I suspect Germany would be horrified the first time they were outvoted on monetary policy. Once the EU decides to screw the risk of inflation and print more money for some reason, Germany will reevaluate how atteactive a United Europe is. Not to mention that it would mean transfers to the economically poor nations.
Monetary policy in the Eurozone already is mostly in the hands of the European Central Bank.
Ref **Pantastic **I agree with all that. But if we look at it a bit differently maybe not so much.
As long as the countries still think of themselves as separate countries with separate langauges and all the rest it’ll be as you say. But let’s fast forward a couple hundred peaceful years to a time when people have been moving across borders, interbreeding, cross-pollinating languages and ethnicities and all the rest for 5 generations.
The idea that, e.g. Belgium, is now more a social convention than a political reality becomes much more plausible in that world than in today’s. Maybe two adjacent small countries realize they’re so intertwined by now that they could be one and gain some weight in the still squishy EU.
Eventually that could drive far enough to make a USE plausible.
But as you say, not today.
But now you’re explicitly contradicting the OP, which has this USE happening in 2025. Yeah, if you postulate that countries are going to fade away in a few hundred years then the shape of a political union would be different, but I don’t actually see this trend of countries deciding to stop being independent and joining giant ‘empire’ countries, and it’s certainly not a given that that is what is happening.
Granted. A USE in 2025 is silly talk. As you said.
A problem with many modern folks, such as the OP, is that they think since 70 years is an eternity in the life of a person, it’s a long time in the life of a society. It’s not.
As Zhou En Lai probably never said about the consequences of the French Revolution: “It’s too early to tell.”
We do need to account for the fact that although societies change slowly, that doesn’t mean they’re in perpetual stasis.
I do agree with you that’s there’s not an obvious impetus in 2017 for small countries to aggregate with their neighbors. But looking ahead it may be different. Assume the USA returns from the present unpleasantness to being a sensible and responsible world economic power, and further assume that Russia and China become similarly responsible outward looking powers.
In such a world I would not be surprised to find that what are now regional economic and loose political alliances (ASEAN, EU, etc.) slowly coalescing into super-states simply to compete effectively on demographic & GDP scale.
Or not. “Difficult to see. Always moving the future is” - Yoda.
Compete at what?
Belgium is an interesting example, being, itself, very highly polarized, and yet able to function as “a nation.”
I think it’s much more likely that the US and Russia will gradually break apart into smaller countries, than that European or Southeast Asian nations will coalesce. (I don’t know enough about China to have an opinion about its future).
Why does anyone care about competing on the demographic and GDP scale? It doesn’t actually provide any benefit to the country or the people in the country to give up other benefits just to be higher on an arbitrary chart.
Small independent countries in regional economic alliances together with some sort of defensive alliance makes a lot more sense to me than giant super-states. You aren’t stuck with the problem of New York and California, or France and Germany influencing your local laws and customs, you get to pass your own laws and maintain things the way you prefer. You can still negotiate trade with the big boys or other big blocks because your own trade block has the clout to do so. You aren’t worried about getting invaded because you’ve got defensive alliances and trade deals to make that kind of warfare painful, and you’re not worried about a demagogue seizing power in your own block because there’s no central authority for a single person to take over.
I just don’t see any trend towards consolidation into larger states, and do see some trend towards larger states breaking up.