The EU war ministry is NATO. That won't change even with the US effectively suspended.
Yes, the EU war ministry is NATO, but with the US effectively suspended, the policies of NATO can be changed by whoever is left in charge and we'd better do it. These matters should not be left to the likes of W and Trump.
The US is leaving the Middle East. That is irreversible, no matter if who will be in power.
The US will forever have its meddlings in the Middle East whenever another opportunity presents itself. If not the US, then Israel, which is the same thing because these two go together.
But Post-Yugoslavia has been a modest success for the EU.
The only success is that wars have not recurred in the area for a while. It would be a better success if Bosnia had been built up with all the investments that have gone into it, but the investments have vanished instead.
Most recently Slovenia, lest you cite it as another post-Yugoslavian success story, has made a rapid turn towards a Hungary-like regime under Janša. This has been possible due to the sick way EU governs its periphery - by rigid diktat over local regulations, instead of harmonising the way
external and
global business and geopolitical forces are allowed to operate in periphery, which is markedly different from the core EU3 or in the "old members" or whatever to call it.
We in the periphery get that EU regulations should be harmonised and this has been done. But why the hell is e.g. Google News and Youtube main page in the Baltics suggesting near-exclusively Russian material out of the box? Why cannot we get stuff from Amazon under the same terms as Germans get them? Are we not supposed to be a single economic area among euro-currency countries? Why are border policies imposed on us without any regard to obvious threats such as Russia under Putin or the wave of Syrian immigrants? EU has managed these issues so miserably that even in Estonia we have a Trump-style party in the government right now. Luckily the PM is not of the same party, and not a Trumpite to the least bit, but he is in dire straits.
The EU treats its periphery as
remote periphery, not as an organic shelter of its own heart. One can be the member of the euro club and swallow all the directives ahead of due date, but none of it matters when one is a "new member" at the periphery. We are like tiny little colonies to them. We are still treated as more of a stranger than Russia, more of a stranger than Turkey, more of a stranger than UK and USA. Wtf?!
Yeah, I know this will never change, because if there were some such ability, the EU would have learned from some of its egregious past mistakes such as the ones cited. My policy suggestion for my own country is to behave the way Southern Europe is doing: Say yes to everything, accept all the money, ask for even more, but do whatever is appropriate in our own particular interests and be happy with it. The feudal style of governance by EU directly requires a rebel serf style of response at the periphery. Of course this is destructive, but its EU's own destruction. EU never listened when we were absolutely right and never learned from the mistake when they were absolutely wrong, so let's not waste any more good effort in that direction.