The United States of Europe

[Arakhor]

Just FYI, Greenland is part of North America geographically. NO part of it, whatsoever, is part of Europe. So if you guys want Greenland, you lose all geographic arguments for Turkey being kept out of a united Europe.

And just as Argentina will soon realise, "indigenous" people qualify on cultural grounds as well as geographic ones.

 

[Leoreth]

Who is "they" exactly? It's my firm opinion that geographical categories are no reason to include or exclude any country, regardless of the "European" in the name, no matter how well or ill defined this category actually is.

 

[kochman]

Some even say Turks and Greeks are same nation with different Religions. In population exchange of 1923 Turks who chose christianity have been seen as greeks and sent to greece. (same for muslim greeks). And this is expected, two peoples lived together for almost a millennium.
I find the idea of "European Culture" is absurd. Greeks had much more interraction with Turks, Arabs and Persians than Germans or English. There's a cultural bind between mediterranean nations but not whole europe.

I missed this.

Culture... it's a lot of factors, major ones being language and religion...
Greek is the route for tons of words in the European languages, way more than Turkish, I would guess (not knowing Turkish)...
And, religion, that's pretty huge... Christianity...
Cultural ties with Europe, Greece definitely has them, to say otherwise is kind of odd.

 

[Traitorfish]

Got to start somewhere, uniting the whole species at once would end in disaster .

So we need to conjure up myths to do it?

 

[Winner]

What about countries like Australia, Canada and USA (#1)?

What about them? They are culturally European (although some are working hard to undo that), but they clearly aren't situated in Europe. And yes, I don't care that we don't have a precise definition of Europe - everybody knows that America or Australia aren't in there.

It's clearly different with Cyprus, Malta, Iceland, etc.

Why is it anachronistic to talk in terms of nations, but not in terms of civilisational blocs?

Why not? Civilizations preceded nation states, so it stands to reason they'll be there when nation states cease to be the primary actors in IR. Imagine nation states were abolished today - what other larger thing could Europeans base their identity on if not their shared "Europeaness"? Everything else is either too universal, or too particular to be the basis of a functioning political entity.

Just FYI, Greenland is part of North America geographically. NO part of it, whatsoever, is part of Europe. So if you guys want Greenland, you lose all geographic arguments for Turkey being kept out of a united Europe.

Greenland is a colony, for all intents and purposes, and it isn't a part of the EU anyway

They lost it with Cyprus already.

See some posts above, now they are talking about some ill defined european culture. With makes sense, Europe is little else than an Asian peninsula in geographic terms.

I wasn't aware we were in an argument. What's Europe and what isn't is defined by Europeans. Americans and Brazilians thankfully have no say in this.

Of course Europe is a preposterous idea on geographic basis alone, it has always been based on culture. Europeans have seen themselves so vastly different from Asia that they invented a continent for themselves. This is why "being European" is a key thing when we are to consider whether a country belongs to Europe (now largely synonymous with the EU) or not. There are borderline cases, but mostly the issue is quite clear (for example, Switzerland and Poland clearly are European, while Somalia and Thailand clearly aren't).

Turkey fails in terms of culture and history. It has never been seen as a European country, in fact it was considered a menacing alien invader for the most part. It had only been attempted to construe it as a European country in the last century, and it didn't succeed. Now even the Turks themselves are looking away from Europe for their own source of identity.

Of course, that won't stop those who want to destroy the EU from pushing for Turkey's membership (the US and the eurosceptics).

 

[Traitorfish]

Why not? Civilizations preceded nation states, so it stands to reason they'll be there when nation states cease to be the primary actors in IR. Imagine nation states were abolished today - what other larger thing could Europeans base their identity on if not their shared "Europeaness"? Everything else is either too universal, or too particular to be the basis of a functioning political entity.

But this conception of "civilisation" as a cultural bloc is nothing more than nationalism writ large; it makes them same presupposition of the existence of organic, discrete and persistent cultural entities that form a natural basis for political organisation. All you're doing is shifting the same body of mythology to a higher level- and one which is even further from the everyday reality of human existence. Even the question of statehood isn't any different, because, as I'm sure a Czech is aware, the "nation" is not necessarily preceded by the nation-state.

In all honesty, it seems to me that your program is every bit the nationalist one that Gangleri's is. You're just peddling a grander vision of nationhood.

 

[Josu]

Honestly? I tend to think of "European" as an historical fiction. It can be a useful term in particular contexts, but only to a certain extent, and it's shifting and even self-contradictory even then. I didn't really see any coherent grounds for establishing any sort of general European identity.

I still don't know why an Indo-European language is important, though. It seems to me that most Europeans just happen to speak one, rather than it having any particular significant in and of itself. A Castilian is in every significant respect more similar to a Basque than he is to a Dutchman, regardless of the genealogy of their native tongue. It seems like you're mistaking a vague correlation for a causal relationship (in whatever direction).

Traitorfish, don't worry about the basques, I know more than one basque that would wet her pants because of pleasure of basque country getting out of European Union because it would mean being independent.


In any case I agree with you, I don't see the point of using Indo-europeins as condition for being part of European Union

 

[Winner]

But this conception of "civilisation" as a cultural bloc is nothing more than nationalism writ large; it makes them same presupposition of the existence of organic, discrete and persistent cultural entities that form a natural basis for political organisation.

Possibly, but civilizations are much more inclusive and open. Europe as a civilization is hugely diverse, yet there is enough similarity among all its peoples to justify and facilitate deeper integration on a trans-national basis.

In all honesty, it seems to me that your program is every bit the nationalist one that Gangleri's is. You're just peddling a grander vision of nationhood.

Let's not call it nationalism and nationhood. Also, going a step up from exclusive nation states isn't in any way hypocritical or pointless, in this case its actually desirable. The nationalist vision for Europe is reactionary in the sense that it looks back instead of forward. The nationalist "vision" for Europe is eternal disunity and mutually assured irrelevance. There is nothing that is new about it, we've had that for thousands of years.

What we have in the shape of the EU is admittedly far, far from perfect, but at least it's going in the right direction. And if Europe can manage the transition away from nation states, perhaps other parts of the world will succeed as well. And that will perhaps set the precedent for a true global integration sometime in the distant future. Therein lies the significance of the European project for the rest of the world.