Pardon me, but I don’t see the “baiting” you accuse me. I don’t think, that I wrote anything against Israel; I just stated, that the current split between Israel and Turkey is a worsening for Israel. Or do you mean something different?

BTW the situation in Spain is extraordinary bad and worst throughout the EU. The situation in the more northern located European countries isn’t that bad. I am currently in the end of my studies and all of my friends, who finished already, got a job within one quarter year. It is the Club Med who is really hit hard.

Your expectations about Germany’s future are of course a frightening realistic scenario, which I hope and pray, will not turn real, as the Celts on the Continent were not the most successful people in history.

I don’t expect the EU to move East. I expect Germany to point East and ditch the Welschen (not the Welsh, for Anglophones listening in).

It is half a joke, for nini is a way of saying “neither-nor,” and NINI is the Spanish government acronym for “Not in education or employment” – that is, lost to the economy.

But it’s not really a joke, because now almost everyone is NINI. The under-30 unemployment rate in Spain has just hit 44 per cent, twice the adult rate. Italy also has passed the 40 per cent mark, and Greece has gone even further. If you count all the people who’ve given up looking, it means the number of people between 20 and 30 who have any form of employment in these countries is something like one in five.

An entire European generation is leaving school to discover they have no place in the economy.

I’m completely agreed about the two wars, which have me soured on US intervention in the Middle East in general. I wouldn’t be so opposed to US involvement in the region if it wasn’t centered on two likely futile wars and was instead focused on diplomacy and perhaps some military pressure.

By “moving East” I wanted to say that the EU members would shift its interest and foreign policy opinion to countries like Russia and Turkey. As Turkey would be forced to keep good relationships with its neighbours and will perhaps enter the EU in 10 or 20 years, the Middle East would get a lot more attention in Brussels, which is not necessarily a good thing.

I would not say, that the USA are really an empire. An empire would be much more about really controlling countries which is only the case in Iraq in Afghanistan. Beyond this, the USA is just exercising its influence in my opinion like France does it still in some of its former colonies.
Until now the USA was seen as they would surely intervene, if an ally was in danger. This seems not true for Turkey any more in the current constellation.
The perception of Israel’s strength in the region could make the difference, how its adversaries estimate the outcome of a war, so is important, in my opinion.

Of course, you’re right that the Americans have to avoid to high spending and rebalance their economy. But this will be not eased by disclaiming the managing role the US has in Middle East or by changing the foreign diplomacy. What is really expensive, are the two wars, which do not improve but rather worsen the stand of the US (and the EU) has in the region.

If the EU moves to “the East,” why shouldn’t the US also do so (though I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that)?

Other than the US intervention in Iraq, I’m not sure what influence the US has on whether Turkey is “finlandized.”

Also, I don’t see why US policy toward a nation of over 70 million (Turkey) should be completely dictated by the national interests of a nation of just over 7 million (Israel), even though there are obviously closer cultural ties to the latter. Are you seriously suggesting that US policy should be altered for the sake of “the perception of Israel’s strength in the region?”

I don’t want to put that much into subsidizing a global empire given that the US is headed toward bankruptcy anyhow; good relations with emerging powers like Turkey are more important than the maintenance of the absolute military superiority of developed nations.

Das ist natürlich wahr. Ich glaube aber nicht, es die Vereinigten Staaten treffen wird. Alle Freunde von mir, die ein Auslandssemester in den USA machen, sind begeistert von dem amerikanischen Unternehmergeist.

Ich bin etwas optimistischer, was die Zukunft Europas angeht. 40 Jahre Teilung sollten eigentlich genug Strafe sein.
Vielleicht findet sich ein neues Gleichgewicht.

Hals- und Beinbruch!
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