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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (122875)	1/7/2004 3:25:29 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Most welcome your inputs from Germany, DJ. Much appreciated.

To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (122875)	1/7/2004 4:10:46 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

re: Wolfgang Schäuble The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, yet spends 50% of the world's total military funding. This is unsustainable. The U.S. must find a way to share the burden. The only other alternative, is to vastly decrease our global footprint. Europe will only join an alliance with the U.S., working with us, if the U.S. adopts Europe's doctrine of deterrence. This means giving up "preventive war" and "first strike". It means relying much less on military solutions, and much more on political/economic/diplomatic solutions. Europe has a much better model, of how to spread democracy and liberalism, than the U.S. Europe has steadily, incrementally, spread democracy from NW Europe, to the south and east. Before they joined the Community, Spain had been governed by a fascist dictatorship since before WW2. And, before that, there was an endless string of despots, violent regime changes, kings, emperors, theocracies, police states. Democracy and liberalism had not taken root. In the process of preparing to join, Spain was required to make many detailed changes, and maintain those changes. The Community insists on verifiable compliance with their standards. Spain is now a part of the Free World. And what was done in Spain, is now also being done, steadily and surely, in unlikely places like Lithuania and Bulgaria. This is all being done, without force, without waging wars of aggression. The Europe-U.S. alliance will wither, and has already been severely strained, by the U.S. rejection of deterrence, and rejection of non-military means of spreading democracy.

To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (122875)	1/9/2004 2:48:51 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi DJ, good pieces you bring, this one here, then today's - #reply-19671199 This thread has developed up so partisan, into proponents of the neocon First Let's Roll Them Tanks invasion approach versus those who question if perhaps there might exist somewhere a viable alternative .... this is probably natural thread dynamics, combined with the current state of the world being so centred around US military and economic power Best course for most of the Rest of Us is to politely evade as much as possible that centralisation, to deal with each other directly, to bypass having to get a permission slip out of Washington .... we have plenty of common interest, common activities, for an example in foreign affairs there are right now germans and canadians in Afghanistan, to such extent as is possible we should be cooperating directly between our nations It is not fair to the average US national, nor at all in his interest, to take on responsibility for that which does not effect him .... i would not want this responsibility, were i one, any more than Bilow Carl or Steven Rogers do - several times more US nationals opposed the neocon invasion of Iraq than there are canadians in total, more than there are frenchmen or germans in total .... they have the same problem we do in our countries though, politicians always after more power, and he who grabs power gets responsibility thrust up the ying-yang ..... from where sprout seeds for the next change of power, no doubt, i guess it was always thus ..... but we can at least try to short-circuit this, and a good start might be made by avoiding unnecessary use of USD, exchanging our currencies directly from one to another, or through some other medium, perhaps a richly coloured and malleable metal, for instance -g- .... cheers