Is the world becoming a better place?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Savvy

Aye. I don't doubt it. But the issue is that when you have been profligate, there is an end game that means immediate, serious, acute pain and a chance to start again.

That option is not available through the Euro and with the options that they have been given by Germany. Instead, they are presented with a situation where there is grinding poverty, no hope of economic salvation AND the debts go up. The very worst of all worlds and utterly disproportionate to the original "crime" (which was committed with the enthusiastic support of French and German banks who recklessly lent to Greece, and London banks who helped the Kleptocrats to hide the extent of their fiscal mendacity by fiddling the books so it looked as if they were not borrowing too much.

So I don't doubt that Greece has systemic problems. But if your car has an engine fault, you don't solve it by taking all the petrol out and screaming "work you bas**rd!" at it, do you?

[Savvy]

Surely your not advocating that they are lent even more money that they have no intention/ability to repay? They shouldn't have been lent this money in the first place and they'd probably be well on the way to economic recovery by now.  Out of chaos comes order! But I agree, the German's have a lot to answer for!

[LesP]

BST: To suggest that the EU has kept the peace in Europe for 60 years is, frankly, laughable.

For the lack of a proper kick off in that time frame (you know, East vs West, buckets of instant sunshine and all that) you can thank NATO.

[BillyStubbsTears]

LesP

You are mis-understanding what I wrote. I didn't say that the EU "kept the peace" in an active way (ie by physically restraining possible enemies from coming to blows). It's a much more philosophical issue than that. The EU's intention (and largely its success) was to make it unthinkable that frictions between European countries should be able to get so far out of hand that people would start to consider war. It was intended to bring Europeans together and make them realise that the folk over the border are normal people like thee and me, just with different language, BO and halitosis.

Yes, NATO was a bonding force between European nations. But it's notable that even nearly 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, and the removal of the big common enemy, it is still unthinkable for Germany and France in particular to pick up guns agaisnt each other. And THAT was the big aim, because it was the frictions between Germany and France that f**ked up Europe for centuries.

Before 1950, Germany & France had had at least 8 major wars in the previous 250 years (WWII, WWI, Franco-PrussianWar, Napoleonic Wars, War of the 1st Coalition, Seven Years War, War of Polish Succession, War of Spanish Succession). That's one ever 30 years or so.

We are now in the longest period without a war between those two countries since Henry VIII was on the throne.

Germany and France are now so culturally, poltically and economically bound that it is unthinkable for them to even dream about going to war with each other in the way that they did pretty much every generation for centuries beforehand. And yes, the EU has played a massive part in that.

But the EU was about more than that. It was also about tying in peripheral countries into the same ethos. Countries that had even more turbulent pasts than Germany and France. Countries like Greece for example, where war and revolution and military coups d'etat traditionally came and went with the tide. Remember that in the 1960s, Greece was a NATO member and not an EU member. NATO did nothing to stop a quasi-fascist coup d'etat by the Greece Army in 1967. So NATO did nothing to stop democracy being terminated in Greece. But it is unthinkable that a military dictatorship could take over and EU country and still remain within the EU. The EU has spread the idea of democracy and stability throughout the continent. It is the loss of THAT force for good that scares the hell out of me.

[Dutch Uncle]

BST, Les

As someone who was intimately involved with NATO for a third of a century, I would like to comment on your posts.

NATO is simply the combination of two things: -

First it is a forum for political leaders to discuss defence issues and make decisions, either on a regular routine basis for future defence planning, or in the face of developing crises;

Secondly it is a collection of procedures, standards, systems, exercises and limited permanent (civilian) and temporary (mostly military) staff which enable the military of different countries to operate together  - interoperability is the name of the game. 

All military forces are owned by the nations - with the exception of a small fleet of E-3A AWACS aircraft bought and operated from NATO's own budget of common funding. After the national leaders (North Atlantic Council) have decided to launch an operation then NATO staff (possibly with some national support)  analyse and decide what is required for that operation, and then Nations decide whether and what to contribute to those requirements.

You are both right in a way. Les - IMHO the link between political leaders and their defence forces formalised in NATO  was indeed the main reason the Cold War passed without a terminal nuclear war. BST - the political partnerships between European nations within the EU (and to a significantly lesser extent within NATO) IMHO give rise to the happy conclusions you draw with respect to Germany, France, Italy, etc.

NATO still has the Consensus approach, or equivalently the Veto. If one nation/national leader votes against then NATO cannot act. I guess that would be why nothing was done about Greece in 1967. It is also exactly why NATO did not intervene either in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm) in 1990 (France voted against - remember Americans trying to rename French Fries as Freedom Fries!), or in offensive operations in Iraq - these were conducted by ad-hoc 'Coalitions of the Willing', albeit using established NATO procedures.   

NATO and EU have had occasion to tread on each other's territory, especially with EU designs on its own Defence Force. However I believe there is sufficient daylight between their respective members and roles that they can continue to co-exist. And both organisations give France and Germany valued and established fora to cooperate 

[glosterred]

NATO also own 3/4 C17 and 5 global hawk drones

[Dutch Uncle]

NATO also own 3/4 C17 and 5 global hawk drones

Yes Gloster -  I forgot about the Drones - a more recent addition, and I didn't bother to mention the transport A/C. The basic principle is the same though - NATO does not own any significant forces, they are owned by nations who decide whether or not to offer them to temporary NATO command. 

[IC1967]

What a stupid question. The world is obviously a much better place as each year goes by.

Ok, we've got the ISIS problem to deal with.

All we need to do is nuke the idiots and problem solved.

Unfortunately this is deemed to be politically incorrect by leftie losers.

So what happens?  We do a few ineffectual air strikes. Big fecking deal. ISIS piss themselves laughing at us.

Well not on my watch.

We nuke the feckers before they nuke us.

Problem sorted.

IC1967 (not afraid to use nukes). 

[BillyStubbsTears]

Surely your not advocating that they are lent even more money that they have no intention/ability to repay? They shouldn't have been lent this money in the first place and they'd probably be well on the way to economic recovery by now.  Out of chaos comes order! But I agree, the German's have a lot to answer for!

Savvy

Do you realise why Greece was given a bailout in 2010?

It wasn't anything to do with saving Greece. The IMF has admitted that the numbers never stacked up in an economic case for Greece.

The standard way out of the catastrophe that Greece was in back in 2010 is very straightforward. You default on your debts. Your creditors take a well-deserved smack in the face for their reckless lending. You have a year of very serious economic pain. You massively devalue your currency. You lose a LOT of your wealth. Everyone gets hurt, but there is a future. Because you have devalued, your exports (tourism for Greece) are very much cheaper. So people pile in to buy them. And you get very rapid economic growth.

Greece couldn't devalue in 2010 because of the idiocy if the Euro. They COULD have defaulted on their debts though. And that's where the problems start. Their debts were mainly to German and French banks that were on the brink. The same banks who had even more recklessly lent to the housing bubble in Spain.

If Greece had defaulted in 2010, they would have brought the EU banking system down around them. There would have been the mother of all Great Depressions across Europe. So that couldn't be allowed to happen. So Greece was given a bailout. Not to save themselves. To save French and German banks.

Germany effectively used its own tax-payers' money to bail out its own farcically unprofessional banks, via the Greek Government.

Now, German politicians could have been honest with their electorate and explained this. But they didn't. They haven't mentioned it. They have peddled a lie that the bailout was to save Greece and they have built up a hysterical hatred of the feckless, untrustworthy Med types.

Yes Greece made horrific mistakes. But German has done the whole of Europe an obscene anti-democratic disservice in the way it has handled this. And it may yet explode back in their own faces.