Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Without commenting on the testicular "potency" of Europeans, nor the potential for the threat of terrorism to grow, rather than subside...

I think Max Hastings comments illustrate nicely the "security dilemma" - how an unpredictable US, a US who blows the threat to its survival out of all proportion, certain that force or the threat thereof is the only avenue to security, CAUSES other countries (even our allies like England) to begin to think they need to arm themselves for security, either from us directly or to have autonomy of policy.

A spiral arms race ensues. An unstable Nash equilibrium, resulting in arms expenditures and wars from inevitable miscalculations. An overarching, coordinating body is necessary for optimal outcomes.

I've never liked the name 'neo-con' as applied to these guys. To me, they're just garden-variety realists who believe that force is the only security, the nation-state the only viable vehicle of action, paranoid, nativist, overcompensating macho boys.

Assholes like Bush apparently think that problems of security like ours have never been faced by human societies. And there are no repercussions to our actions, at least no blowback from anyone we can't summarily squash.

I think it's ony a matter of time before EU adopts a consitution and becomes a country of ten languages, a stronger unit of currency, and a huge army.

--Cats Paw

Contented, beyond
Bliss, housecat purrs, paws folded,
Smiling at flea comb.

What part of God's Creation
Has 130,000 armed soldiers
Massacre 60,000 civilians
And calls it "containment"?
Did they mean "contentment"?

Waxen moon shining,
Frogs sing in joyful chorus,
Mosquitoes humming.

--Jido Kotatsu

Sir Hastings comments on wee statesmanship are rather like the overripe prom date's indecision whether to accept a ride home with her drunken football escorts, knowing full well she may be killed in a crash, or at best, get date-raped.

Or rather like a crowd of mawkish onlookers,
watching without breathe as a gang of toughs
beats the faesces out of an elderly man for fun.
Torn between fascination, fear and frigidity.
None of them saw anything on the police blotter.

Dancing with the Devil 'neath the pale moonlight,
until the day when the Devil rips out their gold
fillings, and throws them into the crematorium.

Hastings, "may now look in the mud for what is left of British prestige."

http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na38146p292.htm
Chamberlain's Treason
By Robery Dell
The Nation
March 12, 1938
Vol. 146, No. 11, P. 292-294

It's not at all clear what good it would do for Europe to spend another megaton of money on military forces. What good would such forces do??? Who would they be used against? Under what scenario? And if there's an answer to these questions, isn't this just a formula for how to make things even worse???

To me, it just sounds like contagious insanity.

Oh, and about calling neo-cons "realists"--make that "surrealists," kiddo. As Walter Russell Mead explained so well in _Special Providence_, "Continental Realism" *was* a realist response to an incredibly threatening near-zero-sum game. We face nothing remotely close to this situation--except in the neo-cons' deluded fantasies.

Brad, this is an appropriate time to ask you a central question. Am I correct in saying that you are definitely NOT one of the pull-out-at-any-price far Left dove Democrats who thinks that huge military confrontations with Islamic Fascism can be avoided, but rather one whose main criticism of Bush is that he's usually handled such major military interventions in a disastrously incompetent way? That is, a liberal hawk of the Mark Kleiman-Paul Berman type?

The reason I ask is that -- if so -- it means that there really is a huge difference between you and Krugman. One gets the definite impression from reading him that he DOES think that successfully dealing with Islamic Fascism, and with Megaterrrorism in general, is relatively unimportant. Hell, he said as much in the column calling Enron more important for the US in the long run than 9-11 -- unquestionably the stupidest thing he's ever said, since 9-11 is obviously just the starting gun for a nightmarish new era which threatens human civilization in general and whose advent has been clearly seen coming for decades before 9-11. And then we have his column blaming most of Mahathir's rabid anti-Semitism -- and the standing ovation it got at the Moslem Conference -- on Bush's post 9-11 actions, instead of recognizing the obvious fact that rabid anti-Semitism and murderous religious bigotry were already a gigantic problem in the Moslem world, and that Bush has at worst poured a small amoung of additional gasoline on an already roaring worldwide bonfire.

Max Hastings' column, and the letter -- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=515706 -- of 50 former ambassadors calling Bush's Middle Eastern policy "clearly doomed" seem to me _hugely_ significant at least in terms of British politics. This is the grown-up, realistic spine of the British policy-making establishment, the army, the foreign office and so forth, saying that the Bushies are so crazy and so far out of control that we are going to have to rethink 50 or 100 years of British policy. There is obviously also a silent mutiny going on the British Army about whether they should move out of Shi-ite areas and into the bits of Iraq that have been anti-pacified by the Americans. Here's a prediction. If Bush is re-elected, the British/American alliance will fracture publicly.

As for "dealing with Islamic Fascism" -- well, if the Muslims want to fuck up their own countries, let them. I don't consider that British or French interests requires that we deal with Little Green Footballs by invading California. Ha ha, you cry: but you couldn't do that anyway, you wimpish Europeans. Yes. But you can't invade and subjugate the Middle East, either, as you are painfully learning. All countries, all empires, even, have limits to their power; although these limits are usually established by wars, the world is happier and better when they are recognised in advance.

Maccabee:
right, the European Union is on the way to get its own constitutional treaty and to become more of a "federal state" (rather than a federation of national states) - with ore integrated common policies AND parliamentary control. The EU defines itself, at the moment, as a "Union of States and a Union of Citizens" - the Union of States being represented by the Council (of ministers), the Union of Citizens being represented by the European Parliament (next elections in June). Legislation is done jointly by Conncil and Parliament (on all issues of "integrated" policy according to the Union Treaty). So we are on the way to "statehood".

The common security and defence policy, so far, is not "integrated", out of parliamentary control, a matter of national governments and their cooperation in Council (and, thus, needs unanimity in the Council, instead of majority decisions - which is why Kissinger once asked which number the hell he should call in case of a crisis).

But even with "ingetrated" security and military policies, I do not see the danger of an "arms race". Europe will have its own army, right, but a rather small one, for credible self defence, but for "out-of-area" operations only under the direction of the UN Security Council.

I think, that makes an important difference: European foreign politics is based on the concept of cooperation in a multi-polar world (vs. unilateralism), on the defence of human rights, and on the "monopoly to use violence" attributed to the Security Council.

We certainly won't invade the US to establish our standards of human rights (e.g. no capital punishment), and we won't fight the US about neo-colonial issues.

But we are going to have the credible military forces to back up our own foreign policy.

The relation with the US will be something like
"co-opetition".

If you want to read more about it, go to the European Union hp (europa.eu.int) and look for Solana's paper on the CFSP, backed by the Council in November of 2003.

"This is the grown-up, realistic spine of the British policy-making establishment, the army, the foreign office and so forth, saying that the Bushies are so crazy and so far out of control that we are going to have to rethink . . British policy."

Exactly. And add to that Sam Brittan advising rejection of the draft Constitution for Europe at: http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text183_p.html

Andrew, the central problem remains what it was: the absolute need to prevent any more dictatorships or shaky states -- ever -- from getting their hands on nuclear weapons (or on the increasingly powerful bioweapons that will soon be made available to us by the wonders of genetic engineering). Our occupation of Iraq is most seriously disastrous inasmuch as it prevents the US from dealing militarily with emergencies of this sort revolving around Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, all of which are higher-priority threats than Saddam's Iraq was -- as well as preventing us from helping Russia guard its own huge arsenal from theft.

As for democratic Europe acquiring its own powerful military: go to it, and for God's sake get a move on. YOU are no threat to us; you could be an indispensable ally.

THe US, on its own, will never be able to prevent other natons from acquiring these horrible weapons. The UN might once have done so, but the apparatus of international control has been pretty much smashed up now. So I don't know the answer. But I do think tha the dream of a _military_ solution to Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and so on getting bombs of their own is ridiculous. All except Iran have got their own bombs. None are going to use them on the US or its allies. What has, historically, worked against nuclear weapons is deterrence. Any nation that uses them against another nuclear-armed nation will face annihilation. This is a horrible policy, for which there is nothing to be said except that it works, while nothing else does.

In other words, the world - like the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Potomac in a war long ago - is stuck with the likes of Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside.

Where are the Grants and Shermans when we need them?

True, in the case of those nations that already have the Bomb -- but the more that acquire it, the deadlier the situation is.

(1) It's now possible for a nation -- instead of being attacked by traceable missiles -- to undergo a devastating attack by smuggled nukes without even knowing who attacked it, a nightmarish new form of warfare impossible during the Cold War. What can that nation do then, but threaten in advance to retaliate against EVERY nation that MIGHT have launched the attack, guilty and innocent alike -- or else leave itself wide open to repeated attacks of the same sort? If a smuggled nuke went off in the US right now and we couldn't trace it definitely to either Pakistan or North Korea, we would have to retaliate against both of them (even if the Bomb had actually been stolen from Russia or come from some other source), thereby triggering a response from the innocent nation. Any other nation attacked with a smuggled nuke would have to do exactly the same thing, or else simply suck up such attcks indefinitely. And if Iran gets the Bomb while remaining a theocratic tyranny, we'll have to add it to our retaliation list. Lovely.

(2) Dictatorships have a tremendous incentive to do things with their Bombs that would be utterly insane for any democracy, because their ruling governments live in terror not only but of other nations but of a revolt by their own people -- and are thus very strongly tempted to either sell ther Bombs on the black market or use them to stick up their neighbors for the cash that will allow them to stay in power. This, by all accounts, is exactly what's motivating North Korea.

(3) We cannot deal with North Korea by simply invading it -- but if we submit to nuclear blackmail by paying off its tyranny not to use its bombs in this way, we will have to keep propping them up this way forever (or until they collapse anyway and their nuclear arsenal, by then greatly swollen, falls into God knows who's hands). What we CAN do, and at some point will have to do, is make it clear to them that we will not pay one penny to keep them in power, but also that we will provide them with any assistance necessary to give up power peacefully without being slaughtered by their own people. The sooner we do this the better. They're riding a tiger, they know it, and we have to give them a way to clim off safely. Which means that -- although we cannot invade North Korea -- we had damn well better be prepared to occupy and administer it if they DO give up power, which will require a huge conventional military force in itself. Ditto for every other nuclear-armed dictatorship in the future.

(4) Shaky nuclear-armed states, such as Pakistan, are still deadlier, because there is no way at all to deal with their nuclear arsenals by such rational deals.

So: do we -- and by "we" I mean all of human civilization -- let this situation go on getting deadlier and deadlier, or do we start doing something about it, fast?

"If we are really fed up with Bush, if we recognise that no future US president is likely be entirely to our taste, we should surely get on with creating credible European armed forces."

Talk about a non-seqitur! Hastings's knighthood was evidently not awarded for logic. A European army makes sense only as the culmination of an anti-American European foreign policy, something which will never happen because European nations have different traditions and interests from each other. For instance, Britain generally opposes genocide while France has supported it (in Rwanda in 1994). Germany helped break up Yugoslavia in 1991 while Britain and France tried to keep it together. And so on and so on.

Nuclear weapons have return addresses, they always did and they always will. Krugman was right. Objectively, the Enron mess was far more damaging economically to the United States than 911 -- he was speaking of the economic effects, by the way. Second, one hears a lot about Islamo-Fascism. Would some please identify the fascist state that this phrase embodies? Or are we simply conflating the term with anti-zionism, which many observers further conflate with anti-semitism?

It is a sign of how hard it is to change the structure of thought that the old bi-polar vision we lived with after World War II has resurfaced as the 'war of civilization'. To call this notion nonsense is to give it too much credit. That many people in the rest of the world hate us is no surprise (a lot of them have good reason to do so); that they would be willing to risk their State for it in an enterprise comparable to the Soviet experiment is laughable. There remains a small group of terrorists who are willing to give their lives to do what in fact is infinitessimally small damage -- not to the victms of course -- but to the state they would like to overturn.

Britain has lived with IRA terrorists for a generation; Europe with various forms of left-wing and Islamic terrorism for the same length of time. They are surviving. Terrorism raises the costs of daily life, but it doesn't shut it down, and it doesn't threaten civil liberties unless we allow it to.

Speaking of fascism, the closest thing to it emerging is the 'zone of autonomy' claimed by the President, and the assertion of his right to declare any of us 'enemy combattants' and put us in a hole where we have no access to lawyers who might help clear up the confusion. People can now simply disappear, like the President's National Guard records. Think about it. You might be next.

And to think that the greatest of mistakes this administration could make would be to destroy the special relationship between the UK and the US that has lasted for almost 100 years. The long-term effects of a preventive, interventionist foreign policy, as pointed out up-thread, have only just begun to play out. We shouldn't be shocked by the outcome...

"Objectively, the Enron mess was far more damaging economically to the United States than 911 -- he was speaking of the economic effects, by the way. "

The Enron mess didn't have a $200 billion federal price tag. Enron didn't depress investment demand and risk taking for a year either. How can Krugman think this?

I have always considered the creation of a unified military force for Europe a good thing. Some benefits:

- It is much more cost effective.
- A near equal partner will be of far greater help is situations like Afghanistan. In other words we won’t be going it alone.
- It might be a good thing to have a counter balance against the more outrageous adventures an American administration might consider.

If both Europe and the US are liberal democracies I don’t see the likelihood of a cold war developing.

Dear Bruce Moomaw and Boelf

thanx, at leats two of you guys reacted to an attempt to begin some sort of a dialogue between US and European liberals (that is, incidentally, what a great number of center-left Europeans expect from sen. Kerry....). But it seems that most Americans (even here in this "elitarian" blog, are concenred only with US policy).

"It might be a good thing to have a counter balance against the more outrageous adventures an American administration might consider.

If both Europe and the US are liberal democracies..." -
that's ex actly what I meant to say: Europe cannot go "against" the US, terrorism cannot be fought "withour" the US, a rule of law in international relations cannot be established "without" the US - but also not "with this government" of unilateralist hawks.

"Co-opetition" between Europe and the US is as important as a dialogue between Europe and American democrats (and intelligent Republicans, if there are any).

"If a smuggled nuke went off in the US right now and we couldn't trace it definitely to either Pakistan or North Korea, we would have to retaliate against both of them (even if the Bomb had actually been stolen from Russia or come from some other source), thereby triggering a response from the innocent nation."

Say what? I think you need to take a few deep breaths.

Perhaps Krugman is making a distinction between those effects from the actual destruction of 9/11 and other effects resulting more from our hand-flapping, Chicken Little responses that ultimately sent us careening and flailing blindly into Baghdad. At least I hope it is "ultimately"...

"If both Europe and the US are liberal democracies.."

Europe is NOT a liberal democracy. It is around 35 liberal democracies (giving Belarus and one or two others the benefit of the doubt). Talking about European armed forces, a European point of view and cooperation with Europe is totally menaingless. Until people realise that Britain and Ukraine, say, have interests, problems and values as different as America and Mexico, America won't deal with Europe sensibly.

It is like taking of an "Asian" viewpoint, as though Iran and Japan or Mongolia and Sri Lanka are ever likely to have anything in common. Europe is a geographical expression, nothing more.

gerhard and boelf, have you read the following in Bush's "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America"?

"Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss9.html

In geostrategic terms, of course, "potential adversaries" means anyone. Particularly anyone, of however benign an appearance, who might think about "pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States".

Hi;

This article is old (2003) but it's an interesting analysis of how Europe's armed forces are developing.

http://tinyurl.com/2wyld

Bottom line is that, based on current trends, Europe would be able to deploy a respectably formidable force by 2010, including carriers, armour and troops.

The simple answer on Iraq is that it was a war that did not need to be fought to enhance or preserve our own national security. The corollary is that the occupation that followed this useless and feckless war has massively degraded our national security.

By the by, all of the uses for our armed forces described above would require a standing army of ten million or so. Where, pray tell, is that coming from?

The Bush militaristic strategy for dealing with terrorism is like using a sledge hammer to protect oneself from a swarm of mosquitoes. It misses the target and does tremendous damage when it lands.

Bruce Moomaw wants us to concentrate on threats that are genuine and need to be taken seriously...but doesn't want to see the conclusions his own analysis raises.

He says: "Bush has at worst poured a small amoung of additional gasoline on an already roaring worldwide bonfire."

Is this true? Even with the rather narrow view available through US media, it seems he has poured a truckload of gasoline on to real but small fires. Yes, 'Islamic fundamentalism' existed as a dangerous idea, spurred both by domestic crises in many mid-Eastern states and by US encouragement for "Islamic" anti-Soviet intervention in Afghanistan; but surely its potency has been tremendously multiplied not just by the huge impact of the Twin Towers terrorism but also by the fairly specific way that the current US administration responded to it. This is a question of degree and judgment, to be sure: but in the real world, we don't have the option of "complete" or "final" solutions. What is so striking is the high level of blindness shown by the current president and his associates about issues of degree and judgment. They claim to be realists...yet Rumsfeld (see Zinni blog item by Brad) points out that Rumsfled claims to be "surprised" by the current developments in Iraq. Surely, he's about the only one...and it's his JOB to anticipate problems there!

In fact, I think Bruce's analysis of Korea shows that he shares this assessment: the problem with dictatorships is exactly not that we should strike and strike hard, but that we need to 'help them climb off the tiger's back'. Why couldn't we have taken a parallel (though obviously different in detail) approach to the catastrphic situation in Iraq under S. Hussein?

The point is: the Bushies don't believe in shades of grey, but we live in a world in which grey is what every nation and every power-center has to deal with.

"The Enron mess didn't have a $200 billion federal price tag. Enron didn't depress investment demand and risk taking for a year either. How can Krugman think this?"

I believe Krugman thought - and I believe still thinks - that it was indicative of a rot in our capitalistic system, that what looked healthy on the surface was much worse beneath. I'm certainly no longer confident in the accounting of many different companies or in the truthfulness of the various auditors and safeguarders of public companies. The accounting scandals weren't over when we were distracted from Enron, and there hasn't been much in the way of major change to make me think that there has been anything to fix the fundamental dishonesty that caused that.

Europeans spend money on a modern military? Perish the thought.

Europe collectively is falling further and further behind the U.S. in all aspects of military power. Take just one example. The U.S. has operated "stealth" aircraft for two decades and is now developing its fourth generation of stealth aircraft. The Europeans have no stealth aircraft, not even on the drawing board.

The only possibility for European countries to acquire a stealth aircraft capability is through the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. Whether they procure JSF aircraft in the future will be a big test as to whether Europe is able to field a military with any modern systems even in small (perhaps meaningless) numbers.

Hey Lawrence;

I dunno, deploying a stealth corvette seems pretty cool to me.

To give one example. ;-)

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/visby/

"At the very moment when most of us feel surfeited with the president's vacuous grin and impregnable moral conceit, we cannot walk away from his follies unless or until Europe makes itself something quite different from the eunuch it is today."

A Tory advocating European federalism. I love it!

Small point. Krugman was specifically refuting the argument that the 911 attack was going to cause a huge post-attack depression. He wrote the article long before the President announced (what he was then deciding in secret) that we would get back at the Iraqi's for not actually having attacked us.

The Swedish Stealth Corvette is quite impressive. It does not however even attempt to provide any of the military power that Europe will need ifgit wishes to ease its reliance on U.S. military power. First, its combat capabilities are limited outside of its designed purposes of mine-sweeping and Anti-Submarine Warfare. More fundamentally, as a short ranged combatant desined for coastline (littoral) operations it, like all corvettes, lacks the range to operate at any significant range.

Its short range points to the fundamental problem facing anyone trying to replace the U.S. military's security function. The United States alone has the ability to deploy large scale forces distant from its home bases. Until Europe can do the same, it will be dependent on the U.S. whether it likes it or not when problems arise far from home (the point of the original article).

i A Tory advocating European federalism. I love it!

Part of the Tories' problem is that a sizeable number of their big hitters are very pro-Europe, as are a majority of their traditional big business backers. Unfortunately, this is opposed by the vast majority of their, frankly senile, party membership, and the Press that supports them.

This has been the case since the early 90's. Effective, clever and popular politicians like Clarke and Patten are effectively marginalised, while non-entities like Hague and whatsisname-Smith are elected leader.

i A Tory advocating European federalism. I love it!

Part of the Tories' problem is that a sizeable number of their big hitters are very pro-Europe, as are a majority of their traditional big business backers. Unfortunately, this is opposed by the vast majority of their, frankly senile, party membership, and the Press that supports them.

This has been the case since the early 90's. Effective, clever and popular politicians like Clarke and Patten are effectively marginalised, while non-entities like Hague and whatsisname-Smith are elected leader.

Hastings' comments are very likely an expression of frustration with the lack of options now open to Europe.
Under the current strained circumstances, a Europe that could offer the United States a militarily significant deployment of troops would also be in the position to demand in return a politically significant amount of influence over strategy and policy.
But it doesn't have the troops, and thus cannot demand the influence.

"In fact, I think Bruce's analysis of Korea shows that he shares this assessment: the problem with dictatorships is exactly not that we should strike and strike hard, but that we need to 'help them climb off the tiger's back'. Why couldn't we have taken a parallel (though obviously different in detail) approach to the catastorphic situation in Iraq under S. Hussein?"

Damn straight we should have, PQuincey, and I was advocating this for 2 years before the damn war started. Ultimately -- just before the war started -- we DID offer to give Saddam the chance to go into exile, but he didn't take it -- whether because of pure stupidity on his part or because he didn't trust this administration to keep its word (which would NOT be stupidity on his part). But, of course, you can't just persuade to do this with the carrot of protecting their lives if they quit -- you hve to explcitly threaten them with a military stick if they DON'T do so. (Or, in the case of North Korea, you have to make it clear that if they try to stay in power instead by selling Bombs or using them for extortion, they're going to die then.)

Alan - a poll today has shown British business massively hostile to the EU and the European constitution, just like the rest of the British public.

Or are they "frankly senile" too?

Europe has two choices - either remain disarmed and rely on the US to provide its military muscle, risking losing control if the US leadership refuses its lead, or it can arm itself, allowing it to have its own policy. Frankly it is a miracle of history that the first is even an option. In any other time, a rich, unarmed nation would be quickly conquered by envious neighbors. Rich, unarmed Europe would be easy pickin's for Islam, Russia, America itself, or Turkey in any other time period or historical context.

Europe should rearm, whether America is "Bushified" or not, unless they can be sure we are their cat's paw. Whether Bush, Gore, or Kerry is President, I do not wish America to be Europe's willing sword arm - America should have our own policy, as we have our own interests. So this kind of statement is a "good thing" in my view.

To Rvman: Yep. Democracies frequently get into strategic and economic disagreements, but they do NOT declare war on each other. A militarily powerful democratic Europe joining the militarily powerful democratic US would be an overwhelmingly good thing for human civilization in the struggle against undemocratic barbarism everywhere, regardless of whether Europe and the US had some clashes about detailed strategy.

"Europe is NOT a liberal democracy. It is around 35 liberal democracies"

P.J. - Americans should try to get used to the notion that the European Union DOES exist (with 25 member staes by may 1), that it DOES have a common currency and a big single market, that it DOES have a common economic strategy (the so-calles "Lisbon strategy" of making Europe, by 2010, the most competitive knowledge-bases economic area in the world, that political integration IS making progress, that we WILL have a common constitution by the end of this year (which will make the Union, approaching "statehood", a truly liberal democracy), und that the Union IS developping a commom security and defence policy based on the same values as (officially) US policy, but articulated in opposition to current US strategy.

Of course, the national states DO "have interests" (like the UK), but even British Tories are beginning to realize that they cannot defend those interests single-handedly, that it is in their best interest to continue the process of European integration.

Wake up to reality, you will not be dealing, in the future, with 35 small states. The European Union is here to stay.

Gerhard -

The EU does NOT have a common currency across its soon-to-be 25 members. None of the new states have adopted it yet, and three of the old 15 have kept their own currencies. Thus, by my calculation, there are 14 currencies in 25 nations. And "Europe" isn't just the EU. Switzerland and Norway have their own currencies too. Maybe there are 25 currencies across the whole of Europe.

And the EU may have a toothless, meaningless economic strategy, but it can't even make its larger members hold their budget deficits down. It can just about bully Portugal, but the big boys simply tell it to get lost.

As for the notion that the EU "WILL have a constitution", do you really think that the referenda in at least four and maybe eight European countries are foregone conclusions? If so, maybe you should look at the polls in Britain in particular and the history of European referenda which often side with the status quo.

British Tories have never believed that interests can be defended single-handedly. That's why they have supported the American alliance and alliances with other nations who share similar interests and values around the world, such as Australia or Canada. But most Brits did NOT join the EU to "defend their national interests" or to stick up to the United States. They joined because in a moment of national insecurity, the economy was underperforming and those in Europe seemed, indeed were, healthier, and access to their markets was important. Of course, though the diagnosis was accurate, the cure was wrong - reform at home was needed, not regulation from Brussels. But now, because the British economy has been performing better, the British Conservative Party and British public opinion in general is much more hostile to the European Union now than it was 15 years ago.

PJ,
true, the EURO is not yet used in all member states. Britain will be discussin soon to take part in the EURO area. Denmakr and Sweden kept und are keeping their crowns. The 10 new member states want to join the EURO area as soon as possbile, i.e. as sonn as the convergence indicators show that they are ready to.

It is, of course, a "work in progress".

True, the stability pact is in difficulty. France and Germany have budget deficits over the established limit and are getting away with it. And there is some discussion on the rationality of the stability criteria anyway. But so far, nobody said that Germany and France could go on for ever ignoring the pact. They are trying to teduce their respective deficits.

And so on.

It all depends on how you look at it. If the glass is "half full" or "half empty". The way I see it, it is half full - because we are going in the right direction. My kids are growing up in a single market and a European Union where they are studying a semester in Finland just as the normal way to go through university, and they do not even need a passport to go to Finland. They will be adults in a European Union that will be very different from the terrible 20th century of wars and totalitarianism.

So pardon me if I think the glass is half full.

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