How have we come to such instability?
Most of our highest political representatives are not leaders any more; they don't have visions of the future; they are popularity poll managers and submissive to the media moguls who erected them above their peers in public visibility. Short-sightness is not restricted to leaders only. Every time I log to ET I learn something, but there is something I cannot understand: how can an important percentage of us accept the entrance of such a big country as Turkey to the club, when England alone is already a formidable blocker. Can you imagine the rise in complexity of the power games in Brussels? It will become basically a 4-player game, and the most frequent alliance geometry will be a rectangle (2 versus 2).
The EU is associated to an ideal. I suppose near all of us have that a version of that ideal. However, it also something more visible than that: it is a very reasonable business arrangement. That should be expressed more often, namely by the Irish Government.
Personally, i think the NO vote to the constitution made by the French and Netherlanders was very positive, since it put some break in the corporate friendliness of the European Commission and demonstrated the popular opposition to the entrance of Turkey in the EU.
It is hard to understand what will be the effect of a rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
If I were a betting person, I would put my money on a NO resulting in either a special deal for Ireland (like Denmark and the euro) or a new referendum to get it right. Or possibly a combination of those two.
Guess that is why I do not really care, I suspect it will not make any real difference.
I also don't believe that the same text can be put to referendum in Ireland, though something like that was done for Denmark after Maastricht and also for Ireland after Nice. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
So we can afford to wait a few years - or even a few decades - if it means that we get to forge into the very bedrock institutions a preference for soft power over hard power, for social justice over lobbyist influence and for a policy of genuine security over neo-colonial securityness policy.
In short, I predict that the political playing field is going to be tilted by the very architecture of the EU institutions, and we had better make sure that it is tilted in our favour.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
don't see why you assume that the world with a European superstate would be any worse than the world without a European superstate. I don't exactly see the other great powers of the present day behaving particularly responsibly. The case that I am making is merely that unless we take the time and effort to make sure that the European project is as well protected as possible, it is unlikely to make the world any better either. So we can afford to wait a few years - or even a few decades - if it means that we get to forge into the very bedrock institutions a preference for soft power over hard power, for social justice over lobbyist influence and for a policy of genuine security over neo-colonial securityness policy. In short, I predict that the political playing field is going to be tilted by the very architecture of the EU institutions, and we had better make sure that it is tilted in our favour.
I'm not sure whether the "you" here is directed at me or not - a couple of glasses of wine can make it difficult to assess the indentation sequence of comments. (Can we have aligning lines in ET 2.0 please?)
I don't disagree with your main thesis that the governing structures and culture you create can constrain your policy options - that is the essence of structuralism. However we are also not living in an ideal world where you can afford to wait, almost indefinitely, for ideal structures to emerge. Sometimes an opportunity only comes once, and if you miss that, regression is more likely than progression.
As a youthful idealist I would always have preferred big bang radical revolutionary changes over wish washy incremental liberal reform. Now I will take any incremental step in the right direction because I have had too much experience of small defeats leading to even bigger defeats. A small step in the wrong direction doesn't make a big step in the right direction any easier - in fact it can destroy the prospects of positive reform for a generation. Hence my sometimes ill-conceived impatience with ideologically pure revolutionaries who succeed in destroying the prospects for any limited improvements by insisting on nirvana or death. Death always seems to win.
I have a fundamental problem with a unipolar world order because there are no effective domestic or international checks and balances to the overweening hubris of the ruling elite of the dominant power. Therefor a bipolar - or better still, a multi-polar world order is preferable provided that there is an international system of law and institutions capable of moderating and sublimating the tensions between.
Therefor I believe a strong EU is a good thing, ipso facto, even if I might have strong misgiving about the policy priorities such a strong EU might pursue. It is still better than where we are now. Also a paralysed EU project might give more encouragement to proto-fascistic tendencies both within and without the current EU boundaries.
In summary, please do not assume, for a moment, that a rejection of Lisbon will give us the opportunity to create something better. Far more likely it will be a victory for narrow nationalism, eurosceptic atlanticism, free market business ideologues, religious fundamentalists and racists a la Le Pen, Sinn Fein, the BNP, and Aznar/Berlusconi like protofascism.
Passing Lisbon, on the other hand, will not herald either a perfect or a radically more powerful EU on the world stage. It is just a very small, boring, and imperfect step in the right direction - of a type which will enthuse almost no one - but at least it will keep the lid on those whose enthusiasms we can better do without. In terms of direction and momentum it may be but a small thing, but it can also be the straw which broke the back of the European Project as conceived by its founders. It means that the neocons who sought to destroy the UN, international law and any countervailing momentum to US hegemony will have won. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
As a youthful idealist I would always have preferred big bang radical revolutionary changes over wish washy incremental liberal reform. Now I will take any incremental step in the right direction because I have had too much experience of small defeats leading to even bigger defeats. A small step in the wrong direction doesn't make a big step in the right direction any easier - in fact it can destroy the prospects of positive reform for a generation.
Yes! In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
If your argument is simply that a multi-polar world is preferable to a bipolar or unipolar - irrespective of the policies of the great powers, then China and Russia (and India) are taking up the slack nicely without the EU. Further, I am not quite confident that you are right about that premise. Some of the worst atrocities in human history happened in the very much multi-polar 19th century.
If your argument is that the Lisbon EU will be able to stop torture flights through Union airspace... well, the member states are also able to do so, if they want to. If you were to argue that the Lisbon treaty would obligate the EU (and/or the member countries) to put a stop to torture flights - and if you were to argue that the obligation would be enforceable (as in there being a realistic chance that it could be enforced against the wishes of individual governments), then you would have a case. Otherwise...
On balance, a treaty that gives more power to the parliament at the expense of the Council is probably a good thing, assuming that it doesn't contain any serious land mines. But simply arguing that the treaty is good because it gives the EU more muscle is naïve, because that line of argument assumes that the EU is inherently more noble than the other global great powers. And I see no evidence of that.
Please elaborate on the likely political consequences.
If Ireland doesn't ratify it, the UK probably won't either and then we can just throw the British Isles out </snark> or just sit back and wait for the SNP and Plaid Cymru to win referendums on independence to stay in the EU, followed by an Irish referendum in the same direction. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
I am not worried with a generic EU becoming a superstate. I am worried with an EU with a European Commission and European Council which have become more less concerned with actual people and more with corporations interests lately. It is that EU that i don't want to see stronger.
If, however, that tendency is stopped and even reversed, than a stronger EU becomes acceptable. After all, a superior model of administration and production leads to the relative accumulation of resources and to the external perception of success, both leading to increased influence over rival organisations (other countries). History may be a sequence of thievery and abuse at large-organisation level, but there is progress, as thieves are generally replaced by better, smarter, ones.
Perhaps to create a more distinct form of organisation we may need to risk what we have now.
