[sereja]

The EU is primarily a trade bloc, and it is in natural competition with the Eurasian Economic Union: countries can have tariff-free trade with either one bloc or the other, but not both at the same time. The current scramble over Ukraine is primarily motivated by the EU and the EAEU economically benefiting from the country being in their respective trade zone.

[gumby]

The EU is in origin and execution a political entity in which trade is one of its tools. The value of adding, say, Romania to the EU was hardly economic, but important for the anti-war mission. The integration of Turkey would be economically quite significant and valuable, but (sadly) lacks impetus on the political side. It is a NATO member.

Likewise, Ukraine’s prewar economy was so small (midway between Hungary and Slovakia) that it would have been economically irrelevant to the EU but, as we have seen, important in the anti war basis.

The economic size of the Eurasian Economic Union is quite small and I doubt it plays into the planning of anyone but its members and some of its immediate neighbors.

I am from a small country with an economy roughly the size of Russia’s (Australia) and it’s clear that the EU has little interest, positive or negative with trade with Australia. Conversely I have literally never seen mention of the Eurasian version in an Australian newspaper.

[thriftwy]

The elephant in the room is that if you invite everybody in your anti-war club, but one country, that remaining country will get really nervous and you might as well get a war (what we are seeing).

If the situation is that you can't invite everybody in, then the plan is defective from the start.

[carlmr]

The EU is quite liberal in accepting countries to the anti-war club, but they need to adhere to some standards regarding human rights, trade, and democracy.

If you crash your own party with some people that don't fit in, you will cause the guests you wanted to have to leave.

Any countries not in the EU don't want to be in the EU. And that's fine.

And looking at what the EU does you don't have to be scared if you don't join. It's a defensive union first and foremost.

Switzerland isn't scared about the EU invading despite largely uncontrolled borders.

[egao1980]

Latvia and Estonia are allowed to have Nazi parades and repress Russian speaking population i.e. non-citizens, language police and criminal sentences for pro-Russian activists. EU looks some other way all the time. See for example https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/outrage-as-s... or https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2019-03-16/ty-arti...

This is not how human rights and democracy should look like.

[hgsgm]

The US has Confederacy parades, and also has criminal sentences for being an unregisteres agent of a foreign power.

[ghostwriter]

> The US has Confederacy parades, and also has criminal sentences for being an unregisteres agent of a foreign power.

No wonder the US did everything to save the nazi collaborator responsible for the massacre of ~100k Poles in Eastern Galicia from a post-war tribunal justice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Lebed#Post-war_activiti...

[hgsgm]

Would the EU be on good terms with Germany if a Nazi party member became the current dictator?

That's basically the situation in Russia with Putin after the USSR.

[gumby]

NATO discussed bringing Russia in during the 1990s, and Russia was invited and did join some NATO regular meetings until relatively recently, but wasn't that interested in joining.

I'm not faulting Russia for their position, just pointing out the thing you are claiming should have happened did indeed happen.

But I will point out that Australia is as rich as Russia yet has not started any wars (except against its own aboriginal population, true of Russia as well) so there is no anti-Australia alliance. Two of the three largest war-mongers in Europe (Germany, France, and until recently UK) have been restrained in a web of agreements and alliances, not seeing them as a threat but as a reassurance. If Russia feels encircled, it should start by looking in the mirror.

[red-iron-pine]

The Russians didn't want to play 2nd fiddle to the US, and had significant domestic arms production -- a non-trivial amount of industry and GDP -- to look after.

STANAG and interoperability standards meant that the Russian gear would have to change, and the Russian weren't willing to give up the control of their national policy, or put their industry at risk.

It was a non-starter for a lot of reasons.

[Yoric]

Not really?

I mean, I haven't seen any rumor of war between the EU and Switzerland, or Turkey, or the United Kingdom, or really any other of its neighbors other than Russia.

[thriftwy]

Have you heard of North Cyprus? Also, North Ireland.

[Yoric]

That seems to be deviating quite a lot from the concept of the existence of EU causing wars, as you suggested in the message I answered. By a few decades for North Cyprus (or 100+ years, depending from your definition of that conflict) a few centuries in the case of North Ireland.

Or did I misunderstand what you wrote?

[thriftwy]

EU did not cause the war in Ukraine. Soviets did, by appending Donetsk Krivorozhye Republic to Ukraine SSR.

But, the fact is that expansion of EU and EU influence in Ukraine were conductive of that war instead of being a deterrent.