this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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reminder that the world did not enjoy it the last time Europeans were super powerful
Europe is the biggest provider of independence days !
Well, not the EU after the UK left. Spain and France tried but they were up against WASPs and that's simply not a fair contest of evil.
Yeah, they all hated each other and their internal beer hall brawl spilled out over the borders. It wasn’t that Europe was any kind of united force. Maybe it’s time. We’re fucked in the US, now.
Though I gotta admit it’s ironic AF that the Allies set up Germany with a far better constitution/Grundgesezt and government framework than our own Constitution which ended up essentially frozen because politics have gotten so bad that opening it up would have probably destroyed whatever good remained in it thanks to talibangelicals and corporate money.
I think they were talking about colonialism, not WW2
Ah, yeah that was a bad time for the rest of the world too.
But Europeans loved it
I don't think the world enjoys anyone being powerful
I'd rather see other powers collapse than Europe join this stupid game
Eh, power vacuums don't last. You're basically just asking for a Somalia situation where there's n small powers continuously at war.
as if there aren't any other options
World federation, superpowers, small powers. As far as I can tell it's just a question of how big the blocs are. I don't see how you move laterally to that continuum in any lasting way; humans are going to act like humans.
A unified world power, for instance through a competent UN that is achieved through diplomacy sound pretty okay.
"boys will be boys" excuse
I didn't excuse anything. We're shit. But, it's the way things are.
Although, come to think of it, we'd probably just elect a world government if we weren't shit anyway. Just to coordinate things as we're being understanding and reasonable with each other.
In my uninformed understanding of humans and their history, unifications happen only in the face of crises and threats (and far from all the time, clearly). Maybe--hopefully--the world eventually makes common cause in order to stabilise the world as things spiral out of control in a few decades, but right now our species appears more concerned about whom gets to dictate what and how humans should live and behave like.
External threats help, but unification was often, ahem, self-promoting as well. A hundred years on, becoming Roman by force and becoming Roman to avoid becoming Persian was kind of indistinguishable - and both did happen.
We're kind of in uncharted territory with today's ideologically-driven democracies, but I'd argue the EU itself is a kind of peaceful equivalent. New members accrue because the economic and other benefits vastly exceed whatever beef it's neighbors have with it.
Not even most Europeans.
Hi Americans!
Europe is not the Germans.
This time you'll get the Vikings, the Romans, the Conquistadors, the Spartans and the people who ruled the world by the cunning use of flags all teamed together.
The British imperialists genocided more people throughout their history than the Germans. Just that the Brits took their time with it. The French, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch and Italians also have many million skeletons in their closet and the French massacred millions of people trying to gain independence after World War 2.
If you go to any place in the world outside of Europe there is a good chance that Europeans committed a massacre there to steal land and resources at some point in the past few hundred years.
But not now, now for the most part they're all democratic countries.
You hang on to the past so hard and you get Gaza, India Pakistan war, the Middle East etc.
A country being democratic for some people has absolutely no indication of whether it is an imperialist threat to other countries.
Do you think the countries being invaded by the US or having their legitimate governments overthrown and fascist puppets installed care about the US being democratic on the inside? Do you think Pakistan is less threatened by India because it is a democratic country? Do you think the Serbian massacres in Bosnia were acceptable and the Kosovarians were welcoming the Serbian invaders because Serbia became democratic a few years earlier?
Also the Middle East like many post colonial areas in Africa are unstable precisely because the French and British democracies designed artificial countries in a way that will cause tensions by separating people such as the Kurdish people into many states and throwing together different people into single states. Continued military "interventions", arming groups in proxy wars and other meddling certainly doesn't help either. Take Libya for instance where France is helping the Haftar regime to continue waging war against the internationally recognized government alongside Russia, Wagner, the UAE and Egypt.
So many good points in one post. People have to get off their high horse on democracy. My goto is every US president since WW2 is a war criminal. Do you think the people suffering war crimes care about democracy? It would be laughable if it wasnt infuriating.
Just to bolster your argument on the Middle East all anyone has to do is look at Sykes Picot. The whole middle east is just some brit in an office drawing squiggly lines, so that the west can extract as many resources from them as possible.
Its like people forgot the ottoman empire even existed and instead just get real racist with lines like "prone to war" "stuck in the past". Bro the US is still creating nation states in the Arab world. Of course they are going to go to war, the west is standing on their neck.
Pretty sure France is not there to be along with Russia and Wagner but because Russia and Wagner is there. Russia’s interest is to grow influence and cause issues to Europe.
France is there to get cheap Libyan oil from a warlord. If that means partnering with Wagner they are fine doing so.
If France was interested in challenging Russian influence they would support the internationally recognized government and help its fight against Haftar. You know, like how limiting Russian influence in Ukraine is done by helping Ukraine, not by helping Russia allied separatists in Luchansk.
I will need more convincing on that. But I do see that France’s involment does have pretty bad optics - and maybe reasons. But because France is not the only one there, it sure isn’t something black and white.
And I wouldn’t draw comparisons to Ukraine as the Libya has unfortunately have had so much internal instability that is not comparable - though one could say something Euromaiden and the aftermath of it but that is still order of magnitudes different starting point.
There is currently a trial for former French president Sarkozy for having been bankrolled by the Gaddafi regime.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20250410-how-former-french-president-sarkozy-allegedly-received-millions-from-libya-s-gaddafi
France then was the first country to bomb Libya in 2011. France is heavily influencing what is going on in Libya.
The English ran laps around the Germans in terms of human attrocity for centuries.
The French weren't far behind.
Hey, don't forget Belgium. They didn't have much, but it's quality over quantity!