re: Europe: EU’s Common Agricultural Policy; Reaction in Spain (John Heelan, UK)

John Heelan writes:

Recently (8 November) we discussed who suffered or benefited from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Last Saturday, Spain’s El País reported that the country’s agricultural sector was mobilising two days of demonstrations with (allegedly) tens of thousands of agricultural workers and business owners demanding government policies that ensured profitable production and the future of the rural world.

With crop and livestock farmers at the forefront, the demonstrators complained about:

1. An average increase of 34% since 2005 in costs of production, machinery, fertilisers, fuel oil and seeds.

2. A steep fall in farm gate prices for cereals, milk, sunflower oil, sheep products, citrus fruits, olive oil and grapes.

3. Suppression of Community mechanisms regulating the markets and the lack of alternative instruments.

4. A 25% drop in profits since 2005 and lack of profit-making potential in the countryside.

5. Questions about the future of CAP beyond 2013.

6. Lack of price transparency in the food chain and the power of large distribution groups to impose farm-gate prices.

7. Low-cost imports from third countries (i.e. dumping).

8. Abandonment of rural life beyond tourism and the lack of measures and services to maintain quality of life (for the rural population).

9. The lack of a (Spanish) Ministry devoted to resolving the problems of the sector, above all as a result of the fusion with the Environment Ministry.

Plus ça change for farmers since 1980!

JE comments: Didn’t French farmers used to complain about lower-priced agricultural products pouring in from Spain? Now Spain is on the receiving end. So where is the really cheap stuff coming from nowadays? Or does the CAP literally benefit nobody?

re: Europe: EU’s Common Agricultural Policy; a Milk Tale (John Heelan, UK)

When commenting the classic George Sassoon post forwarded by Bienvenido Macario on 8 November, JE asked:

Might someone update us on the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy–who benefits and who suffers?

John Heelan responds:

I was one of those working UK dairy farmers who suffered in the late 1970s!

We had a very successful dairy farm (100 Guernsey cows in a milking herd that had won a national award, 100 or so “followers”–i.e. heifers and calves due to take their place at some time in the milking herd. Our land holding and farming quality would have allowed us to increase the size of the milking herd considerably. The banks were leaning over backwards to offer us loans for the necessary investment the increase in equipment and buildings the expansion would have entailed.

Then the Common Agricultural Policy and milk quotas happened!

(Although aimed at reducing the then “milk lake,” for political reasons CAP was targeted at supporting the French 25-cow herds (far too small to be business efficient, but at that time, French farmers comprised 25% of France’s electorate and thus had a remarkably strong lobby). I know as I spoke to French and Dutch farmers at the time.)

Initial milk quotas were set at 90% of the previous year’s output (if my memory serves me right), at the same time, price per gallon of milk produced paid by the UK national Milk Marketing Board was reduced yet again. The increase in feed prices was unchecked as was the level of veterinary charges (two of the major costs in milk production).

Thank goodness for university and management school education and training. It showed us that although we could survive for 3-4 years, eventually the income/expenditure curves crossed–income down, expenses up, proftits become losses.

We recognised this long before others in the milk business and took the painful decision to sell the farm, the land and the animals. As such we were able to get reasonable prices for both before the bottom fell out of farm land and animal markets. (The farm-house and buildings are now a rich man’s plaything for stabling his horses, the animals went to good homes and most of the land is a remarkably poor nine-hole golf course!)

My farming partner (older than me) who had built the prize herd over many years, decided to retire: I went back reluctantly into my first profession in the high-tech world.

Many of our friends in milk production were not so lucky, as eventually our predictions for our business became true for their businesses. To survive they had to convert capital into income by taking out larger and larger loans secured by their land holdings. As land prices dropped, the security did not cover the loans and the banks foreclosed. (Bankers run their businesses on the “umbrella” principle–they offer you umbrellas when the sun is shining but want them back when it is raining!)

CAP left UK dairy farmers in impossible positions, having to sell for a pittance the farms (which also were their homes) they had built up over many years and still end up in negative equity. To support their families, they then had to enter the job market at a time of rising unemployment, untrained for anything other than farming. Suicides among UK dairy farmers at that time were second only to dentists (why dentists committed suicide, I don’t know!).

So forgive me if I spit whenever CAP is mentioned!

JE comments: I never knew that John Heelan, one of WAISdom’s most prolific and faithful correspondents, had been a dairyman. His story is sad, and a powerful indictment of CAP. Is it only the French who seem to benefit? Do they continue to do so?

Scotland: a Classic WAIS Post from George Sassoon (Bienvenido Macario, Philippines/US)

JE: In reference to John Heelan’s and Nigel Jones’s recent postings on WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon, unofficial WAIS Archivist Bienvenido Macario has unearthed this classic post from 2002, in which Siegfried’s son George and Prof. Hilton discussed sheep, the EU, and other trappings of globalization in George’s homeland of Scotland. I agree with Bienvenido that this one is worth a replay:

**********

From: Ronald Hilton
Subject: Re: SCOTLAND: sheep and other problems
To: “WORLD ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES”
Date: Monday, September 16, 2002, 5:19 AM

RH: Commenting on George Sassoon’s piece about Scotland, I said: “You will look in vain on a map for the famed county of Argyll; in 1975 it was divided into Highland, north of the Caledonian Canal and Strathclyde to the south of it. It was a wise move, since Argyll must have been the largest county in Britain, and the capital, Invernaray, a small town near the top of Lock Fyne, was pretty inaccessible.” George updates my information. I found Lochgilphead, a tiny place at the head of Loch Fyne. Scotland has more geography than I can handle. George says:

“Actually, a few years ago the part of Argyll not in Highland region achieved independence from Strathclyde, and is now the County of Argyll and Bute (island), with its ‘capital’ at Lochgilphead, which is even more inaccessible than Inveraray. The latter town is the Campbell headquarters, while the bureaucrats infest Kilmory Castle at Lochgilphead.

“As regards sheep, I gave up active farming when the price of a Blackface lamb dropped to the equivalent of two bottles of whisky, and since then it has sunk still lower. But the real killer in farming is the paperwork. Cattle now need individual ‘passports.’ The foot and mouth outbreak was used as an excuse for even more regulation. The market for Blackface wool has also collapsed to the point where it is not worth the cost of getting it off their backs. It is very coarse, and was used for stuffing mattresses in Italy and for Soviet Army uniforms, which makes me itch just thinking of it. But now the Russians have given up buying.

“Another cause for the decline of farming is the system of artificial subsidies under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy. These are paid on a per-head basis for cattle and sheep, but any benefit to the farmers is lost as the buyers simply drop their prices and increase their profit margins. These subsidies are based on the euro currency, and due to the strength of the British pound against the euro, they are worth correspondingly less to British farmers, putting them at a disadvantage when competing with Continental peasants. A farm is not like a factory where if economic conditions are poor, you can shut it down and start again when things improve. Once stopped, it is a hell of a job to get started again, so people just soldier on and hope for the best.

“You also mentioned fishing. Well, before the late unlamented Soviet Union broke up, they sent fish-factory vessels known as Klondikers to various ports round the West Coast, notably Ullapool. Not being allowed to fish themselves, they bought the catches of local fishermen which were processed and canned on board. Now this too has stopped, as they don’t have the hard currency to pay. Now, thanks to Brussels, the Spanish fishing fleet has been given the freedom of the seas and they are hoovering up everything more than an inch long. In the North Sea, the Danes are catching vast quantities of sand eels, which are the principal food of cod and other larger species. These are used for pig feed, and even, it is rumoured, as fuel in power stations. As a result, cod is becoming a rarity. I could go on much longer about how Brussels and London have destroyed all our traditional industries, but will stop now.”

RH’s comment: I found Ullapool. My atlas says it has or had 807 inhabitants. There is clearly something very wrong with CAP [Common Agricultural Policy]. My sources say the French, the main beneficiaries, are to blame.

JE comments: The WAIS nuggets Bienvenido Macario tirelessly unearths never fail to remind me of Prof. Hilton’s ability to weave together several incoming messages to create a gem of a dialogue. I can almost hear George and Ronald sharing a glass of single-malt over the Internet, bantering about Scottish agriculture as only British gentlemen could. “Hoovering up” cod–this is the prose we sorely miss on WAIS. Regarding George’s mention of the Soviet fleet purchasing Scottish fish, I wonder if seven years later, the now-prosperous Russians have resumed the practice. Cameron Sawyer–can you fill us in? Also, might someone update us on the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy–who presently benefits and who suffers?

re: EU and UN (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Bienvenido Macario wrote on 3 November:

It [the EU] is a non-nation international organization very much like the United Nations.

Cameron Sawyer responds:

Au contraire, the EU and the UN could hardly be more different. The essence of this difference is in the extent of delegation of sovereignty to the respective institutions, which in the case of the UN is slight and sporadic (and the UN does not make laws), and in the case of the EU is broad and systematic (and exercised through actual laws, a huge pile of them in fact). As a result of that, the UN has no practical power except to harangue, apart from sporadic, isolated cases, mostly where the UN is used to manage some failed state which is forced by other countries to delegate certain aspects of sovereignty. The case of the EU is completely and totally different–the member states systematically and broadly delegated an ever-increasing degree of sovereignty to the EU, which by now has reached the stage where the EU exercises a significant amount of sovereign power, while, as various WAISers have pointed out, not being subject to much democratic control.

You see, a regular national government has a traditional form of sovereignty which is derived from the feudal rights of big landlords–a kind of ownership of a certain geographical area which gave the landlords the right to demand military service, extract taxes, and impose laws on the peasants living in that area. Modern states work on very much the same principles, except that democracy has helped a lot to give a certain voice to those former peasants over whom sovereignty is exercised. But the “sovereign” has the same nature and functions; just that it is no longer a landlord or a king, but a government not overtly acting in its own interests, but rather on behalf of the peasantry (at least, theoretically, but that is already good). The EU is another landlord on top, to whom a whole series of powers have been delegated by the traditional landlords. This power is so strong that it has been argued vigorously in some court cases that EU sovereignty is actually not delegated at all, but original.

(See: http://www.enelsyn.gr/papers/w4/Paper%20by%20Andras%20Jakab.pdf).

The article cited above is quite fascinating and I recommend it to WAISers interested in these questions. The article shows that massive confusion exists in the various EU member states about the affect of EU membership on the sovereignty of EU member states. I have to say, that these facts lend objective support to Nigel Jones’s thesis about the EU’s achieving statehood by stealth–here is concrete evidence. I particularly love this phrase in the cited article:

“So, how can we solve on a legal level the conflict between European integration and national sovereignty? What should be our answer to the question concerning sovereignty in the EU? My point was exactly it is a misunderstanding that we should answer the question. The real
lawyerly task (as we have seen analogically in different constitutional laws) is to neutralise this question. There are times where straight answers are needed–like the 16-17th centuries. And there are times where not–like now. Or to put it in a more cynical manner: our task is to avoid or to prevent the question, and if someone still poses it then we should give a ’solution’ that does not say anything practical for conflicts. Any other ’solution’ would just strengthen the possibility of conflicts, though we should rather prevent them. The paradoxical lawyerly task in this situation is to build up a legal uncertainty as to the legal outcome of a conflict (by building up complicated conceptual constructs which make virtually impossible the straight use of the sovereignty argument) . . . ”

Op. cit., pp. 15-16

Wow! There’s your smoking gun, Nigel! You can send me a bottle.

JE comments: Yes, but what EU commission regulates the (snail-mail) posting of liquor to non-EU destinations?

re: Europe: More on Blair and the EU (Bienvenido Macario, Philippines/US)

Bienvenido Macario writes:

I think Tony Blair as EU president would be good for the EU, even though the EU president’s term is only for one year.

The EU is not one solid country or nation. It is a non-nation international organization very much like the United Nations, now headed by a South Korean. EU members enjoy what they call in Spanish (for the lack of a better word) “doble cara” diplomacy. EU is a member of the G-20 at the same time EU member-states are also members of the G-20 in their separate and sovereign capacity.

I think the EU and its members are trying to off-set or balance the numerical superiority of the peoples of the BRIC nations. A case in point is Norway’s interest in Kenya. I’d even give Pres. Obama two Nobel Prizes (for Peace and Economics) if I were Norway. Take the case of Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems. While the US has already approved the M & A, the EU simply delayed the transaction by holding off on its approval. The result? Massive lay-offs in Sun Microsystems, giving the US Tech sector a shiner.

As Prof. Hilton said in 2004, a Democrat in the White House would be in the best interest of Europe. I didn’t realize then that it would be to the detriment of US interests.

JE comments: Two questions: what is Norway doing in Kenya? And what’s the buzz in the Valley about Oracle’s takeover of Sun? 3000 layoffs is a lot of people.

re: EU and US: A Comparison (John Heelan, UK)

Nigel Jones wrote on 2 November:

The US was born of a political/ecomomic uprising against British colonialism. What began as an economic protest soon morphed under the pressure of military events into the forging of a new nation.

The founding fathers banded together voluntarily–no one told them to found their nation.

John Heelan comments:

Perhaps knowledgeable US WAISers would care to compare and contrast the birth of the European Union with the Articles of Confederation 1777 and also with the subsequent (federal) Constitution.

JE quips: Isn’t “knowledgeable…WAISer” a redundancy, rather like hard rock, hot water heater, and etc? But getting back to John Heelan’s request, I’d especially like to hear what Alan Levine has to say.

re: Europe: More on Blair and the EU (Nigel Jones, UK)

Nigel Jones writes:

John Heelan (1 November) compares the EU with the infancy of the US (as advocates of the EU are very wont to do). But there are several massive differences between the two that completely invalidate the comparison.

The US was born of a political/ecomomic uprising against British colonialism. What began as an economic protest soon morphed under the pressure of military events into the forging of a new nation.

The founding fathers banded together voluntarily–no one told them to found their nation.

In stark contrast, the EU was cobbled together by an unelected elite of bureaucrats, exemplified by the sinister Monnet. In contrast with the open, ringing tones of the Declaration of Independence and the early debates of Congress, their project was a secret one, imposed on a Europe ignorant of their ultimate objectives.

The bottom line is that the EU is inorganic and top down; the US was organic and grew from the roots up. The EU is therefore built on sand.

Another major point is the unity (including cultural and linguistic unity) of the US–whereas the EU is a patchwork quilt of ancient nations, stitched together. Any old Order Amishite will tell you what happens if you try to stitch up ancient patchwork: it rips apart.

Finally the idea that the EU has kept the peace in Europe since WWII is a fallacy. The armed forces of NATO–primarily the US–deterred a Soviet invasion. The EU has no armed forces. Nor do I agree that a war in Europe is unthinkable–it may not be a conventional war, but a Yugoslav-type low intensity ethnic conflict is all too imaginable.

re: Europe: More on Blair and the EU (John Heelan, UK)

Alain de Benoist wrote on 1 November:

The discussion about Tony Blair is a bit void, first because he will not be chosen as a president of the EU, second because the president will not have any democratic legitimity (he will not be elected by the European peoples), third because the role of the European president will be mainly a decorative one.

John Heelan comments:

I trust that Alain is correct in saying that Blair will not be chosen as EU President for reasons I have expressed previously. I am not sure “democratic legitimacy” will have much of a role in the choice.

However, my fear is that the general lack of EU “democratic legitimacy.” I suspect the majority of UK citizens do not know who their Member of the European Parliament is. I don’t know who mine is–he/she is practically irrelevant at the present time, and the poor turnout at EU elections indicates that the general public is either confused, bored or just merely apathetic about the EU.

Recent history shows us that during his term as Prime Minister, Blair gradually overturned the traditional principle of governance by the Cabinet (of whom the PM is “primus inter pares”) into a presidential “administration” controlled by himself and a small coterie of “advisers.” Cabinet Ministers were presented with fait accompli decisions which they were expected to support (i.e. take responsibility) as loyal supporters of the PM.

If Blair were selected (not “elected”!) I suspect he would take a similar approach to the top European job–despite the original terms of reference it came with–and become a very much hands-on leader and not just a figurehead.

Although Nigel Jones and I came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, we agree that Blair would be a disaster for the EU as President: the EU would end up as just yet another US satrapy.

Like Alain, I speak as somebody who supports the EU concept on the basis that the days of nation-states are gradually coming to an end: safety in the future world of corporate-states and power-blocs demands that a fragmented Europe unites to provide a common front.

I also recognise that the EU is only in its puberty, giving rise to some of its more undesirable attributes. How long did it take the US constitution to settle down? 100 years? 200 years? Let’s not be too impatient.

JE comments: Regarding the US constitution, it took at least fourscore and seven years to settle down. I would say more like sixscore years–although Civil Rights and other issues kept stewing until the 1960s.

re: Europe: Still More on the EU (Alain de Benoist, France)

Alain de Benoist writes:

John Eipper (30 October) asked for some comments about the recent discussion between Nigel Jones and Gilbert Doctorow on the European Union.

I never defined myself as French, but as a European. This means that I am not hostile to European supranationality. To the contrary, I believe we live in the era of the end of the classical nation-states, which have become in the same time too big to answer correctly to the local demands of the people and too small to face the global challenges of this century. The nation-state was the main political actor in the times of modernity, but we live now in postmodernity. I am a federalist in the sense that I would like to see a politically united Europe built on the principle of subsidiarity and autonomy (which implies that the problems must be solved at the lowest possible level, the people being let to decide as much as possible about that which concerns them).

The present European Union is unfortunately something very different. I agree with Nigel Jones (and other Euroskeptics) that it is today a big bureaucracy with a very important deficit of democracy. It has been built from the top instead of being built from the base. It has been the affair of the States and governments, not of the people themselves. It has given priority to economy and commerce, not to politics and culture. Twenty years ago, “Europe” was presented as a solution to all problems. Now, it is just one more problem among the others. Politically, Europe has no will, and is becoming everyday more impotent and paralyzed. The European political construction has today arrived at a dead end.

The finality of the European construction has never been clearly formulated, because there is a fundamental disagreement between the European countries on that point. Is the purpose to build an economically integrated free-exchange zone, with no clear frontiers, which would become part of the “transatlantic” entity ? Or is it to construct a continental power, politically and militarily independent, with clear geopolitical frontiers, having good relations with Russia (and Eurasia), which could become both an original cradle of civilization and a pole of regulation of the globalization in a multipolar world? These two aims are incompatible. I am not interested in the former (Europe as a market), while I have sympathy for the latter (Europe as a power).

The discussion about Tony Blair is a bit void, first because he will not be choosen as a president of the EU, second because the president will not have any democratic legitimity (he will not be elected by the European peoples), third because the role of the European president will be mainly a decorative one.

Nietzsche wrote that Europe will be only constructed or unified “on the verge of the grave.” It could be true.

re: Europe: Still More on the EU (Herb Abrams, US)

Herb Abrams writes:

It’s a pleasure to observe the EU debate rekindled in the minds and passions of thoughtful WAISers. All of the skepticism is justified, so long as the ultimate goals remain clear. The EU has come a long way from the proposal of Schuman and Monnet in 1950 of a European Coal and Steel community of six nations, ratified by the Treaty of Rome seven years later. In the foreground were the powerful desires to tie Germany integrally to the West and prevent another Franco-German war, to provide an alternative to the spread of Communism, and to integrate economically as a single bloc. I will not belabor the details of its further development and its present organization and difficulties. Instead, I want to indicate some of the background of my own interest.

I look back on the last century as a series of events of huge dimensions: World War l; the Russian Revolution; the League of Nations; the great depression; the surge of totalitarianism; World War II; the United Nations; the end of Apartheid; the collapse of the USSR; and many others. The efforts to stabilize the international polity–to strengthen the UN, for example–have fallen short on the altar of national sovereignty. In this frame, the EU stands out as the most important development of the century because it has demonstrated, however partially, that there can be progress to limit sovereignty by way of a voluntary union, as a model for regional stability.

Has this kind of voluntary ceding of sovereignty in the interest of regional unity ever happened before?

In 1786, New Jersey had it own customs service; nine states had their own navies; Virginia’s law that vessels would be seized unless they paid the proper duty was aimed at Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland; sovereign militias and sovereign state legislatures conducted and enforced the business of government. Boundary disputes were supported by maps and history that were “incontrovertible” on all sides.

With the call for a Constitutional Convention in May 1787, only Pennsylvania and Virginia’s representatives had shown up by May 9. Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Tom Paine were all absent and opposed to a federal seizure of power that echoed that of King George, in their views.

By May 25, a quorum was able to elect George Washington as President of the convention. During a steamy summer he held the thirteen sovereign states together, pulling against each other but ultimately willing to vote on the document that Madison and Hamilton had constructed. The vote was 7 to 3, with New York, Delaware, and Maryland voting “no.” New Jersey’s delegate said, “My state will never submit to tyranny or despots.”

Never before had a body of three and half million people, 13 states, in a territory that embraced a continent hammered out the issues in such a fashion. Some saw the effort as a return to monarchy–especially the single executive. All were divided by issues of slavery, boundaries, independence, and others.

By August 1788, 11 states had ratified the new constitution. Now there are 50, among whom there has never been a war but one: slavery could not be tolerated nor the break-up of the union.

So I see the EU as another regional embodiment of the best in man, a willingness to work together for the common good. In 50 years it has become a single integrated market and trading bloc of over 490 million people. With 27 member countries, it is also a major legislative force, reaching into many areas of economic and social life. It must be criticized to strengthen, not to destroy

Slowly, over time, the regional unions will spread around the planet and become strong enough to cede a measure of sovereignty for the common defense. Maybe. Perhaps. Dream on.

JE comments: Herb Abrams reminds us of perhaps the greatest achievement of the EU: it is now impossible to imagine a war breaking out in Western Europe. Six decades ago, a time frame many WAISers personally remember, this was anything but the case.

re: Europe: More on the EU (Gilbert Doctorow, Belgium)

Gilbert Doctorow responds to David Gress’s post of 31 October:

Reading through David Gress’s post, I see some consistency in the way Euro-skeptics evade the issue of how the evolution of the EU has affected their personal lives and the lives of friends, relatives, acquaintances over the past 20 years.

For those of us living in the real as opposed to opt-out parts of the EU, and by that I mean Schengen and Euro-zone Europe, the changes in the structure of our economies, in the openness of our markets and assortment available for purchase, in the possibilities of free movement across borders to take up employment and life-style opportunities that may attract us while enjoying protection of pension rights and medical insurance and property rights and access to bank credit is unbelievable. And the period of the most positive development and accelerated improvements has been precisely that coinciding with the transformation of the EEC into the EU. You have to be a curmudgeon to deny that, eh, friends, whether it sits well with your ideological procrustean bed or not. And all of these changes required legal basis that was provided by those same bureaucrats and talking shop legislators of the European Parliament whom the Euro-skeptics so enjoy pillorying.

It also bears mention that the folks living in small countries like Belgium or Denmark have been among the greatest beneficiaries of the tearing down of non-duty protectionism within and between EU member states, because our markets were previously among those offering poorest choice to consumers, simply due to the smaller scale they represented.

The nanny state which David is rightly criticizing is part of the Spirit of our Times and besieges us wherever on this globe we may be. It is unreasonable to conflate it with the EU and its institutions. A year ago I was convinced of the globalization of these ills when I visited that bastion of Anglo-Saxon hardiness and self-reliance, New Zealand. A country where you may kill yourself at your leisure driving along its coastal roads which systematically have no guard rails alongside precipices, also posts warnings in its rose gardens to watch your step because the grass may be uneven or has mandatory nutritional information on food packaging informing you that the pack of tomatoes, for example, contains no cholesterol. This type of bureaucratic stupidity seems to know no borders and to survive, indeed flourish most anywhere, even in countries with minimal state apparatus.

JE comments: Gilbert Doctorow is the first WAISer to speak of “procrustean beds” during my 3 + years as editor. I’ve always been fond of the expression.

re: Europe: More on the EU (David Gress, Denmark)

David Gress responds to Nigel Jones’s post of 30 October:

Nigel forgot to mention Denmark, which has also never been a fascist or communist dictatorship.

I have become an EU sceptic as the EU has morphed from a free trading zone offering mutual advantages to all parties into a power-happy apparat staffed with well-paid and undertaxed bureaucrats who develop ever more reasons why they should have more power and resources. The EU has a human rights department, vast environmental bureaucracies, and lots of other stuff that has nothing whatever to do with free trade and growth but everything to do with amassing power and creating self-serving and self-staffing networks of people who could never survive in private business.

In 1972, when Denmark voted 2 to 1 in favor of joining the European Communities, as they were then modestly known, I was very much in favor and despised the left-wing opposition with their scare stories of free-marketeers and Catholics from the south of Europe destroying the welfare state. Some years later, I was astonished to find a small but determined liberal (classical liberal) opposition to the EC/EU evolving in Denmark. I still thought them silly, because it seemed to me that the EU could be a lever to liberalize the Danish economy and reduce the size of the state. Unfortunately, the EU has had zero influence in that regard, and indeed the Danish left, as the European left generally, has now discovered that the EU is their greatest ally, because it can gives them excuses for expanding state power in all sorts of areas far removed, as I said, from free trade and movement of the factors of production. and closer to the kind of moralistic pressure now being exercised on people (eat right, don’t smoke, save the environment). Things that to a classical liberal are personal responsibilities, but in the era of well-meaning power are public concerns.

A counterfactual estimate on how much European nations would have grown economically without the last 20 years of EU-megalomania cannot be conducted. But I suspect the result would have been much the same, or slightly better. After all, the EU, however irritating, does not suck up anything close to any national public sector. The worst part is probably EU law and the treaty mechanism whereby EU directives supersede any national law. Here is a branch of power wholly unaccountable to any electorate and obsessed with extending its own authority, to which national governments supinely assent.

re: Europe: More on Blair and the EU (Nigel Jones, UK)

Nigel Jones writes:

Since I wrote my original post (29 October) about the ghastly prospect of Tony Bliar becoming Euro-Emperor, the horror seems to have receded. EU leaders meeting in Brussels have sensibly decided that the prospect of this preening charlatan strutting around adoring himself in their name is too much even for them to stomach, so his bid is effectively over.

I thought, however, that I should answer Gilbert Doctorow’s thoughtful post of 29 October with some wider musings about the EU generally. I would suggest that the reason that Britain, in Gilbert’s words “opts out of EU provisions whenever (we) can get away with it” is simple : all other EU countries do exactly the same when it is in their national interest to do so. This is especially true of France. Secondly, there is a fundamental misfit between most of continental Europe and Britain.

Within living memory, all EU states except for the UK, Ireland and Sweden have been themselves Communist, fascist or Nazi dictatorships or occupied by Communist, Nazi or fascist dictatorships. Democracy is therefore a fragile flower for them, and one that the EU’s founding fathers decided they could dispense with altogether. It cannot be stated too often or too loudly: the EU is a superstate in the process of creation imposed by a bureaucratic class of professional politicians. It is not a democracy.

Whenever the ongoing (but hidden) plan to create a top-down state run by this new nomenklatura has run into opposition, the EU ruling elite have not changed their plans–they have merely stramrollered democracy. Most notably in re-packaging the EU constitution as the identical Lisbon Treaty after it had been rejected in referenda by the people of France, Holland and Ireland.

The Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “the last man in Europe,” is currently being bullied and browbeaten into putting his signature to this diktat. Not the first time in the last century that a brave Czech leader has been bullied into submitting to a dictatorship.

Britain–not for the first time–thus finds itself alone in defending democracy in Europe. It is no coincidence that today–some 35 years after entering the EU (then called the EEC) in the naive belief that we were merely joining a club for common trading and economic advantages–”Euroscepticism” is more rife than ever in the UK, with around half of all voters favouring our complete withdrawal, and re-emergence like Switzerland and Norway as free and independent states outside this sinister project.

As De Gaulle recognised way back in 1962 when he said “Non” to Britain joining up, free-style Anglo-Saxon democracy, and Jacobin, centralising, dictatorial EU “post-democracy” don’t mix. The EU, like the USSR and ex-Yugoslavia, is a misconceived experiment that is bound to end in tears. I hope it doesn’t end in blood also.

JE comments: Earlier today I told Nigel Jones off-Forum that this discussion on the EU (Jones v. Doctorow so far) is the very stuff of WAIS. I’d love to have the input of WAISers Solf, Papasotiriou, Benoist, McCabe, Molins, Gress, Henriques, Negrín, Hashimoto, Sawyer and others on this topic–as well as the thoughts on the EU of new WAISers Roberta Tontini and Anna Fruhstorfer.

re: Europe: Blair for EU President? (Gilbert Doctorow, Belgium)

Gilbert Doctorow responds to Nigel Jones’s post of 29 October:

I agree with Nigel Jones’s first two paragraphs regarding the nauseating impression a Blair candidacy for EU president creates and his better earned candidacy for hearing at the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Hopefully, today’s FT editorial weighing in against Blair will be the nail in the coffin to his aspirations. The backing Blair received from his buddy Silvio Berluscone a couple of days ago was also a nice contributor to the process.

As for the rest of Nigel Jones’s post, namely his diatribe against the EU, well, friends, I beg to differ. Since Brits have opted out of EU provisions wherever and whenever they could get away with it, Mr Jones may not be as aware of the vast improvement in daily lives of its residents that the EU’s evolution has effected these past couple of decades, not only for the new member states added along the way who have been obliged to modify national law and practices to conform to the “acquis,” but also for the core states like Belgium.

Alain de Benoist was fairly brutal in his description of globalization’s impact on world civilization. But here within the EU an internal globalization might best describe the process of consolidation that has been going on, especially since the decision was taken to adopt the euro. And its benefits to us all have been remarkable.

As for the anti-democratic, bureaucratic aspect of the EU Commission, yes, of course it is a blight. But this is so precisely because the national governments have a vested interest in denying true democracy to the EU institutions lest they diminish their own sovereignty in so doing. In turn, many of our member states, including Belgium, are virtual satrapies of irremovable and unheeding elites which at their own level also make a mockery of democracy, if we understand the term in the American vernacular, as the opportunity for the people to “throw the bums out” at regular intervals.

re: Europe: Blair for EU President? (Nigel Jones, UK)

Nigel Jones responds to John Heelan’s post of 28 October:

The prospect of our late PM becoming President of the EU is a piquant one for me.

On the one hand the idea of this vain, narcissistic liar and war criminal being anything in Europe apart from in the dock at The Hague answering charges of having knowingly led his country into war in Iraq on a false pretext is patently wrong, not to say nauseating.

On the other hand Bliar and the European Union make a perfect fit: both are undemocratic; both gobble up huge amounts of money for no return; both are vapid generators of enormous amounts of hot air; and both are somehow slimy, sinister and ridiculous all at the same time.

The coronation of Phony Tony and his gold-digging consort as the first Emperor and Empress of Europe since Boney and Josephine is too bathetic even for satire, just as the appointment of a man who has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East as a peace tsar for the region was an arrant absurdity.

I can only recommend US WAISers to read Robert Harris’s thriller The Ghost (largely set on Martha’s Vineyard), about a very Bliar-like ex-British PM. Harris is a (very) disillusioned former member of Bliar’s inner circle who became repulsed by how this criminal fantasist actually operates.

(Incidentally, Roman Polanski was in the last stages of filming the novel when his career was recently interrupted.)

JE comments: The TB connection to Polanski, who at last update was still in Swiss custody awaiting deportation to the US, is interesting, though I’m not sure what conclusions to draw. Note to WAISers: whilst editing I had “fixed” Nigel’s first inversion of the “a” and “i” in Blair, until I realized that this was done on purpose…

re: Europe: Blair for EU President? (Eugen Solf, Germany)

Eugen Solf responds to John Heelan’s post of 28 October:

Was Tony Blair not appointed Middle East Envoy after he left the Government and the House of Parliament? Did he not say something like “a solution to the Mid-East problems is possible but only with a lot of work,” or something to this effect?

I wonder how much work he put into that job? Since leaving the Government how often was he in the Middle East solving Mid-East problems?

JE comments: Anyone care to take a stab at Eugen’s questions? Nigel Jones of the UK is even less sanguine than his countryman John Heelan about a possible Blair EU Presidency. Nigel’s post is next in the queue.

Europe: Blair for EU President? (John Heelan, UK)

Israel: Is Israel’s Future with the US or the EU? (Jon Kofas, Greece)

Jon Kofas writes:

The recent “Holiday War,” which Israel launched with the ostensible goal of eliminating if not substantially weakening Hamas and at the same time instigating a deeper fissure between Hamas and Fatah, is not even a week old but it is already revealing significant signs of where Israel’s best interest may rest in the future.

As far as Tel Aviv is concerned, the terrorist network of Iran-Syria-Hezbolah-Hamas is the cause of the conflict, but who in the world or even inside Israel accepts the government’s official position? First, the government in Tel Aviv may have expected global public condemnation, but it probably did not expect that its own newspapers and media would openly question the wisdom of the war or at the very least the indiscriminate manner by which it is conducted with so many innocent people falling casualties–the killing of five adolescent and teenage sisters in a single hit. A segment of war-weary Israelis do not wish that their children live in a society of perpetual violence and this segment of the enlightened population is far more significant than any outside influence in the long term. Second, there are reports that the IDF is already showing signs that it is frustrated by the civilian leadership’s mode of operations and lack of a strategy that would yield the desired military and political results with minimal casualties and domestic opposition. There is a question of how long this war may last and whether there will be a ground assault as threatened. Third, while the US (Israel’s adopted Jewish mother, as Abba Eban correctly called the US) reaction is showing signs of aging, ineffectiveness, and less relevance amid a semi-depressed economy. Fourth, the EU is becoming increasingly more relevant in Israel’s future. In Gaullist modality the “pragmatic conservative” Sarkozy has once again proved that a distinct EU policy will prevail in foreign affairs as it did in international financial affairs over those following America’s coattails.

The EU emergency foreign ministers’ conference in Paris on 30 January 2008 and its resolution which Tel Aviv has rejected before even studying it means a prolonged conflict presumably with US approval. Note that Hamas reaction to the French proposal was the same as Tel Aviv’s. But even regardless whether Tel Aviv rejected the French proposal temporarily, the process proves that in the future the EU as the world’s largest economy with the most to gain/lose from intermittent Middle East instability will preempt Washington and compel it to follow the European lead when it comes to Mediterranean security and balance of power issues, and the Middle East is at the heart of whether the US will have to share determining the balance of power with the EU. Despite US lining up support for Israel from UK, Germany, and other smaller EU countries, Sarkozy convinced the members to follow a “European” course of immediate cease fire and humanitarian assistance, followed by dialogue for a more permanent settlement. As a pretext to continue the war, Tel Aviv demanded a permanent long-term settlement. Entrenched interests within and outside of Israel benefit from perpetual conflict and I don’t mean just weapons dealers. Those interested in perpetual conflict include:

*Ideological and political interests inside Israel, among Palestinians and Arabs, among Americans and Europeans;

*Economic interests linked to Israel’s and Arab war economies;

*Geopolitical interests–the US that uses Israel to determine the regional balance of power. Authoritarian Arab states are seriously concerned that if Palestine becomes a sovereign state would they be safe from inevitable radicalization process? How safe are Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia once a radical regime is in power in a free Palestine?

*Social reasons for perpetual conflict: As long as there is war the social order and regime are safe. Inside Israel there are those who fear, most who dread, that society will collapse if there is no eternal enemy. War keeps Israeli society together under the existing social order and regime. The same dynamic holds true for the Arabs. Moreover, militant Israelis and militant Arabs need an external enemy, otherwise they have no reason to exist.

Above all, there is the issue of sources of power and that brings us back to the US. Of course, Israel heads the list of US aid recipients and private US funds going to Israel are immense. Moreover, the US is and will remain a great power with inordinate influence in global and especially in Middle East affairs. However, reality will eventually ring the bell of pragmatism both in Tel Aviv and Washington that the best interests and future of Israel is with Europe. In a piece for WAIS many months ago I suggested that NATO and EU membership for Israel will engender relative peace in the area, it is a long-term (proposition) and it means that (in its absence) in the next ten to twenty years thousands more will die and millions will live the nightmare of low-level conflict. Rather than a grand all-encompassing peace plan that should always be on the table, short-term solutions can only come from the grass roots of the warring sides, not from the US and others that have their own agenda. Perhaps this may seem implausible, but the alternative is far worse against the reality of ‘perpetual war as a way of life’ and America’s relative decline in a world that is multi-polar and Israel’s limited prospects. The combination of Israel’s geographic proximity to Europe and the lack of options that best serve its citizens will eventually compel it to move closer to the EU and away from its aging adopted Jewish mother that needs to solve her own problems at home. Israel’s integration into EU will best serve the interests of the Arab countries that are also becoming increasingly integrated into the EU economy. And of course at long last the beleaguered and tormented Palestinians will have their own country where they can live in peace and make their contributions to modern civilization.

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: EU: Racism and the Global Crisis (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Cameron Sawyer responds to Robert Whealey’s post of 27 November:

Is it possible to have some actual arguments from Robert Whealey, to illuminate his theses, which like this are mere naked assertions, or rather, pronunciamentos? How exactly is “this big global recession” connected with the expansion of racism and fascism in Europe and in America? Can we have a hint?

For what reasons would George W. Bush be considered the “second Herbert Hoover”? What are the actual parallels Robert finds, if any? Differences? Is there something to discuss here?

JE comments: No president wants to be known as the second Herbert Hoover, whom history has vilified, perhaps unfairly. (I sense he was a smarter and more honorable president than his two immediate predecessors, Harding and Coolidge.) I mentioned this two days ago, but I would bet that a senior WAISer or two knew HH, as RH did, from the former president’s days in Palo Alto. Can anyone, perhaps from the Hoover Institution, offer some personal insight?

Unless we mean World Wars or movie sequels, “X is the second Y” metaphors are always matters of personal opinion. But they are oh so satisfying to invent–when talking about the entertainment world, I tell anyone who’ll listen that Justin Timberlake is the second Frank Sinatra. (On a good day I aspire to be “the second Ronald Hilton,” but I have a half century of work ahead of me before I can lay claim to such a lofty title!)

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: EU: Racism and the Global Crisis (Robert Whealey, US)

Robert Whealey responds to Jon Kofas’s post of 26 November:

If this big global recession which began in October 2007
continues into the Obama administration for two years, racism and fascism
will both expand in Europe and in America. Jon Kofas is quite right about
his insights concerning these two issues.

A minority of economists including Paul Krugman are already assuming that
the second Depression has started. How many months after October 1929 did
the press start describing the problem of the original “slump” as one of
Depression?

In any case, George W Bush will be called the Second Herbert Hoover. It is
still too early to discuss Obama. We have to wait until the Nov. 2010
Congressional Elections to make any kind of comparison.

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

EU: Racism and the Global Crisis (Jon Kofas, Greece)

Jon Kofas writes:

A number of EU countries are currently offering numerous monetary incentives–up to 7,000 euros in some cases–to Afro-Asians to return to their native lands.

At the same time there are measures sponsored by EU-Africa conferences to discuss methods by which African countries will be better prepared to cope with the global crisis without their citizens having to resort to a mass exodus to the EU. Already many laborers from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe have left Western European countries because of the economic crisis, primarily the deep slump in housing construction.

If the current crisis evolves into a recession similar to all others since WWII, then there will not be major problems in ethno-centrist backlash from European fringe groups toward Afro-Asian and East European immigrants. If the crisis evolves into a mini-depression that lasts for more than two years, then we may see small fringe groups of the ultra-right wing variety re-energized and defaulting all problems of capitalism on Afro-Asians and Eastern Europeans taking jobs away from the white Europeans.

Nor will the US be spared of this trend, as it is inevitable that Hispanic immigrants will be blamed by “nativists” for all calamities befalling America; the “American Dream” of prosperity stolen by low-wage foreigners. Neo-Nazi and other right-wing groups will also lash out with predictable anti-Semitic propaganda, attributing the current crisis not to structural modalities and complex nuances beyond the grasp of the average person concerned with daily survival but instead faulting groups that some have invariably used historically to scapegoat their enemies.

In the US there will also be racists that will blame the lingering recession on blacks because Obama was elected president. In fact, there are already websites calling Obama the Hoover of the 21st century and ever so cleverly implying Obama and his followers will ruin Christian Anglo-Saxon America. Such fringe hyperbolic responses are typical in hard times, but governments must counter them decisively with anti-racist measures while at the same time the mass media and other “information” and popular opinion networks
need to educate the world about the structural nature of the current crisis. This is the time that reckless comments such as those typical of Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi are likely to incite fringe groups that are itching for an excuse to find scapegoats for societal problems. In addition to vigilance by all governments to contain prejudice on the part of some extreme groups, funds need to be dedicated by the G-20 that own 85% of the world’s wealth to help the less developed nations cope with the current crisis. These allocations should be viewed as an investment that would actually benefit the rich nations more than the poor as it would curtail
the outflow of immigrant workers from the Third World to the rich countries amid the recession. Along with the UN, the World Bank which has a division that deals with such matters in the Third World could play the catalytic role during the next two-three years.

JE comments: Obama is the Hoover of the 21st century? I don’t follow the logic, but you can support any theory or analogy on the ‘Web. I Googled “Obama” and “Hoover,” and the first “hit” took me straight to a certain Cyberhillbilly, who follows a logic I cannot understand:

http://cyberhillbilly.blogspot.com/2008/09/barack-obama-hoover-part-deux.html

Prof. Hilton knew the Hoover of the 20th century (my beloved aunt, Ann Fullerton, also once met Hoover, in Palo Alto, and I presume a number of Stanford-area senior WAISers met/knew him as well). Often I wonder what RH would have to say about Obama; RH’s death in February of 2007 was just months before BO became a household name.

Getting back to Jon Kofas’s post, what kind of silly “go home” scheme is this? Has any nation ever bought its way out of recession by convincing people to leave?

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA