The unelected EU "foreign minister", labour baroness Cathrine Ashton recently lectured the world about "deep democracy" in Egypt. Now, she is lecturing readers of the New York Times about how to deal with mad dictators, citing how "the West" dealt with the Soviet empire:
Were the European Union to isolate every government that fails to live up to the principles of liberal democracy, we would face accusations of political imperialism. It is better to proclaim the principles of democracy, but deal with the world as it is.
That is how the West behaved toward the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the same time we engaged governments and supported groups that promoted democratic change from within. This meant that when the Wall fell, we had the connections as well as the ambition to help the countries of Eastern Europe move rapidly toward democracy, the rule of law and greater economic prosperity.
This is really over the top. It was, of course, the much scolded "warmonger", "Hollywood B-movie star" Ronald Reagan, together with Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, who brought down the evil empire and changed the world. If the "realpolitik" of the continental EU leaders had prevailed, we would probably still have to deal with an imperial Soviet union.
Read the entire article in the NYT here.
(image by EU audiovisual service)
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