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| EU: It is time to stop being mouth fed by the US |
Links between the Trump administration and the Russians are an explosive political issue.
But what draws U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President
Vladimir Putin together? As it happens they do have one major common
target in their sights. Though this may surprise many, that target is
the European Union and more narrowly the power of Germany.
The reasons for their enmity toward the EU and Berlin are not
obscure. Even after the United Kingdom exits, the European Union will
have a population of more than 440 million people spread across 27
member states.
Number one in the EU is Germany, home to just over 80 million people and the continent’s dominant economy.
During the post war decades, a major goal of American foreign and
defence policy was to bolster the reconstruction of the West German and
European economies and to support the progress toward the creation of
today’s European Union. Western Europe was to serve as a bulwark against
the Soviet Union.
Much has changed. Germany is united and economically dominates the
continent. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European empire have
collapsed. Today’s autocratic Russia is capitalist, brimming with
nuclear missiles and has a Gross Domestic Product that is smaller than
Canada’s.
The Trump administration reckons that the further evolution of the
European Union’s political and economic project poses far more of a
threat to American power than does Russia.
Today, with the open support of both Trump and Putin, far right populist
movements across Europe have launched political assaults against the
EU. Last June, the leave forces triumphed in the referendum to pull the
U.K. out of the EU.
A crucial presidential election in France will further test the viability of the EU.
Marine Le Pen, who is pro Putin and pro Trump, leads the far right Front
National. Polls point to her coming first in the initial round of
voting in France’s presidential election in April and going on to lose
in the second round to a more moderate candidate. If Le Pen were to win,
unlikely but far from impossible, it would constitute a body blow to
the EU.
The hostility to the EU among far right parties in Europe, as well as in
Trump’s Washington and Putin’s Moscow, is deeply ideological. The EU is
the world’s leading experiment in creating a nascent federal state to
which countries voluntarily give up some of their sovereignty. If it
works, the EU will create a post-nationalist European identity. This is
anathema to Trump, Putin and Le Pen.
The EU displays the vulnerabilities of a half-constructed edifice. Most
of it has a common currency, the Euro and free movement of citizens. But
rates of unemployment vary enormously from Spain and Greece where huge
numbers of young adults cannot find jobs to Germany with a current
jobless rate of only 5.9 per cent. The generally cautious policies of
the German government and the European Central Bank have long been
blamed for sluggish growth and high unemployment in many parts of the
continent.
As Europe confronts the fraught politics of managing the flight of
refugees to the continent from the Syrian war, and from African
countries torn by drought and civil conflict, far right parties see this
as their great opportunity.
Last month, when I was in Menton on the French Mediterranean border with
Italy, I saw French police squads rounding up African migrants who had
walked into France along the railway tracks or who had arrived on
trains. The migrants were questioned, placed in police vans and driven
to the border where they were dropped off to fend for themselves in
Italy.
So far, the German political centre is holding under the leadership of
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who heads up a coalition government of
Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. But she is under fire from
right wing populists for admitting over one million asylum seekers into
Germany over the past two years. Her government faces national elections
later this year.
Note EU-Digest: The EU can either move forward to more complete
economic, social and political union, or it can fragment into its
constituent parts. Trump and Putin would welcome the latter, which would
enfeeble a potent rival. For Europeans who have enjoyed peace and
relative prosperity for decades, rather than the terrible wars that came
before, it would be an entirely different matter.
Europe must wake-up to the fact that the EU-US Atlantic Alliance
with the Donald Trump Administration is dead on paper and in reality.
Consequently the EU must stop crying over spilled milk, refrain from putting any more eggs in the bottomless US Corporate and Military basket. Instead, start to seriously develop an independent foreign policy, including a strong military defense force.
EU-Digest
