Cleverness in Brussels: The Fall of the European Union?
T. S. Weidler, in "How to Make Sense of the European Union Disaster" (Nov. 30th 2011 American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/how_to_make_sense_of_the_european_union_disaster.html ).
argues that the essentially-artificial nature of the European Union will lead to a disastrous breakup, possibly including a European war.
Everything you need to know to understand the European Union can be discovered by simply glancing at the location of its headquarters. Brussels is in Belgium, which is not a real country, does not have a government, and does not have any money.
Belgium has not had a government for a year and half, yet the capital city (to the degree that a country without a government can have a capital) is host to one of the largest government organizations in the world. The ironies and paradoxes of the EU are clearly seen in the microcosm of Belgium.
This is of course quite true. On the other hand, if this was all that was wrong with the EU, it might still work out: consider the fact that the District of Columbia, the location of the American capital of Washington, was carved out of a swamp on unsettled land relinquished by the States and that inhabitants of the federal city were not allowed self-government until the late 20th century -- and promptly botched the job, as shown by the record of Mayor Marion Barry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry
convicted felon and incredibly successful politician. Yet one could hardly argue that the United States of America was unsuccessful.
Certainly the European Union is having problems.
Germany would rather not bail out Greece and Italy, and Greece and Italy would rather not be swallowed up by the European leviathan. Doesn't matter -- they have to do it anyway because Europe is all roped together now.
This is analogous to what happened in the early United States when the Federal Government faced the problem of assumption of Revolutionary War debt from the States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790
This problem American surmounted, thanks to our first President, George Washington, and our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
However, the European Union has one serious problem which America never faced, not even under the old Confederation of the United States of America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(1776%E2%80%931789)#Articles_of_Confederation
which established a much weaker government than the Constitution of 1787, our present Republic.
Namely, Europe has absolutely no sense of national unity, no institutions capable of winning national loyalty, no organizations capable of enforcing national unity, and not even any sense that the European Union SHOULD establish a sentiment of national unity. And Europe has a long history of exceedingly-violent disunity. As Weidler puts it
The EU is not a real country. It is a collection of independent states that have no national interest in joining forces, and substantial reasons not to. It does not have a functional government, but it does have just enough of a government to make everyone's life worse, and to run up enormous deficits. Like Belgium, it has no national defense to speak of and numerous factions that are hostile to one another.
All historical evidence suggests that Europe is a fragmented and dangerous place, with constant wars covering its entire history. ...
The basic problem here is that the European Union was established by clever self-proclaimed pragmatists, who, noticing in the late 20th century that Europe had become militarily weak and dependent upon the armed might of the United States of America for her survival, cleverly rationalized away the flaws in the European position by decreeing that the age of military might was over and the age of "economic might" (a contradiction in terms, since "wealth" is not the same thing as "power," though wealth may help buy power) had begun. They cleverly termed this "soft power" and proclaimed the European Union in 1993 based entirely on economic and other regulatory agreements, without either popular election of the EU government or the establishment of an EU military. They declared themselves a "new superpower."
The European Union promptly failed in its first crisis, the Yugoslav Civil War. An organization including the military might of Britain, France and Germany could not impose its will on a disunited country or prevent ethnic militias from engaging in mass murder, for the simple reason that this organization had neither the authority to call troops to the field nor the popular support to keep those troops in the field against armed opposition. Instead, the United States of America had to win the war for the EU, and we did so with a humiliatingly-tiny military response -- the Serbs caved in at the first few serious bombardments. This demonstrated to everyone that the European Union was a military null: absent loyal armed forces, the European Union was no Power at all.
This did not deter the clever men and women of the European Union, who cleverly rationalized this as an expression of their cleverly subtle "soft power." They learned and forgot nothing, and so came the next major crisis.
The Greeks have for a long time outspent their resources: in relationship to their resources far more so than even the United States of America. Now, they are going bankrupt. They begged Germany for help: the Germans offered to lend them money but demanded austerity measures so that the Greeks might avoid bankruptcy even with the loans.
Elements of the Greek populace have rioted, and the Greek government has been incapable or unwilling to put down the rioters, and thus is forced to at least appear to appease them. Thus, the Greeks cannot impose the austerity measures.
This would be purely a Greek problem, except for the way in which the European Union has coupled together the monetary and other economic policies of its members. If the Greeks devalue their currency, they will be devaluing the European currency in general; if the Greek economy collapses, Greek refugees will soon flood the rest of Europe (because under the EU treaty it is illegal for members to close their borders).
A real Power, of course, would command the austerity measures and dispatch troops to put down the rioters, if such action was necessary. But here the very clever people who run the EU are running against the limits of their "soft power." They can't persuade the Greek government to cooperate, because the Greek rioters trump persuasion with naked aggressive force. They can't call the Greek government's bluff, becaus a Greek collapse will damage the rest of Europe, possibly sending other weak-economy dominoes, such as Spain, into sympathetic collapses. And they can't dispatch the troops because they have no troops, and certainly none which would fight for an EU which their peoples have not elected against a Greece whose people feel fierce national loyalty.
Will the European Union fall? It's difficult to say, because an eleventh-hour reform -- the equivalent of our 1787 Constitutional Convention -- might save Europe's bacon. However, I doubt it.
The American Founding Fathers, while idealists, were also realists in the most meaningful sense. They understood the differences between wealth, influence, and power. They had actually fought for American independence, and knew that clever rationalization is meaningless in the face of military might. And above all, they led a nation which -- while not unified in the modern American sense, did not have a long history of internecine warfare and which felt a certain sense of national identity, at least opposed to the rest of the world -- and one which (in the new Constitution) directly elected people to the national government.
The European Union, by contrast, is a wholly artificial creation, the toy of unelected bureaucrats, torn by multiple secession movements. This is not the way I thought the EU would fall -- I thought it would perish under military attack as most of its members hastened to blame the victim-state for its own misfortunes and appease the aggressors -- but it is a way the EU may fall. And will fall, unless at least one brilliant and charismatic statesman appears to save the day.
I see no Jefferson, no Madison, no Washington. And I see little future for the European Union.
What do you think?
argues that the essentially-artificial nature of the European Union will lead to a disastrous breakup, possibly including a European war.
Everything you need to know to understand the European Union can be discovered by simply glancing at the location of its headquarters. Brussels is in Belgium, which is not a real country, does not have a government, and does not have any money.
Belgium has not had a government for a year and half, yet the capital city (to the degree that a country without a government can have a capital) is host to one of the largest government organizations in the world. The ironies and paradoxes of the EU are clearly seen in the microcosm of Belgium.
This is of course quite true. On the other hand, if this was all that was wrong with the EU, it might still work out: consider the fact that the District of Columbia, the location of the American capital of Washington, was carved out of a swamp on unsettled land relinquished by the States and that inhabitants of the federal city were not allowed self-government until the late 20th century -- and promptly botched the job, as shown by the record of Mayor Marion Barry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry
convicted felon and incredibly successful politician. Yet one could hardly argue that the United States of America was unsuccessful.
Certainly the European Union is having problems.
Germany would rather not bail out Greece and Italy, and Greece and Italy would rather not be swallowed up by the European leviathan. Doesn't matter -- they have to do it anyway because Europe is all roped together now.
This is analogous to what happened in the early United States when the Federal Government faced the problem of assumption of Revolutionary War debt from the States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790
This problem American surmounted, thanks to our first President, George Washington, and our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
However, the European Union has one serious problem which America never faced, not even under the old Confederation of the United States of America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(1776%E2%80%931789)#Articles_of_Confederation
which established a much weaker government than the Constitution of 1787, our present Republic.
Namely, Europe has absolutely no sense of national unity, no institutions capable of winning national loyalty, no organizations capable of enforcing national unity, and not even any sense that the European Union SHOULD establish a sentiment of national unity. And Europe has a long history of exceedingly-violent disunity. As Weidler puts it
The EU is not a real country. It is a collection of independent states that have no national interest in joining forces, and substantial reasons not to. It does not have a functional government, but it does have just enough of a government to make everyone's life worse, and to run up enormous deficits. Like Belgium, it has no national defense to speak of and numerous factions that are hostile to one another.
All historical evidence suggests that Europe is a fragmented and dangerous place, with constant wars covering its entire history. ...
The basic problem here is that the European Union was established by clever self-proclaimed pragmatists, who, noticing in the late 20th century that Europe had become militarily weak and dependent upon the armed might of the United States of America for her survival, cleverly rationalized away the flaws in the European position by decreeing that the age of military might was over and the age of "economic might" (a contradiction in terms, since "wealth" is not the same thing as "power," though wealth may help buy power) had begun. They cleverly termed this "soft power" and proclaimed the European Union in 1993 based entirely on economic and other regulatory agreements, without either popular election of the EU government or the establishment of an EU military. They declared themselves a "new superpower."
The European Union promptly failed in its first crisis, the Yugoslav Civil War. An organization including the military might of Britain, France and Germany could not impose its will on a disunited country or prevent ethnic militias from engaging in mass murder, for the simple reason that this organization had neither the authority to call troops to the field nor the popular support to keep those troops in the field against armed opposition. Instead, the United States of America had to win the war for the EU, and we did so with a humiliatingly-tiny military response -- the Serbs caved in at the first few serious bombardments. This demonstrated to everyone that the European Union was a military null: absent loyal armed forces, the European Union was no Power at all.
This did not deter the clever men and women of the European Union, who cleverly rationalized this as an expression of their cleverly subtle "soft power." They learned and forgot nothing, and so came the next major crisis.
The Greeks have for a long time outspent their resources: in relationship to their resources far more so than even the United States of America. Now, they are going bankrupt. They begged Germany for help: the Germans offered to lend them money but demanded austerity measures so that the Greeks might avoid bankruptcy even with the loans.
Elements of the Greek populace have rioted, and the Greek government has been incapable or unwilling to put down the rioters, and thus is forced to at least appear to appease them. Thus, the Greeks cannot impose the austerity measures.
This would be purely a Greek problem, except for the way in which the European Union has coupled together the monetary and other economic policies of its members. If the Greeks devalue their currency, they will be devaluing the European currency in general; if the Greek economy collapses, Greek refugees will soon flood the rest of Europe (because under the EU treaty it is illegal for members to close their borders).
A real Power, of course, would command the austerity measures and dispatch troops to put down the rioters, if such action was necessary. But here the very clever people who run the EU are running against the limits of their "soft power." They can't persuade the Greek government to cooperate, because the Greek rioters trump persuasion with naked aggressive force. They can't call the Greek government's bluff, becaus a Greek collapse will damage the rest of Europe, possibly sending other weak-economy dominoes, such as Spain, into sympathetic collapses. And they can't dispatch the troops because they have no troops, and certainly none which would fight for an EU which their peoples have not elected against a Greece whose people feel fierce national loyalty.
Will the European Union fall? It's difficult to say, because an eleventh-hour reform -- the equivalent of our 1787 Constitutional Convention -- might save Europe's bacon. However, I doubt it.
The American Founding Fathers, while idealists, were also realists in the most meaningful sense. They understood the differences between wealth, influence, and power. They had actually fought for American independence, and knew that clever rationalization is meaningless in the face of military might. And above all, they led a nation which -- while not unified in the modern American sense, did not have a long history of internecine warfare and which felt a certain sense of national identity, at least opposed to the rest of the world -- and one which (in the new Constitution) directly elected people to the national government.
The European Union, by contrast, is a wholly artificial creation, the toy of unelected bureaucrats, torn by multiple secession movements. This is not the way I thought the EU would fall -- I thought it would perish under military attack as most of its members hastened to blame the victim-state for its own misfortunes and appease the aggressors -- but it is a way the EU may fall. And will fall, unless at least one brilliant and charismatic statesman appears to save the day.
I see no Jefferson, no Madison, no Washington. And I see little future for the European Union.
What do you think?