But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.
The EU is making progress every year: I grew up near a border which was gone by the time I was a teen and nowadays using my mobile phone in any of the EU28 will cost me extra. It's those small things that the people do love about the EU and would miss if they'd just think harder about it. It's also boost regions otherwise neglected by their respective country's government. No one in Westminster gives a fuck about the North or Wales, the EU does, with lots of money being invested.
I hope we see a decade of consolidation and more unification e.g. in the tax, finances and transparency. Junker's own blunders as Luxembourg's prime minister are unforgivable.
While the Americans seem to not be operating as a democracy for a while and are instead a Corporocracy. It became fairly obvious after the GFC. The three “super powers” in the world are not democracies.
Moving on, we Europeans are making a decent profit from selling weapons to the Middle East and African countries. We might as well take on those refugees driven out by the violence our weapons cause.
Europe's history, even the years since WWII, is full of migrations: Post-war displacement affected more than 10 million people, refugees from East to West Germany, Brits fleeing the rain for sunny France and Spain (they are a few hundred thousands), Hungary 1956 dispersed 200,000 hungarians of which 70,000 crossed this little bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCcke_von_Andau and the last decade saw a massive flow of young people from southern Europe to the north which causes long-lasting problems for the southern countries. The list goes and and will go on. Some EU countries have 10% or more of EU-nationals in their population which in my eyes will become a hot topic in terms of higher level elections as right now you are only allowed to participate in local elections if you are not a native.
I make it US, EU and China - 4 if we count Russia for the 8000 nukes but not by most other measures.
I'm not saying the European countries have it wrong, but their systems seem far from free college for everybody (how it is often reported in the states) and much closer to free college for the worthy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
When you have finished your Hauptschule or Realschule (lowest and mid path) you usually start a job but part-time you also go to a job-school (Berufsschule) where you learn more specific things that are useful for your job. This dual-education works great and is being exported to other countries where german manufacturers get active but don't find the skilled workers they are used to.
Actually, this particular part of the thread you're responding to is about wealth inequality, economic policy, short-term political thinking, whether the EU is doing well comparatively, and policies that create a large amount of potentially avoidable anxiety - among a few other topics.
Education is only a related topic for this specific comment chain.
The purpose of the EU is to prevent war. The EU hasn't had a war in 75 years. That is the longest that Europe hasn't been at war in its recorded history.
Also, I understand that Russia is considered less and less "European" with each passing year but the Ukraine and Russia (or at least all of its centers of power) are located within the European continent by definition. There's also the issue of the IRA's war against Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole, while that conflict doesn't meet the commonly agreed definition of "traditional warfare", it was the very template every modern insurgency bases itself upon. In a sense that was a war by any modern definition since traditional warfare seems to have become a relic of the past.
The EU was a necessary prerequisite of the peace process in northern Ireland, as is being brought into sharp focus now With Brexit.
The EU is if anything a force against peace, as it takes a totalitarian "you obey us on everything or we work with you on nothing" approach which may appear to create temporary peace, but only by suppressing dissent. The USSR was also by this approach very "peaceful".