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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32346 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I see them as bolstering the Vysehrad Tendency: in favour of the EU, but also strong on sovereignty issues, especially regarding borders

I strongly doubt this. Given how extraordinarily they will be indebted to the US and EU at the end of the war, I don’t think Ukraine will be at any position to have a political spine against the EU institutions. Something like Romania is much more likely. Very corrupt country going totally under the radar in the EU institutions since they vote with German line on every issue.

But of course no EU entrant country, not even Bulgaria, was as demographically, politically, economically fucked up as Ukraine. It’s also quite a large and populous country in comparison so I have doubts if the EU can spare funds necessary for its development even if they wanted. So this whole saga might also develop into a strange farce by time.

The EU line is not set in stone but is affected by what the political lines of the member states are. For a long time now smarter right-wingers and nationalists within EU have aimed at taking over EU instead of demolishing it, and if EU would eventually be joined by a strongly nationalist Ukraine (and it's quite likely strongly nationalist parties will be considerably stronger in Ukraine after this conflict, unless it gets totally defeated), it might very well bolster the efforts of such a tendency to make their line the mainstream line.

For a long time now smarter right-wingers and nationalists within EU have aimed at taking over EU instead of demolishing it

Who are these people and what have they achieved so far in your opinion?

Ukraine has also some resources, including not yet exploited gas fields.

Aren’t we supposed to be having an energy transition soon that will make not yet exploited gas fields obsolete?

If UE would continue pulling hard toward unstable sources like wind and solar that will make gas peakers (and pumped hydropower and other now theoretical grid-scale batteries) more needed, not less.

(or you can just redefine gas as green and renewable and go on if you really need this)

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think it's hard to speculate what Ukraine will be like by the time they become full EU members or if that will even be possible, considering the possibility that Russia might still hold a lot of Ukraine after a peace deal. A situation like Georgia can't be ruled out.

The Ukrainians don't seem to have a lack of spine, and the Vysehrad Group have shown how the EU is pretty toothless against an awkward squad.

and the Vysehrad Group have shown how the EU is pretty toothless against an awkward squad.

I think this was due to EU institutions designed for horse trading between a handful of Western European countries (ie France and Germany basically) being unable to cope with the amount of veto power each member has when the number of members is almost 30. Currently that’s being fixed with Poland and Hungary acting as the comic book villains against whom we should empower our sensible heroic Eurocrat overlords. If Ukraine ever enters the EU (probably as part of a larger expansion including countries like Moldova, Serbia etc) this will imo be part of a larger deal to seriously empower the Center against member states. Or maybe this doesn’t happen at all and newly anointed eu members Ukraine and Georgia just become another set of US satellites in Brussels. Who knows

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