Why You Can't Call Europe

An often made distinction in regions is this one. It is a subdivision of the world in so called culture realms. Their scale, however, is so enormous and the diversity within each of the realms so great that the very concept misleads more than it informs.

The above is not hard to understand when you realize that language and culture are related to an extent you might even say that language is one of the key defining points of a culture.

Seen from that perspective Europe becomes a lot less heterogeneous than, say, North-America.

There's also the problem of which Europe you are talking about. The European Union, or the Council of Europe or the Eurozone? Or perhaps about the European countries within NATO.

Besides this there are also the mental maps, that show a -subjective- perception of the world.
So the way people in Europe see Russia differs from country to country. The general rule is that the closer a country is to Russia, the more it perceives Russia as a threat.

And finally, we are talking about sovereign countries here people. And these sovereign countries sometimes have mutual interests, but as least as often they don't, certainly on military affairs.

The above results in three problems for me to give a single European point of view.

• A lot of times there is no single European point of view.
• I'd have to follow all European countries' foreign policy, which is impossible to do in my spare time.
• It would require me to know 23 languages, just for the EU.

So, while I can give the readers of Information Dissemination a point of view from the European side of the Atlantic Ocean and I will try to give a broader European view, it will never be the European point of view.