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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

I have not yet met an analysis that would explain why a huge governmental body to politically rule the entire Europe would be a good thing. Historically, realms that have been patched together from previously autonomous bodies have not done too well (I would appreciate counter examples).

Most successful large systems grow organically and with time or are forced into a unified whole by a huge effort at control. And the effort needed seems to me to grow at exponentially as the total system size increases.

Trade agreements can govern the interaction between autonomous bodies - they affect the policies but are more of a service interface and a set of constraints than a complete operating system.

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As a counter-example: Germany as a country has a very short history - "pan-germanism" was a movement to unify all German-speaking countries, which included quite a bit of Poland, Austria and Switzerland. There were 39 states in the first German Bund ~1870, there were way more states in the preceding Holy Roman Empire (that one included what's now the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Italy etc.). These were merged into the Empire, which turned shortly into the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West and East Germany, and is now the Bundesrepublik.

Culturally these parts were quite different, most often dominated by Prussia vs. the rest [1]. But Prussia has been forgotten by now, which makes me hopeful that you can have a large country with people who are thought to be "culturally incompatible". Some German-speaking areas that were included in the first German Bund aren't German speaking anymore since the Second World War. Sudeten-Germans and other German minorities were kicked out after Hitler lost.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanism

[1] My favorite book about this is "Diary of a Man in Despair", it's written by a Prussian who pretended to be a Bavarian who keeps on criticizing Prussians

Holy Roman Empire started around 800AD.

As they say, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire.

Mainly the war against the Napoleon empire united the German states in the 19th century and lead to the national movement.

It was a factor but not the entire reason. Pan-German sentiments were pre-existing.

> Prussian who pretended to be a Bavarian who keeps on criticizing Prussians

Dreckspreissen.

The funny thing is that this rivalry with Prussia still exists, except over the centuries the term "Prussia" has become a generic name for all of Germany north of Bavaria.

You actually prove his point more than anything. The German Empire was very short lived in part because it attempted to impose a political order onto a variety of ethnicities. The policy of germanizing these groups, Kulturkampf and its associated so-called 19th century Ostsiedlung (of "Drang nach Osten" fame) went hand in hand with the imperial drive to assimilate and subjugate its members culturally and religiously. The resulting resentment contributed to WWI. Despite certain national undertones during WWII, the major cause for WWII was imperial in nature, i.e., the attempt at reestablishing the German Reich, this time across Europe, as well as the expansion of the Russian Empire in the form of the Soviet Union which likewise tried to eradicate conquered nations and ethnicities in order to create a Soviet people (what some sarcastically call Homo Sovieticus). They failed. The latter, which managed to live on for another 50 years after WWII, failed in part because the idea of the Soviet people as buckling under the seething pressure of national and ethnic difference and consciousness.

Historically, realms that have been patched together from previously autonomous bodies have not done too well (I would appreciate counter examples).

The Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, Byzantine Empire, British Empire and the USA spring to mind. All large states/empires are a patchwork of previously autonomous bodies, in fact most nation states are also formed in the same way, though of course they later usually manufacture tradition/history in an attempt to seem unique and indivisible.

China, India, and Italy are also great examples.

That is an incredibly superficial treatment of the subject that not only fails to mention that these empire fell, but also some of the relevant reasons why. It also fails to distinguish between the formation of nations and the formation of empires and the processes by which they can and do occur. Furthermore, it trivializes the substance and significance of national identity. National identity is very fundamental and upending it in Europe today, and at the scale of a 28 nation bloc, is virtually impossible, especially by means of the mendacious tactics of would-be statesmen and crypto-imperialists.

Mind you, empires are driven by a dominant culture and group. The question then becomes: who would play (or is playing) that role in the EU? When you answer that question, the politics of the EU begin to present themselves in a different light.

"Mind you, empires are driven by a dominant culture and group. The question then becomes: who would play (or is playing) that role in the EU?"

I had quite an acidic comment originally about this first but then realized up-to-date political debate is out of context for HN. But yes, to me in light of history this is a huge thing - and is mostly ignored in daily discussion.

That is an incredibly superficial treatment of the subject that not only fails to mention that these empire fell...Furthermore, it trivializes the substance and significance of national identity.

All empires fall. National identity is an invention of the 19C, hardly an ever-enduring truth. I'd prefer to think the above comment was succinct, not superficial :)

Re upending national identity, if you investigate the list of empires given, you'll see that in fact it is quite possible to meld separate states/cultures into one political state given enough time - for example India in the British empire was a mass of competing principates prior to British rule, and is now a functioning democracy encompassing a huge variety of cultures, languages, religions and on the scale of Europe what you might call nations. The German empire was a similar patchwork prior to unification in 1871. The Ottoman or Roman empires are also good examples of this.

Your hostility to the EU project seems to make you want to declare it impossible, and perhaps it is flawed, but it's clearly not impossible, or even very unusual, to subsume existing states into something bigger.

The morality or desirability of it is an entirely separate question.

For the purposes of determining if a United States of Europe is viable, I think the US is not necessarily a great example. After all, it took two devastating wars (the Civil War and WW2) to truly centralize federal power / exhibit great power organization in the way it does today.

United States was also intentionally grown over centuries, mostly as a single polity. Systems design is hard - takes time, takes effort to fix any bugs. US might be one the most painstakingly designed/constructed systems in the modern times.

China figured their system out when the pyramids were built and has basically been ruled using the same principles ever since.

The thing is, these things take time because they require a cultural context where the motivations and the dynamic of the people can be understood and made to cooperate.

These time and culture aspects make the concept of the united states of europe feel quite fantastical.

> Historically, realms that have been patched together from previously autonomous bodies have not done too well (I would appreciate counter examples).

At least Germany, Spain, Italy, France have evolved from a myriad of city states, duchy, great fief, that have been unified, conquered, inherited, etc to form a bigger central power.

European separatist movement are usually basing their claims on these previous historical divisions (Catalonia, Brittany, Scotland...)

Same thing for Sweden, but I guess most modern countries are a result of unification of lesser city states/countries

I suppose at the time of Sweden's unification it was more about subjugating ones political enemies on horseback rather than attempting to harmonize the existing processes of a huge number of modern polities. Yield! Kneel! Pay your taxes! - and then off to the next battle.

They spoke the same language, it was basically happening in the context of feudal system which was from the point of view of the operations of government modular - basically the whole political system supported pretty well constant shifting of the ruling body - I kneel to you, they kneel to me, and I give you some grain and provide men in time of war. And ruling was pretty simple back then.

Before 1600:s the function of government was basically the king. After they figured out there must be a better way to rule than riding ones bottom sore ruling and taxing about modern state functions began to emerge. I believe this was at the time of Gustavus Adolphus II in sweden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Adolphus_of_Sweden).

It's not only the historical divisions, it's about aptitude from governments to this historical countries.

- This historical countries have different languages. (Euskera, Galician, Catalonian) - This countries are different than other "Autonomous communities" in terms of primary sectors.

Sometimes the Spain government not accept some particular things that happens in this historic countries, plus we come from 39 years of dictatorial state where our languages were banned. Nowadays this historical countries are promoting these languages + spanish, but Spain government didn't accept that.

One of my grandfather got shot for speaking in Galician, another got political asylum in Netherlands after cross the Portuguese border, my family fight for our culture, I want to keep that. I'm spanish but I'm speaking different language, I have different habits, I don't want to be independent but I want that Spanish government try to understand that we are a bit different, only that..

Meanwhile Spain government keeps shot old historic regions and try to kill their culture, Spain will have a problem. Nowadays Catalunya problem it's huge for Spain, and Spain government didn't do anything about and this is too sad :-(

Yeh, that's one of the key things - a United States of Europe is a goal driven by politicians and bureaucrats who are forever grabbing more power for themselves.

Some of goals - trade zone, free movement of people etc., may make sense but a European wide army?

Europe is a region of huge diversity, it doesn't need to be a single political entity.

German here. Could you imagine a Florida army going to war in Afghanistan, while California stays neutral, and Texas sends troops to Mexico? - Why not? People in Texas are quite different from people in California, they have different interests and beliefs. The driving force behind the United States of Europe is that (1) every single country is too small to be influential in the world (and we want to have influence in the world) and (2) that the process of joining forces has worked for many member states before (Germany, Italy, Spain, even Belgium ...) Everyone knows its hard, but hey, most new legislation is now the same in all EU member states, and it mostly works. The refugee situation is the strongest challenge of the Unification of Europe yet, but on the other hand, the objective differences between us never been smaller in the past two decades. The United States of Europe are not a must-have, of course, but to many it would be a nice-to-have.

Without all the technocratic apparatus of the European Union involved, the crisis would look a lot worse with countries closing their frontier, blaming their neighbor : it does already happen, but at least, we can talk about it in a kind of civilized manner, which is a much better way to find a solution.

In my mind this is obvious a pan European answer is needed. You can not ask Italy and Greece to solve the crisis by themselves, when most refugee want to actually go other countries.

> You can not ask Italy and Greece to solve the crisis by themselves, when most refugee want to actually go other countries.

If the refugees are persecuted so badly in their own countries (which is a condition for getting asylum), they should be happy for any sufficiently safe country that is willing to give them asylum.

Greece is not able at the moment to provide a decent living for 100k+ refugees. My understanding of asylum goes beyond providing a bread a day and a toilet. What help would I expect from my neighbors if I have to leave my home due to war? <- That's the kind of help we should provide them.

We are talking medical care, language courses, and working permit. I would expect all of that if I were ever to ask my (global) neighbors for asylum - so I am willing to provide it to those that are in need.

> Greece is not able at the moment to provide a decent living for 100k+ refugees.

I agree here. This is why it surely is not a bad idea to distribute the refugees over the EU countries. But I don't agree to the mentality "want to go to other countries". The refugees should be happy to get temporary asylum in a country that is much safer than the country they flee from.

> We are talking medical care, language courses, and working permit.

For language courses: Since lots of refugees have at least a smartphone, they could simply use the resources that the internet provides to learn the language themselves up to some decent level.

Which makes it such a dreadful pity that die Mutti chose to go unilateral (whether she meant the broad invite or not, it was understood that way). The trick to having great power is not using it, until you really need it. She really shat the bed on this, and we will see the repercussions.

In the space of two weeks, many of us have gone from lifelong EU supporters to anti-Schengen. I'm upset.

The obvious rebuttal to your first point is that Texas and California share a language. They also share quite a lot of culture. Whether a Texan is more like a Californian, than a German is like an Greek, I leave to the reader to decide.

There is one other thing. Identity is hard to impose. Most Americans of my acquaintance hold the US constitution to be a centrally important document. Otherwise they wouldn't argue so much about its exact meaning. There has been an attempt at a European constitution. It seems to have been a dismal failure. All the other arguments about border controls, the euro, farm subsidies and so on pale when compared to this. If you can't win hearts and minds, you can't win.

Though sometimes it appears you can achieve the appearance of winning through bureaucratic confusion.

Diversity need not be a reason for non unification. India for example is so diverse that each state has its own language, food, culture etc..

To be fair, Pakistan did happen.

You'd be surprised to know the similarities between India and Pakistan, culturally. The differences are based on ideologies, but the cultures are quite similar.

And yet even there they chose to split off. The subject requires deeper examination.

Muslims vs. hindus. There were lots of political issues when britain ceded the Raj - but basically one of the driving factors for an independent Pakistan was escalation of political friction between factions representing hindus and muslims.

Texas at one point did have rebel troops in Mexico before seceding and stayed independent for a few years before joining the US. California tried something similar but then got swept up in the Mexican-American War. Even West Florida was "independent" for a few months before being annexed by the US, and of course the rest of Florida was Spanish but neglected by Madrid.

So it is not that hard to imagine a Florida army going to war in Afghanistan, while Texas invaded Mexico and California remained neutral. If they had not been annexed by the US, they would likely either ally the US or have animosity with their southern neighbors due to strained relations from their independence wars.

Also, theoretically a governor can refuse to deploy the state's National Guard. I could find one instance where in California, Governor Schwarzenegger declined the President's request to send National Guard troops to the border with Mexico. So California does have precedent of remaining neutral (said tongue-in-cheek)!

> but a European wide army?

I'm German. The stated purpose of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) is to defend Germany. Historically this has been interpreted as "defend Germany within German borders", lately it has been extended to "defend German interests in remote places like Afghanistan".

The vast majority of deployments the German public is aware of happens either as part of or along side NATO and UN missions. I can't think of any situations where Germany sent troops without any support from other European countries. Nearly every news piece about German military responses to e.g. the Arab Spring goes out of its way to mention the attitude of other countries, especially in Europe but also NATO and the UN.

Yes, a United States of Europe is unlikely to include England (though I can see Scotland being a part of it if they eventually do secede -- unlike England, Scotland has very strong historical ties with Europe and France in particular). But it's a mistake to look at England as representative of general European sentiments.

It's not at all unheard of for political entities within a union not to maintain their own army. Germany was initially created as federation of independent states with their own armies, as was the USA. Even England (not to mention the UK) began as a loose collection of independent states.

Oh, and here's another thing about the German military: throughout the post-WW2 history of Germany there has been a recurring theme of politicians and political interest groups seeking to abolish our military permanently (after all, if it's purely for our defence, we're surrounded by allies these days and don't have any reason to fear invasions). The most frequent counter-argument is simply that we need the military to assist our allies -- note how this has nothing to do with self-defense.

> Historically, realms that have been patched together from previously autonomous bodies have not done too well (I would appreciate counter examples).

I'm writing from Bath in the UK where Edgar, the first king of England, was crowned in 973. This united the ancient kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia etc.

Thankfully we've become more democratic since then, but until the EU was founded in 1993, Europe was an anarchy of nations. The countries themselves were democratic, but the group of nations was an anarchy. Europe suffered the problems of anarchy (the rule of the strong rather than the rule of law) and had been at war in some form or other for a large part of its history. Now that we've got the EU, which is a democracy of nations, the threat of war has receded somewhat. In the future I hope that we'll see a democracy of the entire world, a world government.

You may be surprised, but most people fear a world government.

New World Order and all that bullshit.

Of course, they ignore the ongoing massive globalization and how it has improved their lives...

I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm very pro-globalization. It's an engineering problem and that's the right solution. But I do fear this world order.

> Of course, they ignore the ongoing massive globalization and how it has improved their lives...

I'm not quite sure it improved the life of the 13 year old indian sweatshop worker though...

Who would've otherwise been a 13 year old beggar? Or 6 year old corpse? Their own country's market sure doesn't look too good for job creation...

You do realize your spiel could be used to market any of the conquests of the past centuries - unite under MY banner, and we shall have piece...

Britain is pretty swell, after a thousand years of dominating cultural hegemony. Although some scots may disagree. And some Irish perhaps. Not too many people speak the old tongues.

A typical dynamic in a large polity such as a nation or a corporation is that there will be a single culturally distinguishable leading elite class, and a) this elite will favor it's own (not maliciously, but because they are human and favor familiarity) and b) the people who do not actively recent the ruling elite will try to emulate them. So, in time, if the dominion can remain civil, it will develop an understanding and a common cultural framework.

Talking of civility - historically, britain has been unable to hold to lands that it could not hold under the force of violence. American colonies. India. South Africa.

People love their sovereignty (or, people yearn for political power and use sovereignty as their rallying cry). Anyhow - if the cultural hegemony cannot overwhelm a territory there will be a constant pressure to cede. I think this understanding of history is what drove many of the genocides of the past century - political will to rule, at any cost.

With this view of history uniting the earth under a single government would require either a single monoculture, or a dictatorial rule forcing a cultural homogenization over generations until the dissenting voices have diminished to insignificance.

Perhaps our beloved internet will function as a vehicle of such homogenization - it's not completely impossible.

Note: There was no large war in europe between the napoleonic wars and the first world war. Historically, europe has been quite pieceful in the past without a huge bureaucracy attempting to to formulate everything under it's legalistic framework.

I believe in western concept of human rights, and I do not believe in cultural relativism - oppression is oppression. But, a world government is a concept that is very problematic in our current state in history. I have no idea if this will change.

Depends what you call patching together, and what you call organic growth.

If you count being annexed as "patching together" - all states were created that way at some point. Then they might have been annexed by bigger entities, and separated from them again, but originally there were no states - just tribes.

If you want political and not military patching - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth worked pretty well for 2 centuries, but of course Poland and Lithuania were also created by annexing and fighting in the first place.

This. There is a very big difference between unifying tribes and unifying nations.

W.r.t. the Commonwealth, even then the Commonwealth fell apart for three major reasons, viz., the so-called Swedish Deluge, the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the abuse of the liberal political system by the nobility with foreign meddling playing a major role. The second was ethno-religious in nature and the third driven in part by conflicting interests. (Indeed, the Polish Enlightenment differed from the Enlightenment in the West precisely because it dealt with the problem of too much or misallocated freedom.) The dispersion of military might among private armies (in some cases the sizes of private armies of wealthy magnates rivaled the royal armies in size) coupled with conflicting interests prevented the Commonwealth from being able to mount a coherent and unified defense against Russian, Prussian and Austrian dismemberment, and ultimately destruction, of the state. And while it lasted, even though the Commonwealth was a vastly freer place that permitted the peaceful coexistence of many different ethnic groups and religions, it nonetheless was held together by a dominant group with a dominant ethos, viz., the Polish nobility.

In other words, empires suffer from tension when they impose their will on the constituting nations, but they also suffer from a lack of coherent and unified interests among its members. The EU suffers from both.

On the one hand, you have the federalist impulse wishing to beat member states into submission by asserting a "soft" German dominance over the continent against the wishes of its members. On the other hand, you have the same politicians possessed by this impulse maintaining that they respect the individuality and alleged sovereignty of each state. We respect cultural differences, but we completely ignore them when gerrymandering policies. All members are equally important, but our policies favor the interests of certain members over others and have in place a voting system that privileges might over collaboration. The migrant crisis undermines the Schengen Zone. The Greek crisis undermines the euro zone. Nord Stream undermines the idea of common energy policy. The Ukrainian crisis undermines the idea of common foreign policy. It's easy to wallow in shallow sentiments in the absence of crises, but it is precisely during crises that the substance of such unions is revealed. The truth is that the EU is creeping dangerously toward a point of no return. Instead of serving as a platform for nations to find common ground and collaborate for mutual benefit, it has contributed to the opposite through its incompetence, its arrogance and its Brummagem unity concealing the real political interests at play.

What about the UK?

We have four components with varying levels of autonomy - Scotland arguably being the most "independent" as we have our legal system, education system and parliament here in Edinburgh.

As other poster note - Scotland and England are themselves the result of joining together once independent parts into units that last pretty well - Scotland goes back to the bit 9th century and some of the component parts of Scotland go back to the 6th century (though things get a bit vague by then).

Hm, I don't think "huge" applies to the UK.

Population UK: 64.1 million Population US: 318.9 million

So that is 1/5th the population of a near continental sized country. The UK may not be big but it is dense (Admittedly not as dense as some Asian countries).

> Historically, realms that have been patched together from previously autonomous bodies have not done too well (I would appreciate counter examples).

Spain

Is not doing too well.

*At the moment

Memories keep us alive, don't they?

England.

The UK.

France.

Germany.

The USA.

The list of "[countries] patched together from previously autonomous bodies" happens to be an incredibly huge subset of countries that exist today.

That's a good list of the remmants of dismembered entities, with the exception of the USA, which is relatively young.

The USA is also a remnant of a dismembered entity (or rather composed of one).

I can't think of any country that has remained exactly the same throughout history. Nearly every country out there is either an agglomeration of formerly independent entities or used to be part of a bigger entity at some point.

Your categories are useless. Unless you're trying to define categories for countries which don't exist.

What categories are those?

The USA is no remant, they earned their independence. I don't quite get the "composed of one" part.

perhaps in 400 years USA won't do wel

They've literally had guerillas trying to split it up. Is that the kind of EU we want?

> They've literally had guerillas trying to split it up

What the heck?

The most famous is the Basque ETA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA

The Catalonians also had one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Lliure

ETA was not a guerrilla, it was a terrorist group

And Terra Lliure would have been a joke if not for the only innocent death they provoked. It is perhaps the only terrorist group that has more deaths by accident than actions they tried to do

Ah, I see. I thought they were synonyms.

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