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Comment by catchclose8919 | Hacker News Reader

> Given the past history of the continent

Europe's past history of war and military technology is what allowed it to advance faster up to the point of industrial revolution and then to colonize most of the world...

Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe. An EU Army would at the same time make internal conflict exceedingly unlikely (no/impotent national armies, all resources dedicated to EU Army), and allow Europe to start re-involving itself productively in external conflicts.

A de-militarized Europe is a castrated Europe, doomed to lag behind and wither away.

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> Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe...allow Europe to start re-involving itself productively in external conflicts.

Got it: go fight people away from home for benefit and profit. The logic of empire or, if you prefer, the greatest good for the smallest number. This is precisely the approach being followed by Russia in Ukraine, and I would very much not like it if Europe returned to it too.

> This is precisely the approach being followed by Russia in Ukraine

I don't see anything wrong with Russia's goals per se... only in how they choose to pursue them: everybody was playing an economic and psychological game for the `minds & wallets` of Ukrainians, and Russia got mad because they were loosing and strolled in with tanks...

Russia is like that kid on the playground that always got mad when he lost at a game and went violent on everyone smashing the toys and swinging fists around...

The only thing this turn is that the unruly kid actually did get cheated on (wrt. the promises to limit NATO expansion after '89), so you can't just tell him to put down... you'd need to appease him with something to make up for it. But Europe has the (understandable) "never appease expansionist tyrants again" stance, so we're stuck in this bloody mess...

> Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe.

Eh, I'm not sure you get the tech benefits of a war when it's a foreign war of choice.

I mean, WW2 coincided with computers, radar, rocketry, modern control theory, jet engines, and so on because in an existential war you throw everything you've got into winning it.

But you look at wars of choice, like Iraq? All that came out of it was moderate upgrades to prosthetic limbs and drones. The major innovations of the period, like smartphones and cloud services, were unrelated to the wars.

The self driving cars, IT infra, logistics, social media, robots and rockets are all related to military needs and funding.

The whole investment in computers is so bombs can be more precise.

Post-cold-war, progress in things like IT infrastructure have been driven much more by the private sector than by military needs.

Look at rocketry for example. The moment the impetus of a serious threat is gone, the US decided to put all their space money into a useless boondoggle that was more about spreading the pork around into the right congressional districts than seriously advancing rocketry or space exploration.

>"Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe."

Translation - lets go kill some foreign people so we can live better. Disgusting.

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