KGB_resident said:
Let's looks at USA. The Americans are very different. Anglo-Saxon descendants are a minoroty. And there are Americans of Irish, Italian, Greek, German, French origin. There are many Jews, Arabs, Indians and (of course!) Latino-americans. Los-Angeles is rather Mexican city from ethnical point of view. Let's recall also native Americans that preserve their tribal identity. And at last Afro-Americans should be mentioned. This Babylinian mix of nations, cultures have own state (the most powerfull in the World, btw). Is it possible for Europe to create USE (United States of Europe)? Why not? European parliament, Euro and common European foreign policy are steps on this (though long) way.
Europe will be more and more united. Like you it or not, it will happen and I'm very pleased that United Europe undoubtely will be a World moral leader. Europe will determine standards in human rights, in international relations, in education and so on.
Sergey,
A number of assertions you make here are quite simply wrong or inaccurate.
You state that "Anglo-Saxon descendants are a minoroty" - however, based on the population figures as of October 2006, whites constitute almost 75% of the American population, of which the majority are German-Americans, Irish-Americans and English-Americans; therefore, the largest percentage of the largest ethnic group in the USA is Anglo-Saxon.
You seem to imagine that because America and Europe are ethnically diverse,
ergo a 'United Sates of Europe' can readily be imagined. To think in this way however, is to fail to take into account the inescapable fact that the 'peoples of Europe' are characterised by one thing which sets them apart from their American counterparts - national identity. Americans, be they Irish-American, Afro-American or what have you, share a common, historical American national identity, and a loyalty and identification with the American nation; Europeans are different from one another on the basis of history, culture, religion, language, politics, and outlook. Even leaving aside these differences - which you and others would argue could be 'accommodated' within a 'Unites States of Europe' - there is not, nor really ever has been, a European nation-state to which Europeans can look towards or feel affinity for. To try and belatedly create a common European heritage and loyalty with a view to establishing a 'United States of Europe' by political means is to attempt to fast-forward a process that took centuries in America.
You make broad, sweeping assertions about how a "United Europe undoubtely will be a World moral leader. Europe will determine standards in human rights, in international relations, in education and so on". That sounds all well and good, but where is the evidence for all of this high-mindedness? Determining standards in human rights is laudable, but then you run into the uncomfortable reality of the utter ineffectiveness of the EU during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the Rwandan Genocide. There is no common EU foreign policy, as the EU is still - for the time being anyway - composed of sovereign independent states which pursue their own foreign policy aims, as most clearly evidenced by the split over the invasion of Iraq and the varying policies that individual EU states have pursued. Education - like economics - varies widely across the EU, and any attempt to bring them all into line would almost certainly ruin a number of education systems which have taken centuries to evolve. On the economic side, I take for example my own country, Ireland (Rep. of); although EU money has played a large part in the economic revival of the country and the 'Celtic Tiger', it is the presence of American and other non-European companies and investment coupled with a economic model that differs almost completely from the more common statist 'European' model that is the primary reason that the French and German economies are either stagnant or in free-fall.
Certainly, there will be more attempts to bring about a 'United States of Europe', but wonât these be somewhat hampered by the fact that these attempts will almost certainly be driven primarily by the French and Germans? As has been shown since the most recent expansion of the EU, the closer people are driven together â which is what will have to be done to bring about a 'United Europe' â the more they dislike each other, and the more unworkable and unwieldy the EU becomes. Additionally, Europeans - particularly the 'ordinary' Europeans the EU bureaucrats like to imagine they represent â do not like being told what to think and do by a clique of faceless and unaccountable supra-national pen-pushers who have convinced themselves that public opinion and the nation-state are
passé.
A United States of Europe is
theoretically possible (as are most things), but I seriously doubt if it could survive contact with the real world. As it is, there is a growing body of opinion that the EU will not survive beyond the next two decades.
