An AU-EU Society?

[tcpip]

Australia has various bilateral associations that promote friendship, cooperation, and understanding between the people of one country and another. Obvious to all, these represent a sort of soft-power strategic orientation as well as a source for business contacts, along with the more benign elements of cultural, scientific, and familial associations. A very notable example is the American Australian Association which is affiliated with its complement, the American Australian Association, and likewise the Australia-Britain Society and its complement, the Britain-Australia Society. Once upon a time, there was an Australia-Soviet Friendship Society; that was superseded by the Australia Russia and Affiliates Friendship Society. There is, of course, the Australia China Friendship Society as well.

The ties of Australia to the United Kingdom are not to be estimated; the nation was founded through the forced unification of that particular imperial power and as a result, our primary language is English, our head-of-state is the Queen of England, etc. However, following the great shift during the second world war following Curtin's "The Task Ahead" speech of 1941, Australia has increasingly been more of a junior partner to the United States, rather than to the United Kingdom. In a sense, the UK is a bit of a junior partner to the US as well these days. The Australia Russia and Affiliates Friendship Society has obviously declined in importance over the decades, and the Australia China Friendship Society has grown in importance.

What makes me wonder is why there is no Australia-European Union Society? There are, of course, associated cultural groups, such as Alliance francaise, or Goethe-Institut Australia, Italian Australian Club, the Australian Hellenic Council & etc. And there have been EU projects such as the Europe-Australia forum, designed to strengthen bilateral relations. But there is no Australia-Europe Society, and maybe there should be. After all, as is evident by the number of European cultural groups there is a good percentage of the population who come from continental descent. There is also a shared heritage of civil liberties and democratic traditions, along with being relatively advanced countries in terms of technology and economics. Indeed, among all the superpowers, real and emerging, I would argue that the European Union represents the most advanced features of that nature. It would be useful if, in Australia, there was some organisation that would represent this whilst also providing for the pan-European cultural perspectives.

Comments

[abomvubuso]

True. Yet, there are other similar diplomatic initiatives involving the EU as a bloc, just not ones with the land down under.

[dancesofthelight]

What is a 'Pan European' cultural perspective and why does it apply to Australia as opposed to say, Mexico or Brazil?

[tcpip]

There's a couple of things here. I am thinking of the not insignificant number of people from Europe descent in Australia (Melbourne used to be the second largest Greek city in world, until recently), and I am concentrating on real or emerging superpowers.

I don't think Brazil is there yet...

[dancesofthelight]

In what alternate universe is Australia even close to an emerging superpower and what criteria could possibly define it thus?

[tcpip]

I didn't say that AU was a superpower, actual or emerging.

So that alternate universe :p

[dancesofthelight]

See the thing that confuses me here is that the whole thing about a 'pan European cultural perspective' need not have anything to do with superpowers. If we're talking geopolitical power, which as Comrade Mao said comes from the barrel of a gun, not literary criticism, f'rex, the EU literally has armies that march with broomsticks because it's too cheap to give them guns. Put that against Putin's bombers that are very, very good at blowing up babies and the Russians will steamroll it in a war that'd last an hour. One minute to bomb, fifty nine to laugh.

By actual standards of great power, let alone superpower status, the EU is in the Brazil tier, if that much, in real world terms.

And none of that clarifies what a 'pan European culture' even means in real world terms.

[tcpip]

> By actual standards of great power, let alone superpower status, the EU is in the Brazil tier, if that much, in real world terms.<

France alone surpasses Brazil. Add Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland to the mix.

You can be amusing poetic in your descriptions, I'll grant you that.

[dancesofthelight]

Interesting that you omitted the bit that included the Mao Zedong quote about where power actually comes from. Which ain't wealth. Ask the Qing Dynasty how well being wealthy without being able to do anything active to protect it on their own worked for them.

Absent the French, the EU has no nuclear powers and armies that literally are too cheap to pay for firearms, let alone functional military skill. They have this against a Russian state that does pay for a functional army and has the will to use it and to power project to actually do more than prove itself utterly fucking useless against a fifth-rate army like the Libyans.

And as far as the French, it's fucking France.

So, absent the US Army, Europe would be Western Russia and that would be the result of Europe 'voluntarily' forgetting where real power comes from and hoping to outsource it to the USA indefinitely and that the Russians would never get the simple brute will to exploit this.

[tcpip]

You know, your arguments would be more convincing if you used evidence rather than poetic turns of phrase.

[dancesofthelight]

You really need convincing of one of the most elementary principles of geopolitics and statebuilding, a premise that goes back to the literal roots of states as an organized body of human social construction? You are ignorant of something so remedial that explaining is at best condescending no matter how I'd try not to be?

Then your argument is every bit the racist chicanery that I suspected it was all along and you realize that this is exactly what I was stating it was in the first place, and now you're trying to evade it, and doing so poorly at that.

The EU is seen as a world power for reasons of what it might do, and what it might become. Not what it is, especially not when Poland and Hungary are merrily ripping parts of its geopolitical illusions to shreds and its financial basis is making silk purses out of sow's ears. Treating the EU as an actual as opposed to potential power requires at best the delusion that white countries in Europe are competent and possessed of power due to being white and European and there has been precious little in the last 200 years of European history to justify that on small or large occasions.

[tcpip]

You have nothing worthwhile to contribute here.

[dancesofthelight]

On the contrary.

I have made points that you did not like and lack the intellectual and moral backbone to deal with, so you're evading them and avoiding admitting that you willingly misread points someone else made, and did so because they asked pointed questions.

That's what happens when you make racist statements and expect nobody will sit up and notice them.

If you had the slightest will or ability to deal with the points on the EU as a great power in more than financial terms alone, or noting from the example of the Qing of the 19th Century, who were as wealthy in relative terms as the EU is now (for all the good that did them), you'd actually have a conversation, albeit one that doesn't echo your perspective. You don't want a conversation, you want a circlejerk.

[tcpip]

> That's what happens when you make racist statements <

Just as well I didn't, eh?

> If you had the slightest will or ability to deal with the points on the EU as a great power in more than financial terms alone<

Which was already contradicted by the facts.

Obviously, you have nothing worthwhile to contribute. You are a nothing but a troll, and not even a good one at that.