re: "Harsh. Very Harsh"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") borrowed extensively from a Wall Street Journal piece.

His own comment(s):

"Apart from Belgium which ceased to exist long ago, no EU member state really wants to be subject to German intrusive control over its finances."

&

"Read the whole thing. Then run out and buy tinned food while the shops still operate."

9/20

re: "Our Looming EU Coup d'États?"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") shared some excerpts from his piece in Commentator.

Money quote(s):

"Once upon a time world leaders met only rarely if at all. They maintained their dignity if not power precisely by not meeting.

Now EU leaders are meeting and talking almost every month in one way or the other. This (for now) has the effect of making wars in Europe a lot less likely."

Not that, Balkans and other "Bloody Borders" of Islam aside, that's been all that likely lately.

"There is nonetheless a downside. Which is that Trust reasserts itself in a peculiarly personal way. Private tiffs can spill over into public disagreements, and vice versa."

"And lo! ‘Dialogue’ diminishes. Trust declines. Emails start to get no replies, phone-calls aren’t taken. Differences start to count for more than what people have in common. Those who have money start to
bark out instructions to those who are hoping for yet more cheap loans. The whole mood shifts for the worse, defaulting to petulant
defensiveness..."

Which is where the EU remains today.

"The problem for the European Union is that it has very little legal or political room for manoeuvre for tackling the Eurozone crisis."

The EU is designed for ratcheting forward, into even closer integration and transnationalism. It's not designed for course corrections or reversals.

"... the mighty elite brains who got us into this mess will come up with an even better plan, but then implement it with even less public scrutiny and direct accountability than now exists. To do that they
may have to start taking serious legal short-cuts, to the point of side-stepping or ignoring key national laws and EU treaty constraints."

For an oligarchy, that's not such a big deal. For a democracy, or set thereof, it's a deal-breaker.

"Insofar as it means anything it sounds like a coup d’etat, or more precisely coup d’etats.

I might be prepared to sign away some of my own autonomy and my own little slice of my country’s autonomy in return for a wider economic package which makes sense, but only if I get to take part in a
proper debate about the options. Which, given what is at stake in current circumstances, means a referendum"

Which can be held again and again until a correct result is reached.

9/20

re: "Greece's Dangerous Gamble"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") looked at the Greek financial crisis.

Money quote(s):

"As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out profligate Greece, the Greeks resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more."

Likewise for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Iceland. To name a few.

"European integration has been achieved through stealth and technocratic maneuvering on the part of elites, quite frequently bypassing the clear preferences of the ostensibly democratic populations in various countries. The passing of so much authority to the European Central Bank and to appointed officials in Brussels has been inexorable, with little input from the European publics and often against the expressed wishes demonstrated via referenda."

This is not a bug in the European experiment: it's a feature.

11/1

re: "Foreign policy shrapnel, when Europe blows"

Phil Levy at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") is worried about Europe.

Money quote(s):

"There is a strong temptation to take European stability for granted. After an exceedingly shaky start to the 20th Century, Europe got its act together, overcame animosities, and became a steady and supportive ally of the United States."

"What if you're an old-school, throw-weight and Congress of Vienna foreign policy type?"

Guilty. Mr. Levy lists four foreign policy consequences to the current Euro-zone financial crisis. He concludes:

"Decades of European stability have been a wonderful boon. It is hard to see how that stability survives the continent's current economic crisis. If Europe falters, the ramifications will not be limited to the world of finance."

In addition to being "an old-school, throw-weight and Congress of Vienna foreign policy type," CAA is an old Cold Warrior, who cut his teeth on (and in) NATO and our Western European allies, facing off against the Soviet motorized rifle hordes, somewhere over yonder past the Fulda Gap.

CAA likes Europe. CAA likes Europeans. Not more than or to the exclusion of Americans, you understand, but there's a lot of common history and culture shared with our co-civilizationists, plus a lot of personal friendships and other relationships.

On the more Realpolitik side of things, they're also a huge trading partner, not to mention the military-potential side of things. So Europe matters to the U.S., somewhat more than any other landmass of comparable population.