88 replies to this topic

[Stephen Galvin]

No it would ruin them. Russia makes the lions share of its money from selling gas across Europe, attack an EU member and they would instantly lose all that income.

I'm not sure where Stephen is coming from with China and the racial aspect either. I don't see them laying claim on Penang or Singapore where the majority populations are Chinese.

I could be completely wrong, Gar. It's just the impression I get via a kind of osmosis. It might be that I am imposing my own latent view that the Asiatic area is to the Chinese what Europe seems to be to the Americans. So it is not that they lay claim to regions. More that they have an interest, and a ground presence wherever there is a Chinese ground population. It is how the Irish operate, and maybe I am culturally conditioned to expect them to act as I would in a similar situation. That refers to my earlier point about it being difficult to exactly predict the opinions and aims of different cultures to which one has had little exposure. Perhaps racial is the wrong word, and you can substitute culture, though I think it is a mistake to assume that racial nationalism is gone because the west has got a handle on it to some extent.
The Chinese may not have the same views on race as we do. Nor may the Africans. Nor may the Russians. Nor may the Arabs. and so on.
I don't know, so I am trying not to make assumptions either way.
I do know that people are people, wherever they come from, and so if we in the west could use notions of superiority to justify our exploitations and expansions, so can any other region.
You would know more about that as you are in Asia, so your opinion would be interesting.
On that note, I am interested in seeing how Europe's relationship with China and the far East develops generally. It would be good to see a world council develop where each sphere of influence has a representative. The UN has too many delegates to achieve easy consensus. America has 350 million people and 50 states to represent, but it only needs to send one figurehead. The same should apply to Africa, Arabia,Latin America, the Far East, Europe, China, etc.
It's one of North America's strengths. And of course, it brings it's own problems. At the same time, Europe should now be in a position where it could do the same. When it can, we will know that the lower councils have been properly integrated.

[Ogul]

I agree, I won't join the hyperbole if you don't, fair?

I don't know, I think it adds color.

The number of active military personnel in the armed forces of EU countries is higher than the number of US active military personnel, according to this.

Ok, and? don't a lot of countries have mandatory enlistment for a certain period? I think my French cousins both had to serve for a year or two at some point. It's not about how many people are on their books, it's about actual capacity and budget. As it stands, the US spends 26 times as much as the UK, which is the nearest EU country on the list. Even combining the UK with France, Italy, and Germany, the only other EU countries in the top 15, it only adds up to 5% of the US's expenses. Now sure, a lot of our own costs can be chalked up to fighting in two wars, but even that aside we spend a fortune. And then factor into conflicts where multiple countries are participants, like Libya, where we ended up spending twice as much as any European country, even though we had far less at stake than any of them.

Yes and now we've agreed to be more even, the EU has 500m people to the US 310m or so.

And the EU has a 20% higher GDP than the US does, AND higher tax rates, so they should be capable of spending even more than 20% more than the US does, rather than only 5% as much.

I could be completely wrong, Gar. It's just the impression I get via a kind of osmosis. It might be that I am imposing my own latent view that the Asiatic area is to the Chinese what Europe seems to be to the Americans. So it is not that they lay claim to regions. More that they have an interest, and a ground presence wherever there is a Chinese ground population.

China definitely is an aggressive actor in the Pacific. NHK is constantly reporting about them getting into disputes with neighboring countries over tiny islands and territorial water/seabed claims.

The UN has too many delegates to achieve easy consensus. America has 350 million people and 50 states to represent, but it only needs to send one figurehead.

It'd be pretty sweet if we could get 50 US representatives in the UN, although they probably wouldn't agree on things any more often than the EU's representatives do.

It definitely would make things more interesting if the UN (or a replacement body) gave representation not one per country, but on a per-capita basis, but of course then countries like India and China would have massive voting power.

[garjones]

And then factor into conflicts where multiple countries are participants, like Libya, where we ended up spending twice as much as any European country, even though we had far less at stake than any of them.

That's debatable, the numbers I see online are all over the shop. Wiki gives a list that says that to a degree but has an enormous margin for error in the UK figures of between $330m and $1.5bn. Click on the link next to that for the detailed article and it suddenly has Italy spending as much as the US.

http://en.wikipedia....ibyan_civil_war

I could be completely wrong, Gar. It's just the impression I get via a kind of osmosis. It might be that I am imposing my own latent view that the Asiatic area is to the Chinese what Europe seems to be to the Americans. So it is not that they lay claim to regions. More that they have an interest, and a ground presence wherever there is a Chinese ground population.

Not that I've noticed to be honest Stephen. I think you can get to that conclusion from the Taiwan situation but that has its own history, and fairly recent at that, of being part of China and a schism after the revolution. However where I live is majority Chinese, so is Singapore, there are areas of Thailand with a large Chinese population and they've never really had any presence or influence. Certainly not militarily although increasingly they do in business.

Ogul is right that China has aggressive claims on the waters below them but if you look at something like the Spratly Islands dispute off the Philippines it's gas, oil and fishing that's motivating the dispute and in fact those islands are claimed by Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as China. They are unpopulated.

[Ogul]

Wiki gives a list that says that to a degree but has an enormous margin for error in the UK figures of between $330m and $1.5bn.

Yeah, I don't know what that's about either, but frankly I don't see how the UK figure could be that high anyways. I mean, the US sent a LOT of bombs and drones, what were the UK doing, giving the rebels "fifty thousand pound logs" to use as firewood?

Click on the link next to that for the detailed article and it suddenly has Italy spending as much as the US.

Well, almost as much, it said they spent 1.24b to our 1.3b by their measurements, close enough I suppose, but again, I can't imagine on what. Maybe they're factoring in post-conflict redevelopment costs? In any case, every US dollar spent was a charity, as we had no stake in that action, while the issue for Europe was in the form of an Italian pipeline that was a primary fuel source for France (and the UK, I think). That we spent more out of pocket than, say, Estonia makes no real sense.

[garjones]

Yeah, I don't know what that's about either, but frankly I don't see how the UK figure could be that high anyways. I mean, the US sent a LOT of bombs and drones, what were the UK doing, giving the rebels "fifty thousand pound logs" to use as firewood?

Couldn't the UK also be sending a lot of bombs and planes? I know the SAS were running the special ops on the ground for NATO.

Actually whichever set of numbers is correct for any of the countries the operation was pretty small change compared to what we spend in the two main wars.

[David Meadows]

It's practically insane that Europe has a shared currency without federalism.

I think this is true.

My grasp of economics is limited but I discussed this with a friend who is an economist and he backed up what I had concluded: being in the Euro deprives you of the self-correcting measures your economy could normally make. You can't devalue your currency, for example, because... well... it's not your currency. Single currencies only make sense for a single nation that has common taxation and fiscal policies and an obvious (unconditional) need to share the central wealth among all of its regions.

[Daniel R]

I think this is true.

My grasp of economics is limited but I discussed this with a friend who is an economist and he backed up what I had concluded: being in the Euro deprives you of the self-correcting measures your economy could normally make. You can't devalue your currency, for example, because... well... it's not your currency. Single currencies only make sense for a single nation that has common taxation and fiscal policies and an obvious (unconditional) need to share the central wealth among all of its regions.

That's basically the size of it.

Interestingly, prior to entering the Euro, the member nations were given a set of guidelines to stick to with their fiscal policies, to mitigate the differences in their economies. There were also acceptance criteria so that those within would be similar enough in their economic parameters that they wouldn't fall foul of each other.

In the first case, the guidelines were flouted as the weaker economies gamed the system and their politicians used the money to effectively buy votes from their citizens. In the second case, the acceptance criteria was basically ignored - once they were in, it was believed, they would start to match up in time. The opposite proved true, as macroeconomic forces started pushing them further apart.

If they hadn't ignored their own rules, they might have gotten away with it.



-DR

Edited by Daniel R, 12 June 2012 - 11:57 AM.

[Arjan Dirkse]

Ok, and? don't a lot of countries have mandatory enlistment for a certain period? I think my French cousins both had to serve for a year or two at some point. It's not about how many people are on their books, it's about actual capacity and budget. As it stands, the US spends 26 times as much as the UK, which is the nearest EU country on the list. Even combining the UK with France, Italy, and Germany, the only other EU countries in the top 15, it only adds up to 5% of the US's expenses. Now sure, a lot of our own costs can be chalked up to fighting in two wars, but even that aside we spend a fortune. And then factor into conflicts where multiple countries are participants, like Libya, where we ended up spending twice as much as any European country, even though we had far less at stake than any of them.

The UK and France both spend about 2,5 % of their GDP on the military, as opposed to 4,7 % in the US. 2,5 % seems fine to me. It's a political choice made by the US to hold military spending at that level, it's not a decision forced on them by Brussels. I'd say that it's likely the US's insistence on being the greatest military power in the world in order to hold some kind of superiority over China while also being able to defeat any threat in the Middle East is more of a factor in the US military budget than some cheapskatery in the EU.

If you insist on arguing in that direction, making it into some moral obligation thing, you'd also have to factor in how much of their GDP the US spends on humanitarian aid for foreign countries, where they fall far behind EU countries. And you'd have to weigh how much of the perceived need for military domination is really a need, and wether some of that is a self perpetuating circumstance forced on the West by arrogant policies in the past.

That said, in the case of Libya I think you're right, there should be a sharing of the burden.

[Ogul]

The UK and France both spend about 2,5 % of their GDP on the military, as opposed to 4,7 % in the US. 2,5 % seems fine to me. It's a political choice made by the US to hold military spending at that level, it's not a decision forced on them by Brussels

This is my point though, somebody has to. Somebody has to spend the kind of money that the US does. France and the UK get the luxury of not having to spend that kind of money because the US does it for them. If the US failed to do that, then there would be a power vacuum that aggressive nations would take advantage of, perhaps not directly, but indirectly by being generally belligerent. If we pulled out of the Pacific, for example, you can bet China would fill that vacuum. I'm saying that France and the UK should be spending closer to maybe 3.5-4% of their GDP on military, contributing more to the world policing forces with that additional expenditure, and then the US could pull back to 3.5-4% ourselves while still retaining the same combined military strength.

If you insist on arguing in that direction, making it into some moral obligation thing, you'd also have to factor in how much of their GDP the US spends on humanitarian aid for foreign countries, where they fall far behind EU countries.

If someone would care to run the numbers, I'd wager that the US's humanitarian aid+military budget is greater than or equal to the same combination from any similarly positioned country. You can't expect us to have several times the military budget of anyone else AND match them on humanitarian aide, we can only do one at a time (factoring in that a portion of our military budget does go into humanitarian aid efforts, such as when we use naval ships in disaster relief).