|
|
|
Jewish World Review May 8, 2012/ 16 Iyar, 5772 Farewell to European superstate By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the space of two weeks, three European governments have fallen, sending shock waves across the Continent and calling into question the experiment that has consumed its elect for decades: the construction of a centralized, socialist superstate known as "Europe."
It may just be that the foundering of the coalition government in the Netherlands, the repudiation of Nicolas Sarkozy in France and the plunging fortunes of the two main Greek parties represent more than a rejection of austerity measures dictated by Brussels at the behest of the Germans.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, these political developments probably are not going to end the creeping, sovereignty-crushing European venture or even mark the beginning of its demise. But they just may constitute the end of the beginning of the end of Europe as a single, transnational political enterprise.
To be sure, French voters elected Socialist Francois Hollande, who favors the European Union and reflexively supports the vision of its founders that has seen it evolve from a trade pact to a community to proto-political union. Still, his electorate, like the Greeks and Dutch, wants no part of the EU's main project at the moment - fiscal discipline and budgetary austerity.
The trouble is that such rebuffs threaten to topple various financial houses of cards constructed in recent months by Germany's Angela Merkel with help from her very-much-junior partner, France's Mr. Sarkozy. They have been aimed at giving the appearance of managing the yawning economic crises confronting EU members far beyond Greece, including Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and, yes, France. But as publics across the Continent balk at taking the unpalatable medicine ordered up by Berlin and refuse to give up their unaffordable social services, short workweeks and long vacations, there seems little hope the patient will recover.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". In addition to INSPIRING stories, HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
For all these reasons, Europe may soon be in for another of the horrific cataclysms that have plagued it for nearly all of recorded history. In fact, we have become so accustomed to the tranquillity and prosperity the Continent has known for the past half-century that most of us forget that such conditions are very much the exception there rather than the rule.
It is unclear how a new round of disorder or even war might be precipitated in Europe. The mere threat of such a prospect may prompt - as it has in the past - a redoubled effort to shore up the European Unionand its faltering common currency, the euro. The forces being unleashed at the moment, however, may prove resistant to such exhortations to perpetuate what increasingly is perceived to be a punitive and anti-democratic enterprise.
Needless to say, if Europe once again descends into the vortex of economic privation, religious and/or ethnic "cleansing" and possibly strife that has happened so often there, our own tranquillity and prosperity will be jeopardized as well. We must, however, resist the temptation to try to prop up the European Union as the solution to such prospects and invest, instead, in efforts to work with national governments there to make them more responsible, accountable and disciplined - something the project known as "Europe" has not been to date and, as a practical matter, never can be.
At the very least, we cannot expect that what emerges from the wreckage of profligate spending and subordination of sovereignty that is Europe will provide the reliable partners and robust militaries that we are told will permit us safely to reduce our own capabilities and burden-share with our allies. If history is any guide, it is as likely that we will wind up fighting in Europe again - perhaps catalyzed by an ever-more-bellicose Russia once again formally led by Vladimir Putin - as that we will benefit from substantially greater help from that quarter.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.
© 2006, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. |
Arnold Ahlert | ||||||||||||||||||||
