Europa-Evropa-Europe: Union of Multinationals or Union of Peoples?
French troops in Mali.
(Gaither Stewart in Rome) The upsurge of Islamists in the north of Mali and the French expeditionary military force in support of the Mali government has opened the Pandora box of the future of the European Union (EU), its nature, and its relationship with the USA.
The EU nations are in agreement that “Europe” needs real political clout. Now a growing number agree with France that the EU needs also its own military clout. The continental big five of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland are backing the formation of EU military units in support of the creation of an EU military headquarters. Thus far British (read U.S.) opposition to independent EU military operations to rival the U.S.-led NATO command has overridden EU military ambitions.
France is the driving force for the creation of a defense structure separate from NATO. Its creation requires unanimous consent of EU member nations. Last September, 11 of the EU’s 27 nations voted in favor of scrapping the British veto right over the union’s defense policies. The goal of France and other nations involves the creation of a European army. Other nations fear the elimination of veto rights because it would limit the sovereignty of member states.
French intervention in Mali has provided a pretext for such a structure. The EU is not just talking about whether to send troops to join the French in Mali, but what the duties of the hundreds of troops will be. Italy announced yesterday that it will send 25 specialists to train Mali troops to combat the Islamist insurgents now occupying north Mali, a territory the size of France, including the famous town of Timbuktu. The French want to join the combat as they did in Libya.
The Islamist occupation of the petroleum giant, In Amenas, on the Mali-Algerian border and the taking of hostages many of whom died in the shoot-out with Algerian Special Forces has offered a justification for the dispatch of EU military units to join French forces already in action.
At the same time, no one in the EU forgets the spreading of U.S. military forces across sub-Sahara Africa. The simultaneous EU force and the presence of the U.S. military in Africa signal renewed U.S.-European colonization of Africa. It signals also a potential clash between the U.S. military “occupation” of Africa and the nascent EU military force.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, announced that the USA would take any actions necessary to protect the population of Africa from North African terrorists, whether of not this means cooperation with “other” military operations underway “down there”. Most likely he means unless the U.S. holds the command “These are matters still to be decided,” Panetta said.
Five decades ago French people commented when an American visitor spoke of “visiting Europe”, as if it were one location: ‘Ah, vous Americains!’ they would say, ‘You think Europe is one country, one day in Brussels, the next in Paris, the next in Rome … all just Europe. But we are French.” Or: “They are Belgians.” Or: “They are Italians.” Or: “They are Germans.”
The old idea of a united Europe was re-launched just after WWII. But until recently the Europe concept has not existed firmly in the minds of contemporary Europeans. Until not long ago Europeans still felt their diverse nationalities, each proud, each nationalist. Just a generation ago, lines of excited travelers at border crossings, stamped passports, controlled visas, strict customs controls, international auto insurance and complex currency exchange were normal moments of European life.
Today things have changed radically. Suddenly, it seems. The European idea is that “Europe” is the homeland. Our heritage. Born in pain, but in any case our destiny.
However, the new-born “Europe” has not taken the direction many of the original Europeanists had in mind. Purely capitalistic-imperialistic concepts of “Europe” have been born. The Union has turned out to be a union of multinationals, not of the peoples. Therefore, not everyone is convinced. New words have been coined: Europeanist on the one hand, and Euroskeptic on the other. New law bills in any one nation are backed up by: ‘Brussels orders this.’ ‘Brussels will not approve of that.’ In these times of austerity, a favorite of European politicians to justify budget cuts and raised taxes is: “Europe demands it!”
National elections in the EU are to a great extent determined by the ‘Europe idea’. No major candidate for the political leadership of EU countries—except the UK—dares a clear anti-Europe program. In every political election, from north to south, Europe is on the lips of all.
In peoples’ minds, “Europe” refers to the powerful, unelected, bureaucratic European Commission in Brussels, i.e. the European Union. Or to that powerless ‘debating society’ known as the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Nonetheless, “Europe”, in one way or another, is in the minds of all.
Italians tend to be proud of their modern passports marked “European Union” and only secondly, “Italian Republic”. It is pleasant to travel from Italy to Spain or France or Belgium or The Netherlands or Germany with only the Euro currency in your pocket. And know what price you are paying for hotels or meals or souvenirs.
Though there are advantages—like financial controls and balanced budgets of each country making up the European Union—for many, “Europe” is perfidious, dictatorial and impoverishing.
The problem posed by one branch of Europskeptics is that “Europe” has no political power. The union today is purely economic and financial. To all effects, today’s “Europe” is a union of unelected bankers and financiers. Not the social or political union of peoples some of its founders had in mind.
The original dream of “Europe” for many was a Europe of the people, socialist and democratic. Not a capitalist Europe of bankers filling the pockets of their caste. For many Europeans the missing element is political clout.
By way of example, the legality of matrimony between two persons of the same sex does not enter the sphere of “Europe”. The union has no power—or does not exercise the persuasive powers it has at its disposal—to defend the rights of its peoples against the interference of churches and sects against “gay marriages”—let’s say a direct concern of 10 per cent of all Europeans.
“Europe” does not have the power or does not exercise its power to defend its minorities, its immigrants from Africa or Asia or its Romani (gypsy) peoples, branches of the 12-14 million Sinti and Roma peoples. The Romani peoples constitute a nation more numerous than Belgians, peoples who have never declared war on anyone. Yet peoples widely treated as beggars and thieves. Peoples for reasons of survival forced to leave their East European origins in Romania or Hungary or Bosnia.
One should recall that it was only a few years before the creation of the European Union that Fascists simply decided to eliminate both homosexuals and gypsies from the demographic map.
Today, “Europe” decides by its discretionary use of its economic powers which countries may survive and which are destined for exploitation and eventual elimination, nations like Greece, the cradle of European and thus also American civilization.
Capitalism has never before enjoyed such power as today via the EU, without the use of marching troops over borders. The EU has become the instrument for the economically rich nations to control and rape weaker societies. In their attempts to unify Europe, neither Napoleon nor Hitler ever achieved such real power over the lives of the peoples of Europe as has the European Union.
Now it has become clear for those with eyes to see that not all the founders of the EU had in mind a union of peoples. A purely economic-financial union was in the minds of some of its founders and is still in the minds of its bureaucracy. Therefore, its close relations with NATO which serves as its military arm. It is child’s play to grasp that the difference between the EU and NATO is chiefly one of name.
Now one can easily understand that military alliance with the USA—in 1945 victorious and all-powerful after the fall of Nazi Germany—was in the minds of the original founders of the “Community” of Europe. U.S. economic aid offered by the Marshall Plan was not generosity and gratuitous. Europe paid a high price. U.S. troops were not in Europe only to defend it against Soviet troops ready to take the whole continent. U.S. presence in Europe was to support U.S. interests. The Cold War ensued to consolidate that American presence.
The European Union guarantees the perpetuation of the unchanging special relation between the USA and the United Kingdom, and, in theory, with continental Europe as a whole. Today the EU and interlocking treaties between it and NATO provide troops for the widest possible coalition in America’s world-wide wars. The small country of Denmark has suffered nearly 50 deaths in Afghanistan, apparently the highest of any other nation of the Grand Coalition on that distant Asian battleground. Therefore, one notes an increase in anti-war sentiments and a growing reluctance in countries like Germany, Italy, Spain and now The Netherlands to support those wars. One is tempted to conclude that if the USA wants to count on Germany and NATO as a combat ally in the coming years it will have to help the political establishments in those and other countries to overcome public resistance—not to mention the growing political-economic influence of Russia.
Therefore, the EU can dabble with the French idea of a European force de frappe. It may send a few troops here or there. But I don’t believe the EU has the political or the economic power or desire to even try to withstand American pressure and create a military force capable of competing with the firmly U.S.-led NATO.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rome-based GAITHER STEWART is a senior editor with The Greanville Post and Cyrano’s Journal Today, and editor in chief of Gaitherstewart.com. The author of several books on espionage and political intrigue, and personal memoirs, as well as many essays on culture, politics, art and other subjects, he’s currently completing Time of Exile, the third volume of the Europe Trilogy, published by Punto Press. The two previous volumes, The Trojan Spy and Lily Pad Roll are available at Amazon and other leading booksellers.
