Comments on: What a swell party this… might be… More on the Libertas Dinner.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:44:34 +0000

Nah, I didn’t read it that way.

Hmmm… combat with NATO… again, triple lock, public antagonism. I think darfur is as far as it goes in that respect.

By: Garibaldy

Garibaldy — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:25:47 +0000

not engaging in combat with nato though, which may well have been the case had Lisbon been enacted before that. I hope I didn’t seem to be saying all south American governments were progressive.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:55:08 +0000

Still, one can’t unequivocally say that South American govt’s are entirely progressive. There are one or two not progressive at all states there, yet Chavez seems comfortable with something essentially identical to the EU. It would be interesting to know his rationale.

Aren’t there some Irish troops in Afghanistan under UN mandate?

By: Garibaldy

Garibaldy — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:26:30 +0000

Missed that WBS, so thanks for that. I’d need to see the details as to whether that means pooled soveriegnty, but a central bank may well be a good idea for those states. I do think that cooperation between progressive governments is of a different order than an EU foreign and military policy. With such an entity would Irish troops have ended up in Afghanistan? It strikes me as very possible – most of the EU countries have troops there.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:37:57 +0000

Well South America is already well down the path towards its own version of the EU which brings together Mercosur and the Andean Community. The name was officially instituted at a meeting in Venezuela. I notice also that Venezuela is playing a strong part in bringing this to fruition including agreeing to the siting of the central bank in Caracas.

By: Garibaldy

Garibaldy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:54:32 +0000

Well the UN doesn’t make internal laws for countries the way the EU does (both good and bad), and can say what it wants partly because it is toothless on that front basically.

I certainly believe in international cooperation, especially in a progressive way. The extent to which that requires the surrendering of freedom of action is open to big questions. To take an obvious alternative model, has the cooperation between progressive governments in Latin America required any pooling of sovereignty?

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:39:44 +0000

I wonder about that. The UN operates as a big power club, only rarely as with Iraq going against large state interests in a serious fashion, and only very very rarely sanctioning them. And on a lower level it is hugely intrusive into national sovereignty issues. Only recently we’ve seen organs of the UN rightly criticising the Irish state in terms which were it the EU there would be uproar.

As regards the EU, it’s expanding, sort of… whether to the degree we saw proposed during the Lisbon referendum is a different issue.

To be honest I think that a complex international structure is going to inevitably lead to diminuitions of national sovereignty across many different axes – we’ve seen perfect examples of how transnational capital issues bring us low despite being halfway around the world. The point is representation and although highly critical of many aspects of the EU I think they’ve done as well as they could in a context where national sovereignty must take primacy.

But as socialists surely we believe that a pooling of sovereignty is not merely a good thing in itself but also necessary to face the globalised problems of the moment and the future?

By: Garibaldy

Garibaldy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:30:52 +0000

It isn’t a red herring where the realm of policy decided at a European level is expanding. The UN can certainly be criticised, but it is a different type of organisation than the EU, so I’m not sure that comparison is exactly spot on. There are clearly tensions of interest, and inevitably so as you say. But I don’t see that as a reason for surrendering more power rather than less. The question is relevant when the idea of the Irish state being at the centre of the EU is raised I think.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:26:29 +0000

Garibaldy, as regards the EU being a big power club, precisely the same argument for precisely the same reasons could be made against the UN, indeed that body is worse because of the structure of the Security Council. But quite reasonably people accept that there are ways of constraining larger power interests at least some of the time. With the EU which is so consensus drive it’s often painful to watch that’s a much lesser issue. And the scope for smaller nations to act together against larger ones is greater still – not least because the larger powers have quite divergent agendas from each other. In any case, I can’t genuinely see how there couldn’t be in any given political structure precisely this sort of tension between nation size and influence however progressive, so I see it as a bit of a red herring in these debates.

By: Garibaldy

Garibaldy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:18:33 +0000

P.S. No word from that meeting? I am genuinely interested in what she might have had to say.