My understanding is that the whole EU scheme was promoted by Am. businessmen, to make it easier for them to do biz in Europe, which after the collapse of the Soviet bloc included E. European nations. We now continue to fund European armed forces, including those of E. European nations, in the bellicose fantasy that Russia is still eager to annex E. Europe again. We just sent U.S. troops into Poland.Burning ghost wrote:... I do think so called "free trade" needs to be taken away from the hands of companies and put back into the hands of the government. This is also something that was a good reason for the UK exiting the EU. I worry about businessmen being put into positions where they make decisions that effect people in different countries, ...
Meanwhile, the EU is a complete disaster; basically one fat Germany-funded welfare state, which is why M.E. refugees are so eager to go there. Russia can pretend to have imperialist dreams, which I suspect includes all these hacking accusations, but Russia has more than its share of economic & political travails, not the least of which is the rumblings of the caliphate types within its borders: one-fourth of ISIS recruits come from Russia; and we may recall that all those former USSR states were in the main Muslim and all forms of religious practice was suppressed during the Soviet years.
There's an old joke about when ret. U.S. Army Gen. Alexander Haig began doing business in the old USSR: he said young couples were exiting their Mercedes Benzes, wearing Rolex watches, to go drink apple daiquiris; it looked just like Beverly Hills, except there were no communists.
