Stuttgart, European Politics

[tcpip]

The past few days have been in Stuttgart with caseopaya's Deutsche side of the family. It was an astoundingly relaxing time compared to the usual rate of affairs I like to operate on, and there was even one day which I could honestly say I did nothing (except read, play FreeCiv, and mock Ron Paul for his latest round of racism). It was, of course, great to catch up with Felix, Kerstan, Annalise, and the kinder, Antonia and Tobias - who are always delightful. One particular outing was to the Württemberg Mausoleum, which provided impressive views of the city. It was built by XXX and, with great acoustics, is still used for Russian Orthodox services. An amusing present I provided the family was a German-language copy of Talisman, which I picked up in Australia.

I always manage to get at least one if not more serious conversations in with Felix and the state of world politics and technology. He expressed grave concerns that the current POtUS is causing economic and political damage to what has previously been decades of close friendship between Germany and the United States. I made the observation that much of the rest of the world looks towards Europe to provide leadership in terms of political matters, as it still provides "the northern lights" of civil rights and social democracy, whereas the 21st century is also witnessing the extraordinary economic growth of China. It may be, unless there is some dramatic change in the United States (at that is quite possible), that the Europeans may find that there is more to be gained with a more strategic relation with China rather than their "old friend".

Which also leads into a political aspect of this trip; I am meeting a couple of individuals who have contributed to the Isocracy Network in the past, and I am hoping that I convince said individuals to take up a leadership role for the Network in their respective countries (I am particularly thinking of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany), and hopefully make them into functioning branches. In order to further develop this I have arranged for a Melbourne meeting on my return on the subject of the current state of European politics; my current take is the still-existing political and administrative fragmentation of the European countries is still too great, and civil rights are not strongly enough enforced between EU member states (c.,f. Hungary). But these thoughts will ferment further over the next few weeks.

Comments

[rangifer]

I swear the Euro-American relationship right now is a circus.

[tcpip]

It's pretty unstable. Every day there seems to be something disrupts long-standing relationships.

As far a circuses go, the biggest beneficiary is the clown.

[rangifer]

Quite. While there are several good reasons why Europe would like to avoid making any new dramatic moves in the short-to-medium term, European angst about what's going on in the political side of things is probably only going to get worse from here. I think there's also a dash of denial in some of our foreign offices right now. They're clearly hoping the current difficulties are a temporary aberration. That might not be the case. We might be in for several more years of transatlantic bickering and that scares me a bit.

[tcpip]

Avoiding dramatic moves is smart, but paralysis would be bad too as it would allow the European project to be out-maneuvered. Speaking as an outsider, the world still looks to Europe for leadership in civil rights and civic democracy. Despite British recalcitrants, the path of greater European integration is a good one. The US will need to sort out its own problems; lead by example.