True Colors
The Daily Mail reports that Segolene Royal will try to force Britain to choose between being America's closest ally or being at the heart of Europe if she becomes French president, says a close aide. Her foreign affairs adviser Gilles Savery, a French MEP, unveiled proposals for a new EU treaty, to replace the failed EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters.
At some stage, probably very soon, enough people are going to wake up to the fact that the old belief in assured security is just that: an old belief. While he may not get all the particulars right, I think Philip Bobbitt is correct. The world is going through a major paradigm shift and while it is fully adrift on the tides of the 21st century, nearly all the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are stuck firmly in the past. We are entering a dark wood without a compass, and not even the realization of the need for one. Back to Murtha and Alcee Hastings.
posted by wretchardthecat at 11/20/2006 08:13:00 AM
7 Comments:
In particular Europeans ought to be asking themselves, if the US won't sustain an effort in Iraq beyond a couple of thousand deaths, just what precisely does Europe's defence consist of these days? The truth is that Europe now has next to no usable defence capability.
Royal's concern appears to be to make this problem worse rather than better, as fast as she can, for purely short-term political reasons (pandering to popular pacifist illusions).
Welcome (back) to the 1930's.
meme chose wrote:
In particular Europeans ought to be asking themselves, if the US won't sustain an effort in Iraq beyond a couple of thousand deaths, just what precisely does Europe's defence consist of these days?
They have concluded that paying the Dhimmi Tax is more cost-beneficial than jacking up defense spending. As an added bonus they will kick in some Euros to convert cathedrals to mosques as long as the muslims try to keep the rapes and subway bombings below a certain threshold.
Segolene Royal is living in a dream world. England knows what side its bread is buttered on, and has enjoyed something universes beyond 'most favored nation' status with the USA.
France asking England to pick Europe over the USA, is like asking England to enter that 'dark wood' with a candle, instead of a million candlepower spotlight.
I think the Simpson's "cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys" is spot on. I am amazed that present day France could be the descendants of those who fought and defeated Islam in 732 at Tours.
I wonder if the "Hitler and Sudenland" argument will return...literally.
Will the Arab countries (sorry, Iran is also included)start protesting how their brother Muslims are treated in Europe and start demanding that their rights be protected?
After all, the Sudenland grab was to protect the poor citizens who were really German and being abused. Or maybe it was a power play to see if the world would blink.
Hmmmm? And could this also tie in to the fact that Iran and Al Qaeda are sending British volunteers back to England so their lives are wasted in Iraq???
A reader writes to say:
"According to what I've read at EU Referendum, Defence made that decision in 2000 and it wasn't US."
Implying that the French intent to issue an ultimatum predated OIF. This is how I understand the message anyhow.
There is of course absolutely nothing new here. De Gaulle was 50 years ago trying to pull together a country riven with disunity and betrayals during WWII, and the brilliant idea he went with as a means to achieve this was his attempt to bust up the alliance between the UK, other European countries and the US. Every French Presidential candidate since has played this card as soon as the need occurred, and it has occurred very often because the abject and visible failures of successive French governments have repeatedly left them with no credibility at home, and only the trumped-up 'American threat' to fall back on.
European countries typically see themselves as socially and politically more advanced than the US, but I think this is the exact reverse of the truth. Britain today is really about where the US was in the early 1970's, the era of the 'Dirty Harry' movies when the public had awoken to a still inarticulate realization that 'soft liberal' solutions to social problems were not solutions at all. France meanwhile is further back, being today about where Britain was in the late 1960's - having lost it's position and influence in the world but still clinging to a belief that this hadn't happened, and sliding through a relative economic decline with it's eyes firmly shut.
I believe both countries will in due course turn themselves around and follow a path similar to that of the US, as indeed the UK has done in economic terms since the kick in the pants it got from the 'winter of discontent' and the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and the Falklands invasion in 1982. They are just a long, long way behind.
Post a Comment
<< Home