Word: europeanizer
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Originally, that purpose was to preserve the peace by placing Germany firmly within a wider European structure to eliminate the risk of what might be termed German recidivism. That objective has been fully achieved. Since then, the further political purpose arose of helping the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, newly emancipated from the Soviet empire, to make the transition to freedom, capitalism and security by embedding them in that same European structure. That, too, has been largely achieved - with their security further buttressed by membership of NATO...
...there is another, quite different view of what the E.U. is about politically - and it is this alone that explains the present treaty. In a recently published essay, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote: "In Europe the nation-state is in the process of being diminished. The European Union is supposed to replace it, but the reality is that Europe is in transition between a past that it has rejected and a future which it has not yet reached...
...boys and girls who casually pick fights, have sex and keep the emergency services fully occupied are often fueled by cheap booze. British youngsters drink their Continental European counterparts under the table: in 2003, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), 27% of British 15-year-olds had been drunk 20 times or more, compared to 12% of young Germans, 6% of Netherlands youth and only 3% of young French. British kids were also involved more frequently in fights (44% in the U.K. to 28% in Germany). They are more likely to try drugs or start smoking young...
...Bucharest, the U.S., Canada and others have called on a handful of European countries to increase their troop and equipment contributions to the Afghan war. Speaking to European leaders in Germany last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that NATO "must not - cannot - become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not." But according to commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, that two-tiered alliance is already here. While French President Nicolas Sarkozy is widely expected to announce at the summit that he is sending another 1,000 French troops...
...Shadow of the Past It is not as if European nations have no troops in Afghanistan. The U.K. has 7,800 there, Germany will soon have 3,500. All of the remaining alliance members have dispatched at least some troops or resources to aid in the effort. But under a system of national exceptions known as caveats, most have also stipulated that their troops not be sent to difficult areas, including the south. Within NATO, only the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark now have significant numbers of troops in the region. Because of caveats, Germans are not allowed...