O Canada

I did a quick follow up on the crowd favorite Canadian style welfare state, or at least on the health care aspect. To answer Professor Egan's question, the healthcare system in Canada is funded at both the provincial and federal level through corporate and individual taxes like in the US. Basically the federal government hands over funds to the individual provinces, who are then responsible for the allocation as well as administration of the system. This was just a quick follow up, there is definitely a lot more to the overall system itself.

EU Approach to Fighting Terrorism

Leslie Lebl writes that the EU takes a different strategic approach to fighting terrorism than the U.S. does. When it comes to the question of “is this a fight to be conducted primarily at home, or carried abroad to the enemy?” the EU goes for the former option. Lebl asks if the EU view will grow closer to the U.S. view given its new borders.

Do you guys foresee either side revising its position? I think the U.S. is unlikely to change its tactics, but it’s harder for me to guess what will happen in the EU. As we discussed in class, Europe’s longer history of home-grown terrorists contributes to its domestic approach. But the threat of Islamic extremism would seem to demand a different approach.

If anything, I would guess the EU will increasingly work with third countries to form agreements on important issues. It has already created policies to deal with asylum seekers that seek to place a greater burden on the countries through which those people traveled to get to the EU. In the future, it could expand the scope of its counterterrorism efforts by attempting to create consequences for states that do not actively pursue terrorists.

Duplication/Changing Purposes of Organizations

During our class discussion of competing institutional architectures, I thought about Antonio Missiroli’s assertion that “The EU and the NATO that the central European applicants have recently entered are very different organisations from those they set out to join a decade ago.” It seems like a good observation. By the time these states got their membership cards, important aspects of both organizations had changed.

Missiroli says the EU has “acquired a more ambitious foreign and security policy” and moved towards “becoming a single-currency area.” He says NATO is “assuming a more global role” and the EU and NATO are essentially building the same capabilities in the same areas. Professor Egan also talked about how NATO has become a political entity.

Do you guys think this is an accurate analysis? In the case of the EU, I think one could argue that Central and Eastern European states have had the opportunity to chart the course of European integration. Common Foreign and Security Policy has been around for a while, and European Security and Defense Policy was a topic of debate several years before enlargement. Any thoughts?