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Meanwhile, in the Disunited States of Europe …
I get bored sometimes when the only topic of conversation around here is the race for the presidency in 2016. (We have three branches of government, remember? And a culture. And then there’s the rest of the world.) But that focus has been entirely warranted in the past few days. Super Tuesday’s genuinely a big deal — for the whole world. Everyone, everywhere, has been riveted to the drama.
And everyone, everywhere, seems a bit perplexed: “The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president,” writes a baffled Financial Times, which has been so stressed out by everything else that this is only now beginning to dawn on them. Anyway, it’s hangover Thursday, so come with me as I catch up with the news over here. Let’s take a whirlwind tour ’round the Stressed-Out and Disunited States Europe.
Seems this morning the French Minister for the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, told Britain that if they Brexit, France will stop keeping all those migrants from Calais from racing across the Channel into Britain. (That camp is built, by the way, literally, I kid you not, on top of a former toxic waste dump. It’s heartwarming to see how quickly these human beings have been politically weaponized by every modern European nation-state! Enlightened.) Macron pointed out that a Brexit could annul the 2003 Treaty of Le Touquet, which is what allows Britain to patrol its border on the French side of the Channel. Basically, he said, “Jerk us around and we’ll flood you with the wretched of the earth.” (And here we thought only the Gaddafis of this world could sink to that. How wrong we were.)
He also threatened to “roll out the red carpet” in France for all the bankers fleeing London — which they would, because they’d no longer be able to trade in Europe from the City. Macron, who’s usually pretty sensible, seems to have been studying Trumponomics, too: He wants Britain to stay in and pay up, but he wants Brussels to protect European industries and jobs. “We ask our companies to restructure, we ask employees to work more for less money because there is overproduction but then we’re unable to defend them from cheaper Chinese imports. We are insane,” he said. (He didn’t sound insane to me until the last sentence.)
Smoot-Hawley Global Economy 2.0, here we come.
Coming up on March 7: The EU convenes in Brussels for Emergency Summit No-One-Can-Even-Remember-How-Many anymore to fight over the refugee crisis. Merkel has her hopes pinned on warehousing them in Turkey. But countries along the Balkan Route, led by Austria, staged a revolt. Now Vienna is only accepting 80 asylum applications per day at the Spielfeld crossing with Slovenia. So Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia restricted the influx in response. “Shifting responsibility from one border to the next is clearly not the solution,” said the Macedonian Foreign Minister Nicola Poposki, as Macedonia shifted responsibility from one border to the next and tear-gassed them back into Greece.
Austria meanwhile held its own swanky, exclusive refugee emergency summit to which it didn’t invite Greece. Or anyone else in Europe, except the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Greece was furious and reacted by recalling its ambassador from Vienna, which was, as Der Spiegel put it, “a gesture that in the diplomatic world is akin to giving Austria the middle finger.” The European Migration Commissioner responded with a “harshly worded letter” to the Austrian interior minister. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister said that Europe no longer has a plan: “We are heading into anarchy.” Austria’s defense minister started screaming that Merkel should take in everyone now stranded in Greece, and basically it’s the diplomatic version of hell week at the Phi Delts. You know it’s out of control because somehow Turkey’s sounding like the only sane one of the lot. (The stress seems to have particularly gotten to Volker Beck, a popular Green party member of the Bundestag, who was just arrested with what media claims was crystal meth. Good governance in Europe takes yet another hit.)
But Europe’s come up with a new plan: Since the refugees are piling up in Greece, the rest of Europe is trying to bribe Greece to just keep them. Our opening bid is €700 million. Cash. We won’t ever hassle you about austerity and all that stuff again. Greece isn’t so sure, especially because the last time the EU made them a promise it promised to take 66,400 refugees from Greece, and so far they’ve only actually taken 325. “We have come to the time when Greece is likely to be sacrificed for the good of the EU,” said the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico. (Doesn’t he realize he’s next? Slovakia’s easy to sacrifice.) So Greece is now sending 308 “irregular migrants” back to Turkey.
A confused Greek media has decided Turkey must be to blame; Turkey’s always to blame. They’re now reporting that Turkey’s blocking NATO from intercepting human traffickers:
NATO warships located in the Aegean under German command are to monitor the movements of smugglers. However, according to an AFP report citing diplomatic sources from Brussels, Ankara said “no” to the demands of the German command of the NATO naval mission. This claim was confirmed by a second diplomat.
The first diplomatic source commented that this problem was known from “the beginning” and further revealed that Turkey wants the German commander, Rear Admiral Jörg Klein, to travel to Ankara and outline the area where the NATO vessels will be deployed.
Furthermore, the same source pointed out that despite the assurances of Greek and German officials, Turkey appears to have little to no interest in receiving refugees rescued by NATO during the operations.
As for the conflict giving rise to this crisis, everyone’s out of ideas. “The key to solving Europe’s refugee crisis lies in Syria, not Brussels,” the Telegraph correctly notes. “An important first step would be to try to make the Russians understand that a ceasefire is not a ceasefire when you carry on bombing your foes.” That’s right. It’s just a language problem. Maybe we can explain it in interpretive dance?
NATO’s top General Philip Breedlove has accused Russia and Syria of weaponising the massive influx of people fleeing the Syrian conflict to destabilise the West:
“Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve,” Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Speaking of Russia’s six-month air campaign in support of Assad, and the Syrian leader’s use of barrel bombs in civilian areas, Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians.
“These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can’t find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else’s problem,” Breedlove said.
This is obviously true, but the uncharitable thought comes to mind that if this is all it takes to destabilize the West, the West must have been more of a basket case to begin with than we realized, don’t you think?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
The global order worried too much about what a poor kid in Syria thought about something, and too little about what a poor kid in mainz would absord things.
Likewise nobody in the world thought about a poor kid in Mainz, or Indianapolis. At all. They could bear all things, were never considered. Their bodies stuffed the uniforms in campaigns of noble necessary sacrifices, and silently ate all the negative externalities of elite virtue signaling in an intellectually and morally bankrupt post-war ideology.
Do you think the non-Christian Syrians aren’t really refugees?
Sure you can, and Britain’s got just that. No Euro, access to the common market.
I’m a conservative populist and I’m not converging on Trump. So there.
“Sea Fighter” is a really terrific techno-thriller published in 2000 by James H. Cobb. It’s set in the near future of littoral (offshore) combat off the Nigerian coast, and one of the big elements of the plot is how the bad guy used refugees as a way to destabilize economies and take over neighboring countries.
And 16 years later, fiction is now reality.
This is a good point, but to hear a lot of the Republicans talk it’s as if they plan to be unwilling to stop Trump just as much as they were unwilling to stop Obama.
There is a certain cross-over between nativist hostility to immigration by white working class supporters of the “Out” camp and Trump supporters I’ll grant you, but there is also a strong small government, minimal regulation, classical liberal, free trade, anti-subsidy, anti-federal control case for leaving the EU too. That’s my own lodestar: shared by decidedly un-Trumplike figures like Priti Patel, Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell.
(I’m honest enough to admit that the “Out” campaign can’t be won without the working class anti-immigrant vote though)
On the lighter side, Bravo!
Yes – and to read of topics like border control, walls, refugee crisis, economic crisis, bribes, “no proper political path moving forward”, coming from another continent sounds like irony to me. It has been moments like these when the real thugs of the world rise and make their presence known – if we have learned anything from history.
Sorry, I’m going to highlight another because I really needed to smile this morning. Interesting that you’ve enabled me to do it while reading on how the West is coming apart.
Oh, and welcome to London RFBF. Hope you’re enjoying it!
I remember a certain politician, who vowed to never give terrorists a safe haven, to make war on any country who harbored them. Who preached respect and goodwill towards muslims. Who, when faced with the huge burden of foreign wars and nation-building, accepted and embraced it, recognizing that its cost was lower in the long term than the cost of letting problems fester. Who was respected by Russia and China. Who stated he was glad when economic crisis came during his term, because he wanted to confront it and hand his successor some signs of improvement. Who suggested, while far from perfect, comprehensive plans to improve education, entitlement spending, and immigration.
Of course he spent too much, and wasn’t nearly as conservative as we wanted, and had plenty of other faults. But for all his shortcomings, MAN do I miss George W. Bush. Europe is in desperate need of a leader like him now.
I suppose it’s good that somebody besides his mother misses him.
So I have a question, why don’t the refugees try to go through Romania? Is Romania not a shengen country?
There used to be a market for this type of policy, however it is long out of style and I do not see it making a return anytime soon.
Send the invaders back. All of them.
And bureaucrats from Brussels telling them which UK laws are ok and which aren’t. Either the UK parliament and the UK courts have the final say on UK laws or Brussels does.
BTW, you bring up a good point, when are the folks in Britain going to erect a statute to the Tories who were smart enough to keep them out of the disaster that is the euro?
What do you mean by anti-immigrant? Here in the US there is a strong anti-ILLEGAL-immigrant movement, but from my interactions, I see little or no anti-immigrant feeling. In fact, some of the strongest anti-ILLEGAL-immigrant supporters are first and second generation legal immigrants.
Well if Brussels refuses to be bold enough to inform the British regarding which appliances are acceptable and which sinful then who shall?
They learned the first time?
http://www.livescience.com/40843-real-dracula-vlad-the-impaler.html
I miss him. I still consider him an above average president.
I was chatting with a Romanian friend Tuesday about just this topic. She said that in addition to the relatively meager safety net, there was not a push of immigrants. Evidently Serbia and Bulgaria have shielded them, and those in Hungary look west, not east.
And Vlad the Impaler probably doesn’t hurt either.
I think you are absolutely right about the current market value of large interventions. But if gangs of thousands of unemployable, unassimilated Muslim men continue to war on European civilians and the utterly bankrupt Muslim culture insists on sharing its violent dysfunction a la 9/11, that market may change.
I think it is hopeless to think that we can simply wait for a Westphalian nation state arrangement to emerge in a region that seems to want a caliph when technology and failed cultural assumptions make that outcome impossible.
I would be sympathetic to those who say stand back and let them destroy themselves but for the fact that we apparently do not have the means to isolate and protect the West from that shared destruction. And Bozo the POTUS has made us much less safe in that regard.
Even this family?
I liked him and appreciated his character and values. But he screwed up royally in Iraq and NoChildLeftBehind was a disaster. And to have that financial crisis on his watch, is that not hard to stomach?
Since the cat vouches for them (and I love cats, as you know), they can stay.
100% of the 3 million or so EU immigrants in the UK are legal immigrants because, as things stand, a citizen of any EU member state has the right to live and work in any other EU member state. So anti-immigrant sentiment which translates into support for an “Out” vote is by definition a protest about legal, rather than illegal, immigration. (Although the two are often wrongly conflated in the minds of the public.)
I have to admit that I’ve never understood why the UK, or any other of the more prosperous EU nations would ever have agreed to this. The results were so predictable as to be guaranteed. Seriously, can you explain to me what they were thinking would happen at the time they agreed to this?