Europe as a counterpoint to the US - a talk by Lord Butler

[Sprayber]

Damn, Siro is keeping it real

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Verto
Europeans need to throw off the shackles of uselessness and at least pretend to be the descendents of the Roman, British and French empires (but not the Germans ... and all those other minor powers, you can act empowered too, although rather unjustifiably )

Conquerors, not bureaucrats!

They blead for those empires and bleeding isn't something they are willing to do these days. To be honest, being the worlds policeman is highly overrated. Having everyone show up at your door looking for solutions or blame isn't what it used to be. America is on the wrong side of the status quo. We rose to the top on change from the old ways but now we have staked our prosperity on things somehow staying the same, and they won't. The current American administration's real failing is it's inflexibility. America is going to have to be able to keep up with reality instead of holding on to oudated ways of thinking. I by no means pretend to know what those new ways may mean but we just have to be more flexible in our approaches.

[Geronimo]

The US should simply retire from being the worlds policeman. Total global disaster can probably be averted by waiting until things get so ugly that multilateral action can address it without any dragging or prodding by the US.


The price will be that problems will be much more painful to solve when consensus about solving them is finally reached.

The pay off will be that we will be able to coast by providing just a proportional share of the effort when action finally does occur like everybody else does.

[Wycoff]

That's pretty much how I think, Geronimo.