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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

Because, firstly, EU is not a country, I'm a EU citizen and I certainly do not approve of this policy but there's no way for me (or for other people who think the same as me) to vote out the people that make those decisions (I'm also not a French citizen, maybe that way I could have had an effect on Macron holding power or not).

It's a double-edged sword for the EU leaders in the middle to long-term, because once a great part of the European population will start realising that they have been in effect disenfranchised then said population will have no qualms in following new political leaders that will leave "democracy" at the side, and thus leaving the concept of the EU for dead.

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If you're an Eu citizen - you should care that russia is stopped in Ukraine as they said multiple times - their goal is up to Lisbon.

> their goal is up to Lisbon

That was in fact Mitterand's goal in late 1989 - early 1990, the other way round, that is, until the Americans (well, the honorable James Baker) freaked out and nothing came out of it. I still think from time to time what could have been if "from Lisbon to Vladivostok" had become real, just as Mitterand had wanted it. [1]

[1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/155777507.pdf

Last time I checked, Lisbon was in fact in the EU... Vladivosstok not so much.

It could never have been as Eastern European countries would do anything not to be in a union with Russia

My country, Romania, had in fact signed a pact with the USSR after 1989, so not all Eastern European countries would have been against it.

> there's no way for me (or for other people who think the same as me) to vote out the people that make those decisions

You can vote for your country's elections. You can also vote for the EU parliament.

And ever EU nation supports Ukraine, with the exception of Hungary. In this case the policy of the EU is very much aligned with the policy of ... pretty much the entire EU.

My country, Romania, has no effective say in this matter at the EU level. As for the European Parliament and its democratic legitimacy, the lesser said the better. We also used to have “elected” representatives under Ceausescu’s Romania, with the same effective results.

Your country is going to be invaded and reoccupied by Russia if Putin gets his way in Ukraine and Trump delays article 5 just long enough for it to be "not worth it".

Because why should we waste hundreds of thousands of lives on protecting "just some land".

Let us care for ourselves, we did just fine before (we actually fought the Soviets/Russians on their home turf before, unlike the majority of the Western countries), and use those troops you mention for the defense of your own realms, we don’t need them here.

If I was your neighboring countries, I would absolutely not let you “care for yourselves”. That puts my border at risk. Nothing is in a vacuum.

> That puts my border at risk. Nothing is in a vacuum.

Ah, yes, when it is a Western border at risk it is totally fine, it's not fine if that is a Russian border.

Hypocrisy.

The russian border was last challenged by hitler and before that by napoleon. Anything after that is just been being pissy about everything.

> Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2016-04-18/r...

I was speaking in general terms. It’s bad strategy to ignore what happens 1-2 borders away. I don’t think that’s controversial?

It funny that those people claiming to be disenfranchised have no problem with leaders who won't give them any rights at all.

It makes it more honest, for one thing.

And second, it may sound as a paradox, but those authoritarian leaders are more connected with the masses and their needs (and vice-versa) compared to a pseudo-democratic and very opaque assembly composed of some hundreds of members (what are now called “parliaments”) of which no-one knows all that much, for that matter.

So a switch to an authoritarian leader would in effect, and comparatively speaking, mean a return of effective power to the masses, because it is on those masses that the legitimacy of said leader depends. Today’s parliamentarian regimes have long lost their legitimacy (notice senile 90+ years old ladies being parliament members in the most “democratic” country on Earth), it’s all a Glasperlenspiel [1] at this point, following prior moves blindly while the reason behind those moves has long been lost.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

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