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| European Unity? |
George Friedman the author of this report is an American political scientist and author. A former chief intelligence officer, he is the founder of Stratfor and was its financial overseer and CEO. He recently sold his shares in Stratfor and started Geopolitical Futures, a new global analysis company.
Firstly, the US looks at Europe in the much broader context of Eurasia. So now we have a crisis that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Chinese are in crisis, Russia is in crisis, the Middle East is in terrific crisis, and now Europe is in crisis as well. So we are looking at a situation where an area with a population of 5 billion is transforming in ways we cannot anticipate.
An American looks at this not just as Europe, but as a range of problems in general. There are many American views of Europe, but my view is that the EU has failed, but there is no clear alternative. And we see the failure in the immigration issue, which we do not regard as a major issue because it is less than 0.5% of population shift, but Europe cannot make a decision on how to handle it.
This is not an unmanageable problem. You can decide not to let anyone in, and then you take measures to prevent that, or you decide to integrate them and you do certain things to make that happen. It is Europe’s inability to make a decision that is, from the American point of view, the most problematic.
It is problematic because the United States has a partnership with Europe. As important as the EU, and very much missing from this conversation, is NATO: the stresses that exist between the countries in the European Union also become present in NATO.
So for example, we have one relationship with the French, one relationship with the British, a very different relationship with the Germans and a completely different relationship with the Poles. We can no longer think of NATO as the mechanism by which we are related to Europe.
This is not a catastrophic situation for the United States, but it poses challenges to us in the Middle East, and it poses challenges with Russia, and we are looking at the Europeans as increasingly unreliable and increasingly unpredictable.
Note EU-Digest: a most interesting and revealing report, exposing the weaknesses of the EU, including: lack of loyalty among partners, disarray among member states in the decision making process, need for a strong central leadership, ineffectiveness of NATO, and need for our own EU army. As the saying goes :"We, the EU, better fish or cut bait".
Hope you are taking note ? - EU Citizens, EU Presidency, EU Commission, EU Parliament, and foremost all you 28 self-centered EU member states governments. Don't destroy this fantastic project of democracy we call the EU, which has brought us more than 60 years of Democracy, Peace and Prosperity. We the people will hold you responsible. We can't turn the clock back. Time for action is now !
For the complete report click here: George Friedman: The EU is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable | EurActiv
