JD, where is Booker wrong?

It would be as valid to say that we have had no wars within the EU, compared to the conflicts outside the EU: therefore the EU has met one of its original raisons d'être . Which was to end the continual cycle of wars between what are now it's members.

A war in Ukraine only serves to throw the peace the EU has fostered into relief. One could easily argue that as Russia /USSR were expansionist before the EU went east, and this is just the latest phase, then being in the EU protects a state from this.
You could also argue that an element is Putin's need for a continuing nationalist campaign to distract from an economy that is reeling from low oil prices.

Does anyone here think the Russia /Ukraine conflict is a result of the EU? I'd like to see what it's based on as I may be wrong.
 
Ask the Greeks if they do not feel 'at war' with the Germanic hordes - You do not have to murder people and physically destroy their homeland to be 'at war', even if you have gotten away with it under the guise of Nazism in the recent past.
Some may say 'they' owe us, in fact most of Europe, BIG TIME.

Pay up Fritz and look big !!

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It would be as valid to say that we have had no wars within the EU, compared to the conflicts outside the EU: therefore the EU has met one of its original raisons d'être

The EU as it is has only existed for a fraction of the 60 years of peace since WW2, the EU has nowt to do with it, European treaties, NATO and modern distaste for large warfare is the cause.

Does anyone here think the Russia /Ukraine conflict is a result of the EU?

Partly yes.

Look at a map, when they showed intentions of becoming part of the EU/NATO sphere, Russia was never going to accept that.

If Libya falls to ISIS, do you think we are going to let them have it, with the access it would provide Europe?

Ultimately it is Russia fault for behaving like they do, but the EU is to blame in the same way you are if you put your hand in a wasps nest.
 
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I should have been more specific but I am using the term EU to include its previous incarnations from the Coal and Steel communities, EEC etc
 
My old grandpa said it was doomed to failure and I never seen him wrong.
Once the greeks go the rest will fall like dominos.

And once we go we'll be £12 billion better off every year which we can spend on defences and whats left of europe can deal with all the immigrant dross.

And it will put paid to all the sh@ite I read on this forum about them having a "right" to come here.
 
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I'm sure that we all agree that it would be lovely if we lived in a world in which everyone got one and celebrated differences as well as similarities. It would be marvellous indeed if the EU was a small example of that, and its conception may well have been designed with the best of intentions.

As we know, it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the barrel. Regardless of how much any country may wish to point the finger at other(s), the real trouble is that every country is, in its own way, a rotten apple.
 
It's interesting that an anti-European journalist, writing in an anti-European newspaper for an anti-European readership, suggests that the EU is the cause of Russia invading Ukraine.

Looking back:
Russian forces invade Finland 1921
Russian forces invade Ukraine 1939
Russian forces invade Poland 1939
Russian forces invade Finland 1939
Russian forces invade Hungary 1956
Russian forces invade Czechoslovakia 1968
Russian forces invade Afghanistan 1979
Russian forces invade Georgia 2008
Russian forces invade Ukraine 2014

Is there perhaps a pattern here?

It would be interesting to know in which generation Russia did not seek to extend its power into smaller or weaker countries.

Here in the West, World War 2 ended in 1945. In Central and Eastern Europe, it lingered on until about 1990 when the last occupying troops went home and the countries made faltering attempts to find a way of working as independent states.

Mr Putin has achieved popularity in his country, despite economic collapse and institutionalised corruption, with a resurgence of national pride in the military might of his empire.

Taking an entirely opposite approach, one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Ideal was to create a Europe in which Britain/France/Germany/Italy/Austria/Belgium/Holland/Denmark could get by without devastating wars between themselves every generation. In that it has been successful.
 
The EU as it is has only existed for a fraction of the 60 years of peace since WW2, the EU has nowt to do with it, European treaties, NATO and modern distaste for large warfare is the cause.

Perfectly true, along with nuclear weapons.

Recently, with the general election approaching and the Limp Dems, the Greenies and the SNP announcing their intention to dispose of our nuclear deterrent (to say nothing of the Tories' cutbacks in our defences), Russia has been testing our resolve to defend our shores.
Perhaps it's just a coincidence.
 
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