Borderline Europe countries

BlitzKrieg

how?

edit: damn you sink!

Affable

sink wrote: »

What exactly is the difference between an Irishman not wanting Ireland to become the 51st state of the USofA and a Kenyan not wanting Kenya to become a member of the EU?

Well Kenya is an unrealistic example, but say Morocco for example. It's totally different. a)Because Europe is actally superior to the USA in many of our eyes and more civilised. Africa is not more civilised than Europe. b)It's miles and miles away from Ireland(USA). Morocco is close to Europe.
c)Being in the EU is not as binding. And one would not be giving away their heritage and history by joining. Shared history is important as someone mentioned. The only shared history Ireland and the US have is that Irish people left Ireland to go to the US, and that some dumb yanks funded the IRA without having a clue about it because they didn't like English people.

sink

Affable wrote: »

Well Kenya is an unrealistic example, but say Morocco for example.

I thought you were worried about indefinite expansion, if you admit that Kenya is unlikely to ever join the EU then you must also admit that indefinite expansion of the EU is also unlikely.

Affable wrote: »

It's totally different. a)Because Europe is actally superior to the USA in many of our eyes and more civilised. Africa is not more civilised than Europe.

That is a completely subjective measurement, Americans would certainly tend to disagree, in fact they would tend to believe the opposite. Africans would also have their own subjective measurement of what is superior. Many Africans are fiercely anti-European due to their colonial history and would not see Europe as superior in anyway. You are presupposing an entire continent agrees with your own subjective opinion with no evidence.

Affable wrote: »

b)It's miles and miles away from Ireland(USA). Morocco is close to Europe.

Hence why Morocco want's to join the EU and why Ireland and Kenya do not want to join the USA and the EU respectively.

Affable wrote: »

c)Being in the EU is not as binding. And one would not be giving away their heritage and history by joining. Shared history is important as someone mentioned. The only shared history Ireland and the US have is that Irish people left Ireland to go to the US, and that some dumb yanks funded the IRA without having a clue about it because they didn't like English people.

There are definite difference in degrees of integration but even if all things were equal it is likely Ireland would still not want to join the US and Kenya would still not want to join the EU.

Historic ties between Ireland and America are much stronger than the ties between Ireland and Eastern Europe, heck even much of western Europe.

BlitzKrieg

a)Because Europe is actally superior to the USA in many of our eyes and more civilised. Africa is not more civilised than Europe.

But if we put it in reverse and asked an american state to seceed and join the EU you will still get the same *no* saying your country is superior is not a valid argument, it goes back to the issue of pride and arrogence I brought up. Assuming just because Europe is more civilised that other states will automatically want to join it show's a serious ignorance of *at least* north african states. Morocco is a constitutional Monarchy, it has civilisation, it has over 4 dozen universities, it has a
culture and a history.

Should Ireland have joined the US in the 1980's...we were poor developing country back then so therefore less *civilised*? The answer is clearly no.


And picking Morocco is unfair, I spent the first half of this thread argueng that Morocco *is* a valid state to apply for membership into the EU because they have a shared history and cultural aspects with european states. I am not going to turn around and say they suddenly dont.

Affable

sink wrote: »

Hence why Morocco want's to join the EU and why Ireland and Kenya do not want to join the USA and the EU respectively.



There are definite difference in degrees of integration but even if all things were equal it is likely Ireland would still not want to join the US and Kenya would still not want to join the EU.

Historic ties between Ireland and America are much stronger than the ties between Ireland and Eastern Europe, heck even much of western Europe.

But I was making the point that Kenya was an example that threw the debate in the wrong direction. I didn't want to compare Kenya, I was talking borderline countries. I'm tired so need a moment to go back to the orignal post. I disgree with your final point. Ireland only has ties with the US because of people who left. Americans only really have ties to each other because they are all people from other continents genetically who came there. Irish are genetic Europeans that share similar, longer political histories to Europeans, and even more religious similarities, right, with roman catholic countries like Poland/Italy.

Edit-This was the original statement ok, so you have, and I say this without confrontational intent, diverted the debate.

---->>>

No, because it's totally different. Borderline Asian/African countries wanting/not wanting to be in the EU is simply not an issue that is comparable to European countries wanting to join the USA. It just isn't.

sink

Things are getting confused let's backtrack and find where things got muddled.

Affable wrote: »

Yeah but like I say if the EU's got serious long term aspirations of greater union to a single federation/country, then too bigger size may impinge on that. Africa is an intuitve place to stop, the water does it. Over the water is a huge huge land mass. You may get some equivalent to the Northern Ireland situation if it occurs.

You original argument was that the EU has to stop somewhere due to a enlarged EU being unmanageable (for what reason you never explained). This implied that you were of the opinion that without a fixed border limit the EU would continue expanding indefinitely. Blitzkrieg and myself argued that countries which are far beyond the current borders of the EU are unlikely to ever want to join the EU and just assuming they would shows both ignorance of their culture/history and arrogance over your own. The hypothetical scenarios involving the USA and Kenya were an attempt to demonstrate the fallaciousness of your concerns.

sink

Affable wrote: »

I disgree with your final point. Ireland only has ties with the US because of people who left. Americans only really have ties to each other because they are all people from other continents genetically who came there. Irish are genetic Europeans that share similar, longer political histories to Europeans, and even more religious similarities, right, with roman catholic countries like Poland/Italy.

Although this is way off topic I could not leave this point un-addressed. Cultural ties between Ireland and the USA are very strong precisely due to Irish migrants. There are some 40 million Americans who claim Irish heritage, there are entire areas of the East coast which are dominated by Irish American culture. Many Irish people including myself have family and life-long friends in America. There were very few personal ties between Ireland and much of continental Europe prior to the EU whereas family ties between Irish and Americans go back to the earliest settlers in America and ties don't get any closer than family ties.

Affable

sink wrote: »

You original argument was that the EU has to stop somewhere due to a enlarged EU being unmanageable (for what reason you never explained). This implied that you were of the opinion that without a fixed border limit the EU would continue expanding indefinitely. Blitzkrieg and myself argued that countries which are far beyond the current borders of the EU are unlikely to ever want to join the EU and just assuming they would shows both ignorance of their culture/history and arrogance over your own.

Oh ok. I didn't want to imply that it WOULD increase indefinitely. You are probably entirely correct to say that it would most likely never do so and that there is an arrogance in people, including me, assuming it would. I really want to address your point about the border though. By your logic, the current geographical border is arbitrary(which you state renders it invalid). Take that logic to it's conclusion, and it COULD be, on principle, permitted to increase indefinitely, since any other border would be equally arbitrary, and any countries falling within it with adequate shared values and history could join. So let's not, for now, consider whether it WOULD expand indefinitely. I'm saying that if, on principle, you don't oppose the likes of these 'slightly over the current borderline' countries joining because of shared values/history/aspirations and because the current borderline is arbitrary, then you couldn't, on principle, oppose countries from slightly further(and then slightly more further, and then slightly more further(repeat many times)) afield with shared values/history/aspirations joining. Any geographical border further out would be just as arbitrary as the current one. This to me would mean a geographical 'arbitrary' limit has to be set at some point. Otherwise the hypothetical conclusion to it is that India could join with the right criteria, Hong Kong could, Australasia could, Canada could. Shared values, aspirations, histories. Which would cause an absurd degree of globalisation and be too large to govern, follow media and culture and events within, feel any connection with as an entity, and if there was a single language, most likely English, it would be too much of one language in the world. And it would be ungovernable because when it got that large there is no way a centralized government would have any meaningful power or sway, or that you'd want it to over that many people and that much land, or could even follow voters needs, so it'd get to the stage of just needing each division to be totally independent again. Like I say, to me, the EU is only really a meaningful concept if you are willing to consider the 'USE' idea-think about it- otherwise, all it effectively means is a few economic agreements, a single currency(which isn't as bigger deal as people think) and some fairly meaningless 'symbolic' shared title. It has to mean something more than that. The natural historical and geographical borders for Europe, ie Istanbul area, South of Spain, edge of Russia, make pretty good sense in terms of size, (common climate that people of European descent best exist at and work at also, though thats kinda trivial, but there are better working conditions, less heatwaves and deaths etc, stabler climate) and where to stop the process.

Anyway for me, the need for a geographical border is not arbitrary, but it's precise location is. The former takes presidence over the latter in determining whether we set one.

BlitzKrieg

I think you have the right grasp on certain elements but the wrong reasoning on others.

Your main concern is that without Geographic limits the possible indefinite expansion of the EU can result in an unmanagable organisation that will possible collapse in on itself and if not that would be an unresponsive giant that is inefficient.

Well on that point you are sort of in the same thinking as the European Commission when the current treaty process started (nice etc), a key issue with the expansion of the EU was a feeling that the EU institutes would not be able to handle the influx of new political entities into the EU.

This is key in what led to the current constitution/treaty process as the EU is currently trying to reorganise itself so that it can handle its expanded borders.

So I believe in your propossed scenario what would happen would be a similar situation, that each time the EU expanded there would be a required reshuffle of its political process to adjust for the new members, institutes steamlined or redesigned, new one's introduced, old ones removed etc.

The end result is the need to put a geographic limit on the EU is pointless because a political limit would be reached long before a geographic one.

Considering Turkey while I personnally belief it would only need to fullfill its requirements to have a successful application, I would belief due to its large population that there would be a need for a a serious reworking of the European Parliament before Turkey can join due to its large population (population = more seats, Turkey would have the 2nd highest in Europe after Germany) such readjustment will probably benefit Ireland as the current member states will try to play down the importance of population to reel in Turkey's potential to dominate Parliament. But its all still theoritical.

Personnally I would expect them to do as I mentioned earlier and divide the EU into a series of blocks if it continued to expand, where it would become some sort of Democratic Union (the DU) with sub blocks of EU, MU, AU, ASU, ESU etc which would all be seperate entities but follow the same political and economic ideals.

But this is all theory, I doubt the current EU would expand any further then Turkey and Morocco on the African continent, if even then Algeria's membership in the Africa Union shows they are probably more willing to work within in an African system then come back to France. I think more focus will be put on bringing in countries like Iceland instead though. And with the rise of the AU outside of the EU, I dont think the EU will need to expand nor will it be able to.

Zebra3

Affable wrote: »

Should Turkey be in the EU?
Should Russia?
Should Israel(I hope not)?

No, no and NO!!!!!

turgon wrote: »

About 10% of Turkeys land is on the European side of this border.

It's actually roughly 3%.

Affable

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I think you have the right grasp on certain elements but the wrong reasoning on others.

Your main concern is that without Geographic limits the possible indefinite expansion of the EU can result in an unmanagable organisation that will possible collapse in on itself and if not that would be an unresponsive giant that is inefficient.

Yeh. Although what I got interested in was the basis of his argument. I mean, trying to define the way we were arguing philosophically. Because he's arguing in terms of the consequences of the act and I'm arguing in terms of following his principle to a hypothetical conclusion and that as a reason why it shouldn't be done. I was looking on the wbe separating out the issues and trying to fins out which arguments were deontoligcal, which were consequentialist, and what kinds of conseqeuntialism there were. It got complicated and took me ages.

sink

I still think you are taking a hypothetical situation which has little or no chance of ever happening and using it as your only justification, which quiet frankly isn't a good reason.

I also want to point out that North Africans have been trading and warring with Europeans for millennium and there is as much shared history between Mediterranean Europe and North Africa as within Europe itself. While North Africa has had continued contact with Europeans for a very long length of time it had almost no contact with sub-Saharan Africa for almost as long, due to the impassibility of the Saharan desert. It wasn't until the 16th century when ships capable of sailing the rough atlantic seas were developed that any sort of regular contact became possible. Hence why north African culture has more similarities with European and Middle Eastern culture than it does with sub-Saharan African culture. As a result many North Africans feel more connected with Europe and the Middle East than with greater Africa.

ionix5891

Should Turkey be in the EU?
Should Russia?
Should Israel(I hope not)?

Turkey - i've mixed feeling on this one, Europeans are very worried about the religious involvement in politics, we have our own nuts and baggage (raping priests, ahem) to deal with as is, also they need to sort out their issues with greece and especially cyprus

Russia - yes, but as someone who travelled extensively, they wont do it, theres a huge natioanlistic wave lately in the country, with xenophobia and distrust of outsiders, all of this is being fuelled by putin who wants to keep the country under his thumb, there are also alot of criminals that we dont need

Israel - not likely unless they demolish all them settlements and walls outside their borders and give the Palestinians their country already, also like turkey the involvement of religion in politics is not welcome

---

now countries that should be considered

Cape Verde - already a large tourist and investment destination for Europeans, one of the more stable west African countries, is small, has ties to Portugal

Azerbaijan - the place has huge oil and mineral reserves, the theres political corruption going all the way up to the president, like other eastern European countries it was a democracy in 20s when brutally annexed into the ussr for its oil which proved pivotal in them wining WW2

upmeath

Israel, no not a hope, it has no geographic and few cultural ties to Europe.

Russia shares a land border but Russia wouldn't want to be in the club anymore than we'd want Russia in the club.

Turkey I would like to see join the EU. As previously stated, Istanbul straddles the intercontinental divide, and Turkey has lands on the Balkan peninsula. If the EU develops over the next 50 years to become a superpower, then it's probable that (whatwith America's war on terror ongoing and all :rolleyes: ) the EU may become a new target for Muslim extremists, and having a predominantly Muslim country on board, with understandings of both cultures, would go a long way should diplomatic tensions arise.

PaulieD

upmeath wrote: »

Israel, no not a hope, it has no geographic and few cultural ties to Europe.

Russia shares a land border but Russia wouldn't want to be in the club anymore than we'd want Russia in the club.

Turkey I would like to see join the EU. As previously stated, Istanbul straddles the intercontinental divide, and Turkey has lands on the Balkan peninsula. If the EU develops over the next 50 years to become a superpower, then it's probable that (whatwith America's war on terror ongoing and all :rolleyes: ) the EU may become a new target for Muslim extremists, and having a predominantly Muslim country on board, with understandings of both cultures, would go a long way should diplomatic tensions arise.

Or give them a base from which to attack.

RiverWilde

I have no problem with countries as far ranging as Iceland - maybe even Canada joining the Union. Although I can see the US administration having a bit of a fit at the idea. Especially if Russia and Turkey eventually join. The US is paranoid enough as it is. However, if these countries agreed to adhere to EU law I've no problem with them joining. It would make for very interesting political debates if nothing else.

Riv

evercloserunion

The problem with Russia joining is the same problem as we would have if, hypothetically, the US joined. Both Russia and the US are used to being the big superpowers and they like to throw their weight around. Neither country would work well in what is supposed to be a mutually beneficial union. Both Russia and the EU would try to dominate the EU and use it to serve their own interests if they could. I think it's important that the EU develops as an alternative to Russia and the US.

markopantelic

sink wrote: »

Although this is way off topic I could not leave this point un-addressed. Cultural ties between Ireland and the USA are very strong precisely due to Irish migrants. There are some 40 million Americans who claim Irish heritage, there are entire areas of the East coast which are dominated by Irish American culture. Many Irish people including myself have family and life-long friends in America. There were very few personal ties between Ireland and much of continental Europe prior to the EU whereas family ties between Irish and Americans go back to the earliest settlers in America and ties don't get any closer than family ties.

All European countries have family ties in the USA, over 50 million Americans claim German ancestry!

sink

markopantelic wrote: »

All European countries have family ties in the USA, over 50 million Americans claim German ancestry!

True but that is not pertinent to the point I was making.

Rb

I don't think Islam has a home in the EU, to be quite honest.

conchubhar1

christ - could that be any more wrong and discrimitaory? ^

sharia law - yes

islam in general - how could you justify that?

PaulieD

conchubhar1 wrote: »

christ - could that be any more wrong and discrimitaory? ^

sharia law - yes

islam in general - how could you justify that?

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's quotation:
"The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, the believers our soldiers."

You want them in europe? Seriously?

conchubhar1

do you know what islam is? ^

oscarBravo

PaulieD wrote: »

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's quotation:
"The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, the believers our soldiers."

You want them in europe? Seriously?

Based on that one out-of-context quotation, I think we should wipe them off the map, personally.

conchubhar1

exactly - taking one qoutation without a knowledge of islam is utterly pointless and not fair

Rb

conchubhar1 wrote: »

christ - could that be any more wrong and discrimitaory? ^

sharia law - yes

islam in general - how could you justify that?

I don't think there's a need for a debate on religion in this thread, however I will say that I oppose the religion and hope to never see become a major force on this Island and also in Europe.

I'm not too fond of organised religion in any form fwiw, and believe it has no place in politics, however I'd much rather a Christian government and Christian power in Europe than Islam.

conchubhar1

you can oppose it all you want

do you have any basis for oppossing it from ever bein here? seems a bit harsh to ban something from a whole large area

PaulieD

oscarBravo wrote: »

Based on that one out-of-context quotation, I think we should wipe them off the map, personally.

Why import this backward religion into europe? We have enough problems with religous nuts as is.

Europe needs islam like a hole in the head.

Rb

conchubhar1 wrote: »

you can oppose it all you want

do you have any basis for oppossing it from ever bein here? seems a bit harsh to ban something from a whole large area

Have you ever been in a muslim country?

conchubhar1

having only been to spain,france and the u.k (north, wales, birmingham and london)

no i have not - but that is not to say i do not know about other places, customs and religions