this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Instead Europe had a more recent and a more devastating Great War, and then another so called "World War". The former belligerents went on to form the nucleus of the later European Union, and are still the most powerful parties. Except for the UK, sadly.
I would also say, if a war from 150 years ago explains why your current day politics fail, there are most likely bigger flaws with that system than that war.
It helps if you look at scale. The whole of the European Union has 448.4 million people living in it. The USA has 331.9 million people living in it. You'd think that this would make them similar given that the EU is made up of a confederation of sorts of 27 different countries and that could be compared to the US being a confederation of 50 states.
The problem with comparing them this way is that, for the most part each Country in the EU is still a sovereign nation. They have their own armies, their own GDP, their own trade deals, their own governing bodies. Their strength in being a union comes from the fact that they are sovereign nations who have banded together.
The states aren't sovereign nations. They'd like to pretend they are. But all their laws, all their provisions for public health, public safety, home land security, border control etc are beholden to the federal government and its two party system. Meaning their laws can be struck down as unconstitutional. They get funding from the federal government. Aid from the federal government. Social programs from the federal government. The federal government has a say in education, housing, the environment, natural disaster relief.
The EU isn't really set up with way. When Switzerland wants to pass a law, they're free and clear to do that no harm no foul. When the EU sets a goal (like GDPR) it's up to the countries involved to decide how to implement laws and policies that would allow for that goal to become reality. In the US it happens the opposite way. The federal government makes a law. Then the states create legislation within the bounds of it.
And the main answer is that it's harder to buy a bunch of different countries than it is a couple of senators.
We're talking about Economic Committee vs a whole Federal Government.
We don't have our own trade deals. The EU makes all the trade deals for everyone to the outside and on the inside it's completely free trade. That was one of the points the UK wanted from the Brexit. To "great" success.
Switzerland can pass any law they are happy with. The are not part of the Union. They are only part of the trade federation and allow free travel. ~~But they are not part of Schengen either.~~ (I remembered that wrong.) It's complicated.
The rest is spot on.
Almost, Switzerland is also part of Schengen.
I'm not saying you're wrong but you're under some inaccurate assumptions about the EU.
As Trump had to learn, individual EU countries don't make their own trade deals (that would collide with the single market).
Our laws too can be struck down as not in line with EU law, as seen with Germany's attempt at highway tolls for example.
Also, there are different classes of EU legislation, most importantly directives and regulations. The former set a goal that the countries must achieve, but how they implement it is up to them. The latter do become law as soon as the EU passes them, there is no need for individual Parliaments to ratify them or "copy" them over to their national law. They often still do to avoid collisions, but it wouldn't be a requirement for the regulation to become effective.
And last but not least, Switzerland sadly is not a member.
Well. I picked Switzerland on a whim. Substitute Finland or France or whatever.
There is still an assumption that GDPR and laws like it could be implemented in the US but companies count as entities that have rights and freedoms that cannot be infringed by the federal government here as well. Is that the case with the EU and its members?
Sure, World War 2 ended much more recently than the Civil War in the USA. But I don't think the recency matters all that much. More importantly, I think Europe did a much better job of "healing" after the war was over than the US. Even after the Civil War ended, the bitterness of the slave states ensued, and continues to exist even today. You could probably argue that this continues to happen to some extent with WW2 in Germany/other parts of Europe today, but nowhere near at the same scale as the analogue in the US.
To me, the USA still looks like it's a country that's still at war with itself. It just happened to go from a cold war to a hot one in the 1800s, but there has always been a divide between slave state and non-slave states and it feels like it has never ended (and probably never will).
So yeah, I would argue that your last point is spot on. The USA looks like an inherently flawed country to me - it's too big and too non-unified. It just looks like it would make so much more sense if it were split up into a few smaller countries that would be much more unified and cohesive.