TheMinisterOfWar, please define "very recent". Although the word "sovereignty" goes back to (early) the Middle Ages, the concept was applied, and discussed, long before; it existed in ancient China, Rome, Assyria, and many earlier empires and states.

Bottom line: Just because you're good and selfless doesn't mean you should just pick up arms for every cause that seems right.

@Stephanie, when the fuck did anyone in Europe was shot down by a drone? Stephanie, you are not pragmatic, you are absolutely detached from the real world. Do you want to tell me that democracy like the one you exercise in the Netherlands, were gays can marry and you can vote for whoever you want is somehow worse than Russian dictatorship (and by the way, they had their share of stealing from the world, so by your logic democracy should work great for them). And I don't advocate the whole world should live by our standards, I certainly believe that many conflicts in the world like Rwanda or Pakistan/India is exactly because after colonial times Europe thought that everyone can leave in the same form of state as we do, but they were wrong. Iraq wasn't messed up because they didn't have democracy, it was messed up because they used to kill whole Kurdish villages with gas attacks.
Ukraine however is a developed, European country that for centuries (or at least century) has been struggling for freedom and democracy, and you don't think that's worth fighting for? Sad.
As for Crimea, first of all that is an entirely different case than Donbas. Crimea was for a long time Russia (not USSR but actual Russia) and was given under Ukrainian administration as a gift in times were people thought USSR is everlasting. The vast majority was Russian and the Russian invasion was conducted in such quick fashion that there were almost no losses on either side. While in my opinion still is a rogue action, to just change borders just like that - that could be somehow rationalized and justified. Even so, Tatar population which is the native population of Crimea now faces great repercussions under Russian rule, with political leaders being imprisoned and their parliament disbanded. What you see in Donbas however is a long lasting conflict that has taken over 10,000 lives and costed tens of billions of dollars in losses. People has to actually take your advice, fleeing the region, leaving their homes, possessions, often members of family that weren't able to come, now living in refuge camps like the ones we have in Poland. But sure, next time I meet a Ukrainian I'll tell them to just stop fighting and accept Russian rule.

@Nescio- I know it wasn't directed at me but I think a unified european army could be more effective than NATO. As long as the European army doesn't allow for individual nations to perform unilateral operations or refuse to defend a member state (two things that make NATO less effective) then I can see this being a more effective system. The problem is that larger military powers (UK, France, Germany) will not be fond of not having complete unilateral control of their forces. As a cadet I study unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. If the units in a Unified European army were mixed nationality than the removal of one nations forces from a unit in preparation of war will seriously affect the units ability to wage war and provide solid defense; Imagine if a unit is 25% German soldiers and 75% Balkan soldiers, Germany decides that it doesn't have interest in supporting a peace keeping operation in Turkey (Germany and Turkey are known for sour relationships) so all German forces pull out of the unified army, now that unit is 25%+ less effective. If the officer of that unit was German than it is now even less effective. Considering that a units strength comes from its camaraderie which is built through training having soldiers removed and replaced based on a political decision and not a military one will only cause issues for the unification process.

Before someone suggests that the units could be unilateral under a multinational command I will tackle that beast too. We will use the same situation as before but with a full German brigade. The entire brigade is removed from use, well now military planning that took months to formulate is jeopardized because when military leaders plan attacks they plan with the bare minimum of the entire available force. So if the German brigades of which I believe Germany currently has 3, all pull out and refuse to fight then the unified forces will have to replan and that could take weeks wasting time and resources to re-position other forces to take the germans place.

Imagine you have a stale-mate line in diplomacy. You are France in the WT. Germany decides he no longer wants to fight the war and just starts submitting holds. The stalemate line falls apart and all of your planning is thrown awa, now you and england have to figure out either a new stalemate line a new action plan or fall apart.

see what civilians don't understand is that way more than arming a few guys in camo and sending them on an objective is required to wage war. It takes careful planning, deliberate training, and the complete autonomy of the leadership to be successful.

@Stephanie's more recent post:
Yeah, because if history of Nazi Germany taught us anything is that giving up soil will solve everything. Because after Hitler said they need to take Austria, and Sudetenland, and Bohemia and Moravia altogether, that's when he just said "alright guys, that's enough, I've got the soil I needed and now I and this war nonsense"

@steephie- I have no words except just pure bewilderment taht you actually think that what you are saying is realistic. There will NEVER be a world where someone isnt trying to kill someone else and there will never be a world where war stops. It is human nature, people fight and argue and some people can do it with words but others do it with violence. For example if I were the violent type I would suggest that this argument end by me killing you, your family, and everyone who ever supported you. Rather I am going to use the power of language to reduce your petty ideas and deeply flawed arguments to nothing more than whispers of misplaced hope in a bustling terminal of reality. Simply put, you are the reason why Hitler, Putin and any other tyrant makes it far enough to commit atrocities because you believe in the appeasement. You are the type of person who believed Germany would stop killing civilians once they took full power.... people like you were wrong, and directly contributed to the killing of 6 million jews and millions of other civilians...... you need to open your eyes to the world and realize that if not for national defense a skilled orator can convince people to kill for god, money, women, morality, family values, fuck it given the right circumstances someone can be convinced to kill because the stars are aligned. That's why cults exist and that's why what you suggest is a slippery slope to a global catastrophe where millions of people die.

@CB, the problem with giving up sovereignty in terms of military is very analogous to giving up sovereignty in diplomacy. Each country in Europe wants to maintain their own diplomacy, and yet every now and then you see more and more power shifting to the Unions side. I don't know about the other part - you find similar situations everywhere in the world where a country is big enough to have people from different cultures mixed together - Russia, China. Damn, I could imagine even in USA in II WW people from states like Texas must've been much more enthusiastic (or less unwilling) than people from the Dakotas. France already experimented with légion étrangère, which of course is an extreme example but they made it work.

@yassem- That was my point in my argument. It is extremely unlikely that any nation would surrender their sovereignty over their forces in favor of increased defense. But realistically IF they did it would be very effective.

But it already is happening in so many other aspects, right now we see a new initiative to give up energetic sovereignty, especially in terms of gas (e.g. uranium is already bought on the "federal" level).
The unified army project would take decades to implement, and by then Europe will have become probably even more federalist.

@yassem: I'm saying the system we have in the Netherlands works well for the Netherlands (just like a dictatorship would work well in a sense. Corrupt dictators would be removed from power anyway), but I see how it might not work too well in Russia. Dictatorship is many things, some of them bad. It's also efficient. Russia needed radical change, it still does.
Fighting against an invader so much stronger doesn't save your democracy though, it just increases the death count. I'm against just increasing the death count. There's only a few times when a battle can actually make a difference. Those are the times when you may fight, IMO.

So USA is in the clear because their drones tend to blow up people outside of Europe?

Democracy is fine, but I don't believe in the kind of democracy that protects freedom of speech by removing glorified hate speakers from the surface of the earth, even if my continent happens to be exempted from said policy. Because quite frankly, I don't care where people die.

How is that not tyranny?

yassem, you're mistaken. European nations frequently give up their sovereignty in diplomacy, as do many others. Smaller nations sometimes share embassies, or ask others to represent them, sometimes temporarily, sometimes structually. This is not new, and certainly does not only apply to small states such as Luxembourg.
The USA in Iran is represented by the embassy of Switzerland in Tehran, and in the most recent Crimea crisis, Obama outsourced the USA's diplomacy to Merkel.
Diplomacy is flexible; souvereignty in military matters is something completely different.

As for your Hitler analogy: if the Germans weren't so willing to go to war in defence of their national ideas and interests, there wouldn't have been a WWII, or WWI for that matter.

CommanderByron, don't confuse size with effectivity.

Unit cohesion is important; mixed units are often quite effective. Nationality doesn't have to be important, a clear command structure is.

@yassem- military and defense is much different than energy or other economic examples. Military is a nations sovereign defense and putting the defense of your people in another nations hands is not usually accepted. People are naturally paranoid and so they plan for the worst, lets say you are a English citizen "What if one day we have to fight in the Falklands? we no longer have the ability to do it ourselves." people panic and then the politicians follow. because in a democracy the people elect the officials.

In what way what you're saying is in opposition or even relevance to what I said? Every nation in Europe has its own ministry of foreign affairs and have individual relations with countries around the world. Often those relations are very different, for example Italians have quite warm relations with Russia while the Baltic states don't. Poland is US bitch that goes everywhere she is told, while France isn't (that much). Nevertheless, there is also unified, European diplomacy represented for example by Federica Mogherini (High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs), which is currently gaining more and more importance and often plays bigger role than individual countries. For example new sanctions, both diplomatic and economic where imposed despite reluctance of many countries. Nevertheless, they had to obey, not only economically but also by for example not inviting Putin anywhere (a deal that was actually broken by Hungarian prime minister - he is a weird guy)

^@ Nescio

yassem, to your "giving up sovereignty in terms of military is very analogous to giving up sovereignty in diplomacy" remark earlier, which is not true.

@CB, English is a bad example for the reasons we discussed above : )
But yes, let's say France want's to protect Guyana. Well, it isn't putting France's defense in the hands of other countries, it's putting it in hands of Europe, which France is a part of. It's like asking why should New York give up it's defense to USA. Sure, now it's just natural, but I imagine in few decades it will be just as natural in Europe.

@Nescio- I am aware of mixed units currently I am not arguing against mixed units, I am arguing that a nations sovereignty would get in the way of unit cohesion. You can not have strong unit cohesion if half your unit is politically removed by their home nation. For example mixed units in today's world are effective because they train together for several months before hand, and when 1 nation removes their forces from the unit the unit is put on stand-by until it retrains back to 100% efficiency. Now imagine mixed units where 1 nation could pull out 3 brigades worth of forces and the units effected were put on stand-by until they could retrain. Mixed units are very effective because they get to train together but luckily because unilateral units of equal caliber exist when a multinational task force is disbanded the single nation force can take its place.

@CommanderByron:
So your point is that because people don't follow my philosophy they go to war and because they go to war they don't follow my philosophy?

I concur.

No, I'm not the kind of person that would think Nazi-Germany could be appeased. I'm the kind of person that sees that Nazi-Germany's manpower didn't come from evil, it were good people, willing to go to war. Good people should be less willing to go to war. Pick your battles, make sure you only fight the ones that are definitely going to have positive results. Don't fight for a bit of soil you can't defend anyway, for starters.

Going to war shouldn't be the standard. It should be a careful consideration, even if war has been declared on your nation. In the case of the Nazi's, definitely fight back. In case of Russia, arguments can be made for both sides.

And more importantly, it's futile.

@Stephanie, I think that history of the 6 years before 1939 taught us that Hitler was able to conquer Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and half of France because some people followed your philosophy.

@yassem- I can see that point and I am not arguing that its impossible but it is unlikely. very very very unlikely. If it were common there would be more than the US example of it. Personally I support a 1 world government and think that initiatives like this are steps in that direction but I like looking at thing objectively and finding the worse case scenario. It very well may just be my training that makes me plan for the worst but that is how I operate. If europe comes together and forms a unified military force that will be a huge step toward global unification. but in the meantime I am going to argue how unlikely it is and that any provision that allows for unilateral action or other sovereignty is simply going to undermine the efficiency of the system.

This thread is entirely tl;dr, but I'll respond to the question posed to me:

@Nescio: the concept of sovereignty as an exclusive right belonging to certain entities dates back "only" to the treaty of Westphalia. Arguably, it only actually started to come into force with the Congress of Vienna, but that's a matter of opinion. Why is it so vague? Because the *very notion* of sovereignty is vague. Is ISIS a sovereign nation? Why? Why not?

When it boils down to it, we're just warm bodies on a blue marble that organise in some way or not. Whether those organisations are 'sovereign' or not is entirely moot.

@CB, I am not arguing it will be easy! As for examples: why should Quebec trust guys from Ontario to defend them? Why should folks from Wales trust the British forces? I don't know, why Greenland should trust Denmark? There are much more examples around the world, of course every example is a little different. My point being - such things happened.

@yassem: No. You are evidently not understanding my philosophy. It's not a philosophy of appeasement, it's a philosophy of picking your battles. Nazi-Germany is a battle that would definitely need to be picked.

Nazi-Germany did not just happen because of Hitler and improper handling by neighbouring countries though. It also happened because so many Germans followed blindly, for the glory of their nation or whatever. This blind following, this blind believing your country is the good one, this must be ended if we are to prevent WWIII.

It's a complicated issue and you are still trying to trivialize any comment I make on it.

I guess I'm done with this discussion, anyway.

@TheMinisterOfWar
TL is the best type of DR!
As for the sovereignty wasn't the Peace of Westphalia in some way a reflection of sovereignty issues that were boiling in HRE long before that?

@Stephanie, it seems a lot like your philosophy has changed a lot since the beginning of this thread, because this isn't the philosophy you presented then : )
If the League of Nation, or at least France, UK or anyone else intervened when Anschluss happened we could've possibly averted IIWW - just saying.