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November 28, 2004
Some thoughts on the EU...
The Treaty of Westphalia (roughly as important as Newton’s laws of motion, so it wouldn’t be bad to know something about it) formalized the concept of sovereignty. Basically, whatever a prince or principality did inside his borders was fair: none would gainsay it...
This thought still survives to the modern day, though the Second World War began its demise, it is rapidly becoming an obsolete concept--We send observes to elections all the time; we went into Iraq recently in part because Saddam had slaughtered “his own” people. Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor: all these interventions took place in direct contravention of the principal of sovereignty. The world applauded...
Many of our friends on the right decry the European Constitution as destructive to sovereignty. This argument has always struck me as odd: the whole point of the thing was to destroy the sovereignty that was, and create something new, just like our own constitution did...
The thing is: within Europe, I see the model for a united earth-- in a way I don’t see within the US. Not that there is anything wrong with the US government, or constitution (far from!), but America Added territory by moving people into it and fencing things off. Not by working with pre-existing peoples and finding the common ground under which to form a new government...
If the Europeans, who have spent the last 1500+ years fighting each other can decide that they gain more as part of a collective government, then perhaps there is hope for India and Pakistan, China and Japan, certainly for South America. The end I see, if the European vision works, is similar movements around the world. Certainly not now! But soon in human terms. I’d love to be around 500 years from now to find out what we are like as a species, as a planet. We will probably have the Europeans to thank if humanity is more peaceful...
Posted by Andrew at November 28, 2004 02:09 AM
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