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Roads to war in Europe | 272 comments (272 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: What you are searching for (none / 1)
You're assuming an outside military intervention doesn't count as "worsening the war".

As a recovering liberal interventionist (and there are a number of us on the blog), I simply don't see the obvious benefits of intervention. My point is, by the time intervention becomes your best policy option, the European project is a failure. So you're no longer debating from the point of view of the European interest.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 6th, 2013 at 09:53:39 AM EST
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Re: What you are searching for (none / 0)
Actually I'm not assuming anything. I'm not presuming that an interventionist doctrine would be a magic wand, and that every intervention would be quick and easy. But I am not prepared to concede that every intervention would be foredoomed to make things worse. And I think the question, distressing and painful as it is, to be an interesting one.

If we have war, then the European project is a failure. But the continent and its people continue to exist, regardless of institutional structure, so the question of the European interest is still pertinent. The EU, or its constituents, had no institutional obligation to intervene in Yugoslavia in 1991. Is that a valid excuse for not doing so? Do you think any such intervention would have made things worse?

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II

by eurogreen on Wed Mar 6th, 2013 at 10:13:44 AM EST
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Re: What you are searching for (4.00 / 4)
Destroying the village in order to save it appears to be a basic tenet of European Union economic intervention.

There's one thing worse that either military intervention or no intervention: incompetent military intervention. I am confident the EU won't disappoint.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 6th, 2013 at 10:19:23 AM EST
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Re: What you are searching for (none / 1)
If we have war, then the European project is a failure. But the continent and its people continue to exist, regardless of institutional structure, so the question of the European interest is still pertinent.

No, it's not.

In the event of a war in Europe, the entities which are able to put boots on the ground will be, at best, acting in their own national interest (and more probably in the narrow special interests of a certain slice of their oligarchy). In terms of pertinence, the European interest is located somewhere slightly below the interests of the people being intervened in. The latter can, at least, shoot back.

The EU, or its constituents, had no institutional obligation to intervene in Yugoslavia in 1991. Is that a valid excuse for not doing so? Do you think any such intervention would have made things worse?

In principle, no.

In practice, given that the same countries who were going to be intervening had been the loudest cheerleaders for starting the civil war they were intervening into in the first place, yes.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Mar 6th, 2013 at 11:49:02 AM EST
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Roads to war in Europe | 272 comments (272 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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