European Politics Thread

Sounds like the High Representative might need to step in here and either knock some heads together or strait up fire a bunch of people.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Dayton was always meant as a stop gap. The powers that underwrote that agreement are at fault for not finding a more stable and permanent solution, which frankly was always going to end in a hard partition.

Until now, things were fine because there was no way to cleanly split up Bosnia. But now that the Croats are basically leaving (as the newly released demographic statistics point out), it's just a matter of seperating Serbs and Bosniaks.

Just trying to sit it out might be the best course of actions. The complex ethnic situation in Bosnia might become simpler to solve if the Croats continue to leave, and once Serbia acknowledges the independence of Kosovo, perhaps the EU and USA might bring themselves to agree to the ascension of the Republika Srpska to Serbia.

Would probably have to be one of those things that happens at the same time, rather than consecutively. Doubt the EU or Serbia trusts the other to hold their end of such a recognition.

Otherwise agreed....unless violence breaks out again.

Well, those things could happen quite soon after another. Serbia still wants to join the EU, and the EU made it clear that Serbia would have to recognize Kosovo first. Perhaps they could sweeten the deal with a promised referendum in the Serbian part of Bosnia.

Of course we would have to take utmost care that no violence erupts afterwards. And the question is, what would happen with the rest of Bosnia?

Also, the UK is still actively opposing the creation of a European army (or at least more coordination among European member states in terms of defence). Because leaving is apparantly not enough, now they are trying to ruin it for the rest of us.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-defence-idUSKCN11X00G

edited 27th Sep '16 11:13:37 AM by Zarastro

Goddangit, a EU army would actually be competitive with the larger nations in terms of efficiency.

Well, at least the fact that Britain still thinks it's okay to vote on this sort of thing shows that they have very little intention on following through on Brexit.

If everybody can agree and not put their own national interests first.

Nobody knows what's happening when it comes to Brexit. Most of all, the British Government doesn't have a clue what it wants or how to do it.

edited 27th Sep '16 11:37:51 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

I thought that what the government wanted was pretty clear? I mean, the leaders of the movement reacted to their "victory" by promptly resigning from their positions. No one actually wants to leave the EU, and now they're just looking for ways to get away with staying without losing too much face.

Well, it's probably more complicated than that, I guess. Doesn't always feel like it, though.

The House of Lords is pretty clear: it'd like to throttle the Commons right now, and is willing to try hurling the biggest fits it can manage over every bit of Brexit legislation that might come its way. Not to mention that it is already sharpening the scissors to maul each Tory attempt to scrap the Human Rights Act.

And, for all the Tory front bench are puppeting the "Brexit means Brexit" line on auto, only a couple of them have actually come out as wanting to invoke Article 50 this side of the New Year (or the other side, for that matter). <_<

None of the City of London bloc is all that keen, and that cuts across party lines. Not to mention the Scottish and Northern Irish blocs who are more than happy to get scrappy.

The remaining Lib Dems are vociferously against Brexit, as is a huge wedge of the Labour MPs. Most would be quite happy to force another, much clearer referendum... this time, with a muzzle on the Murdoch press.

And, when push comes to shove, 48% of the population is not a small, insignificant percentage to ignore, either. <_<

edited 27th Sep '16 3:45:39 PM by Euodiachloris

Which is why national referendums like these oughta be only binding if there's 2 thirds in favour.

edited 27th Sep '16 2:17:23 PM by Quag15

Then again, this is only the third Referendum in the UK's history — the first was also about Europe in 1974 (and that time it was Labour that was divided).

Keep Rolling On

You sure about that? This map makes me doubt it, particularly the fact that the Brčko District is effectively a third entity in this combined polity, that Bosnia-Herzegovina will be forced to have the Posavina Canton become a completely landlocked enclave surrounded on by the new Serbian territory to the South and Croatia to the north, and I could've sworn I read something about how both entities of the binational state have direct control over certain towns and villages the other entity (they apparently refused to move the people around for one reason or the other — or the people refused to be evicted, perhaps).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Landlockedness isn't itself a big deal. Plenty such states exist in Europe right now. Enclaves and exclaves as well. My point was that in the Bi H entity, it wouldn't be as hard to split off, because with the Croats leaving, Bosniaks wouldn't have to worry about a second order split.

I don't know, not being landlocked used to be a big deal for Bosnia, and they still have disputes with Croatia about anything that might compromise their only harbour.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/07/croatia

The Balkans are really strange... .

Nobody said that things would be easy, only relatively easy by Balkan standards.

And only part of it will be so, as an enclave of the larger portion that has the port.

Greenmantle The UK is being a tad delusional here -there is a mechanism in the treaties for sufficiently large sub-groups of the EU to go further down the integration path over the objections of the rest of the union, if certain conditions were met - and all of those conditions are met, because defense is essentially what people were thinking of when they put those clauses in.

The size requirement is "at least nine", but that is not a problem - there are way more than nine nations in the EU who are painfully aware that their actual defense against external threats are not their armies, but rather their allies, and who would thus prefer spending their military budgets jointly, rather than maintaining a tiny force of only symbolic importance.

Thus, this is happening, and the UK can't veto it. They used to be able to argue people out of it on grounds that it would displease them, but that is not a veto with legal force, it was merely a desire to stay on their good side, which... yhea, not so much anymore.

As for the national interest - if you are one of the many european nations that are just too small to have much of a national defense, a common army is in your national interest. Heck, even quite big members will likely sign up just due to a historic awareness that a national army just isn't very likely to actually win in the event of the fecal matter hitting the rotating air-foils, and the trio of gigants (ITA, FRA and DE) are all for it on general grounds of federalism.

I am slightly concerned how it will play in the rest of the world, because there are a lot of lunatics out there with prophesies of a reborn roman empire, and this will patternmatch really hard with that crowd, but eh. Cant plan policy around crazy.

edited 28th Sep '16 10:32:29 AM by Izeinsummer

It's either "Roman Empire reborn" or "Fourth Reich". Though the latter is a lot more popular nowadays.

What about NATO?

Keep Rolling On

What about NATO? It's not like the european side of things getting stronger will inherently weaken the alliance. That plus electing Trump.. okay, would, but if things go that way, NATO is the walking dead anyway, and military integration would become rather urgent. The UK saying it would weaken NATO is motivated reasoning - what it would actually do is make the opinion of the UK within NATO rather unimportant, because it decisively makes them "That island off the coast of europe" rather than "one of the strongest militaries in europe"

The UK has solid reasons to oppose this, politically. The rest of the EU doesn't have much in the way of reasons to listen to them.

edited 28th Sep '16 12:28:00 PM by Izeinsummer

What nations would people see forming a European army? I don't see the Eastern members wanting to give up any semblance of control over their forces. So France, Italy and Germany are the obvious ones, I suspect that the Low Countries would join, would the Iberians and Nords join? Likewise the Greeks are likely to be defensive about military independence.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

We have military independence?For what,scaring off Turkish jets?

Secret Signature

Eastern Europe has a lot of nations likely to join, due to, well, look at european history. Having independant armies has not really.. Worked..

Basically, I don't see the Greeks wanting to not be able to get into pissing contests with Turkey. That and I doubt the Greek military wants to risk facing cuts, the Greek military is rather bloated and I'm sure some European insiders would love to cut the Greek military down and use the money to pay off some of Greece's debt (which wouldn't be that bad an idea honestly).

I'm not convinced. The eastern lot are already in NATO, a European army is something they might fear as it would be beyond their control and could thwart authoritarian ambitions of theirs.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Oh, diddums: Orbán not get to be saluted by a lot of synchronised, people-wearing jackboots... Let my heart bleed.

edited 28th Sep '16 1:53:31 PM by Euodiachloris

And could refuse to act^note  i.e. The Germans could veto any action against any (Ukraine-style?) Russian aggression against them.

edited 28th Sep '16 2:07:28 PM by Greenmantle

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