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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent. France will never accept the idea that the working language is English or that French troops might have to take orders from a Romanian. The Brits clearly don’t trust the French or German intelligence services enough to let them into the FIVEYES club. French, Brits and the Dutch are the only ones with veteran militaries. Nobody will be willing to give up veto power and nobody will accept anyone else having it anyway. Western European voters are never going to accept Johnny and Jean-Pierre dying to save Boris the Bulgarian Slav from Boris the Russian Slav. Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work.

Hope I’m wrong, but history is on my side with this

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  Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work.

As a european, I have to say, what a ridiculous statement.

What’s your nationality?

Why is a label in my (or their) passport relevant to this discussion?

Because I suspect a Romanian or Bulgarian or Greek has witnessed dramatically more racism than a Dutch or Swedish person.

I'm Bulgarian living in the Netherlands and I literally never witnessed racism (first because i'm white duhh?) and 0 discrimination. I'm on the high end of education tho so yeah :)

Oh sweet summer child, racism applies to far more than skin color. Discrimination against country of origin is considered racism in today’s discourse. It’s a convenient cudgel to make essentially every country racist, but it is what it is.

I think it's fair to be afraid of the unknown but eastern European economies are growing and then even the point of us being too poor will be gone.

Anyway, I don't really care about racism because anyone who is racist enough not to hire me is a great dodged bullet anyway lol.

Also..sweet summer child? I don't get if you're trying to sound condescending

I'm Romanian living in Romania and in physical conversations while not drunk, people are cautious. But drunk (e.g. Okto berfest) or under anonymity of Internet forums, the dark side of humanity did surface out. Of course it's a small percentage of people but racism and xenophobia is alive and well.

well yea but i usually joke about bulgarians stealing stuff or etc. if someone says it seriously then it's clear they're retarded so...no point in continuing. anyway, we are earning our glory brother, slowly but surely!

In a discussion about nationalism in certain EU nations? Gee, I wonder.

So, because someone has a certain nationality they are nationalistic?

European too, and I agree completely with the statement

A regular persons opinion has very little in common with the ones who actually wield power.

The UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing.

More complicated is deciding what the objectives are. Domestic defense only or airstrikes in Libya and Syria?

The UK was one of the main blockers of the EU army, but now that's changing

Research the Franco-German Brigade and then reconsider the main blocker...

> France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent.

They already offered that, under Mitterand.

Sure, Germany would have been the junior partner, but the offer explicitly included Germany being at the table.

Of course they will help Boris from Bulgaria because allowing Bulgaria to be taken over the Russians will be one step closer to the back door of their own country. Eastern Europe is a buffer zone that works as long as they are not conquered.

2017-2019 has not convinced me most voters are willing to look beyond the end of their nose. Where was the EU action over Crimea?

Sanctions? As you may know we don't have an army. What else do you suggest?

No idea, but the point I was responding that Europeans would never let Russia dominate a border country, and the Ukraine seems like a counter point.

Ukraine is Russia’s buffer to NATO, not the EU’s buffer to Russia.

If western europe was looking to square up to Russia to protect an eastern europe buffer zone, they could have used the Budapest memorandum on security assurances as a pretext to offer military assistance the moment Russian troops started crossing the border.

One could reasonably argue that Ukraine simply wasn't part of the EU, and if Russia threatened Poland it would be a different matter. That it is the EU membership, not the buffer zone, that is important.

Another possible interpretation is EU would have wanted to intervene, but its current political structure proved too deliberative to react before it was too late. That would imply an EU army would also need political reform.

Crimea is/was part of Ukraine though not part of EU. There are still active sanctions over Russian activities there and were recently renewed.

Crimea already had a major Russian naval base in it.

By that logic, there would be nothing to complain about if the US takes over the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate since they already have an air base there (Ramstein).

No, by that logic Russia or someone else would hesitate to attack Germany because of the US airbase. Just like the EU and the US hesitated to defend Crimea because of Sevastopol.

Sure, just like Poland had written European border guarantees issued in March 1939. Not to mention 1994 Ukraine ones signed by Russia, Britain and the United States.

This is why this shit is not going to fly in Poland, our government will do everything in their power to get as much US troops on the ground as possible, at the cost of being USA gofer in Iraq/Afganistan/Iran/wherever POTUS fancies this week.

Germany has already been shown going back to their old tricks, scheming another Molotov-Ribbentrop behind whole EUs back with Nord Stream, and especially Nord Stream 2. Paradoxically US is the only country with some backbone to oppose this german-Putin deal, with most western EU countries sitting silent.

Do you really believe that the US is against Nord Stream 2 because some morals stand? Trump tried to remove all of the Russian sanctions that are herding the US economy. The day that US will get more from Russia than Poland the US troops will be gone.

First of all, most of the balkans are slavic and even Poland is a slavic nation. Any slavic nation under agression by any other will nowdays meet not only the slavic armies but also western european ones

I hope you’re right! I’d suggest that the Visegrád group’s military aspects suggests the Central Europeans are worried they’d be on their own in case of Russian aggression though.

Eastern Europe has been a battlefield for millennia, any nation in NATO has to guarantee their own safety to this moment. V4 are working together but I do believe we will achieve it on a wider scale after the brits are gone

I’ll believe it when I see it. I think we’re far more likely to see closer Franco-British integration (with maybe some Hanseatic colour thrown in) well before an EU army

EU seems to be standing idle while Turkey is trying to dig out hydrocarbons from Cyprus and Greece EEZ.

Plenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well so I don't know why you picked these three as being 'veteran'. Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this. In any case, not having to die a whole lot can only be seen as a win. FIVEEYES is a club for 5 former english colonies that speak english. Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club, but somehow I doubt they want to have any part of it. Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene from other Mbene and in that context saving Boris from other Boris isn't such a leap.

> Plenty of other EU nations have had deployments in nato context as well

The Brits and the French have had plenty of their own non-NATO adventurism. The article notes "[they're] almost never not at war somewhere, officially or otherwise".

They also have _by far_ the most troops deployed abroad; twice as many when taken as a percentage, and an order of magnitude more when taken in absolute numbers[0]. Apparently I was overestimating the Dutch contribution.

> Of course, the Brits aren't going to be part of this

That is far from clear[1]

> Of EU nations, Ireland would be most appropriate for this club

Actually, France would, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway[2].

> Jean-Pierre is already fighting to save Mbene

In Francophone Africa, where people speak Jean-Pierre's language, where Camus comes from, and where the French have nostalgic ideas about empire. Far from the same thing. Also, the top three names in a random Francophone African country I just chose are Florent, Yves, and Frank. Isn't Mbene a Nigerian name?

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/11916/which-countries-have-th...

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-or-not-france-and-bri...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Six_Eyes

I have no idea where Mbene is from. It sounded African enough. It is not like France never fought for Eastern Europe (ww1 they got drawn in because their alliance with Russia, ww2 because of alliance to Poland). Other than explanations based fantasies about empire based on a neo romantic conception of France as this old world place lost somewhere five hundred years ago, deployments to places like Mali are of interest for the protection of France and the rest of Europe against unchecked propagation of Islamic extremism. Which is why other European allies have joined that operation. In that sense, it is similar because in both cases the reason for intervention is the strategic interest of France. It's unsurprising that France still has bilateral military cooperation with Britain. But Britain's historical track record on the EU level military cooperation issue is that they do not want anything to do with it.

After Brexit, why would the working language of a European military be English? Are the Irish that influential?

Because American and Canadian allies aren’t going to learn Dutch, and almost everyone in the officer class has a working comprehension of English already. I could — at a huge push — believe in Spanish, maybe, kinda, almost. France and Germany won’t let the other win it.

The de facto working language of the EU is English, not because of the UK but because it's the one language that plenty of people in every country across the EU speak as at least a second language. If anything this is probably due to the US being so influential.

Also, using everyone's second language is going to be less controversial than picking either German or French.

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