Hacker News Reader

Comment by H8crilA | Hacker News Reader

The entire European Union project is a direct result of the failure of colonialism - if we cannot be colonisers competing over far away resources then it makes sense that we should start playing nice together, without war, and present ourselves externally as a single, more powerful organism. Colonialism itself did not stop in 1945, not at all, in fact the very last European (or European/Asian) empire is on its last stretch trying to re-colonise Ukraine. Timothy Snyder explains it perfectly here: https://youtu.be/JVs2y-YeiFM?t=3682

EDIT: Given the replies below that I suggest reading my comment perhaps more than once. It seems some people are quick to jump onto some wrong conclusions after grep'ing two or three words from the paragraph I wrote :)

View on HN

If EU "colonization" was so bad, why did formerly developing countries like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, etc work so hard to join the EU, and currently developing countries like Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Bosnia, etc still try to ascend into the EU?

And also the fact that HDI metrics of most of Eastern and Southern Europe only broke the 0.9 (very very highly developed) because of EU funding and support.

Edit: you aren't arguing that the EU is a neo-colonial/imperialist project. I answered as such assuming you are anti-EU. +1 on Snyder btw - highly recommend reading "Postwar" if anyone has the time.

I don't think the claim is that the EU is colonizing people, but rather the impulse for the large European countries was basically "we can't be relevant by having huge colonies any more so let's try being relevant by being a unified block"

Which is basically true, though the primary motivator was to interlink economies to avoid another war in Europe as started ww1 and ww2

Ok. That can be argued (and was a major impetus behind the Benelux Pact which turned into the EEC), but you cannot deny the amount of development the EU brought to countries that ascended to it.

Just look at Croatia versus Serbia despite having the same ethnicity, language, and civil war, or Romania versus Moldova, or Poland versus Belarus despite both sharing the same HDI in the early 1990s.

Sure, small European countries had a different motivation than the large ones, but also having a say on the world stage was even less possible for them disunited.

Imagine how little the US might care about possible threats to the Baltic states from Russia if the borders to the EU and NATO were still at Germany.

Croatia is hugely dependent on tourism. Serbia does not have access to nice beaches and islands on the Mediterranean. In addition, its exports to the EU are taxed quite heavily

Yet the average Croatian has a higher household income, life expectancy at birth, and literacy rate than Serbia - despite Croatia having a lower HDI than Serbia in the 1990s, and lacking any major cities or industries (which were concentrated in Bosnia and Serbia during the Yugoslav era)

Not sure how your argument refutes mine but okay.

Oh also to add, regarding literacy rates, even before WW1 because Croatia and Slovenia were Austro-hungarian, and the rest was Ottoman, the literacy rates were way different, with the former being much much higher. Currently, its probably about the same with Croatia and Serbia.

There's a pretty big difference between how the Spanish Empire worked, and how the EU works. For one, it's not like heavily armed conquistadors are setting out from Brussels to Tblisi or something to forcibly indoctrinate Georgians into the brilliance of the EuroZone.

Insofar as the EU relationship to its member states is extractive, its not principally extractive, nor is it primarily parasitic in nature. And anyway, EU expansion is driven entirely by applications to join, not efforts to annex.

That's not to say that anything like the EU is necessarily good, just that its unambiguously not a colonial/imperialist project, and its a weird non sequitur to act like it is.

By "neoimperialist" I mean the tankie talking point. Not the return of Pizarro.

> European Union project

I thought it was to unite EU to prevent another World War happening and to join coal resources?

> The entire European Union project is a direct result of the failure of colonialism - if we cannot be colonisers competing over far away resources then it makes sense that we should start playing nice together, without war, and present ourselves externally as a single, more powerful organism.

Why wage war in Europe when you can peacefully exploit the Global South?

> Colonialism itself did not stop in 1945,

Yeah I guess France has its whole neocolonialism—

> not at all, in fact the very last European (or European/Asian) empire is on its last stretch trying to re-colonise Ukraine.

Oh. I guess that too.

> > Colonialism itself did not stop in 1945,

> Yeah I guess France has its whole neocolonialism—

It's over for France. Putin sent Wagner to set former French colonies on fire. Why do you think Macron is talking about sending French weapons and soldiers to Ukraine? Payback for dismantling the French order in Africa.

> present ourselves externally as a single, more powerful organism

Except in 1989 Germany got the keys to Europe and jumped in bed with Russia screwing over Europe in the process. Because once you get away with murder, you don't fear doing it again.

Never forget Spanish, Portuguese, French, British, Danish, and Dutch, and later, American mercantile colonialism led to the exploitation, suffering, and deaths of ~100 million indigenous and ~15 million African peoples for profits that built the US and Europe and the fortunes of a small cadre of elite landowners.

US colonialism lived on through economic and military interventionism through Manifest Destiny in N America and Monroe Doctrine in the greater Americas for more than 2 centuries, and still continues to meddle to this day. An explicit policy of American military supremacy post-WW2 is one of the fundamental genesises of the Cold War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Haitian_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Government_of_Cuba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Ni...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Ha...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBFortune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f... (School of the Americas)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Banzer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FUBELT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Salvadoran_coup_d%27%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Venezuelan_uprising_attem...

Finally, in the recent few years, Africa countries are becoming more self-aware and escorting colonial vestiges of control out the door to forge their own paths.

the whole world is the direct result of colonialism, so what? meet the human race.

Would you say the same thing if Canada tried to join a military alliance with Russia? Of course what would happen is a total overnight invasion of Canada by the USA. Something similar happened in the 70s with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Total overnight naval blockade of Cuba with imminent threat of escalation.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was 60s: 1962.

Unfortunately, having worked together to defuse it, both Kennedy and Khrushchev were cancelled soon after.

Point still stands. Better yet, imagine Texas leaves the union and joins military alliance with Russia. That would be more similar than the scenario with Canada.

No, it does not stand, because they are not comparable examples at all. Since the end of the Cold War, European militaries have seen a reduction of up to 10 times in everything from personnel to equipment. Germany went from 3800 tanks in 1980s to 200 in 2015. Since Putin's rise to power in early 2000s, Russia has been continuously creeping forwards. They started massive army modernization program, and have placed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, an enclave in the middle of Europe[1][2], and in Belarus, an unstable dictatorship right on the EU border.[3] They have launched the largest war in Europe since Hitler invaded Poland, and are currently forming two new armies larger than the ground forces of major European countries COMBINED.[4]

Instead of a strong reaction to this creep like during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have seen nothing of this sort. It has tipped the balance of military power in Europe deeply in favor of Russia and emboldened them to launch land grabs against Ukraine.

In 2024, we are living the scenario where Russia placed missiles in Cuba, saw no reaction, and then invaded Florida "to protect Cuban minorities".

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37597075

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2016/11...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65932700

[4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/new-russian-military-ex...

> imagine Texas leaves the union and joins military alliance with Russia

That'd be awesome. They're nothing but trouble anyway: fought wars to keep slavery twice* in a row, yet still somehow keep installing US presidents with deep security apparatus ties — they're worse than Georgians with moustaches. Как тебе такое, Илон Маск?

I'd miss Austin, but am now imagining all the great mashups to be sung on one of {1 Feb, 2 Mar, 9 May}:

  The Yellow Rose of Texas Sobiraet Vinograd
  All my Katyas live in Texas
  Ne Valay Duraka, Oklahoma
  Oy, To Ne Betcha
  On the Road is Long Again
  Seven Spanish Tankista

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwFpV80ASjw&t=30s

* three times, if you count the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War ? Anyway, I'd reckon they'd love them the Novorossiya flag.

Was Canada occupied by US for >300 years? If they were, I think it would be totally legitimate for them to seek a military alliance with Russia.

Even if it had been occupied by the US for 300 years, I (a US citizen) would be angry with my government if it didn't use military force to stop Canada (or Mexico) from forming a military alliance with Russia (or China) (provided diplomatic avenues had been exhausted). Letting such an alliance persist and flourish would permanently drastically degrade the security of the US.

Thats exactly Russia's reasoning right now. What is essentially happening is that the US is the aggressor and Russia is simply defending itself from NATO expansion. I am not sure why everyone is just bashing Russia without thinking for 2 seconds about this topic.

That's bullshit. The aggressor is the one who is invading and bombing another country.

The only reason why Ukraine even wants to get into NATO is because Russia has never stopped viewing it as a core part of its Greater Russia imperial restoration project. This is also why the entire Eastern Europe rushed to NATO as soon as they could - because they didn't want to end up like Ukraine did.

The reason eastern europe rushed to NATO is simply because the west was quite wealthy as a capitalist bloc, and the former communist countries viewed the west as a holy grail. If the eastern europeans wanted access to the european markets, they would have to go through EU integration, and of course NATO. Its not like they could join the EU if they still were in a warsaw-pact like military alliance. The truth is, the west had more influence because of their economies.

TBF US attempted to invade/annex Canada twice when Canada was British Canada, AKA nascent US's existential geopolitical enemy. It wasn't until British got displaced from NA (thanks to French) that Canada learned it's better to play nice with juggernaut that is US and eventually integrate with US system, because there is no other path to serenity.

And the argument still works. Even in that hypothetical scenario the USA would still reasonably not allow Canada to join that military alliance. In addition, saying Russia occupied Ukraine for 300 years is like saying France occupied Occitanie, or Germany occupied Prussia, or even Spain occupied Catalonia. There's so many of these occasions in recent history that its basically not an argument. On that note, thinking the same way did also the US maybe occupy Utah?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com