EU - the European empire - is doomed to fail

The remains of one failed empire - The Forum Romanum in a 1890s photograph.

One wonders what will remain of the EU headquarters in Brussels a hundred

years from now?

The Dutch historian Thierry Baudet has written an excellent article about the failure of the European Union empire.

Here is an excerpt:

The idea that nationalism leads to war while European unification promotes peace is therefore false. And let’s not forget that Europe has not been at “peace” over the last 50 years. During most of that period, the countries of Europe were engaged in a fight to the death with the Soviet Union, which was once again the expression of yet another anti-national philosophy – in this case communism. As the Communist Manifesto insisted, “Working men have no country.”
As you might expect, today’s attempt to bring about political unity in Europe is a major source of tensions. The political landscape in virtually every country in Europe has now been marked by the emergence of increasingly powerful parties that are opposed to the established order.

Nationalism makes democracy possible

Distrust of the South is increasingly prevalent in Northern Europe, and vice-versa. Here again, it is not nationalism but the European project which is the source of the conflict. It follows that we should seek to create a Europe that is radically different to the current EU.
What we need is a Europe without a central regime: a Europe comprised of nation states, which are not afraid of national differences, and willing to cooperate with each other. The authority of nation states over their own borders should be restored, so that they themselves can decide who they want to allow in their territory.
In the service of their economic interest, they should opt for flexible visa regimes, which will nonetheless allow them to keep control of crime and immigration. We will also have to dissolve the euro to give nation states some monetary breathing space so that they can once again set their own interest rates in response to local conditions. Finally, we will have to get rid of harmonisation which undermines diversity.
Far from being a source of conflict, nationalism is the force that makes democracy possible. Without this unifying force, parliaments would be unable to take legitimate decisions. As the example of Belgium has shown, a lack of national unity can make the administration of a country extremely difficult. The irrational fear of nationalism could ultimately result in the establishment of a restrictive empire in Brussels. The time has come to call a halt and restore the nation state.

Read the entire article here

If you love Europe, you must hope that the British will put an end to the fake EU empire

If you love democracy and the rich cultural and economic variety of Europe, you must hope that the British, by voting for Brexit, will help to put and end to Barroso´s fake Empire:

Waiting for Tsar Putin's next move: A list of countries that have "always been an inalienable part of Russia"

Tsar Vladimir, "the man without a face"

The mentally unstable thugocrat in charge of the largest mafia state the world has ever seen, has spoken:

 

Putin, speaking to a joint session of Parliament in Moscow, also stressed the historical and cultural ties between Russia and Crimea, and said Crimea is an inalienable part of Russia.

"In our hearts we know Crimea has always been an inalienable part of Russia," he said.

 

At least the countries and regions mentioned below should take notice. Tsar Vladimir will probably soon announce that they (and some areas that were part of the Soviet empire) have also "always been an inalienable part of Russia":

In addition to almost the entire territory of modern Russia,^{[n 2]} prior to 1917 the Russian Empire included most of Ukraine (Dnieper Ukraine and Crimea), Belarus, Moldova (Bessarabia), Finland (Grand Principality of Finland), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (including Mengrelia), the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Russian Turkestan), most of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Baltic provinces), as well as a significant portion of Poland (Kingdom of Poland) and Ardahan, Artvin, Iğdır, Kars and northeastern part of Erzurum from Turkey (then part of the Ottoman Empire).

The European Union as an empire

Top Brussels bureaucrats seem to enjoy describing the European Union in imperial terms. We all remember how José Barroso characterized the EU as an empire. Now another EU grandee, the European External Action Service Counsellor Robert Cooper, "one of the intellectual architects of EU foreign policy" (whatever that is), is comparing the EU with the Habsburg Empire:

Above all, both the Habsburg Monarchy and the EU have provided a home for the small nations of Europe who would have difficulty surviving alone: in the nineteenth century, their need was to avoid being at the mercy of the less liberal German and Russian Empires. In the twentieth, belonging to a larger framework has brought both political and economic security. Had it not been for the catastrophe of war, the Habsburg Monarchy would have continued to develop in its haphazard way, no doubt giving more autonomy to those who wanted it but still providing the smaller states with things that mattered a lot to them.

What was unique in the Habsburg zone was that it enabled the small nationalities to survive, keep their culture, some level of autonomy, and even to thrive with it. The security it provided was political; but was backed – for this was the nineteenth century – by military force.

A further curious resemblance to the European Union is that the Monarchy was (as Robert Kann puts it) a power without a name; or rather a power with several names, none of them quite right: Habsburg Empire? Austro-Hungarian Empire? Habsburg Monarchy? None quite expresses its nature, because, like the European Union, it was complicated and did not fit into any convenient category. For Europe today, Common Market and European Economic Community are too little; European Union is too much: the EU is not a union in the sense that the United States or the United Kingdom is. This last name is an aspiration; but what is the use of an aspiration if nobody knows what it amounts to?

Cooper appears to realize that not everything is well in his beloved European "empire":

But the threat that the EU now faces is, in its way, as deadly as the one that confronted the Habsburg Monarchy a hundred years ago. Instead of the uncontrolled expansion of armies and navies of the early twentieth century, when few understood the implications of the new military technology, we live today in a world of uncontrolled global financial markets dealing in instruments that few comprehend. And the crisis strikes at the heart of the EU. If the EU ceases to be a bringer of prosperity but becomes instead a cause of impoverishment, it too will collapse. Because, unlike the Habsburg Monarchy, the EU is not a state but a community of states, its collapse will not begin at the centre, but at the edges. If it ever dies, it will do so with a whimper, rather than a bang. This fish rots from the tail, not the head. The explosion will come not in Brussels but on the streets of Athens, Rome or Madrid. Perhaps we are seeing the first signs. And if the explosion comes, it will bring down with it the open borders, the single market, the practice of cooperative relations with others, the collaboration in many fields, and at its centre the good political relations that have delivered peace and a sense of community over fifty-five years.

The stakes in the Euro-game are high: monetary union was meant to bring prosperity (and to bind Germany closer!). If the result is penury and political instability, then the EU will share the fate of the Habsburg Monarchy.

A good description of the EU malaise. But the distinguished "intellectual architect of EU foreign policy" does not have very much to offer in the way of curing the disease:

Unlike war, there are no winners when financial markets collapse (no, not even George Soros). If we fail, it will be by errors in our economics or misjudgments of our politics or through collective stupidity. Getting it right does not need a miracle. It requires only open debate, open minds, a readiness to listen and to learn. Intellectual clarity and human sympathy is all that we need, plus some understanding what we stand to lose.

Of course, Cooper does not really want an "open debate", because that is what the entire EU establishment has been - and still is - avoiding like a plague. The EU leaders do not want a really open debate, because  it would lead to the reconsideration of the entire failed project.  

On the highest EU level, there is one head of state, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who is head and shoulders above the rest. But Cooper and the the other EU grandees, who talk and write about an "open debate" and "readiness to listen", have during the last ten or so years done their utmost in order to shut him out.