Marine Le Pen lost the election! This is great news not just for France but for Ukraine and a massive defeat for Le Pen’s sponsor Putin.
In case anybody is completely oblivious to European politics, Putin champions all of the far right, nationalistic, anti-EU parties of Europe. He passionately wants the EU to collapse and doesn’t begrudge any money to the European parties that advance this goal.
Though I never too much cared for the far right aspect (or Putin for that matter) the one thing either has going for them is the general decline of the EU. But then I don’t think it needs a great deal of help.
Thing is, if only the US, Russia and China would follow suit…
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So…you want the US, Russia and China to decline and fall too? Is that correct?
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Pretty much. (Well, “fall” might not be such a good term to use, as that suggests a loss of dignity. I suggest the reverse could result, depending on the economics though.)
And once that is accomplished, divide the world up into tiny little statlets that leave each other the bleep alone. Maybe not an ideal world for some but I’m not too sure large geopolitical entities of any kind do the world all that much good, as said entities can weild far too much power and probably have far too many internal differences between regions.
(It’ll also make me feel somewhat more comfortable if the Scots change their mind about independence. Further to which I also think “England” as an entity is defunct and could be split…)
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\ divide the world up into tiny little statlets that leave each other the bleep alone
Ironically, this relevant post of Clarissa’s appeares under “Related” immediately after this post:
How can those tiny states leave each other alone if they are interdependent? One state can’t solve the problem of global warming … or provide a high standard of living to its citizens. Capitalism needs huge markets, not tiny isolated states.
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@el: By “leave alone” I didn’t mean that they could not voluntarily agree to some sort of action where it was necessay, such as for things like climate change, which is a global problem. I simply meant that there would be a recognition that nations should be able to govern their own purely internal matters and deal with their own problems themselves. Be it questionable “humanitarian” military interventions, or unwildy bureaucratic and democratically-deficiant institutions like the EU which have to balance the needs of 27 member states and rarely really listen to the people. A small state would not be nearly so remote in its governance.
(As for climate change, one of hte alleged problems with the recent COP21 negotiations was that small island nations were supposedly getting overlooked because of the alleged interests of large and economically powerful countries requiring compromises.)
“Capitalism needs huge markets, not tiny isolated states.”
That depends upon the type of capitalism, and whether this is a good thing. I don’t see why this would be a problem if trade was relatively free across borders.
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This was already tried, and the results were very poor. Before the consolidation of the nation-state model in the 18th century, only Europe had 1500 tiny little statelets that were constantly at war with each other. Why repeat such a failed experiment?? There was nothing all that good in the middle ages, which is when small statelets model was most popular.
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This kind of assumes, I’d have thought, that all the other conditions of the pre-18th century world would have to be met too. Some of the reasons for war- such as perhaps crises of dynstic succession no longer exist in a world which is mostly democratic, Europe has mostly managed to overcome religious conflicts even if other parts of the world have not, and wars over resources can be in part mitigated by the concept of free trade. The nation state model has not prevented wars from happening pretty constantly somewhere on the planet, and indeed some of the worst, bloodiest European wars were in the nation state era (or, worse, the era of great empires). Probably the only reason we’ve not yet had WW3 is probably the presence of nukes, and there is no reason why small statelets could not all possess some kind of nuclear deterrant, unless the risks really were deemed not to be worth maintaining them.
I think one advatage of having smaller states (and you’ll note I said “they would leave each other alone- by which I meant partly not going to war or generally intervening (militarily or otherwise) in each others’ affairs) would be that there are limitations on the scope of any such war and power projection capabilities.
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The very point of the nation-state model was to be able to wage wars on a scale that was greater than anything known before. That goal was obviously achieved. Any state form exists to wage war. Preventing warfare as such never was a goal of any state model.
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So, if nobody wants this sort of massive-scale war anymore after WW2 and the nuclear bomb, the preferred model of the state must change. As much as I appreciate the good things the nation state form of organization brought, I don’t think it has much chance of survival at this point, and considering what would happen to humanity if two nuclear powers went to war against each other, I hesitate to suggest we should hang on to it either.
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Yes, absolutely, you are absolutely right. The manner of waging war is undergoing an enormous transformation right now at the same time as the state model is changing. The enormous battles of the 2 world wars where huge numbers of soldiers met face to face on the battlefield are a thing of the past.
Today’s model of warfare is what I’d call “the consumerist warfare.” It relies on drones, air bombing, there is always an effort to make the fighting as long-distance as possible.
Maybe I should write a separate post about it.
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And I’d love to read it! (the post on the transformation of the manner of waging war, if you’re reading comments on the app and can’t see what I’m replying to)
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I’m writing it right now! 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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