Most EU countries banned certain categories of weapons like cluster munitions and antipersonnel mines, and as a result were unable to provide them to Ukraine.
russia had no such qualms. Fortunately non-EU countries were able to supply Ukraine with these useful weapons: the EU was dependent on non-EU countries for its security.
Had russia attacked a NATO country of the EU directly, said country would have been at a disadvantage.
There have been reports of experiments with autonomous drones in the russia-Ukraine war.
If the EU bans AI for military uses and our adversaries do not, I am afraid someday we will regret our mistake. But it will be too late.
> Most EU countries banned certain categories of weapons like cluster munitions and antipersonnel mines, and as a result were unable to provide them to Ukraine
The hypothetical war in Europe would not be fought the same way it is fought in Eastern Ukraine, where anywhere between 30-60% of inhabitants are ethnically Russian, depending on locale, and Russia goes out of its way to not just methodically flatten things the way Israel flattened Palestine, which, by the way, is something they can do given their near endless supply of guided bombs. That's why you only have ~23K civilian casualties there after 3 years of war, about half of them attributable to Ukrainian strikes. Absolutely nobody in Moscow would care about collateral damage in e.g. Warsaw or Berlin. Nor for that matter anyone in Warsaw or Berlin would care about collateral damage in Moscow. So if this war were to actually break out, it'd spin out of control within weeks, and end with a full nuclear exchange, decimating Russia, and completely destroying Europe, which is much more densely populated.
Have you seen what Mariupol looked like right after it was taken? Or what Bakhmut looks like today?
The reason why Russia doesn't do this to Ukraine as a whole is because it is fighting this war with the ultimate goal of occupying and annexing Ukraine, so why would it destroy valuable resources like infrastructure and people needed to maintain it unless it serves some other goal? OTOH when it does serve some other goal (e.g. actually advancing the frontline), they have zero qualms about doing the same exact thing Israel does. I mean, Russia doesn't care all that much about lives of its own soldiers, given the kinds of tactics routinely used.
How Europe would be treated would similarly depend on what the goals of the war from Russian perspective would be.
You don't understand - that was the _minimal_ amount of damage typically inflicted in urban warfare of this intensity. Mariupol itself wasn't even carpet bombed because there were a lot of locals hiding in the basements. Nor was Bakhmut, for largely the same reason. Look at what we did in Mosul or Raqqa to see how we'd approach this. Flatten first, then move in. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/war-torn-...
The point is that Russia was entirely willing to engage in urban warfare of this intensity regardless of what it does to civilians. And just so that we're clear about what intensity that is, Mariupol has seen a larger percentage of buildings destroyed than Stalingrad did back in WW2.
Carpet bombing is tricky when your planes get blown out of the sky on a regular basis and your industry can't replace them as easily as it can replace artillery shells. That's the main reason why they're using glide bombs and missiles instead.
Oh, and you don't need to look at Mosul or Raqqa to see other examples, either. Grozny, in either the first or the second Chechen war, is a nice illustration of how Russia fight wars.
This is an outrageously blatant lie. Of course, Russia is trying its best to damage as much civil infrastructure as it can.
A quote: "The latest available assessment by the World Bank, European Commission, United Nations and Ukrainian government found that direct war damage in Ukraine had reached $152 billion as of December, 2023, with housing, transport, commerce and industry, energy and agriculture the worst-affected sectors." [1] By now, it should be over 200 billion.
The reasons why Russia failed to cause more damage have nothing to do with demoraphics, good will, or anything like that. After all, Russia sent to death hundreds of thousands of ITS OWN citizens. Had it cared about russian lives as much as you are trying to whitewash here, it would not have been fighting this war to begin with.
The real reasons why Russia has not caused more damage or killed more civilians, are, first, it has failed to achieve air superiority. Second, Ukraine, with the help of its allies, was able to set up more less effective air defense against missiles and drones.
"Nearly 12,000 missiles have been launched against Ukraine by Russia since this full-scale conflict started.
Some 80% of those have been intercepted by Ukraine." [2]
The number of drones must be comparable or higher.
The limited number of civilian casualties is easily explained by the number of refugees from Ukraine which is in the millions. Its definity not because Russia did not try too hard.
This is an unprecedentely low civilian casualty count for a conflict of this intensity and duration. Such high ratio of military to civilian casualties has not been observed since WW1.
I hope to see even more "stupid AI regulation" in the future, fingers crossed.
Recently I benefited from a "stupid regulation" mandating minimum Internet speeds carriers need to provide. How dare the policy makers interfere with the extortionate prices every single ISP in the market colluded to impose on the population. Muh liberty!
Plus the undemocratic law making process and the unelected EU commission that is an authoritarian institution without anyone keeping it in check. The DSA is a censorship law with an added backdoor (look up "emergency response" and its implications). And tethered caps are just annoying ;)
The European Parliament is elected every few years by citizens in all member states.
The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.
The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
It may be a little complicated, but it's all rooted in democratic processes. Please stick to the facts and keep the populistic anti-EU nationalistic propaganda to yourself.
(Every kid in the EU has been learning those basic facts in school for decades, making it surprising that this populist nonsense still catches on with so many people. I have an easier time forgivin non-EU folks, but even those should check the facts before claiming things.)
> The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.
> The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
I disagree. Successful elected government officials from member states aren't governing the EU Commission and Council. They're governing their own member states, where they are elected by the public.
Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.
Just look at the uninspiring Commissioners we've suffered over the last few years.
It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
> Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.
Von der Leyen was not appointed by bureaucrats.
> It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
That's nothing special in European voting systems. Various governments (regional or country wide) in Germany have small, but relatively stable majorities provided by coalitions. That's very different to the mostly two-party systems in the US or the UK.
51.4% is a majority. You are free to disagree again, but that won't change the facts. You can just as easily disagree about gravity, evolution or climate change. Still won't change them.
Look, I don't like lots of things about the EU either. But the first step to being able to change sth is to acknowledge the facts. Claiming that von der Leyen wasn't democratically appointed is similar to Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Not a great start.
That was always one of the issues with EU, and EEC before it, membership in the UK. There was no education as to the change in constitutional status, nor explanation of how the EEC (then EU) actually worked.
Most folks still had the view that UK Parliament was in charge, not really appreciating the change. That also applied to our MPs, hence the Factomane cases.
Now if there had bee proper education in the UK as to the impact of EEC and EU membership, possibly Brexit would not have happened.
From Chapter 6: 'The Inherently Undemocratic EU Democracy'
'A number of prominent public intellectuals put pen to paper to warn not only of a crisis of European democracy, but of a crisis of the very ‘political institution’ of democracy, and particularly its representative and liberal variants. Contemporary manifestations of the ‘hollowing out’ of democracy following the Eurocrisis have taken many forms and several contributions in this volume have dealt with various aspects of the phenomenon.'
' .... a crisis of the EU’s own democratic credentials. Even as they insisted on its purely economic character, commentators were quick to criticise the undemocratic form that the emergency EMU-related responses to the Eurocrisis came to assume, particularly at the European level, where not only parliamentary processes, but also the Treaties’ legal prescriptions, were systematically circumvented'.
The EU has certainly its issues, no doubt about it. They need to be pointed out and addressed for sure. We are not in disagreement there.
But the flat out denial that EU is in principle a democratic system is just a too simplistic view. It tends to be mostly touted by those populists who ultimately would like to see an authocratic state with themselves in charge.
I think it makes a lot more sense that there's a lot of (especially rich people and US folks) that desperately want EU to fail - either because they're deeply nationalist, see a profit motive or just hate foreigners.
Those will craft narratives that are patently untrue to drive their agenda.
The council, composed of representatives of governments elected in their own state, nominates the commission and proposes laws which are then voted by the parliament where deputies who have been directly elected by European sit. The parliament also confirms the commission.
The commissioners are appointed by their party - often the decisions are made by people who are not even directly elected themselves - and as such have no real accountability to the public. MEPs are slightly better but the overwhelming majority of them are "elected" via a party list system, which means that any individual can much more easily get elected by being popular with party bureaucrats than by being popular with the public that they supposedly represent. (But since the MEPs can't write laws, only vote on laws written by the commision, they're pretty irrelevant anyway).
Even an extremely unpopular commissioner is at no risk of being voted out. For many years the UK's representative was disgraced former disgraced former MP Peter *Mandelson, one of the most hated people in the country, who could never have won any remotely democratic contest.
Peter Mandelson*. Recently back in the headlines as he was just appointed as US ambassador.
I think it’s a stretch to call Mandelson “one of the most hated people in the country”. What did he do exactly? By this point I’m sure the average person has mostly forgotten that he exists.
You are right, however, about the lack of real democratic accountability in the EU. The EU commission is the place to “fail up” - it’s where politicians go after their democratic viability has run out at home and the voters boot them out.
> I think it’s a stretch to call Mandelson “one of the most hated people in the country”. What did he do exactly?
He had at least the image of a slimeball "spin doctor", seen as having control over the media and using it to control the narrative and cover up government wrongdoing. He was definitely publicly hated even before it emerged that he'd taken a bribe^Wundeclared interest-free loan from a person he was responsible for investigating. You're right that he's mostly forgotten nowadays.
Commissioners are proposed by their country and discussed with the head of the commission (which was selected by the whole European council) before being validated by the parliamentary committee in charge of its portfolio (composed of MEPs which are elected using direct universal suffrage and proportional representation (you can hardly be more democratic than that).
I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Well, no, they're proposed by the government of their country. Which generally means they're selected by the ruling party in that country.
> I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Huh? Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to) redouble the problem - you lose democratic accountability even at that lower level.
> Well, no, they're proposed by the government of their country.
Yes, that’s how democracy works. Countries have elected governments.
> Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to)
Huh? It’s a proportional system and everyone is free to present their own list if they disagree with the existing organisation presenting lists. The fact that you can’t be bothered to take part in the political life of your country is not magically a loss of democratic accountability.
Not OP, but for starters, the referendum in my country about joining EU did not ask whether we should give our independence away to the EU. If people would have been told the actual goal, the referendum would have probably never passed. The EU is not a legitimate democracy.
IMO the EU regulation doesn't go far enough as it excludes banning AI for "military use".