Tuesday 25 February 2020

'Elites favour federations like the European Union. Non-elites revolt.'

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A taxi driver in Belgrade told a British friend of mine, who lives there, that Yugoslavia was the EU before the EU. My friend, who  is an ardent believer in the EU, found this discouraging, as well he might.
'Elites favour federations like the European Union. Non-elites revolt.' 
This is the headline on an article in the Washington Post that points out that, in addition to Yugoslavia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, the West Indies Federation, the Central African Federation and the United Arab Republic are failed attempts at subsuming nations or ethnic groups into multinational states.

So,of course, was the Hapsburg Empire though that in its time was a great success. My British-Hungarian-Russian-Jewish but 100% British friend, and ardent Brexiteer avant la lettre, Helen Szamuely justly called it a European Union that worked, but it stop working in 1918, partly thanks to Francis Joseph's folly in going to war with Serbia but more due to the malign influence of liberal American Democrats. 

There is no end to the harm that they have wreaked in the world, though George W. Bush, a Wilsonian in foreign policy, and Lincoln are responsible for more unnecessary deaths than even the Democrats.

Malaysia has stayed the course, but without some of its original components, to wit Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah.

The tragedy, of course, is that a united Germany and Italy ever came into existence or did not break up before Hitler or Mussolini could come to power. 

It is still not too late for Bavaria to seek her independence or for the Italian principalities. 

On a recent visit to Palermo the first person I met was demonstrating in favour of an independent Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. We were fated to meet. I wished him very well and parted from him with a leaflet and wearing one of his badges. It was not much, but one does what one can. 

9 comments:

  1. The tragedy, of course, is that a united Germany and Italy ever came into existence or did not break up before Hitler or Mussolini could come to power.

    I agree. But the biggest tragedy of all is that the United States ever came into existence. It's a problem for the same reason France was a problem for centuries, and Germany was and is a problem. Any European or European-derived state as powerful as the US is going to succumb to the temptation of imperialism and become a menace to the rest of the world.

    Unfortunately the existence of the United States makes it necessary for other super-states such as the EU to exist since there is no other way to balance the power of the US.

    Britain is going to find that out the hard way, It's going to find out what it's like to be a minor vassal state of an imperialist super-power. Britain has already endured three-quarters of a century of humiliation at he hands of the US (being stripped iff its empire, being whipped and sent to bed without any supper like a disobedient child over Suez). Post-Brexit Britain is going to have to do a lot of grovelling to the US. And a lot more young Britons are going to die fighting a lot more American wars.

    To some extent it was the power of France that made German unification inevitable. Had the Congress of Vienna broken France up as it should have done a lot of misery could have been avoided. The power of the US made the EU inevitable.

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    Replies
    1. I agree that we were humiliated and asset stripped by America, but otherwise you are talking absolute nonsense. We can flourish without being anyone's ally.

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    2. ' The power of the US made the EU inevitable.'

      The power of the US made the EU possible.

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    3. We can flourish without being anyone's ally.

      As far as the United States is concerned there are only two types of nations - American vassal states and America's enemies. So Britain has two options to choose from.

      We know which option Boris Johnson will choose.

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    4. Why should we be any more an American vassal out of the EU than in it? Is Sweden an American vassal? Israel? India? France?

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    5. The collapse of Europe 1939-45 made it inevitable that Europe would be ruled by non-European powers and that European unity, before 1945 almost unimaginable, though imagined by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, would make sense. It is a unity born of impotence and, very disappointingly to me, has not strengthened the continent much either in economic or political terms, despite forming the biggest market in the world. In foreign policy the EU is almost a nullity, repeating UN platitudes.

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    6. No-one could have been more of an American lapdog than Mr Blair. The last anti-American British Prime Minister was Heath - it was the single thing he had in common with Enoch Powell, apart from their both being nominally Tories and having fought in the war.

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  2. PRE-ORDER DISUNITED NATIONS

    https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/

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  3. To the mentors who advised me that while
    it is important to be bold and brash,
    the smartest thing I could ever do is
    find the smartest person in the room and just . . .
    listen.

    Candice Young
    Robert Pringle
    Susan Eisenhower
    Matthew Baker

    Introduction to Disunited Nations
    by Peter Zeihan on February 27, 2020

    https://mcusercontent.com/de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0c9/files/24c58d05-4e65-4f0c-aa1c-574bc89887e8/DisunitedNations_final_intro.pdf

    ReplyDelete