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Europe on Both Sides of the Altantic
Margaret Thatcher in September 1988:
Working more closely together does not require power to be centralized in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy. Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries, such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the center, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the center, there are some in the [European] Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction.
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels …
Let us have a Europe which looks outward, not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community — that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic — which is our noblest inheritance.
The Europe on which Thatcher insisted — Europe on both sides of the Atlantic — is far more likely to come into being today than it was just 24 hours ago. Republicans should seize the moment, calling for British membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Published in General
If 0bama were consistent (I know, I know …), he would be hailing Brexit as … Britannia Spring!
Ths is an interesting proposal, but would have to be done after we elect someone other than Hillary. We can’t know where these things lead. Reagan’s Trade Representative former Senator Brock told a few of us working with him on the Carribian Basin Initiative, the unintended origin of NAFTA. His main task were global trade where he was pushing the EC on agriculture and other issues, and to bring them forward, as a bluff, to provide leverage he made a speech on the desirability of doing regional deals, mentioning adding Mexico to the US Canada trade agreement. The Mexican President, a US educated economist seized on the speech and welcomed the deal as it would give powerful leverage to his attempt to open the Mexican economy.
You can take her speech and substitute Washington D.C. for Brussels and the individual states in the US for the individual countries in Europe and come up with (what should be) the basic belief of the Republican Party.
Fascinating insight into the workings of diplomacy.
If they had listened to her then, it might never have come to this pass.
Instead, they appointed a new aristocracy, unresponsive, aloof, and ultimately unable to deliver on their promise.
If Obama had any brains at all, he’d jump on that with both feet.
Unfortunately, the current leader of the Republican party thinks NAFTA was a “disaster.”