September 5, 2004
NO, WAIT, BUSH ISN'T HITLER, SCHROEDER IS (via Transcript Bio?):
Europe is reaching crisis point: Forget America: the government should be worrying about the situations in France and Germany (Will Hutton, September 5, 2004, The Observer)
With all eyes fixed on the American presidential elections, the scale of the looming crisis in France and Germany has gone largely unremarked. But it may so change the political geography of Europe that British arguments for and against the EU will be made redundant. A pervasive sense of decline in both countries, only partially justified but none the less virulent, is destabilising not just the structures of the EU - but the political systems of France and Germany.Last week in France, charismatic finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy resigned from the government in order to challenge for the leadership of President Chirac's UMP party, despairing of what is seen in France as a do-nothing regime that is fiddling while the country burns. The economy is mired in low growth and high unemployment; government spending at 54 per cent of GDP can go no higher.
There is universal agreement that France needs decisive action to reverse economic decline; there are rancorous arguments about not just how the economy should be run and society organised but whether the constitution of the Fifth Republic works any more. The socialist opposition wants to limit the President's current powers to allow more pluralism. With two-and-half years to run until the next presidential elections, France is descending into acrimony and division.
In Germany, Gerhard Schröder is presiding over the wreckage of the SPD, once the standard bearer of European social democracy. September sees four key state elections, including the vital election in North Rhine Westphalia, the SPD's historic heartland. Sixteen per cent behind in the polls there, its loss would be a disaster, not just for what it signals about Schröder's standing but because it will mean control that of the German upper house will pass to the conservative CDU and make him a titular Chancellor, governing only within the parameters of what his opponents will permit. [...]
As in France, the structures of the German political system are now being put in play. Twisting and turning for any kind of electoral advantage, Schröder last week said he was prepared to reverse Germany's 54-year-long ban on the referendum, the populist tool used by Hitler to establish the Nazi regime.
There's a debate question for you: Mr. Kerry will you be the third Democratic president in the past hundred years to send American troops to Europe to die in a war to end all wars? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 5, 2004 10:51 PM
OJ: You gotta get out more. What are the French and the Germans going to fight a war with? Spitballs?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 6, 2004 12:01 AMSpitballs and nuclear weapons.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at September 6, 2004 2:22 AMUmm, with who?
IMHO, it's going to have all the earmarks of a revolution.
Posted by: Ptah at September 6, 2004 4:15 AM"To imagine that Britain will be immune from this is absurd; what happens in mainland Europe will directly impact upon us as it has throughout our history. What is needed is an understanding that if European states don't hang together they will hang separately - and that because the European Union is the best we have, we'd better make it work."
Once again, what is striking is not so much that Europe has serious problems, but that no one can see anyway out other than "more of the same" and reving up the apocolyptic engines. European elites are ultramontane about the EU and any talk of slowing down, tinkering or even strategic reversals is heresy. It's like when they outlawed war in the 20's (Briand-Kellogg) and then blew themselves up a decade later.
It's also a little like when the UN tries to bring peace somewhere or cure AIDS. When they fail miserably, all anyone ever says is "more money, more UN." To suggest the UN can't or shouldn't do the job gives the world's progressive elites fits of the vapours.
Posted by: Peter B at September 6, 2004 6:25 AMIf French nuclear weapons function as well as their aircraft carrier, the only people who should fear them are the French. Schroder just got hammered in the Saarland losing it by 16%, which is like Democrats losing West Virginia. The Nord Rhein-Westphalen vote will be really ugly for him.
The elites may want an EU, the people don't. They want a customs union, they want cross-border military cooperation, they want some kind of common defense, but they don't want to surrender to a bunch of Brussells bureaucrats what makes each people unique. Banning unpasteurized cheese wins you no friends in Normandy.
The Sarkozy resignation is part of a strategy. He sees blood in the water. Chirac is a national embarassment. Giving the US a Three-Stooges style eye-poke is all well and good until your wine exports drop by 25%, while those of the Coalition of the Willing increase. And since lower-end wine is lower-end wine, much of that market share ain't coming back too soon. I would expect to see the Giscard wing of the Right of which Sarkozy is a member to bolt the government before Bush is inaugurated.
Why should Blair worry? His enemies are the ones losing on the continent. What he should do is prune his backbenches of trouble-makers through the judicious use of the pork barrel, getting rid of the Clare Shorts and Tam Dalyells at the local level.
Posted by: Bart at September 6, 2004 8:38 AM