That's what always surprised me about the whole concept of BRICS nations. Those countries have more interest in competing with each other to get access to other markets than to work/stick together in any way.
small markets are less interesting/valuable. it makes a difference if i can sell my product to 10 million people vs 100 million. so working together makes the whole area more attractive.
What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals," as the Belgian PM put it.
> What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals
NATO: Russia is a threat to both Europe and the US, lets band together to make sure we can fight them.
EU: Europe keeps fighting wars, lets make our economies more inter-dependent so that doesn't happen as much.
For NATO, I can see the happy vassals thing (and that's what the Belgian PM was referring to), but can you explain who is the overlord in the EU example?
The EU would be very very different if that were the case. Like, since the UK left we'd have a common corporate taxation system. Prior to that, we'd have had a military since the 70s, and only one stock market (in London, obvs) and all data-collection would've been made illegal.
(This is mostly satire, even if I think 2 of the 3 second things were and are great ideas).
The EU as a group really doesn't seem to have a lot of political will / momentum. They make a lot of statements, but that's it. I wish they did, but they don't seem to.
Access to markets isn't an exclusive asset. They don't compete over it, and mostly they can't compete over it, because they already have it.