Comment by elfexec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elfexec | Hacker News Reader

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> It's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away.

It is a real institution.

> Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism.

They are planning to create the army outside of the EU framework.

> She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open.

Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe.

https://apnews.com/a038942bb9f0f1af239c6a56a54ae408

> I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good.

If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.

> Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe.

All that seems to support the grandparent's view?

> If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.

It's easy to imagine those 28 nations would otherwise become client states of the US or China. An integrated EU could give its members more independence at the global level, as paradoxical as that sounds at first glance.

The US wanting to shut the pipeline is pretty textbook "not incentived to keep it open" but people read what they want to read.

And yes, a unified Europe makes it like the American federation. Perfectly capable of infighting, but gets to swing a unified weight at the international level

So I read that article, but it didn't explain the legal reasoning behind any sanctions. It's almost like they said the soft part out loud e.g sanctions because we'll lose money.

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