Post Brexit EU will spend 'stability and peace' budget funding Chinese war drones The European Union wants to spend part of its “peace building” overseas aid budget on equipping African and Middle Eastern countries' armed forces, according to reports – which could include the provision of Chinese-built drones. The Financial Times reported yesterday that Brussels bureaucrats are planning to amend the rules …
"So is this supposed to be a "Look how awful the EU is, we are better off out of it" type of article?...." IMHO, no. This is more of an arms-business-as-usual-but-now-with-additional-EU-"peace"-funding article. All the World's industrial nations have been doing these kind of grants for decades in attempts to either shore up their regime/dictator of choice or to push their arms products. Wanting to believe the EU is any different is naïve.
From a purely technical aspect, the interesting bit is how more and more Third World nations are latching on to UCAVs for their internal "policing" rather than hideously expensive ego-trips like the Ethiopian Su-27s mentioned in the article. Wouldn't you rather they spent a tenth of the cash on UCAVs that they would rather have spent on jets like the F-35? It leaves more loot for their corrupt officials to syphon off (allegedly like the 15bn USD simply "gone missing" from the Zimbabwean diamond business - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35720912). At least the dictators of today will be getting their genocides sorted in a more cost-effective manner, with the help of the EU taxpayer.
And who thought they'd ever see the words "EU funding" and "cost-effective" in the same article!
Could it be that some Brexiters are upset bye the fact that the world is not only crying but laughing too.
Only the ones that can't think.
Our exchange rate has cratered, and that's marvelous news. Meanwhile the clowns of most of the EU are still locked in the perma-criss of the Euro caused by frozen, inaccurate "exchange rates" equivalences, with a vast chunk of southern Europe out of work, whilst Germany's order books are full. The EEC, EFTA were quite reasonable ideas, slowly and variably implemented. The EU and the Euro were appalling, madcap ideas, implemented precipitately and without foresight.
A day of reckoning will come, and that will involve either the break up of the EU, or the Germans accepting that they'll have to pay off a good chunk of southern Europe's debts. If you think otherwise, contact Jean Claude Juncker and Mari Draghi, who will be delighted that you know the answer, because they haven't got any solutions.
A day of reckoning will come, and that will involve either the break up of the EU, or the Germans accepting that they'll have to pay off a good chunk of southern Europe's debts
Not necessarily, not necessarily. There is option 3 - Southern Europe to live within its means for a while. It is not pretty, but it is possible:
Southern Europe debt stats vs Bulgaria and UK
Eastern Europe vs UK debt stats
When I look at that graph, that is clearly on UK near future menu as well. Brexit will take care of that by the look of it.
"The EU and the Euro were appalling, madcap ideas, implemented precipitately and without foresight."
Just look at the UK for an example, a carefully implemented political and economical union of several nations.
Hmmm.... Right.
No, on second thought, the EU beats the UK hands down. It's not perfect, it can be better. But unlike the UK and what every other member did, it's not using violence to establish itself. That's quite a change in the history of humanity.
I'm not willing it to fail just because it's fun to watch things burn without thinking of the consequences.
"But unlike the UK and what every other member did, it's not using violence to establish itself. That's quite a change in the history of humanity."
No, but when people can't eat they can't fight back when your friends come to visit. If someone pays your farmers to grow crops that cannot be used as food by people, or they raise your national debt to several times the amount of money in your nation, then they don't really need to fight you. They can just walk in and take what they want - if you argue, you starve. Quite simple really.
Why exactly does the EU need its own standing army again?
"....or the Germans accepting that they'll have to pay off a good chunk of southern Europe's debts...." Oh, that's already happening, as shown by the Greek bailout. The EU and IMF give money to Greece, a large chunk of it from German taxpayers. The Greeks are then forced to give it to the non-Greek banks to meet the repayments on their debts, the majority of that (IIRC) being with German banks*, which means the majority of the bailout money promptly goes back to Germany! The German politicians won't upset the German banks by writing off the debt so they are stuck with having to pay the interest payments by the circuitous route of EU bailouts. I suspect that is why the IMF does not want to be involved in any further Greek bailouts, because the rest of the World (especially the Yanks) are sick and tired of paying off the German banks. Imagine the fun Angel Merkel will have explaining to the voters at the next German elections that they will probably be stuck with paying more taxes to fund the German banks via Greek debt relief!
*IIRC, in 2012 the largest single chunk of debt was actually with a Greek bank, Alpha Bank AE, but they hold only about 2.2% in total.
This is how Britain preserved the peace of the world, mostly successfully, for a century before the Americans took over. And the Americans did precisely the same.
Look, if you want peace, somebody has to enforce it. If the central government has no teeth - well, if you're very, very lucky and privileged in your geography, history and politics, you get Costa Rica, but more likely you get Somalia or Afghanistan.
One way of "keeping peace" is to put your own soldiers in there. But that's - unfashionable, now. Also, not at all by coincidence, hideously dangerous and ruinously expensive. Or you can try to trick, cajole, shame or bribe another country into doing it for you, but that has most of the same drawbacks plus the fact that you have no direct control over what they do, because their goals are different from yours.
The only other way - note, only other way - is to pick a local team who will do the job for you, and support them. This is far cheaper, more acceptable to voters just about everywhere, and much more sustainable. But of course it means you have to let the local team set their own agenda, like the mujahedin in Afghanistan.
The only time it seriously backfires is when you badly misjudge the local team and find yourself supporting someone really nasty. And we've all done that, the French and Germans as well as the British and Americans.
Today, I can write to my MEP and say 'Someone on the internet made some wild accusations, and I believed them with any supporting evidence. Please vote against it.' The reply would be some vague denials and any further letter will be referred to the 'fob off the clueless twit' secretary.
I tried the EU search engine, with the search key 'stability and peace budget' which gave two promising results (1 2). Neither include the acronym 'UAV'.
I have found writing to my MEP about specific draft directives has been effective. So come on credulous brexiter, give us something specific to write to our MEPs about.
When I voted remain, I didn't do so on any single issue, I did so on the balance of issues — most prominently that there is little sovereignty lost outside of the imaginations of the tabloid press, that there are substantial financial and lifestyle advantages to membership, and that the democratic deficit that exists is insufficiently substantial to overcome those advantages.
Does it change my mind that the amount of my tax money that, eventually, goes towards sponsoring equipment for foreign armies will be negligible more than it already is? No. See today's Chilcot Report findings for many of the reasons that I don't consider this, in relative terms, to be a big deal.
".....That doesn't make any sense." The EU is a massive, secretive and unelected bureaucracy, where the right hand often doesn't know what the left is doing. It's not just the EU, the UN is worse!
One hilarious example of this is from 2006, when Israeli forces recovered British-manufactured military nigh-vision gear from Hezbollah in the Lebanon. Not only was Hezbollah on the EU terror list, but there was an EU (and UN) export ban on such kit to the two most likely of Hezbollah's arms suppliers, Iran and Syria. HMG was flummoxed, until the serial numbers were traced to the UN, which had supplied the night-vision gear to Iran under an EU-backed international policing initiative. The idea was that the NV gear would help countries catch drug smugglers, in this case heroin from Afghanistan. At the time, the EU was also in receipt Europol (the EU police force) reports that showed the largest smuggler in the region was Iran itself. Israel was an associate state of the EU (one step off full EU member), so here was the UN supplying banned military equipment to a known terrorist-supplying state, which was highly likely to pass it on to an EU-listed terrorist organization for use against a "special" trading partner of the EU, and against the recommendation of another part of the EU! When asked to account for the farce, the UN and EU hierarchies stated there was no issue, that the Iranians had given them "cast-iron guarantees" that the kit would not wander, therefore they were blameless! The only unsurprising part of the whole affair was that no UN nor EU bureaucrat lost their jobs.
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