Posted on 06/30/2004 6:07:55 AM PDT by xsysmgr
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:42:32 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The EU-U.S. summit comes at a time of great changes in Europe. On May 1, the European Union underwent the greatest expansion in its history, and negotiators are putting final touches on the European constitution.
Territorial "widening" and constitutional "deepening," however, may not symbolize Europe's growing strength.They may represent the zenith of its integration. The Bush administration should be aware of the troubles Europe faces and fashion U.S. foreign policy so as to minimize the negative consequences of Europe's probable break-up.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I would die laughing if Britain was simultaneously in the EU FTA and entered into a FTA with America.
What the article posits about a functioning "demos" applies to the USA as well. We have the conditions for a functioing market economy, but socially our country is split in an increasingly divisive way between liberal activists and fed-up conservatives.
I don't think it will last that long. The course of events moves much faster now than in the 19thC, especially that part of the 19thC.
First off, we MUST act to keep the Brits out of the EU--and I think that undermining and ultimate dissolution of the European Union should be job #1 for our foreign policy in the 21st Century. We just spent ten trillion dollars breaking up the Soviet Union. Why reunite it six hundred miles west?
More on the French and German tax initiatives...
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/06/tax_competition.html
Yes, I'm sure that Central and Eastern Europeans prefer poverty over prosperity. These countries need Germany and France a lot more than Germany and France need them. Altruism does play a role in the EU, though that concept is beyond the grasp of the author who displays a stunning ignorance of the European point of view.
One of the ironies of the early 21st century may well be a centralized, bureaucratic, quasi-socialist Europe kept afloat by trade with decentralized, capitalist Russia and China, with Marx spinning in his grave. But he did make the right call: "History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
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