According to CNN, the EU Prez said today in Malta:
I know we’re running out of hyperbole here, but HOLY FUCK! Is anyone else alarmed by this statement? Mind you, I don’t disagree with the thrust of Juncker’s argument, but the mere fact that we’re at a place that a US President has to be publicly scolded and made to consider the seriousness of his repeated advocacy of the political dissolution of a powerful ally doesn’t leave me feeling all tingly inside.
The Atlantic also has an interesting take on this situation.
Juncker’s comment was not serious in the sense of actually threatening to support Texan independence. It was serious in the sense of telling President Trump to stop trying to rip the EU apart. How valuable such commentary is depends, of course, on your viewpoint regarding interfering in other nations’ federation efforts…
Maybe if we distract Trump by getting him to build the Great Wall of Texas instead of a border wall…paid for by Texans, of course…
I lived in Houston for a while and, no joke, there was a guy trying to raise funds for same by selling yellow bricks. (As in Yellow Rose of…) That was at a time when a judge had determined to chemically castrate a rapist in lieu of prison time. Strange days indeed.
The point, which seems to be lost on you, is that when EU diplomats deal with the USA, they don’t try to pull Alaska or Maine into the corner and whisper sweet nothings into their ears, as if they were dealing with sovereign entities able to swing foreign treaties on their own.
The point that seems to be lost on you, is that the EU is not a country. The UK and other signatories to EU treaties are sovereign countries. Or at least the people of the respective countries have been told that they are.
For one thing, the EU isn’t an “ally” of the United States. Most, though not all, of its component states are allies of the United States. The members states of the EU are sovereign states, and the United States, or Canada, or Brazil or any other country are perfectly without their right and within the bounds of diplomatic protocol to speak to them independently. For a country to pull aside a U.S. state (or a state of Brazil, or Mexico, or a province of Canada) is a gross violation of diplomatic protocol and, were one to advise such a state or province to seek independence, would border on an act of war.
Now, I don’t happen to think Trump is acting wisely or appropriately here; this is just another example of him being a crass idiot. But it’s not at all equivalent to your scenario of “pull(ing) Alaska or Maine into the corner and whisper sweet nothings into their ears, as if they were dealing with sovereign entities able to swing foreign treaties on their own.” There’s no “as if” here. The EU members ARE sovereign entities and are properly treated like it.
He would have sounded more educated about US domestic politics had he said California instead of Texas. He seems to have mixed up which parts of the country support which party.
Mmmm, hold on TheMightyAtlas and RickJay. The assertion that the EU is not a separate polity is not quite a valid statement. In what way is it not? It has a governing structure, it has identifiable leaders who are separate from the leaders of the forming members, it has a capital, and it does, indeed, engage in diplomacy. It even has a form of military that can be deployed to enforce its will.
Now, the EU is certainly not as aggressively confederated as the United States is (and maybe not even as much as the United States was from 1776 to 1787). But to dismiss it as not even being its own political entity is incorrect. If it is not a political entity the same as the US is, then the US itself is just a collection of actual countries (states), and Juncker would be justified in whispering sweet nothings into the ears of Alaska. Though why he’d choose to go to bed in the frozen North, I have no idea…
Not alarmed, but amused. There was no “scolding”. If Obama had said it, there would have been no kerfluffle at all. But because Trump said it, it has been blown out of proportion.
And as a Texan, I had to laugh out loud at the thought of the People’s Republic of Austin becoming an independent nation. The rest of the state has been wishing that for quite a while.
The UK is a sovereign entity able to swing foreign treaties on it’s own, and it does so routinely. Treating it like what it is is perfectly appropriate and reasonable (those are not words that typically apply to Trump). “We support the legitimate and completely legal actions that a country has voted to take under the terms of a treaty” is not remotely like supporting insurrection in another country. The fact that EU leaders want to act like the UK is not a sovereign entity is also more fuel for the Brexit fire, since on paper that’s not the effect the UK has but many Brexit supporters feel that practically that’s what being in the EU does, and they object to it.
I’d like to point out that most Texas cities vote Democratic. In the last election, Ft Worth was the only one to go for Trump. From the* Texas Tribune*:
Harris County, of course, includes Houston. My city–and Clothalump’s. (In case anyone wonders about his increasing grumpiness.)
Austin’s a bit too cute, a bit smug & not as diverse as other Texas cities. Still, it would be OK if not for those loons who meet in the Capitol building…
His argument is kind of silly. I’m not sure HE understands this, though I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with he was talking tongue in cheek. The UK was a sovereign nation and had every right to leave the EU if it so chose. There was a mechanism in place for it to do so, in fact…and after a vote by its people they decided to go that route. Texas is not a sovereign nation, there is no mechanism for it to leave the union, and if there was a popular vote in Texas such a move would be voted down big time. Last time this ridiculous subject came up I think I saw that only about 15% of Texas voters would actually vote to secede…and if it came down to an actual vote I think that’s wildly inflated. If Trump were smart…well, strike that, we can’t even go there for the sake of argument…Trump SHOULD just laugh it off and tell Juncker to knock himself out. He should also remind Juncker that the UK had every right to do what they did, and Trump has every right to cheer them on.
Not quite a “country”, no. But then again, neither was the USA until 1865.
Uh, not really. That’s kind of the point - the EU would not exist at all in any meaningful sense without the concessions of absolute sovereignty by its constituent states.
Well, I can’t speak for Italians or Czechs, but here in Ireland the electorate is quite well-informed as to the extent of which sovereignty is shared between Dublin and Brussels.
