Why so much fear of a federal Europe

Nothung

Coming back to the original question.

I can give two reasons why I fear a federal Europe:

(1) To my mind there should be no harm in replacing our incompetent National politicians with incompetent Federal ones. Should it really be material whether they are in Leinster House or Brussels? But we all know that we would end up with the worst of all worlds. The incompetent ones would remain in Dáil Eireann, and the Palace of Westminster, etc. on full pay and benefits, while a whole new layer of incompetent ones would be created in Brussels. This principle would also apply to Customs and Excise, Revenue Commissioners et al. Just think of the joy of duplicating all the bureaucracy you currently rail against.

(2) Once a Federal State is created they will have new toys to play with, such as a European Army. The problem with giving them toys like this is they won't be able to resist using them. How long do you think it would be before they start spinning stories of Ukrainian aggression on Poland's border? Better invade to protect Poland. Or Russian aggression on Ukraine's border? Better invade to protect our neighbour. At the moment we are lucky that this can't be done; hell would freeze over before Sarkozy could persuade Brown to lend him some troops. Long may that remain.

claudiog

Scofflaw wrote: »

So essentially it's a military/foreign policy definition....but since the UN authorises joint positions and joint military actions, is it not, by the same definition, also federal? Or is there actually somewhat more to your definition?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Federation derives from the latin word "foedo" which means pact for alliance. So also NATO is a sort of federation, UN a bit less.

Just an other thing. US is a federation in which states, and overall the individuals, are protected by the excess of power from the federal government by the constitution. However in the time this has changed and more and more power were given to the federal government. Not all Americans are happy about this. Try to see this: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

ChocolateSauce

A series of interesting replies. I must say I detect a great deal of defeatism in almost every post. It seems you are all disenfranchised with politics in general. Most people who expressed doubts about a federal EU did not specifically say it was intrinsically a bad thing, only that it wouldn't work because no one is good enough to run it.

I'm not going to say if all this defeatism is justified. I'm honestly not sure. I'm optimistic overall, although I regard September 10th, 2001 as a high point which we should all aspire to return to.

I do agree though that lately politics has given me a bitter taste, but I honestly believe that when this terrorism BS is finished, things will get better. When is it finished? As soon as we stop being afraid. Considering I'm a million times more likely to die crossing the street than I am in a terrorist attack, I'm not scared of them at all. I'm more scared of my liberties being eroded by people who ARE scared of them.

Thankfully, countries like France, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark are deeply committed to freedom, and if we were to unite with these countries in political union deeper than what we now have, I believe the case for freedom would be more strongly fought.

RDM_83

because a federal europe in its current state is not able to to have even have the infrastructure for a common defence.
They changed the galileo system so that the USA could block the accurate european GPS system with out blocking there own military signals.
Problem is that some levels (i presume higher becuase the system originally seemed designed that the US could not block it) of the EU do not have the willpower make descisions that might interefere with NATO

oscarBravo

RDM_83 wrote: »

They changed the galileo system so that the USA could block the accurate european GPS system with out blocking there own military signals.

Source?

RDM_83

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3839809.stm

sink

RDM_83 wrote: »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3839809.stm

Do you know why they do that? It's so a terrorist can't strap a bomb to a model aeroplane and use GPS/Galileo to guide the bomb onto a target. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Europe can block the US and the US can block Europe.

nhughes100

Maybe the US could use the European GPS to more accurately guide their bombs instead of coming up with exploding cigar plots as above.

RDM_83

You mean like this
http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/


one of the main points of the the Galileo system was that civilians wouldn't be dependant on a system that gets turned off every time the US is intervening somewhere.
Galileo was a new sytemgoing ahead with the frequency that the US could not block with would have cost them nothing, and in terms of diplomacy the US could have asked the EU to restrict accuracy in conflict zones rather than giving the US the ability without consultation.
You give your friend a loan of money, you don't give them your bankcard and PIN to take the money themselves

IRLConor

sink wrote: »

Do you know why they do that? It's so a terrorist can't strap a bomb to a model aeroplane and use GPS/Galileo to guide the bomb onto a target. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Europe can block the US and the US can block Europe.

It's a little more complex than that. There are two "jamming" issues at stake.

One is "selective availability" which is a feature of GPS which allows the US DoD to degrade the accuracy of the civilian signal. This is one of the prime reasons for the Galileo project from the outset. Now, the US has said that they're no longer going to use this and the new satellites they're putting into orbit don't have that capability.

The other is the ability to locally jam the signal. Galileo was initially supposed to run on a similar frequency to GPS which would mean that if the US wanted to jam Galileo they'd end up jamming their own GPS too. The EU and the US finally agreed to separate the frequencies so it's now possible to jam any one signal without interfering with the others. The main advantage of this type of jamming is that it's local and quite difficult to do on a wider scale. Anyone, EU, US or third party, can now locally jam either or both signals.

The bomb-on-a-model aeroplane is something of a movie plot threat, but not totally implausible. There was a guy in New Zealand who was building a home brew cruise missile to prove the concept. The jamming ability won't really defend against this threat though, since no-one wants to jam GPS/Galileo/GLONASS on a continuous basis even locally.

Dragging this thread back towards the topic:

I think a more tightly integrated EU with some defence parts has the potential to wean the EU NATO members off NATO (which is dominated by the USA) and lead them into a more European (by which I mean diplomatic) defence alliance. I see defence pacts as an inevitability, so to my mind the most logical thing to fight for is a type of defence pact which will serve the world's interests better. Trying to fight against defence pacts in general is pissing into the wind IMO.