Word: eu
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...argue, differs qualitatively from all other nations on earth. Built upon the three Lockean natural rights–life, liberty, and property–the 13 states became an enlightened republic, with an ever-expanding border and strong checks and balances to prevent tyranny. These days, the European Union (EU) is challenging that uniqueness with an even more ambitious expansion program...
...Europe is among the most contested in human history, but since the Soviet Union imploded, the EU has redefined their purpose. For a millennium after the fall of Rome, realpolitik ruled European polities, creating small, warring states that competed for preeminence and hegemony. Some even dreamt of empire on the continent, based on race, ideology, glory, or all of the above. They all failed. Political cartography became a popular art: Maps were redrawn endlessly following every war. Those borders were key to separating communities with particular languages, religions, and cultures...
...this new era of globalization, Europe proposes its small-states empire by choice: union based on worthy ideals, not purely military or economic power. In 1993, the EU came up with the Copenhagen Criteria, a roadmap to membership. The three criteria somewhat resemble America’s founding principles, only updated to present realities. To apply for membership, a country must have a democratic political system with protection for minorities and human rights and a functioning market economy. Further, it must accept the acquis, the collection of regulations from Brussels that aim at ever-closer monetary, economic, and political integration...
...hostility towards Iraqi Kurdistan has grown more active following last month's killings of about 40 Turks, mostly soldiers, by fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, a militant group of Turkish Kurds at war with the Turkish state (and branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU). Turkey accuses Iraqi Kurdish leaders of allowing the PKK to maintain bases in northern Iraq as part of a greater Kurdish national agenda. (Iraqi Kurds say they are helpless against a hardened guerilla group that Turkey itself has failed to defeat in over 20 years of war - Turkey rejects these...
...running the globe for centuries, Europe today faces the threat of sinking into oblivion. Through political, economic, and institutional progress, membership to the Union has brought benefits to many countries far beyond the original founders. Where totalitarianism had once consigned whole societies to poverty and underdevelopment, membership to the EU has made Spain and Poland, among others, thrive in the environment of globalization, furthering their relationships with older members like France and Germany...