Posted on 12/26/2004 4:10:53 PM PST by UnklGene
Ancient and Modern - It was tribalism that finished Rome, and it will finish Brussels too
Peter Jones
Whenever the subject of the EU comes up, someone is bound to compare it to the Roman empire. If the comparison relates to the beginning and subsequent development of that empire, it fails. But the end of the Roman empire in the West in the 5th century ad may well offer quite a good model of how EUthanasia will set in.
Rome entered the imperial stakes after defeating Carthage in the first Punic war (264–241 bc). The two greatest powers of the western Mediterranean had been fighting it out over control of Sicily, which became Rome’s first provincia when Carthage surrendered. After the second Punic war and the defeat of Hannibal (218–202 bc), the Carthaginian territories of Africa (roughly modern Tunisia) and Spain were added, to be followed in 146 bc by Greece (whose king had supported Hannibal). Asia (modern western Turkey) was then bequeathed (!) to the Romans by its ruler Attalus III ...and so it went on.
There was no ‘policy’ about any of this. Rome did not go in for visions or long-term strategies: it simply reacted to events in the way it reckoned would be most advantageous to itself. But once Rome had tasted the benefits of imperial power, there was every incentive for it to protect what it had, and if that meant expansion, so be it. By the 1st century ad Rome ruled an area from the Rhine-Danube to north Africa and Egypt, from Syria to Britain.
Whatever one thinks of the EUtopia that is Neil Kinnock’s pension, the EU does not in these respects work like Rome. The order of the day is not conquest for the sake of self-enrichment, but international treaty obligations voluntarily entered into by expanding numbers of member states under the guidance of a wise and benign autocracy in Brussels, working in everyone’s interests, leading to peace and prosperity for all.
That may be a EUphemism for voluntary tyranny, but it is at least voluntary. There was nothing voluntary about Rome; and if one of the outcomes of the Roman empire was peace and prosperity over wide areas for long periods of time (and it was), that was not a vision that had turned Rome into an imperial power in the first place, though Romans were well aware that an empire without it was in the long term ungovernable. The break-up of the Roman empire in the West, however, does indeed provide food for thought.
Foreign incursions into the Roman West began in the 3rd century ad. After a number of scares they were dealt with or petered out, but it was now clear that the empire was vulnerable to serial attack, and the last hundred years of the Roman empire in the West is the story of Rome’s relationship with ‘barbarians’ — the various Germanic Goths and non-Germanic Huns looking to settle within its domain. (The Eastern, ‘Greek’ half of the empire based in Constantinople/Istanbul, which had emerged as a separate entity after 395, survived as the Byzantine empire till 1453.)
The problem Rome faced was: do we fight to keep the barbarians out, or are we prepared to make concessions? Being pragmatists, they compromised. In 382, for example, the emperor Theodosius accepted Visigoths en masse into the empire, the first among many to be granted allied, federate status. The point is that the Romans needed manpower, particularly soldiers, and the Germans could provide it. The quid pro quo was that the Germans were accepted into the society and political structure of the Roman world, where many made their way to high office.
But there could be no guarantees of good conduct. Take, for example, the German Vandal king Gaiseric. He entered Gaul unopposed in 406 and pillaged his way to Spain, where he settled. Invited in 429 by Boniface, the bolshy Roman governor of North Africa, to help him out, Gaiseric took a shine to his new home, kicked out Boniface and settled there instead. The Romans shrugged and in 436 granted Gaiseric federate status. Gaiseric’s response was to take yet more North African territory. At this, Rome simply gave up and left Gaiseric to rule what was now his own sovereign state, though they made several attempts to overthrow him.
To put the issue simply: the empire ultimately depended on there being enough revenue coming in from the provinces to pay the Roman army to suppress any provinces that removed their revenues from Rome by rebelling. That was a circle that needed constant squaring, but, as more and more tribes began to settle in the empire, Rome found it increasingly difficult to square it. As revenue was lost, so the state machine weakened; so more territories rebelled; so even less money came in — and so on.
The question, then, boiled down to one of loyalty: to whom did these peoples feel they owed their allegiance? Rome, or their local tribal leader? More and more, the answer was the latter. As a consequence, those local Romanised land-owning elites who had effectively run the provinces (under the Roman governor’s jurisdiction) found that the Roman connection, which had once guaranteed their status and privileges, was increasingly worthless. They therefore began to refocus their loyalties on their local tribal leaders. Rome, in other words, was becoming impotent and irrelevant, an administrative and political centre with no means of commanding authority. By the end of the 5th century, Europe had reverted to a collection of individual states, and the foundations of modern Europe were being laid.
And so it will be again. Indeed, the process has started: everything from conditions for joining the EU to financial stability pacts and directives is already routinely ignored. But if Brussels is nothing without voluntary co-operation, it is even less without revenues — and for how much longer will Germany (for example) be prepared to pour money into it? Whatever the ‘international treaties’ signed by member states binding them to Brussels, the day will come when one of them, observing the disaster visited upon it by its membership and deciding that its loyalty lies with its own people, will secede, taking with it its contribution to the Brussels budget. The hapless EU minister Denis MacShane will demand that the European army intervene, to universal derision.
Once one country has gone, others will ask ‘Why not?’ and follow suit. As revenues dry up with each secession, the power and influence so beloved of the EU apparat in Brussels and its member states will gradually disappear, and their reason for existence with them. Its legal basis will collapse. The skeletons of France and Germany will be left still clinging to each other in a deadly embrace, Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ being ground out through gritted teeth as the now useless euro inflates to monstrous proportions; and Peter Mandelson will suddenly rediscover the virtues of Hartlepool, which will be just as well since his multi-trillion euro pay-off may just about enable him to rent a council flat there.
Only on the ruins of the present bloated shambles might politicians start thinking seriously about a form of European co-operation that could work.
The author seems to believe that the EU at one time HAD power and relevance. And that this supposed time of EU ascendancy is now passing away, with the EU "becoming" impotent and irrelevant.
His naivete makes me smile.
See the new Euroislamic state rise from the ruins..
Unrelated, but interesting: When Rome sacked Carthage, it destroyed everything and salted the fields. But, 100 years later Rome rebuilt Carthage.
EU is a retreat to the pre-Enlightenment times, since the members voluntarily lose their sovereignty (or having been bullied to surrender thereof).
Can that continue for any long historical period?
I don't think so. All the more that nowadays' invaders are not Germans (who were a big unknown in the days of Rome) but Mohammedans of all sorts (whose precious qualities as citizens and neighbours are notorious).
"EUthanasia" Now that is a great, new word for the Euro-weenies.
The EU had better worry less a "country" will secede and worry more the ever-increasing Muslim hordes will instead overwhelm current populations and rulers and set up their own states, in the very pattern of Gaiseric!
Bunk.
What will do in the EU is the fact that bigger government is not necessarily better than smaller government. The Europeans don't seem to appreciate this. They are a continent of conformists.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Paris, do as the Romans do. When in Bonn, do as the Romans do. When in London, do as the Romans do.
They obvious question is: Why? What's wrong with local governance?
Prior to that Roman culture, if not government, was definitely in the saddle.
Best anyone can tell the Dark Ages thing started with an abrupt change in the weather and a population dropoff throughout Western Europe.
The Eastern Empire was hit hard as well, but it took another 700 years to bring it down the old fashioned way, with war and politics!
Europe would be stronger as federations of homelands (as De Gaulle envisioned) with strong local rule and respect for local traditions and common Christian heritage.
Unfortunately EUrocrats are rabid secularist, gentler in methods but not less hostile to the Church tan Bolsheviks. They hate Christianity so much that they will bring in Islamic countries to use one religion against the other and to try to establish the atheistic utopia of John Lennon.
Imagine Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today... Imagine there's no countries, It isnt hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace... Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... You may say Im a dreamer, but Im not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will live as one.
bump for the morning coffee!
I don't think they understand the theory behind federalism. The idea is to have as much as possible decided at the local level, and leave to the federal government only those things that must be handled centrally. Instead, they are trying to handle as much as possible at the level of the central government, and leave only those things which absolutely cannot be handled at that level for the local politicians.
That's not the way to maximize freedom, and it's bound to cause friction. Their response is to simply ignore their own laws because they are impractical, which is something they are good at doing anyway. It will ultimately spell their demise.
They do not care. They are drunk with power and they believe that they will bring the perfect atheistic paradise with them as the philosopher kings. They think that they have learned on the mistakes of Jacobins and Bolsheviks and that through the shrewd manipulation they will turn European (and some Muslim or Asian) nations into a mass of docile sheep.
The Orange Revolution on the Ukraine is just a test.
I agree.
The author states, The problem Rome faced was: do we fight to keep the barbarians out, or are we prepared to make concessions?
The fall of the Roman Empire clearly began when citizens figured out they could vote themselves entitlements. In otherwords a lack of hard cash in the treasury. Of course with our own Federal Government we just print more fiat cash.
That's what it's become, but the original idea behind the EU was to pattern Europe after the common market example of America, maybe even to improve on it. They missed the key feature of the US example, though. They ended up with a policy of standardization purely for its own sake, which is antithetical to the American experience, and makes no more sense to the Europeans, either.
It would have gone lot more smoothly if they'd realized from the outset that there was a method to the American Founder's madness. They weren't just trying to bring the States together. They were trying to do so in a way that minimized the role of the federal government to just those things which are necessarily handled at the federal level.
They cannot, they are driven by the fanatical atheism - the same one that was animating Jacobins and Bolsheviks.But EUrocracts believe that they will not fail as their spiritual brethren did. They hope that the cunning, patient brainwashing and playing one group against another will do the trick.
That is why they will bring Turkey into Europe. They will use Muslims against Christians and Christians against Muslims. EUrocrats love Ataturk's cruel secularism and they hope they will be able to adopt it in the European nations in the name of tolerance, religious peace and freedom from the moral constraints.
That's right, and even the EUros have recognized this. In EUrospeak, the concept is called subsidiarity and it's written into the latest treaties.
Of course, being written into a treaty and actually practiced by the EUrocrats are two different things, but they at least pay lip service to subsidiarity.
I think it's wrong to pin Europe's problems on the EU. At most the EU is merely a symptom of the underlying malaise of population stagnation and the economic suffocation of socialism.
Europe has been dying ever since it self-slaughtered so many in World War I.
It'll be real interesting to see if the EU can secularize Islam. I bet not.
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