With all of Greece’s troubles, I got to thinking about the differences between the EU and the US, another federation of sorts, though without the same level of sovereignty among its members.
Would Greece do better fiscally if it were to join the US as a State or Territory?
What effect would it have on the US? Would the US be able to lift Greece back up to normalcy, or at least up to the level of California or another fiscally challenged but not circling the toilet jurisdiction?
What are the chances, politically, that such a thing could go through?
Pretty much zero. They aren’t going to want to be absorbed by another culture, and I doubt that they agree with much of American politics; little of the world does. And America has no reason to want to add an economic disaster like Greece is at the moment to itself.
Makes a lot of sense. Over here Puerto Rico (which is already a territory) has not been terribly eager for Statehood partly because of cultural and language reasons - they feel that full integration would mean Anglicization.
I could see the US potentially wanting Greece for its closeness to the Middle East. Right now, the US has to stay on good terms with various countries that “let” us operate military bases there and transport troops across the territory. If the Pentagon could just slap missile silos on Crete and station dozens of aircraft carriers at the new Athens Naval Base, it could give the US more forward power.
The US is still digesting Iraq and Afghanistan. Another country at this point would give us heartburn. We might have room for an after dinner mint country, like Lichtenstein or maybe a Greek Island or two, in a few years.
Aircraft carriers are a lot more useful in the Persian Gulf these days than in the Mediterranean. Unless that pesky Roman pirate problem starts up again.
I think it makes little sense for Greece to join the USA. I think a more interesting question is what are the chances of Greece being absorbed into Germany? Germany has to deal with the Greek debt either way. If Greece ceded some sovereignty to Germany, would that help with the overall problems the euro is facing? Is this option even being considered by anyone?
Are you actually asking about the chances that one of the world’s oldest continuously existing nations and cultures will voluntarily give up its existence as a nation-state to be absorbed by a country that doesn’t even speak its language? Seriously? I can’t believe someone would even ask this question.
How is Greece “one of the world’s oldest continuously existing nations”? There was no single Greek nation before the 19e century and the last Greek state before that called itself Romanoi?
I would submit to you that the Greeks would assert their existence as a distinct nation dates back thousands of years. They believe, with absolute and total sincerity, that their civilization not only dates back to antiquity, but is the founding heart of all Western civilization. And it’s thier opinion that would drive the issue.
The idea of them joining the United States is insane. It is about as likely as the people of the United States voting to become a state of India.
The idea of Greece joining the U.S. as the 51st state is of course insane in a lot of ways; neither side would want it.
However, I thought the OP would be asking a slightly different question, how does Greece as a element of Europe differ from the status of various states in the U.S. And since I had an answer to that, I wanted to share it.
In brief, the U.S. routinely transfers money from “have” states like California and New York to “have not” states like Mississippi and Missouri. So far, Europe has been unable/unwilling to have similar fiscal transfers.