.

"Europe" may be politically dysfunctional at the level of unified diplomatic presence but whether looked at collectively or at the larger individual states, they embody centers of manufacturing prowess, technical competence, significant players in global commerce and finance, and an affluent consumer market. Russia has none of these things.  It can play the nuclear blackmail card, which has already been overplayed.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

It worked, reading it now. Thanks

Nice. I can probably link more from there. Just shout if a link is needed.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

That's definitely Putin and Thiel's read on Europe.

And not necessarily wrong. Eu regulation and ideological stubbornness is gutting our industry because of far to harsh and unrealistic goals resulting, among other, in energy prices that are far too high.
If you then know that, for example, Antwerpen has the second biggest petro-chemical cluster in the world and that they're sounding the alarm...
All because we sent fools to the eu parliament and commission.

Industry first is the name of the game. On that foundation you can build your services to sell the things you make.  Otherwise you're just a glorified pass-along.
And for that you need to mine, refine, research and have cheap and abundant energy. Even if it pollutes, which is something you can fix if you have an industrial base that name worthy.

And currently the eu is squandering that in an effort to lower global emissions in an attempt to stop warming with an insignificant amount.