ECB (finally) gets bashed in Spanish elections

Posted on 30 October 2011 by

The EU typically plays a minor role in Spanish electoral campaigns. However, El País reports that “the crisis has also upset this, and for the first time since the 80s, the Spanish campaign has begun with a clash between the two primary candidates on the way the European Union is tackling the crisis.”

Indeed, the ruling Socialist Party’s spokesperson and prime ministerial candidate Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba is criticizing the role of the independent European Central Bank:

The European economy is immobile. Austerity alone is no good for exiting the crisis. […] We are missing the policies for growth to create jobs. And we have to tell the ECB that Europe’s problem is not inflation, but that there are many people who don’t have work. We have to lower interest rates.

I’m continuously stunned that parties both left and right have taken so long to make an issue of this. In a “suboptimal” currency union, it is impossible to have a monetary policy that suits everyone. However, you would expect those getting the short end of that stick to make a little fuss about it, especially when the policies are so narrowly-conceived that one financial analyst goes so far as to accuse the ECB of catering to “the Rhineland zone”.

The case of Spain is particularly striking. The unemployment rate continues to increase and has reached a Depressionesque 21.52%. The country cannot be said to be getting its comeuppance for not “playing by the rules”. Spanish public debt decreased from 67.4% of GDP in 1996 to 36.2% in 2007, meaning it followed the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact better than either France or Germany.

From Spain’s point of view, as the country tries to lower unemployment and return to growth, the policies of the ECB could hardly be more devastating:

  1. A focus on fighting headline inflation, using a baseline interest rate of 1.5% for loans (the equivalent figure is 0% for the Fed and Bank of Japan), increasing it twice through 2011, and thus limiting investment.
  2. As the rest of the world engages in competitive devaluation and “currency wars” to boost their exports, the ECB is pursuing an “ultra-hard” monetary policy. The euro currently trades for $1.41 or £0.88.
  3. A refusal to commit to being a lender of last resort, feeding financial speculation against national debts and forcing governments to get high-interest loans on the financial markets.
  4. Advocating more budget cuts and “expansionary-austerity”.

Why isn’t the Spanish political class (scratch that, the politicians of the whole of Southern Europe) up in arms about this? I suspect Europe’s leaders don’t want to get into public tiffs over the ECB and monetary policy in general is too abstract to inspire the public’s ire.

The ECB’s independence and the fact that the Socialist Party is already in power in Spain (and will probably lose in November) means whatever Rubalcaba says will probably be a little immediate import. However, if other campaigning leaders begin to make an issue of this – at a time when a new ECB president has taken office and the centre-left appears likely to make major gains in France, Germany and Italy – we may have the beginnings of a public debate on Europe’s monetary policy and the statutes of the ECB.

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Right-wing U.S. Pundit Distorts My News Article to Fit Own Ideology

Posted on 15 July 2011 by

Classic of the ultra-capitalist ideology (1957), already featuring collapsing/impoverished Europe.

OK, that isn’t exactly newsworthy is it? However, in this case, it is some of my news which is concerned so I think it worth a response.

Meet Daniel Mitchell, whom Wikipedia describes as a libertarian economist (…), senior fellow at the Cato Institute and “one of the nation’s experts on the flat tax”. In a post on Forbes.com (syndicated on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government) He cites my story on a survey revealing discontent among the European Commission’s functionaries as proof – surprise! – that “Statism” doesn’t work.

The quote:

And since we’re contemplating the big-picture issue of whether markets are better than statism, here’s some very sobering polling data from EurActiv. […] This is remarkable. Even the statist über-bureaucrats of the European Commission realize the house of cards of big government is collapsing, yet politicians in Washington still want to make America more like Europe.

This response isn’t particularly surprising, even if these “statist über-bureaucrats” actually have infinitely less power and authority than the U.S. federal government.

What I termed the “American ultra-capitalist ideology” is predicated on the fact that the welfare state, regulation and indeed all “government intervention” (really non-pro-Big Business intervention) is bad for the economy. As such, any and all really existing successful welfare states/mixed economies – and notably European ones – are an objective threat to the ideology and therefore must be discredited and indeed have their very existence denied.

To save the ideology, successful alternative models must be demonized by right-wing pundits, media and politicians. It is then very dangerous for the ideologue that the World Economic Forum – the ultimate preacher for capitalist globalization – recognizes countries like Germany, Finland, Denmark and Canada as among the top 10 most economically competitive countries in the world.

Sweden – though famously welfarist, egalitarian , and with some of highest state expenditure, the country has some of the lowest government debt in the world and the WEF deems it the second most competitive – is naturally a favorite target, as is France, in addition to Europe more generally, even for supposed wise men.

As to Daniel Mitchell, no one should be intimidated by his apparent academic credentials. I respond with facts, as subversive as they may be:

  1. In “Statist Europe” the budgetary situation is rather more sustainable than in America. EU27 public deficits average at 6.4% of GDP (6% for the Eurozone) vs. 11.5% in the U.S. As stated previously, I have no faith the American political class will rise up to the challenge of squaring the circle by either significantly cutting welfare for seniors (Medicare, Social Security), raising taxes, or reducing military expenditure. The U.S.’s medium-term budgetary outlook looks pretty bad indeed.
  2. The E.U.’s relative fiscal conservatism is part of the reason the U.S. dollar’s value has collapsed to 0.7 euros.
  3. If Eurocrats don’t believe specifically in the “2020 Strategy for Growth” it is because it is yet another one of the European Commission’s budgetless lowest-common-denominator slogans being passed off as policy. It means damn well near nothing just as the Lisbon Strategy (you don’t remember that?) meant nothing. However, it’s depressing for the Eurocrat, as his livelihood depends on his pretending this means something.
  4. The main differences between E.U. and U.S. economic growth (currently 1.8% vs. 2.8%) are chiefly due to demographic growth, the U.S. having significantly more babies and immigrants, leading to just shy of 1% point more demographic growth. Productivity is comparable

I have no illusions that these facts would be able to penetrate into the consciousness of someone who writes for Cato or Big Government. More likely, as with any soldier in the army of professional ideologues that have taken over American politics, they would be immediately and ably eliminated by his various psycho-ideological defense mechanisms. Any new reality, I am sure, can be twisted to fix his pre-existing “big-picture”.

Just for fun however, I emailed these facts to Mitchell. He replied:

I have no idea where you’re getting your public debt numbers. The Economist website shows the US lower (not that the US is good).

I share your disdain for US politicians, but Europe is falling off the cliff first. Western politicians have taxed and spent themselves into the gutter.

I realize Eurocrats want more integration, but that would be repeating a mistake made in America – and hasten Europe’s collapse.

I replied in turn that I got my figures from the IMF, Eurostat and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). No response.

So, as expected, I failed to convert the true believer from his faith. However, I think most people are reasonable, and I hope this post will help them understand a little better both my article and the real state of things on both sides of the Atlantic.

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In Defense of Decadent Europe: Is it “the best place on Earth to be born”?

Posted on 10 July 2011 by

A beaming Donald Tusk holds the European flag with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life.” – Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk, 1 July 2011

For those of us involved in European affairs, it has been more than a little refreshing to hear Donald Tusk, whose country now hold the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, going against the overwhelming ambient pessimism of the continent and especially of its media and elites.

Of course, Tusk’s words might be deemed hyperbole (I hear Canada and Australia are nice) and, for some of us, downright offensive. How many us could go to the youth of Spain who face 40% unemployment or of Greece as their country’s economy collapses – and tell them they’ve got it the best in the world?

On the other hand, like inveterate EU blogger J. Clive-Matthews I really do think there is a lot of truth to what Tusk is saying. Let me even go out on a limb: Even in a recession and with some countries in deep trouble, Europe on the whole really is the best-off place in the world.

“Nay!”, I hear you say, “It can’t be!” Surely we Europeans are lazy, infertile and soft. In a word, we are decadent.

In recent years there has never been a lack of prophets, both foreign and domestic, predicting the doom of decadent Europe: Infertile “native” Europeans will be displaced by Muslim immigrants and their descendents, virile Americans and their soldiery are the only things keeping ungrateful Europeans safe or, most common nowadays, the Chinese will economically devour us.

Of course, each of these allegations has their truthiness. They can resonate with our lived day-to-day reality of poor race relations and today’s bad economic times to broader angst at living in postmodern civilization.

However, having consulted the facts, not just the feeling in our guts, let me go on the record: I don’t believe one bit of it. The citizens of the European Union, as a whole, have some of the healthiest, wealthiest, most peaceful and productive lives of the whole of humanity.

In this, we are up there with the rest of what we used to call the “First World”, along with North America and Japan, later joined by a few small East Asian countries (notably Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). I would go on to say, however, that not only are the Europeans among this enviable class of nations, but we are, in fact, decidedly less “decadent” than some of our peers. Let me say why.

Demographics

First, on the population issue, Europe is not isolated in having fewer children. The United Nations has been following this for years and notes that between 1965 and 2002 the world average fertility rate per couple collapsed from 5 to 2.7.

European nations tend have few children – the EU average is 1.6 per couple – but this is not unusual for developed countries nor the lowest in the world. No, the bottom six on that mark are all highly-developed East Asian countries with fertility rates ranging from a high of 1.23 for South Korea down to an amazingly low 0.92 (less than 1 per woman) for Macau, with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong King between those two.

In the 70s and 80s, hysterical fear of the Japanese “economic threat” was par for the course in the West. No one seems to remember those days anymore as Japan and the “Asian Tigers” – armed with Lee Kuan Yew’s infamous “Asian values” – have overtaken the West in the transition to becoming wealthy and peaceful fortified retirement homes.

Yet, inexplicably, the West is repeating the same mistake with China. Yes, it is the most populous nation in the world, yes its economy is growing at an astonishing rate and, yes, the country is undoubtedly destined to be one of the leading economic powers of the 21st Century.

But I suspect we make too much of this. The Chinese fertility rate is already lower than Europe’s at 1.54 and the UN predicts its population will begin shrinking between 2025 and 2030. Then, though still substantially poorer than Europe, the country will have to struggle with our same intractable problems of maintaining an ever-growing number of pensioners with a shrinking base of productive working-age people.

What of the supposed hordes of Muslims that will be displacing us and turning our fair continent in “Eurabia”? International demographers and statisticians tell us the sharpest drop in fertility in the entire world between 1980 and 2010 was in… the Middle East. The leaders in this trend are the Iranians, no less, whom the CIA already report have less than 2 children per couple.

Economics

Public debt-to-GDP according to IMF figures.

Europe’s alleged economic decadence is an equally common trope: laissez faire capitalism is always better, State intervention always inefficient, and the welfare state is certainly making Europeans spoilt and lazy.

Here American ultra-capitalist ideology plays a heavy role and one can cite the usual wiseman-dunces like Fareed Zakaria (who on this basis declared “the decline and fall of Europe” in 2006). The Economist continues to be a big fan of this trope, generally singling out France, but still being a rather reality-tethered publication it occasionally recognizes success when it is there.

The truth is the gap in productivity growth between the USA and Europe collapsed in the early 2000s. Since then, Europe has done substantially better through the economic crisis. Unemployment in Europe and America has been almost identical, on average peaking around 10%, then going down to a current EU average of 9.3% while in the US it is at 9.2% (and actually rising). Note that the unemployed European typically has a rather more secure social safety net than his American counterpart.

The real difference is the budgetary situation. The regional disparities in Europe and the crises in the PIGS obfuscate a broader reality: EU deficits are substantially smaller than America’s: the Euro zone’s average deficit lies at 6%, the broader EU’s at 6.4%, and the average government debt stands at 80% of GDP. The United States, with a significantly weaker welfare state than other Western countries, in contrast has a public debt of 99.5% of GDP and deficit equal to 11% of GDP (over $1.4 trillion).

Indeed, given the political impossibility of cutting old persons’ welfare in the US (Medicare and Social Security, by far the biggest items in the Federal budget and set to grow massively), the Republican congressional majority’s total rejection of tax hikes, and continued increases in military spending ($18 billion more for the Pentagon in 2011), one can be distinctly pessimistic on the US’s medium-term budgetary situation. The IMF, incidentally, predicts US debt will increase substantially more than European debt in the coming years.

No one has an interest in the US economy collapsing so America’s foreign creditors are unlikely to be as brutal as those of Greece or Ireland. Nonetheless, there should come a time when the Chinese and others will decide it is not in their best interest to keep throwing money at the US government…

Of course, Europe’s economy doesn’t have the spectacular growth of the emerging world. However, the situation of most Europeans, even with the economic crisis, cannot be compared with the vast majority of people who live in the developing world. And it should not forgotten, as we fret about China, India et al, that their tremendous economic growth is not a sign of their superiority or our decadence, but of their catching up. That other countries reach our standards of living should be cause of celebration, not fear or self-doubt.

The State of the Union

There is the European Union itself, that simultaneously bizarre, incomprehensible and inspiring entity that is going through some difficulties at the moment. As imperfect and troubled as it is, it remains one of the world’s unique and truly great historic achievements.

The EU is not perfect but I really think our pessimism is overdone. And I feel we are ungrateful for what we have. People are willing to die every month to get into Europe. Whole countries are doing all they can to share in our success: Serbia arrested its most infamous war criminal to please Brussels, Ukraine wants a Free Trade Agreement with the EU rather than a customs union with Russia, Turkey may be turning away but only after 70 years of consistent rebuffs.

True the so-called common foreign policy has been a big fat nothing. But the EU remains a genuine economic actor: the biggest economic bloc in the world, 27 national governments representing 500 million people, with all their varying languages and histories, negotiate as one with others countries and at the WTO. Given that international relations the 21st Century have been and look to remain dominated by economic matters, who is to say the EU is not a well-suited organization for it?

Certainly it says something when other regions are attempting to repeat this success in economic integration, with much more limited results, in as wide-ranging places as South America, Africa and the post-Soviet sphere.

Too often the assessment of Europe’s successes or failings is based on comparison with the United States. There should be more to EU-US relations than transatlantic pissing matches. However, for this particular article, this cannot be avoided. Our leaders, I think it is fair to say, are deeply infatuated with America and are willing to even wage wars (as boneheaded or illegal as they may be) on its behalf. And yet, I am convinced it is a profoundly sick nation.

A child born in the United States, rather than in any other nation, will be more likely to become overweight or obese (over 40% of adult population in 39 states), will spend more money on healthcare (twice the average for wealthy countries, over 16% of GDP) and will be more likely to go to prison (the world leader both absolutely and per capita with 2.3 million incarcerated). He would also be born in the most needlessly oil-dependent and greenhouse gas-emitting nation in the world. These problems, while they all exist in Europe, have not yet reached the scale of the United States.

“We’re doomed! Unless…”

Given these facts, I have some difficulty understanding European leaders envy of America and the more general pessimistic obsession with European decline. I cannot help thinking of something Sartre once said:

When a Frenchman, for example, tells another Frenchmen: “We’re screwed!” – which, as far as I know, happens about every day since 1930 – it’s a passionate speech, burning with rage and love, the orator putting himself in the same lot as his countrymen. He then generally adds ‘Unless…’ We see it for what it is: There is only one mistake to be made; if his recommendations are not followed to the letter, then and only then will the country disintegrate. In short, it’s a threat followed by a piece of advice.

For so many people, Europe is doomed, unless we keep out those Muslims, unless we dismantle the welfare state and give tax breaks to big business, unless we boost military expenditure and join the United States in yet more forlorn crusades… Forgive me if I don’t always think these are the most generous and disinterested pieces of advice.

And even supposed “good Europeans” engage in this. Federalists habitually claim Europe is doomed if it does not integrate more now. Javier Solana recently asserted that without Turkish membership the EU would become “a museum” rather than a “global player”. This sort of hyperbole is irresponsible and does no service either to the speaker or to the cause they purport to be promoting. And as stunted as integration is now, that is not the same as decline.

So after this long exposé, what more need be said? Europe on the whole is a very fine place to be born: As civilized, peaceful and prosperous as anywhere, including Canada, Japan or Australia, but in addition with an internal cultural diversity and international outlook that is really unique and valuable.

Of course, we should be careful that legitimate patriotic pride not lead to undue chest-thumping and to dreaded nationalism. The pride of any people or country should never depend on the denigrating of others or meaningless cries of “We’re number 1!” On the other hand, I do think we might legitimately paraphrase Churchill: Europe, clearly the worst place to be born in the world, except for all the others…

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Daniel Hannan hails Europe’s non-existent swing to the right

Posted on 7 June 2011 by

Tory MEP and prominent EU blogger Daniel Hannan sends his congratulations to Portugal on electing a centre-right government saying “Where the people of Greece appear to be in denial, rioting whenever spending cuts are suggested, our oldest allies accept that they cannot carry on with the policies”.

He sees it as “part of a wider European flight from the Left. Of the 27 EU member states, only five now have Left-Of-Centre governments.” “Why?,” he rhetorically asks, “Mainly because people see that money has run out. [...] Now they simply want competence.”

One would have to not have access to any newspapers or suffer from a particularly bad case of “ideology,” whereby one imposes ones stilted preconceptions on one’s perceptions of reality, with frightening ability in this case. I will simply say that recent developments include:

The current wave of elections is obviously overwhelmingly anti-incumbent, as opposed to inherently left or right, as they often are in times of economic crisis. Given that Europe is currently governed by centre-right parties it means that, despite some gains for the far-right, the centre-left is likely to make more big wins in the immediate future.

Almost all European leaders, I think, feel their crowns are resting very insecurely upon their brows. This can lead to desperate tactics. However, neither Sarkozy’s traditional race-baiting nor his little war in Libya  have really helped him in the polls. And, very encouragingly, Berlusconi’s incredible homophobic, anti-Gypsy and anti-Muslim campaign failed to prevent a crushing defeat in Milan.

Already José Sócrates of Portugal (centre-left) and Brian Cowen of Ireland (centrist) have been dethroned. Instead of gloating too much, Hannan ought to think about what he can do to help his right-wing friends: I expect Europeans will be unceremoniously evicting many more of their leaders regardless of their political stripe!

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About me page…

Posted on 18 May 2011 by

…it has been added. I hope some editors see it. And maybe some bloggers who want to collaborate too. Please give advice on anything I might have missed or if it could be improved!

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EurActiv’s Redesign: Can EU news be sexy?

Posted on 17 May 2011 by

Well hello there!

That is the question posed by the recently-launched redesigned website of EurActiv, my current very dear employers as you can surmise from the “published work” section. I invite my readers, especially non-Brussels bubble inhabitants, to comment on attractiveness, ease of use, navigability and so on!

The EU media market is a a strange beast and each major specialized EU-media has its particularities and drawbacks. EurActiv, in the sleepy world of EU media, is by far the most international, largest and most comprehensive. It achieves this distinction thanks to greater revenue than the others through a mix of advertising and sponsorships from the private and public sectors.

EurActiv faces the same problems as all EU affairs publications: the topic is often boring, technical or only of interest to EU affairs professionals, the “Brussels bubble” market is too small (maybe 50,000 people) and the actual European market is fragmented into the various national cultures and languages.

EurActiv partly addresses the latter problem, originally and I think very effectively, by having a large network of autonomous national news sites. EurActiv France is almost always readable and potentially interesting for the literate layman in a way which a EurActiv.com article typically is not.

The old EurActiv, I don’t know if it is archived somewhere, was easy to navigate and clear, but rather static and unattractive. The new one has toned down the yellow, has a dynamic main page, drop-down menus and the “EU news map” – a very interesting experiment -prominently and attractively displayed.

Perhaps the structural constraints are insurmountable, but I think the new site does as a good a job as can be done of making EU news as accessible and interesting as possible to a general audience. But only our readers can confirm that!

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“Hidden Disaster”: The EU’s actually pretty good comic on its humanitarian work

Posted on 14 May 2011 by

I hate the European Union’s PR efforts. Over-generalizing very slightly, they could be characterized as “universally shit”. The Commission in particular is guilty of funding high-budget bizarre and even incomprehensible videos, whether it be the two-part “Adventures of Euro-Clooney and the Innovation Crystal Ball”, the “Creepy One-For-All Soup” (succeeding in taking a decent, concrete initiative and making a magnificent turd of it) or the “Attack of the Flying Sci-Fi-Future-Creating Paperwork”.

If you only saw this of the Commission, you would be forgiven for believing the organization was entirely made up of spendthrift, utterly out of touch megalomaniacal bureaucrats with psychotic penchants for magical thinking. For the record, and knowing quite a few people in the Commission, I don’t think this is the case but clearly some people in DG COMM need to be seriously reprimanded and perhaps have their heads checked by professionals.

Actually a pretty good EU-funded comic book.

Having said all this, I also feel I should praise the Commission when it does something reasonably well. I discovered this comic book in the Commission’s information center and it is good in the sense that, if I had a child, I would give it to her to read. She would come out of it more informed about the world, might be inspired to volunteer for humanitarian work, and might even find the 40-page story entertaining (I need a youngster to confirm).

A .pdf is available in five languages here and you can see some more of the Belgian author’s work here. Belgium incidentally has a long history of comic book-writing, its artists producing many of Europe’s most famous series including Tintin, The Smurfs and Lucky Luke.

Flying over the disaster-struck mountainous country of Borduvia.

The book stars Zana, a field expert for the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department (more commonly known as “ECHO”) as she attempts to bring relief to the flood-stricken people of “Borduvia”. Though the latter looks suspiciously like Af-Pak, the disclaimer assures us it is “a wholly fictitious story” in which “[a]ny resemblance to real people is entirely coincidental”. Good to know.

The plot is very straightforward and there is only the very bare bones of an “intrigue”, if it can be called that. However, the story carries you along and the scenes depicted are striking and evocative including panoramic views of Brussels, helicopters swooping over devastated villages and even our protagonists discovering the stench of bodies buried beneath tons of rubble.

Integrated into this, mostly seamlessly, are explanations of how ECHO and the Commission more generally work: ECHO’s division into regional “operational desks”, Zana’s drafting of situational reports for headquarters (“sitreps”) and even the outsourcing of the EU’s humanitarian work to NGOs (eg: the Red Cross or Oxfam getting money from the Commission for a specific EU project). The latter point is fairly important for understanding in general what the Commission does and does not do.

The reader also gets a sense of the challenges posed by a humanitarian crisis in a Third World country. This includes the poverty, logistical problems and lack of infrastructure, the control (in this case) of certain disaster-hit areas by armed rebels, trouble with semi-literate soldiers, the need to talk checkpoints guards into letting you past..

The book is what I would call effective propaganda in the most positive sense. The heroine can be readily identified with and one gets an impression of ECHO – with its own lingo, Brussels-based “Crisis Room” and concrete action in the disaster area – as a genuinely useful and even “sexy” organization which a young person might aspire to find meaningful work in.

How close this book is to the reality is beside the point. I suspect however that ECHO’s work is similar to the bittersweet mix of genuine idealism and political compromise that Samantha Power wrote about so well in Chasing the Flame, her book on the life and work of the Brazilian UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello who died in Iraq in 2003. In any event, young people should, on occasion, be inspired and educated by their elders. For that I’ll tip my hat to whoever produced Hidden Disaster and will give a copy to some of my very young cousins when I have the chance.

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Poland’s new look

Posted on 12 May 2011 by

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, is an avowed europhile and as such is taking very seriously his country’s upcoming six-month presidency of the European Council. This contrasts with the country’s previous leadership and, for that matter, every other major European leader at the moment, that is, the current panoply of dour “austeritists” (led by Angela “Dame de plomb“ Merkel) and professional race-baiters (led by Nicolas “Too many Muslims” Sarkozy).

As such I was a little surprised with the Polish presidency’s new logo went for child-like euro-kitsch instead of the more sober and elegant look of the previous Spain-Belgium-Hungary trio.

The new logo has already kind of grown on me though. The flag recalls Solidarnosc – as good a reference as  any to the historical agency and love of liberty of the great martyr-nation. The upwards arrows evoke an optimism sorely lacking in the rest of Europe and encapsulated in Hungary’s declinist constitution. Poland was incidentally the only EU member not to suffer from a recession.

Before I wax too lyrical, a temptation I sometimes cede to regarding France, Poland is also an ordinary country pursuing its particular agenda. A heavily coal-dependent country it has also taken the lead on expanding shale gas in Europe. The Polish foreign minister travelled to Benghazi recently to express (quite eloquently) support for the rebels without giving full recognition to their provisional government (probably a wise policy). Meanwhile it is also being sued by an imprisoned Saudi subject for Poland’s collaboration in the United States of America’s extralegal imprisonment and torture regime.

A mixed bag, as ever.. With any luck however Poland’s renewed confidence and optimism could inspire a more positive and constructive approach in the next European Council summits – rather than the rather reflexive and negative approach we’ve grown used to.

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Barnier: “There can only be one” (EU president)

Posted on 11 May 2011 by

Michel Barnier, French Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, suggested in a speech given on “Europe Day” (9 May of course..) that the offices of President of the European Council and President of the European Commission should be merged. He says this person should ultimately be elected.

This means the jobs currently held by José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy would be done by one person. I wholeheartedly approve the idea as HVR doesn’t appear to do much, clutters the G20 summits with another European, and it would give the EU a genuine “Mr Europe”. Then Dr. Kissinger might know who to call..

This is the first time such a senior EU official – as opposed to some MEP or think tank – has suggested such a move. Interestingly, for the same person to occupy the two offices would require no treaty change, which means the chances of it happening are more than zero. Similarly, there is no legal obstacle to Center-Right and Socialists having actual Commission President candidates who campaign and win or lose based on the elections to the European Parliament.

EurActiv France and Germany both covered it and I wrote the English version for EurActiv.com. It gives a nice overview of the background and context, if I do say so myself. If you know any Balkan languages, you can also go crazy with the Bulgarian and Romanian translations.

While much of the European media have ignored the announcement, the New York Times got in early on the story, earlier in fact than EurActiv.com and the other specialized EU media! It summarizes well the broader content of the speech. EUobserver emphasized its more alarmist side. England Expects, unsurprisingly, was upset by it.

Barnier is one of the big French names of international politics, the others being Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Pascal Lamy and Jean-Claude Trichet (all perfect capitalists, incidentally..). As such his speech was rather better covered by the French press.

Les Échos sees a “small European revolution” in this as Barnier is openly aiming for what he calls a “Federation of Nation-States” (a neat way of squaring the national primacy vs. federalism circle). Laurent Marchand of Ouest-France waxes lyrical about the speech’s refreshing candor and personal tone (rare for the Commission), as well as the content: pro-democratization and frankly federalist.

Marchand also points out that Barnier even mentions a tax on financial transactions and limitations on bonuses for corporate leaders. The latter is, incidentally, an important issue in French politics at the moment. Here’s to hoping some personalized and democratic politics can makes it way into the Commission..

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Bin Laden Is Dead: Some Thoughts on the End of an Era

Posted on 5 May 2011 by

This is the first rather US-centric post on this blog. I decided to publish it as it came out, very naturally one evening, on the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. I was going to write something on the European response, but actually, that would have been weak. This is much more personal and rich I think.

I’m incidentally peddling the piece to the Liberal-leftist Anglo-American blogosphere for it to reach a wider audience. Please contact me if you know someone who might want to publish it.

The White House team following the attack against Bin Laden (apparently staged).

I began to come to political consciousness in many ways on 11 September 2001. It was, wrongly given all the other ills about, the moment I realized not all was well in the world and one could not live “carelessly” on a planet characterized by infinite, gentle progress. I was 14.

I have never thought the War on Terror was anything but a parochial, Western phenomenon, unimportant except for those who must die in its name. Bush-era officials, asinine conservative hacks, former CIA officials, and neocons in their armchairs of course compared it, and still do, to the Second World War or the Cold War.

I always thought it was scandalously offensive and conceited to compare our troubles with those who died defeating Nazism or lived through the threat of nuclear holocaust. One has to ask the question: Who in their right mind can put Osama Bin Laden – who has only 9/11 and a few sporadic attacks to his name – on the same historical level as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin?

As an American citizen, I can only react with joy to the physical exorcising of this specter. I hope Obama takes advantage of the opportunity to declare victory and go home. I hope against hope that America will cease to wage its imaginary wars.

America’s Wars

For over forty years the United States fought Communists all around the world under the pretext that every sorry little impoverished peasant country was in fact the next step of Moscow’s plan for world domination. And this, even as the Communists – nothing more than brutish soldier-bureaucrats exercising the lowest form of power – time and again fell into infighting and division in a way which did not exist within the Western Alliance.

The Americans knew Marshal Tito, Enver Hoxha and Mao Zedong all fell out with Moscow over their natural desire for national independence. They also knew Ho Chi Minh and Mao fought a war immediately after the Americans withdrew from Vietnam.

If they had any brains – and I think of the Reagan-era Cold War hacks in particular – they would have known only one thing could keep the façade of Communist “brotherly unity” together: violence. The violence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe and the violence of the US armed forces and secret agencies everywhere else. In the absence of this, nothing could keep the totalitarians together. Indeed today, the Communist leftovers (Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea) are not known for their cohesiveness.

Stalin later proved reticent to support Communist revolutionaries in Greece and Vietnam.

America’s leaders perpetuate these wars out of vanity and selfish (as opposed to “enlightened”) self-interest. Self-interest when anti-Communism – whipped up to into the hysteria often characteristic of US politics – is cynically used as an excuse to destroy disagreeable regimes (particularly ones interested in nationalizing natural resources, as in Iran 1953 or Congo 1960). Vanity when it lets the leader imagine he is playing a historic role in a world-epic struggle for freedom.

The Cold War ended with Mikhail Gorbachev’s unwillingness to use violence to maintain the Soviet Empire, which went the way every empire must go. The uneasy “peace” of the 1990s might have lasted another decade. It was broken however when Osama bin Laden provided a new specter, a new threat, a new narrative for trigger-happy and comic-book gorged American leaders to indulge in.

In truth, I think cynicism played the larger part until the arrival of George W. Bush. I believe he on the other hand, with his monumental ignorance and parochialism, sincerely thought by waging war he really was living up to Churchill and Reagan. (As ridiculous and conceited as that might sound!)

Now Bin Laden is dead. Will America believe it is safe? Or, perhaps ten or twenty years from now, once the wounds and lessons of Iraq are forgotten as were those of Vietnam, will America find a new foe for its eternal crusade? China seems a most likely candidate: It is in the midst an unprecedented transformation and the West was capable of being hysterically afraid of the “Yellow Peril” in the nineteenth century even as the Middle Kingdom was being destroyed.

Perfidious Europe

I worked in the US Congress in the winter of 2009-10 – the time when health reform was being passed and the Afghan War was escalated. I found the experience depressing on the whole for reasons that largely went beyond politics. I eventually moved to Brussels where I currently work as a journalist on EU affairs.

Part of my interest in Europe has been motivated by the rejection of this side of America. Europe, we are told, stands for peace while the Americans – crass, ignorant but powerful Americans – stand for war. A part of me wishes and hopes the Europeans would help America free itself from its fears. I know however this hope is futile.

Europeans are not from Venus. They do not believe in peace. I will not go into the details of the base reasons (chiefly currying American favor) why the majority of Europeans have token forces in Afghanistan.

Obama at a NATO summit: "Why don't they put their boots where their mouthes are?"

The Europeans, incidentally, have long since ceased believing in this war. They are being slovenly and perfidious. If the Europeans were truly America’s friends, they would either buckle down to win the war or they would frankly say the thing is pointless and withdraw their forces. As it stands, all but the British have a symbolic presence, with no other purpose than to pretend to the Americans and the world that the effort is worthwhile.

It has now been almost a full decade that German soldiers – previously scarcely allowed to carry weapons outside the borders of the Federal Republic – are now running around the Hindu Kush in perfect “self-defense”. Have they not also lost their way?

I will not list the overwhelming majority of European leaders who collaborated in the unprovoked aggression against Iraq in 2003. Do I need to recall that the current President of the European Commission, before acquiring a “good European’s” taste for peace and “non-imperial empires”, organized the summit in the Azores at which Bush and Blair finalized the plan of attack? Said politician was also a Maoist militant in his youth. I will let you speculate as to what values or principles could possibly hold that career together.

America Alone

In truth, Europe’s leaders don’t believe in being European. They clearly care nothing for the Union as a project, as evidenced by the choice of unknowns and outright mediocrities to be its most important officers. Many – Blair, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, most in Eastern Europe – actually prefer America to anything else. The country is wealth, power, glory and indeed the closest thing one has to perfection.

They cannot see or don’t care for the country’s faults – the endless wars, the prison-industrial complex more vast than the Soviet gulag, the criminally inefficient and unjust healthcare system, the epidemic of obesity, endless over-consumption, the incredibly wasteful and even “unpatriotic” transport system…  America can often seem a nation of bingers.

Most European leaders cannot see these faults. They only see America’s greatness and are obsessed with sharing in its glory. As such, Europeans rarely have the courage – only the French seem to summon it from time to time – to be frank and tell America, as only a true friend can, when they have gone down the wrong path.

An American Quaker's sacrifice during the Vietnam War: As glorious as that of Thich Quang Duc, Jan Palach or Mohamed Bouazizi.

All this leads me to believe that Americans must save America alone. Two decades from now, when America’s leaders launch their next crusade, what will be the “peace-loving” Europeans’ response? If the past is anything to go by, the Europeans will cheer on as America descends into another mad adventure until its boys are waist-deep in the mud and blood of a country you’ve never heard of.

America has no friends or allies in Europe, only vassals and sycophants. It is up to good Americans to raise their own consciousness. To convince their countrymen the world is not such a frightening place. That just because a war is on somewhere and foreigners are dying does not mean anyone is “safer”.

Only Americans can wake themselves from their self-inflicted nightmare. And I really hope they do. They called the second half of the twentieth century the “Cold War”. The first decade of the twenty-first was the “War on Terror”. I hope Americans can find the serenity, the courage and the wisdom to finally join the postwar world.

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