Europe Repeating America’s Mistakes

posted at 2:01 pm on October 27, 2009 by


Tory leader David Cameron has caused somewhat of a controversy in Britain by saying he does not want former Prime Minister Tony Blair to become president of the European Union. Is there a president of the EU, you might ask? Why no, not as of yet, but Brussels has decided it should have more power and that, in order to have it, it also needs to have its very own president. Do voters agree? Again no, but who cares? Brussels knows best.

In his monthly news conference, the Tory leader said if the role had to exist at all, it should go to someone who would see himself as a chairman of the European Council.

“I do not want the job to exist, but if it has to exist, I don’t think it should be the all-singing all-dancing President Tony Blair,” he said.

“It should be a job of chairing the Council of Ministers, rather than a new president of a superstate.”

Although it will undoubtedly be a “job of charing the council” initially, it’ll undoubtedly gradually transform into a “new president of a superstate” in the end. Americans learned this lesson earlier, now we have to learn it as well. Give politicians a little bit of power and they will not rest until you give them more. You give them more and they will get more themselves, whether you want them to have more power or not.

It’s fantastic that Cameron continues to resist Brussels, but I’m afraid we’ll end up following in America’s footsteps; this even though the relationships between individual European states aren’t even remotely comparable to those between their American counterparts.

A tragic mistake in the making.

Blowback

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The funny thing is, the EU is not recreating the United States. Speaking strictly in terms of structure, they’re recreating the Confederacy.

The central govm’t had no troops of it’s own – all the troops belonged to the States. The central govm’t had some financial power, but again, most of the banks belonged to the States. And the States remained viciously in competition with each other up until the bitter end, with the result that towards the end of the civil war, with Lee’s troops freezing in the field with no supplies, Georgia’s governer successfully refused to give Lee’s Army any of his storehouses of supplies, on the grounds that Georgia needed them worse than Lee and that they belonged to Georgia, not the Confederacy.

First major crisis, the EU blows up into 31 pieces. The structure is too weak to sustain any shock. Just like the Confederacy.

WWS on October 27, 2009 at 2:36 PM

WWS: as of this moment, yes, and I think it could happen as you say. But what then? Then we’ll become like the US of today, I’m afraid. That is the point of my post; that we’ll change in the US pretty quickly after this. Even though, and this is important, the people don’t want it.

Michael van der Galien on October 27, 2009 at 2:41 PM

This begs a very big question: what does it mean for Europe as it deals with Russia, and other regional issues like the threat from Iran, reliable access to energy resources, and immigration from the rest of the Eastern hemisphere?

I know Europeans have been thinking about this for years, but I’m not convinced there has been an extended process of thinking it all through. Right now it matters, when you’re dealing with Russia, if you’re France or Germany. Are France and Germany really prepared to have their policy toward Russia, their policies on immigration and social assimilation, their policies on what’s the best way to get oil and gas — all these policy areas under constant pressure from a superbody in Brussels topped by… Tony Blair?

Is Poland ready to agree to that? The Baltic republics? Italy?

The showing of so-called “right-wing” nationalist parties in the last EU elections suggests the “folks” in Europe are not quite so ready for all that. More power to them. A big collective is only as strong as the weakest link, an internally-focused imperial power with vulnerable hinterlands; whereas an alliance can be leveraged to let the strong protect the weak. I hope the EU doesn’t take any more steps toward the former and away from the latter.

J.E. Dyer on October 27, 2009 at 8:41 PM

Interesting post, but I’m much more concerned with America following Europe down the nanny-state abyss than the other way around.

BadgerHawk on October 27, 2009 at 8:47 PM