Much Snow in Lithuania

Trakai, Lithuania. 14 January.  The Snow Meeting.  Trakai Castle sits firm and strong on its island stronghold in the midst of a snowbound, frozen lake.  Built in the fourteenth century the castle protected the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from attacks by the Teutonic Knights.  As we looked upon Europe’s past an array of prime ministers, foreign ministers and ambassadors from across the western world considered Europe’s future.  This intense, small, annual meeting is a gem in the calendar and so different in tone from many ego-fests.  It is also one of those moments in a year when I really speak truth unto power in my role as strategic court jester.

 

In Lithuania both the European Union and NATO make sense.  Some 190 kilometres from the Russian border Moscow is always present.  In the 1960s then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once cited the restoration of Trakai Castle as an example of what he called the ‘nationalism’ that he believed threatened the then-Soviet Union.  Today, we would call such ‘nationalism’ political liberty; the right of nation-states to self-govern, a theme that ran throughout the conference.

Two big geopolitical pictures of note were painted, one understood, the other not.  Russia is ever looking to exploit weakness and irresolution in the West even if in reality the only stable border Russia has in the one a short distance from here.  With the Eurozone crisis having now effectively killed off any prospect of EU enlargement to the likes of Belarus or Ukraine and with little to offer as incentives for political reform therein, the Kremlin has offered an alternative Eurasian Union with Moscow firmly embedded at its centre.  This was clearly understood by all present but there was little that could be done other than to let the Russians screw it up in their own inimitable fashion.

The second big geopolitical picture concerned the consequences of crisis-driven, Germany-led, Brussels Centre managed deeper economic and political integration in the Eurozone and Britain’s reaction to it.  On the eve of the biggest shift ever in the balance of power between the EU state and Brussels Centre it is clear from this meeting that no-one will support Cameron’s objective of repatriating powers from Brussels.  Indeed, there is no mood to compensate Britain for its coming downgrading by the Eurozone, referendum or no referendum.  The Germans know full well that the British political Left (including the Liberal Democrats) are willing to sacrifice any amount of Britain’s political liberty to keep Berlin and Brussels smiling on them, whatever the views of the British people.  Thus, Germany has no need to give any ground whatsoever to Britain and can drive on regardless now that it has Washington’s backing. 

What I was shocked by was the level to which the European elite as a whole have convinced themselves that what is about to happen is a good thing and that somehow Britain gets a good deal.  One very senior person quoted figures about how much Britain benefits from the EU that were spectacularly wrong.  On 22 January Cameron will offer the British people a 2015 sort-of referendum on the EU.  If he is still in power (big if) he will then go to Brussels with his demands and promptly be told to “Brussels Off”.  At that point the reality of Euro-integration will be apparent to all and London will face a choice – sign up to Germany’s Europe or try and quit. 

The Eurasian Union is already a busted flush, whilst the future EU will simply not work and whatever the pressure or propaganda Britain must stand firm and continue to resist.  Rather than force the recalcitrant into a structure they can never accept, will never work and which affords all sorts of dangers to democratic oversight of over-mighty power work should rather begin on an entirely new EU.  That was the essential point made by George Osborne, the British finance minister, in an 11 January interview with German newspaper Die Welt. 

In my opening remarks to the conference I warned about a weak Europe playing bad chess whilst the rest of the world plays stud poker.  Here in Lithuania Realpolitik is ever present and unless Europeans relearn the rules of geopolitics the new balance of power that emerges from it will be cast utterly at Europe's expense.  If ‘Europe’ is to make sense the real challenge is a Europe that can compete effectively across all economic and strategic domains and which is seen as legitimate and democratic by all its peoples. Surely, this is an agenda that can unite Germans, Britons, Swedes and most other Europeans?

Perhaps the most poignant, painful lesson for this life-long Atlanticist from the meeting was the abandonment of Britain by an Obama administration contemptuous of Britain.  The Special Relationship is finally dead; long-live the New Special Relationship…America and Germany.

Of course, none of this was confronted head-on.  Too much snow.

Julian Lindley-French, Director, Europa Analytica

Euro-Realism, Mr Gordon!

Alphen, Netherlands. 9 January.  It is not often I am moved to write two blogs in a day but I really must.  Last week I warned  that a "senior administration official" was going to lecture Britain about its relationship with the EU.  I chose not to mention his name out of respect for his position and indeed for him, although I knew full well who he was.  Today, the US Assistant Secretary for European Affairs Phil Gordon broke cover to warn against Britain leaving the EU.  He also counselled against the British people being offered a referendum on perhaps the greatest single choice they have faced since at least World War Two; to remain a self-governing state or by accepting the sovereignty-sapping future EU a German-led Eurozone and Brussels Centre are driving toward see Britain in time reduced to to all intents a province of a 'united' Europe.  Make no mistake; that is the choice on offer. 

 

Now, I have known Phil Gordon for many years from the days when I worked for the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris and Phil was a Washington academic.  Whilst I respect him greatly Phil Gordon was and is the closest thing in DC to an EU groupie. He was also very close to my French boss of the time and the French Government.  Whilst Gordon did his best to choose his words carefully listening to Phil today warn that "referendums have turned countries inward" it was hard to be sure if this was the US Government speaking or Phil Gordon.

 

What is clear is that a campaign is now underway to influence a very influenceable David Cameron ahead of his keynote speech on Europe which he will make later this month.  Cameron simply does not get the huge strategic issues at stake.  Gordon's comments also imply a campaign by several foreign powers and some from within the Whitehall Establishment to deny the British people a voice on their future. 

 

Whilst some of what Phil Gordon said today makes sense, such as the need to keep the EU looking outward (see my earlier blog of today) the implication of his intervention is that the British people should be forced to accept a model of 'Europe' they have never wanted, never voted for and never will want.  It is a Europe in which the European nation-state will steadily be hollowed out and power transferred to an impossibly undemocratic and probably utterly unworkable Brussels Centre.  This is something Phil Gordon and his fellow Americans would never accept for Americans so why should we British be forced to accept it?

At this point I could get all precious about Gordon's comments being an egregious American interference in British internal affairs but the US has earned the right to comment on Britain.  The EU decision Britain finally makes will impact the US.  However, Phil Gordon and the Obama Administration must be very careful not to be seen to bully the British people over this matter.  The EU of today is not the EU of tomorrow and there is nothing about the Eurozone and its governance that the British find at all attractive. 

 

Nor should Americans confuse anti-EU Euro-scepticism with Euro-realism.  Rather than lecturing we British to stay in the EU at all costs Washington should be backing Britain to help ensure that the fantasy of political union is brought to an end, that the European Commission and European Parliament are put back in their respective toy boxes and that the EU goes back to being what it should always have been; a tight alliance of nation-states with power resting firmly in national capitals.  That is the only form of legitimacy that works in Europe.  Implicit in Phil Gordon's comments is an America equally comfortable with the idea of one large state dominating Europe with a Britain that is prevented By EU statute from playing the balancing role it has always played in a German-leaning Europe.

 

America needs to go back to the traditional principles of American diplomacy in Europe, Mr Gordon, and rediscover its Euro-realism. 

Julian Lindley-French       

Can Anything Stop Europe Disarming?

Alphen, Netherlands. 9 January.  The world is playing stud poker, whilst Europe plays bad chess.  Last week’s stern warning from US NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder that Europeans should use the money saved by withdrawing from Afghanistan to reverse crippling defence cuts was surely just another tiresome American whinge?  In fact Daalder is dead right.

 

Daalder and I have not always seen eye to eye but he knows what he is talking about.  Nor is he just another gung-ho American.  Born in The Hague he is as European an American as one could possibly find and by and large sympathetic to the idea of a ‘Europe’. 

The facts speak for Daalder.  Last month’s authoritative “European Defense Trends” by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) demonstrates conclusively a disconnection between Europe’s on-going slashing of defence spending and the hikes taking place in the rest of the world.  According to CSIS European defence spending fell by 1.8% in 2012 on top of the up to 30% cuts from between 2008 and 2011.  Contrast that with defence spending elsewhere revealed by my own research.  Russia aims to inject about $775bn/€593 by 2022 for new armaments and a more professional military.  Beijing grew the Chinese defence budget by 11.2% in 2012 (although slightly lower than the 12.7% in 2011) which is but the latest double digit increase.  Indeed, China has been growing its military at that rate since 1989 and the official figures are probably ‘conservative’. 

Even Europe’s overall defence spend conceals a dangerous capability gap BETWEEN Europeans.  The combined 2011 defence budgets of NATO Europe totalled some $235/bn€180bn compared with a 2009 U.S. defence budget of $658bn/€503bn, even though the size of the two economies is roughly the same.  Of that $235bn/€180bn France and the UK together represent 49% whilst the so-called ‘big three’ (Britain, France and Germany) spend some 88% of all defence research and development in NATO Europe.  Sixteen of the twenty-six NATO Europe members spend less than $5bn/€4bn per annum and much of it inefficiently.  In spite of economic difficulties Britain plans confirmed spending of some $261bn/€200bn on military equipment alone over the next ten years. 

It would be easy to say that Europe’s appeasement of strategic reality can all be put down to the Eurozone crisis.  Clearly, that is an important factor.  However, there are other deeper forces at work.  When I worked on what became the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy a decade or so ago there was still a sense that European defence would in time provide a new set of defence benchmarks wholly ‘made in Europe’, rather than imposed by America.  Sadly, whilst the EU has indeed made limited progress towards a European defence market today those Euro-benchmarks are honoured only in the breach.  More than one senior EU official has told me privately that each time a force goal is missed EU member-states either move the goalposts, hide the facts or more often both.

 

America has some responsibility.  Washington’s strategic mistakes and poor leadership have helped to create the pacifism from which much of Europe now suffers.  However, ultimately Europeans must take responsibility for their own defence.  Sadly, too many Europeans lack the appetite to create the big picture strategic analysis upon which sound strategic defence decisions are made.  Consequently I can guarantee I will waste a lot of time this year at conferences listening to the same self-serving, short-term ‘strategic’ nonsense official Europeans serve up to justify defence meltdown.  This will no doubt be supported by ‘evidence’ of meaningless deployments whilst reality-sapping national caveats and swingeing cuts will be quietly ignored.

 

Daalder’s essential point is therefore correct; one cannot establish a credible defence on a military vacuum.  At a time when NATO's collective defence architecture is in desperate need of modernisation to cope with the technologies of a new age Europe cannot detach itself from geo-politics or pretend balance of power politics are a thing of Europe’s past.  Like it or not Europe’s defence effort is a key test of European strategic seriousness.  Europeans cannot expect Americans to invest in Europe's twenty-first century defence if Europeans do not.  Moreover, with an over-stretched America increasingly focussed on Asia-Pacific Europe’s defence appeasement will drive dangerous world change not stop it.  Sadly, lacking a strategic concept worthy of the name, mistrustful of American leadership and organised around a Germany the more influential it becomes the less military continental Europe will likely become more pacifist and more neo-isolationist.  

 

What will it take for Europe to stop disarming?  Europeans must stop appeasing reality by pretending they live in the Euro-world they would like and face the world as it is; a world in which others now make the rules.  In other words, Europeans must stop playing bad chess, whilst the rest of the world plays stud poker.  Winston Churchill once described an appeaser as “one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last”.  If Europeans do not finally get their defence act together Churchill’s crocodile will one day bite...and hard!

 

Julian Lindley-French

 

Saving Syria from Assad

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 January.  “The enemies of the people are the enemies of God, and the enemies of God will burn in hell.” Syrian President Assad left little grounds for optimism in his 6 January ‘peace’ initiative.  Clearly there can now be no peace with Assad but what will it take to get rid of him and what would happen if he went? 

 

The need is pressing.  The United Nations last week estimated the death toll in the Syrian civil war at come sixty thousand since March 2011, possibly many more.  International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that if the war is not ended in 2013 Syria could indeed turn into a “hell”.  However, whilst the so-called Geneva Plan lays the foundation for a resolution by Syrians for Syrians it is extremely unlikely any ‘big deal’ can now be reached between the regime and the Syrian National Coalition.  Transition from war to a stable Syria will thus demand the removal of Assad and the direct involvement of the international community.   

Equally, whilst the removal of Assad would be the first step to peace it would not be an end in itself.   Assad is right about one thing.  Fundamentalist Sunni fighters and what British Prime Minister David Cameron recently described as a “new cohort of al-Qaeda linked extremists” are all too apparent in the opposition’s ranks.  If the regime simply implodes doubtless a new power struggle will begin.

Furthermore, an enduring Syrian peace will also only be possible if the conflict is detached from a wider regional Realpolitik.  Iran has been supporting the regime with both expertise and munitions, with substantial evidence of direct involvement by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whilst Russia and China have blocked any direct outside intervention.  Indeed, the regional strategic ambitions of Iran and its proxy Hezbollah-led conflict with Israel have critically exacerbated the war.  Equally, whilst an arms embargo has been formally imposed evidence abounds that it exists in name only.  The Coalition has been receiving directly or indirectly both small arms and man-held anti-aircraft missiles from the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia to counter the regime’s use of air power. 

What would a 'credible' international presence on the ground look like and under what mandate? Arab League, UN, NATO, EU or a beefed up Contact Group?  Experience of political transition in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (hardly encouraging) suggests that early political reconciliation would be critical but only possible if reprisal killings are prevented and the humanitarian suffering of all alleviated.  A new seat of government in Damascus would also need to be rapidly established and protected, committed to a political timetable for transition underpinned by the early disarmament and rehabilitation of combatants.  The armed forces would need to be re-oriented and essential services and the judicial system preserved to provide stability. Critically, senior members of the Assad regime charged under law would need to get a fair trial and justice seen to work.  National elections woven into a new constitution would also be vital with extreme elements in the opposition forced to face a choice; reconciliation or exclusion.  Would Russia and China agree?  Maybe this is the moment for a Tony Blair-type Sextet for Syria - America, Arab League, China, EU and Russia?

But here’s the thing.  For Syria to find true peace a new coherence will need to be forged that reflects a Syria very different to that of 1966 when Assad’s father seized power.  That will not be easy.  Assad’s fate is linked to that of Syria's many minorities such as the Shia community, specifically the Alawhites from which he hails. Syria is 90% Arab, with some two million Kurds plus other smaller groups making up the balance of a 22 million population that has exploded by over 300% since 1966.  Syria is also 87% Muslim with Shias making up 13% of the population, as against 74% Sunnis with the rest comprised of small Christian, Druze and other communities.  In the past the Baathist constitution protected minorities and until those self-same minorities feel secure peace is unlikely to endure.

Moscow’s admission last month that Assad may fall from power allied to Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa assertion that no-one can win the Syrian civil war and that a transitional government is now the only way forward suggests the war is indeed at a tipping point.  Sadly, no-one can expect peace soon.  An enduring Syrian peace would only be possible with the consistent support of a unified international community and that simply does not exist.  Even if it did would any state be prepared to commit land forces under UN mandate to secure the peace?  Who would be prepared to offer the huge resources vital to re-settle peaceably displaced populations, promote peaceful transition and re-build a smashed Syria? 

If peace miraculously came tomorrow with the fall of Assad Syrians would face a vacuum created by a hopelessly split international community.  Saving Syria from Assad is but the first step.  The Syrian civil war is not simply about the transfer of power from a national minority to a majority it is about the future geopolitical shape of the Middle East. Without real support from us all Syria will continue to be a danger to itself and its neighbours in a very dangerous region.  

Julian Lindley-French

Cliff Politics

Alphen, Netherlands.  1 January.  First century Roman senator and historian Tacitus railing against the greed of imperial Rome said, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace”.  Sitting up all night in the wake of the seasonal festivities I found myself glued to CNN (sad I know) and the pending American train wreck that has become known as the fiscal cliff.  It is hard to watch the political leaders of a country one respects and admires playing chicken with the livelihoods of tens of millions of ordinary, hard-working Americans, and much of the world beyond.  As I watched I was struck by two phenomena all too evident in both America and Europe today: the creeping extremism of the political ‘mainstream’; and the growing detachment between the political virtual reality of capitals and the lives of ordinary people. 

 

The creeping extremism/unworldliness of the ‘mainstream’ has been under way for some time.  The post-war ‘one nation’ generation that was infused with a spirit of ‘doing the right thing’ has passed.  Of course, the post war West was certainly not short of political folly but not on this scale.  Moreover, democracy used to by and large work with the ballot box a correcting mechanism punishing those that ventured too far right or left.  Sadly, be it in Washington, Brussels, London or any Western capital what I have witnessed over the past twenty years or so has been a growing intolerance of the ‘other’ in the political mainstream, with the people seen as gullible suckers to be manipulated one way or t'other. 

Much of this is to do with the growing influence of political activists via one-thought ‘think tanks’ or single issue pressure groups.  Indeed, activists have not only successfully inserted themselves between the people and their politicians but forced politicians too often to look to them for legitimisation rather than the people.  Today many politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are drawn from the ranks of such groups.  Watching both Democrat and Republican politicians last night twist the twisted statistics provided by such groups I was struck by how little room for manoeuvre anyone had given the need not to be seen to give an inch for fear of losing the support not of the people but of the activist base.  Be it spending cuts or tax hikes the perceived impact on the people was simply one weapon in a war that was almost entirely of the political class’s own making. 

Too many in the political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic believe people denied both leadership and choice have but one option; to vote for one set of failed ideologues or another.  In fact a form or street politics is emerging reflected in the rapid emergence of new political parties, such as the UK Independence Party.  The establishment tries to sneer off such parties but they are here to stay precisely because of the growing disconnect between the establishment’s world/euro-view and that of ordinary people. 

In Britain political discourse is dominated by a false ‘one nation’ narrative and an implicit shift to the left by the London metropolitan political elite and their media ‘chums’ under the guise of political correctness.  To them Britons are either ‘all in this together’ or part of a tolerant multicultural kaleidoscope of togetherness.  The reality is very different; a ‘society’ fractured by the failed experiment of hyper-immigration in which the gap between rich and poor only gets wider with a political class unable to confront the mess their inept social experimentation has created. 

On the Continent the gap between political fantasy and reality is even more marked.  With Chancellor Merkel yesterday warning that the Euro crisis can only get worse Brussels Centre is singing the same one-note tune; the very mess created by ‘Europe’ can only be solved by more Europe.  Come to my Dutch village or go to any community across Europe and it is quickly evident that such nonsense is seen pretty much as Tacitus saw the Roman Empire – the usurpation of legitimacy and democracy in the name of a false peace.  

The detachment of Europe’s political class from its peoples is simply accelerating Europe’s decline as ‘leaders’ drive disunited and very disparate Europeans towards a political fantasy land that can only fail.  For America the stakes are potentially even higher.  If American politicians cannot lead at home what hope or chance have these cliff dwellers got of credibly leading the rest of us abroad?

Of course Washington struck an eleventh hour temporary ‘deal’ but it is not one that in any way bridges the divide between high spenders and low taxers.  It is merely a truce in Washington’s war against Americans (and the rest of us).   

Washington should be ashamed of itself this morning; but of course Washington is not.

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Much EU About Nothing?

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 December.  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has something of the night about him.  With the Germans about to lead the seventeen EUrozone countries into the greatest political leap in the dark since the creation of the European Union Schaeuble has suggested that the British people be denied a referendum on their future relationship with a future German-led EU.  It would cause “uncertainty” he said.  Even Schaeuble’s use of language speaks of another age.  In a 23rd December interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung Schaeuble said, “Our British friends are not dangerous”.  Why even use such language?

 

What worries Schaeuble is a speech British PR-Meister David Cameron is scheduled to make in January in which he will offer Britons a 2015 referendum…of sorts.  Schaeuble should not be worried.  According to Whitehall insiders Cameron as per usual is going to duck the real issues.  The choice on offer will be between doing nothing (status quo) or asking the impossible (that all EU member-states will agree to a limited repatriation of powers from Brussels to London).  Much EU about nothing.

Europe has always ‘worked’ by give and take.  The British ‘give’ was to agree not to block German-led moves towards the creation a European Banking Authority and thus tacitly accept deeper EUrozone integration.  The ‘take’ should have been a Germany that accepts Britons must now consider the only question now left to them; to be part of Germany’s new EU or not.  Sadly, Herr Schaeuble’s intervention points to the very undemocratic and autocratic future many Britons object to and again underlines Cameron’s weakness.

 

Cameron’s cave-in was probably made inevitable the moment the Obama administration waded in on Herr Schaeuble’s side.  Last week a "senior US administration official" (I have a pretty good idea who) said, “It is important to state very clearly that a strong UK in a strong Europe is in America’s national interest”.  What he meant to say was that a weak UK in a strong EU is in America’s interest, which demonstrates the extent to which Washington has misunderstood what is happening in Europe.  Americans are not about to witness the creation of a United States of Europe cast in their own image, but a sophisticated powerplay by Germany for leadership in the age-old name of a ‘free Europe’.  After all the sacrifice Britons have made over the past years supporting dubious American leadership this is Washington’s payback? 

Clearly, the US sees Britain as little more than a foreign policy surrogate in the EU, casting Britain in the very role of American trojan horse that Charles de Gaulle so objected to back in the 1960s.  I would like to suggest that Britain will not sacrifice its own liberty just because Washington cannot get its own foreign policy act together.  However, so supine have British leaders become I am no longer at all sure.

 

Nor am I suggesting for a minute that Herr Schaeuble is seeking a return to the dark side of German history, but Europeans have by no means escaped their history and Schaeuble really needs to watch his language.  Faced with a EUrozone crisis the severity of which very few even now understand Schaeuble is resorting to an age-old elite German tendency to be absolutely certain when absolutely wrong.  Schaeuble believes that only by casting all other EUrozone states in the German image and subjecting them to indirect fiat will financial prudence be restored.  Berlin’s strategy is to use EU institutions to that end while inserting clauses into agreements that protect Germany and its institutions from just such control.  This month’s EU finance minister’s agreement over a European Banking Authority reeks of such caveats.

 

In a well co-ordinated intervention Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barthe Eide, who I know, like and respect, last week warned that Britain would find itself facing “regulation without representation” if it left the EU.  What Espen has failed to understand is that in Germany’s new EUrozone Britain will face just such regulation without representation and still have to pay the enormous price for little or no influence that is the burden of Britain's contemporary EU membership.  In other words, taxation without representation.  It is a burden that will only get heavier.  In other words, the status quo is not an option.

Therefore, the only way Britain could remain a member of the EU outside Germany’s EUrozone will be to establish an entirely new relationship between those in and those out.   Such a relationship would need to be built on the kinds of checks and balances enshrined in the American constitution but which are steadily being removed from the EU summit by grinding summit.  Far from lecturing the British people about accepting EU membership at any cost or manipulating a weak British prime minister the shape of just such a relationship should be the stuff of British, German and indeed American diplomacy in 2013.  If a deal is not done by the German federal elections in September 2013 it will probably be too late as the British electoral cycle will then begin.   

 

Freedom to choose is a freedom for which Americans and Britons fought and died for in their hundreds of thousands in two world wars.  Americans, Germans (and Norwegians) of all peoples should respect and understand that.

Much EU about nothing?  I don’t think so.

 

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: For a Better Europe

Alphen, Netherlands, 21 December.  Oh no, Christmas again!  Gadzooks! Once again I have crashed and burned on the Christmas card front.  So, by way of dodgy recompense one more Yorkshire blast before the Yuletide gruel. 

 

Myth has it that Trotsky believed capitalism would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. In fact that was the so-called Ultra Leftists as neither Lenin nor Trotsky thought capitalism would face a final reckoning, believing rather that capitalism would preserve itself at whatever cost.  Only class struggle would ensure the collapse of capitalism.  However, if alive today Trotsky would doubtless believe the EU likely to collapse under the weight of its own copious contradictions.  At present all that is holding the Eurozone up is Euro-Aristocratic hot air, Imperial levels of wishful thinking and my impoverishment through huge transfers of my Dutch taxpayer’s money. 

 

Since I wrote “A Sad Day for Europe” last week I have been 'assailed' by various factions of Euro-frippery.  Some have been genuine but naïve, others well-intended but misguided, and not a few self-serving and cynical (and not a few of those from within the Brussels machine).  One was from the completely mad and worth framing and sticking on the wall school of thought.  I never knew one could do that with a broom handle.  One even suggested that in time I would face the latter day version of the Spanish Inquisition.  No disrespect to my Spanish friends but I suggested in retort that the Inquisition could afford neither the train fare nor the comfy chair (old Monty Python joke).  What all had in common was a complete inability to consider what is happening to Europe analytically.  This lack of analysis suggests that the Eurozone crisis is morphing into an ideological crisis and with it a retreat into a false consciousness (Marx) that is worse the closer one gets to Brussels Centre. 

 

Put simply, there is no pan-European demos upon which a democratic political union could be established, only a weak and frankly risible European Parliament which cannot hold itself to account let alone Europe’s pretend government-in-waiting, the European Commission. Worse, in the struggle for a mythical but unattainable European polis the writ of the European Council, the only truly legitimate inter-governmental EU body, is being daily undermined by the Parliament and the Commission in a Brussels Centre power struggle that is adding to the chronic uncertainty about where power lies, who exerts it and who, if anyone, has control.  As these people fiddle the Eurozone crisis gets daily worse and Europe’s people are lulled ever deeper into a false sense of security. 

 

Until Europe is led back towards competitiveness and profitability it is only a matter of time before the Euro fails.  Instead Eurozone ‘leaders’ are attempting to ring-fence the European economy from the world economy which simply delays the inevitable crash.  Printing money or making richer northern and western Europeans poorer by transferring huge sums to poorer southern and eastern Europeans without any real prospect of structural economic reforms can only ever be a temporary fix.  Europe must be made fit for the twenty-first century or fail.  2013 and 2014 will be the crunch years.

 

I believe in ‘Europe’ as a tight alliance of democratic nation-states.  For the sake of coherence and cohesion a small Brussels-based secretariat is clearly needed to help enact the decisions of the European Council.  I do not believe in a European Commission that seeks to compete with the very governments it should serve or a European Parliament full of flunkies, has-beens and ‘friends and family of’.  Indeed, until the so-called community method is abandoned in favour of an alliance of governments I fear crisis will follow paralysis and paralysis will follow crisis.  Indeed, the Eurozone crisis would be far closer to resolution if the Commission (and 'President' van Rompuy) had not offered plan after totally unworkable and impractical plan simply to link their insane ambitions for political union to the saving of the Euro. 

 

If this goes on the EU will indeed collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and at a horrifying price for the European people.  That is why as a European citizen, historian and political scientist it is my duty to point out to a dogmatic European uber-elite their dangerous contradictions.  Therefore, I will continue to fight for a Europe that makes sense, not a fantasy Europe but a real Europe. My Europe.

 

To conclude let me thank all who have given me time and attention in 2012.  You will find none of that politically correct ‘happy holidays’ nonsense here.  Indeed, wherever and whoever you are let me thank you for your loyalty and let me celebrate your culture by respecting you with my own.  A merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all! 

 

The Yorkshire world view will be back in 2013!  Now then!

 

Julian Lindley-French