EU And US: A Relationship Of Concern

From the desk of George Handlery on Sun, 2015-05-31 20:27

Much to their detriment, Americans like to ignore the world. Accordingly, they do not appreciate reminders that, like it or not, the rest of the world is out there. Worse, some of its “leading leaders” have rabies and “bite”. Aware of the provocation, Duly Noted has often indulged in its own version of “globalism”. In doing so, the European Union had received much attention.

If by your unearned luck you are an American reader, you wonder why the EU should be of concern to you. The evolvement of the Union will determine the quality of that entity and thereby its worth as a major ally. A federation might emerge that will, in a future crisis, be “neutral against the USA”. If some of this is true, the way Europe’s content will develop is of geopolitical significance.

Be reminded that Europe is a major world player. However, by its choice, it punches well under its weight class. With 500 million inhabitants and members rated as leading economies and with three of them listed among the great powers –England, France and Germany- Europe matters. It also counts as it had generated the forces that made the modern world. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, modern science, from rocketry to cybernetics is, besides some key components of democracy, Europe’s contribution to the present. At the same time, two world wars and some of destructive systems of mass murder - Fascism, National Socialism and Communism- are also European products.

Viewed globally, Europe’s achievements - rounded out by the contribution of her overseas extensions- have made it a culture of reference. However, the caveats of that evaluation counsel to caution.

By the 20th century, the highs achieved in the arts, science, medicine, economics, have been unmatched by the Continent’s political performance. Staging the world wars expresses that. Europe’s efforts to protect past achievements and to project these into the future have been less than satisfactory. This holds especially true in the post WW2 period when the independence of Western Europe had to be maintained –even after the post-war recovery- by an extra-European power.

Europe’s weakness is caused by an amalgam. Its components are failing vision, misjudged threats, unfounded assumptions about security, and an unwillingness to sacrifice to protect values declared non-negotiable.

An adjunct is to be added. Politicians are inclined to underrate threats, so they promise to voters that should know better that there are no enemies, and that the proclaimed intentions of these are not meant seriously. The notion of “security for free” is a drug. Its lulling consumption is difficult to cut when illusions dissipate and resistance is called for.

Disturbing trends emerge once the Union’s development is examined. To begin: the analogy of the United States of America and the United States of Europe is misleading. America’s union project –even if there might have been an emerging Southern nation- has not encountered functioning, historical and conscious national entities. The Civil War has determined that America would not continue to develop as a confederation. Given “federalism’s” practice, the components of an expanding USA could live with that result.

East or West, Europe is peacefully and consensually not unifiable the way “United” in “United States” suggests. To create a unitary state here, one needs to weld together what does not wish to fit together. Europe’s states are not administrative conveniences but the products of diverging traditions and languages. Since Europe is an entity without a matching people, any plan to unite it administratively while also upholding liberty and identities, implies a commitment to contradictory concepts. This testifies to ignorance, to the pursuit of a hidden agenda –or both.

The foregoing should not be taken to indicate that some sort of a European Union must be a threat to the collective personality of its member nations. Decisive is the nature of the federation that can be had, while the values of democracy and the goal of prosperity are preserved.

Therefore, the question is what kind of a union is achievable that does not make the resulting entity into a “jailhouse of nations” as was the Russian Empire, the empire of the Habsburgs, Hitler’s Reich and Stalin’s uncompleted project.

By such standards, disturbing problems emerge. The original concept of an EU had been to guarantee the independence of sovereign states that were committed to defend shared values. These were “democracy”, limited self-government to cultivate localism, and a free market. The collective pursuit of shared objectives assumed freely extended cooperation among like-minded states. This is the juncture where the original principle departs from contemporary practice.

Operating a federation demands patience and the modesty of its managers. Europe’s tradition of centralism, enhanced by the natural craving for power, has resulted in a construction that defies its original purpose.

As the tasks of the EU grew, their implementation was assigned to bureaucratic agencies. As these duties widened the administrators saw their power expand. Bureaucracies upgrade their importance by extending their sway and by usurping power that is reserved for legislatives. In the case of the supranational Eurocrats, this grab has been facilitated because there is no European people and so, there can be no controlling national government. The supervising Commissioners are themselves bureaucratic creatures whose loyalty is more to administrative organs than to a non-existing people. The result is turf extension –and to create jobs for the like minded. The result is a system that is not governed by a responsible cabinet-like institution but by an interlocking system of regulations and officials.

Eurocracy is involved in a discernible campaign. Stealthily it seeks to expand its power to become a supranational equivalent of a national government. Lenin and Stalin wished to have totalitarian power to create the New Socialist Man that, as they had to admit, history failed to create. The faceless in charge of EU institutions wish to use their might to create the yet missing people to match the structure they operate.

That project finds that national identity and its institutions block the way to unity. This redefines independences as a hindrance and not a status to be preserved.

The creeping expansion makes the EU increasingly authoritarian. For that reason, the union has accepted underdeveloped states that were unqualified for membership. Being unripe, such countries incline to submit to tutelage in exchange for funding that feeds, if not the people, then the elites. An adjunct to admission against the statutes is the negative view of those that dare to refuse membership. Peripheral Norway gives money to buy its independence. Eight million Swiss send a billion to Brussels, ostensibly, to finance the upgrading of the underdeveloped members of a federation of which it is not a member. A steep price paid to be left alone, you might say. (Switzerland is a non-member because its system of direct democracy let her people to vote down the project to join.) Even so, the pressure on the recalcitrant is considerable. Conforming in some areas –border controls and immigration- to EU norms is not a question of persuasion but of pressure. In disputes regarding cooperation, the EU even demands that EU courts adjudicate the case. At the same time, members that show signs of wanting to “take their country back”, are exposed to serious threats. In case that a British exit materializes, London will face threats it has not seen since Hitler.

We are left with the impression that liberty in the EU is reduced to the right to agree with its central organs. This makes the personnel that run Europe into left-of-center collectivists. Binding more tightly than the inclination of the parts of an artificial construction allows, absorbs much energy. Shoring up the internal power base leaves little energy to counter outside threats -IS, Iran, Putin’s Russia.

Consequently, if the EU’s current course continues, its value as a member of the Atlantic Alliance will not improve. The implications of that are easily guessed.

to KO

Submitted by Ivan Daraktchiev on Wed, 2016-03-23 21:26.

Thanks! I'd be very interested in reading that book: will look it up shortly. The key question is what is their definition of direct democracy; I've seen quite some variations in different people's minds. In earlier periods of my life I have considered Switzerland a direct democracy, until I went to live and work there for a while, and realized it is actually a hybrid one. I believe it was around that time that I've realized the very existence of professional politics was the source of all evil, and that it must be outrooted, in order to restore true democracy. So, I wonder what these guys have to say on that.

You've touched upon a very key word here, "experts". Yes, experts should run the administration, period. But you have (involuntary) betrayed the manipulation we all have been subjected to, some half a century at least: why do they insist that experts should make the laws, and that's that (i.e. the executive - and other lucrative - positions are reserved for the politicians). I may agree that experts should write the laws yet this is secondary. (However, I do question the need to write endlessly new laws, if we assume we have a sound Constitution and a good set of laws at the start of governing: see, already here I claim that the fact that every new Parliament maintains they need to permanently write - and accordingly churns out - new laws, proves self-interest.) The primary is that expert managers should run the Administration, and we know politicians become only the least capable, least knowledgeable, least experienced, low-integrity, easily-corruption-prone individuals. See, as a retired corporate executive I can tell you that any company, even the mightiest and one-time-most-successful one of them, is brought down by one mechanism only: the advent within its organization of “political animals” who run things for climbing the ladder, not for the Company interest.

We are witnessing the collapse of the worst affected companies (states). The reasons are outlined above, primarily: no leadership (qualified managers). Since long ago, but mostly since last summer, the agony and the fear and the helplessness characterize our “managers” in real time, despite the effort by MSM to put some make up. Yesterday marked what I have called “the spring offensive” by IS, in a paper published at the turn of the year, https://www.academia.edu/20045616/USA_s_semi-hot_war_for_control_of_Russia_s_natural_resources_the_Syrian_episode . I was wrong only in expecting them to start first at the Eastern front (details in the paper), and only then to open the Western one. The Novorussians just reported that the ground is still too wet hence Kiev’s heavy armor would be inefficient – that explains it all. One way or another, soon more of the Western “leaders” will have to explain to the public why they waste forever taxpayers money for 1) concealing the truth, and 2) importing hostile warriors against their nation’s will. Unfortunately, we will all be stuck with the war for quite some time…

to Ivan Daraktchiev

Submitted by KO on Tue, 2016-03-01 19:44.

Thanks for your reply and reference. Sorry to be so long in responding but I rarely visit this site any more because of the slow traffic.

Our regulatory state seems to be really a reversion to hereditary monarchy, under which the bureaucrats rule a population that has no recourse to the ballot -- the permanent bureaucrats remain in power.

I will visit your site now. Thanks again.

I've looked at your article Nomenklatura. Outstanding! You might like a book by friends of mine, Neopopulism as Counterculture. (Available on Amazon.com.) One of the authors is a philosopher of science. He isolates bureaucratic rationalism as a tradition that has no greater access to universal standards of verification than the people's own traditions of common sense, common language, and religious belief. Thus the people must retrieve political power and rule their governors in accordance with their own traditions. The authors (Kaardal and Dahlberg) advocate direct democracy as superior to "rule by expert" as embodied in representative democracy, in which experts are elected to make laws and make decisions that the people are theoretically not equipped to make.

Sometimes a banana us just a banana

Submitted by SteveSmith on Tue, 2016-01-26 03:20.

Americans have no control over their foreign policy, it's been hijacked by Socialist Jews, the Fannie Mae FreddyMac sub -prime collapse was the coup DE grace, the EU was a just a temp fiat fix, the EU unknowingly financed our sub-prime invasion and the very same sub-prime looters were behind Abengoa.

We didn't prosecute, we promoted the crooks to the US State Dept.

The global shitstorm is all a respose to the US sub- prime collapse and ideological contagion of the money losing business model of sub-prime debt combined with invasion.

The west is being subjected to USSR 101, the west's leaders never got the memo it* was a joke.

* Socialism is tool for looting property and control.

Or maybe they got the memo and are going for the loot.

@ KO

Submitted by Ivan Daraktchiev on Thu, 2016-01-07 18:13.

Last three sentences of your comment fall in line with my doctrine of Nomenklaturocracy, as described in several articles at https://independent.academia.edu/IvanDaraktchiev; however, you put it much nicer, elegant and brief.

As far as your second sentence-question, my personal feeling is that you would get (at least part of) the answer if you (i) read the articles on Ukraine and Russia in the abovementioned site, and (ii) visit the comment exchanges on the article "Web of soothing lies" at TBJ about a year ago.

Where is everybody?

Submitted by SteveP55419 on Wed, 2015-08-26 21:03.

It's been quite a while since a new post. I was wondering.

EU and US: A Relationship Of Concern

Submitted by panamboy on Mon, 2015-08-24 03:50.

I think we all need to take breath and focus on self introspect.

We all wear clothes some are different in stle and colors.

Stop the better than thee scat.

EU

Submitted by KO on Fri, 2015-07-24 20:05.

Thanks for posting, sir. What has happend to this website? Was it the reformatting?

We naturally like to see our ideals and values embraced by others. As an American, it kills me that the EU is so anti-democratic, refusing to take no for an answer when voters reject it and presuming to govern every detail of local life.

It's as bad as our unaccountable regulatory state, operated for the benefit of those who can pay for revolving doors and to write legislation.