EU is not that big a deal anyway—its stupid AI regulations are keeping it back...
IMO the EU regulation doesn't go far enough as it excludes banning AI for "military use".
Had russia attacked a NATO country of the EU directly, said country would have been at a disadvantage.
There have been reports of experiments with autonomous drones in the russia-Ukraine war.
If the EU bans AI for military uses and our adversaries do not, I am afraid someday we will regret our mistake. But it will be too late.
None of what I mentioned necessarily implies a war crime, as far as I know.
In one word: Good.
Neither does the Ukraine or the US.
The reason why Russia doesn't do this to Ukraine as a whole is because it is fighting this war with the ultimate goal of occupying and annexing Ukraine, so why would it destroy valuable resources like infrastructure and people needed to maintain it unless it serves some other goal? OTOH when it does serve some other goal (e.g. actually advancing the frontline), they have zero qualms about doing the same exact thing Israel does. I mean, Russia doesn't care all that much about lives of its own soldiers, given the kinds of tactics routinely used.
How Europe would be treated would similarly depend on what the goals of the war from Russian perspective would be.
Carpet bombing is tricky when your planes get blown out of the sky on a regular basis and your industry can't replace them as easily as it can replace artillery shells. That's the main reason why they're using glide bombs and missiles instead.
Oh, and you don't need to look at Mosul or Raqqa to see other examples, either. Grozny, in either the first or the second Chechen war, is a nice illustration of how Russia fight wars.
A quote: "The latest available assessment by the World Bank, European Commission, United Nations and Ukrainian government found that direct war damage in Ukraine had reached $152 billion as of December, 2023, with housing, transport, commerce and industry, energy and agriculture the worst-affected sectors." [1] By now, it should be over 200 billion.
The reasons why Russia failed to cause more damage have nothing to do with demoraphics, good will, or anything like that. After all, Russia sent to death hundreds of thousands of ITS OWN citizens. Had it cared about russian lives as much as you are trying to whitewash here, it would not have been fighting this war to begin with.
The real reasons why Russia has not caused more damage or killed more civilians, are, first, it has failed to achieve air superiority. Second, Ukraine, with the help of its allies, was able to set up more less effective air defense against missiles and drones.
"Nearly 12,000 missiles have been launched against Ukraine by Russia since this full-scale conflict started.
Some 80% of those have been intercepted by Ukraine." [2]
The number of drones must be comparable or higher.
The limited number of civilian casualties is easily explained by the number of refugees from Ukraine which is in the millions. Its definity not because Russia did not try too hard.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-russias-invasion-h...
What is your basis for this belief?
This is an unprecedentely low civilian casualty count for a conflict of this intensity and duration. Such high ratio of military to civilian casualties has not been observed since WW1.
I hope to see even more "stupid AI regulation" in the future, fingers crossed.
Recently I benefited from a "stupid regulation" mandating minimum Internet speeds carriers need to provide. How dare the policy makers interfere with the extortionate prices every single ISP in the market colluded to impose on the population. Muh liberty!
The European Parliament is elected every few years by citizens in all member states.
The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.
The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
It may be a little complicated, but it's all rooted in democratic processes. Please stick to the facts and keep the populistic anti-EU nationalistic propaganda to yourself.
(Every kid in the EU has been learning those basic facts in school for decades, making it surprising that this populist nonsense still catches on with so many people. I have an easier time forgivin non-EU folks, but even those should check the facts before claiming things.)
> The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
I disagree. Successful elected government officials from member states aren't governing the EU Commission and Council. They're governing their own member states, where they are elected by the public.
Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.
Just look at the uninspiring Commissioners we've suffered over the last few years.
It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
https://facts4eu.org/news/2024_dec_unpopular_eu_I
In her home country Germany, only 33% said she'd make a good Commission president.
https://www.politico.eu/article/most-germans-skeptical-of-ur...
Von der Leyen was not appointed by bureaucrats.
> It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
That's nothing special in European voting systems. Various governments (regional or country wide) in Germany have small, but relatively stable majorities provided by coalitions. That's very different to the mostly two-party systems in the US or the UK.
It's not clear who specifically did the ceremonial nomination, but it was probably the CDU bureaucracy that made the decision.
Generally about the appointment of the commission:
https://commission.europa.eu/about/organisation/how-commissi...
Right, and like most large organisations it has a bureaucracy.
> Generally about the appointment of the commission
Right, note the vague "suggestions from member states". (Also note that the claimed accountability points have never been activated in practice)
Ursula on der Leyen was 2019 supported by Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) as the future president of the EU commission. That's no secret. Macron also supported her. The European Council then nominated Ursula on der Leyen and she was accepted by the European Parliament. The Parliament is directly elected the citizens of the European Union.
The election of her was kind of unfortunate, since it was signalled by parties that the election to the parliament will also find the proposed EU commission president. But that was not the case. Since a candidate was not found (various parties and governments were not happy with the proposed candidates), the European Council finally proposed Ursula von der Leyen, which then also got a majority in the parliament.
Look, I don't like lots of things about the EU either. But the first step to being able to change sth is to acknowledge the facts. Claiming that von der Leyen wasn't democratically appointed is similar to Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Not a great start.
Now there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one!
Where democracy is involved, we use the word "elected" -- not "appointed"
Most folks still had the view that UK Parliament was in charge, not really appreciating the change. That also applied to our MPs, hence the Factomane cases.
Now if there had bee proper education in the UK as to the impact of EEC and EU membership, possibly Brexit would not have happened.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/crisis-behind-the-euroc...
From Chapter 6: 'The Inherently Undemocratic EU Democracy'
'A number of prominent public intellectuals put pen to paper to warn not only of a crisis of European democracy, but of a crisis of the very ‘political institution’ of democracy, and particularly its representative and liberal variants. Contemporary manifestations of the ‘hollowing out’ of democracy following the Eurocrisis have taken many forms and several contributions in this volume have dealt with various aspects of the phenomenon.'
' .... a crisis of the EU’s own democratic credentials. Even as they insisted on its purely economic character, commentators were quick to criticise the undemocratic form that the emergency EMU-related responses to the Eurocrisis came to assume, particularly at the European level, where not only parliamentary processes, but also the Treaties’ legal prescriptions, were systematically circumvented'.
But the flat out denial that EU is in principle a democratic system is just a too simplistic view. It tends to be mostly touted by those populists who ultimately would like to see an authocratic state with themselves in charge.
Those will craft narratives that are patently untrue to drive their agenda.
Care to explain how any of that is undemocratic?
Even an extremely unpopular commissioner is at no risk of being voted out. For many years the UK's representative was disgraced former disgraced former MP Peter *Mandelson, one of the most hated people in the country, who could never have won any remotely democratic contest.
I think it’s a stretch to call Mandelson “one of the most hated people in the country”. What did he do exactly? By this point I’m sure the average person has mostly forgotten that he exists.
You are right, however, about the lack of real democratic accountability in the EU. The EU commission is the place to “fail up” - it’s where politicians go after their democratic viability has run out at home and the voters boot them out.
He had at least the image of a slimeball "spin doctor", seen as having control over the media and using it to control the narrative and cover up government wrongdoing. He was definitely publicly hated even before it emerged that he'd taken a bribe^Wundeclared interest-free loan from a person he was responsible for investigating. You're right that he's mostly forgotten nowadays.
Commissioners are proposed by their country and discussed with the head of the commission (which was selected by the whole European council) before being validated by the parliamentary committee in charge of its portfolio (composed of MEPs which are elected using direct universal suffrage and proportional representation (you can hardly be more democratic than that).
I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Well, no, they're proposed by the government of their country. Which generally means they're selected by the ruling party in that country.
> I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Huh? Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to) redouble the problem - you lose democratic accountability even at that lower level.
Yes, that’s how democracy works. Countries have elected governments.
> Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to)
Huh? It’s a proportional system and everyone is free to present their own list if they disagree with the existing organisation presenting lists. The fact that you can’t be bothered to take part in the political life of your country is not magically a loss of democratic accountability.
This is one of those "the law in its majestic equality" things. It's not practically possible to compete with the full-time political parties without being a full-time political party. And a society that separates its politicians from its people is as bad as that quote about separating its scholars from its warriors.
> The fact that you can’t be bothered to take part in the political life of your country
I get involved, more at a local level, but at a national level I vote, and occasionally I write to my MP - who is a named individual representing a fairly small number of people who can therefore actually hold him accountable. Piss off your constituents enough and it doesn't matter how much the party likes you. Which is a system I'm very happy with, and something that's deeply missing from the EU.
So you hate all modern democracies actually and it has nothing to do with the EU. Thank you that makes things a lot more clear.
> I write to my MP - who is a named individual representing a fairly small number of people who can therefore actually hold him accountable
It can be exactly the same for MEP. Countries are free to use a per region vote if they want. Turn out the UK chose to have national lists but France had 8 regional zones until 2018. It was entirely a UK decision.
Plus all MEP’s votes are public and easy to consult and they all have an address you can write to. The fact that people don’t even bother remembering how they are called is not per se a deficit of democracy in the EU.