Bend Over and try the new Atlanticism, America

Trying to regain ground with the United States, the EU is proposing to upgrade the transatlantic relationship beyond traditional Atlanticism to one that is results-oriented and guided by strategic priorities.

The “upgrade” in the new atlanticism that they propose, as usual will be “we hold the summits, you provide the firepower”. This, from a continent where the word “atlanticist” has mutated to be used as an personal insult for talking heads and would-be policy wonks.

In a world of new threats and challenges, Barroso underlined the need for a more dynamic partnership, one that would be more outward-looking and engage more third parties, including China, India and Brazil.

All of which sound cute, if not painfully obvious that the best they can do is to try to get the rest of the world to do their donkey-work. These are 500 million people, the wealthiest entity on earth, trying to pawn off their security problems not just on the US, but on nations like Canada and India, something they do every time they wring their hands and urgently call for a “peacekeeping force” in order to lull the voices in their heads shouting that homus occasus, western man, is responsible for some sort of action that produces impressions that compassion is being played out, even if someone is just mouthing the words. Just don’t ask them.

It also sounds just easy-peasy on their part, because they really don’t have anything to offer other than spooks that spike any initiative you undertake and a debate mechanism that enables evil to arm itself with nukes.

EU-US cooperation in US President Barack Obama's first year has a mixed record at best, and certainly falls short of the hopes fuelled by his election in 2008.

Because their only desire was to ignore any real problem out there in humanity that presented itself, wanted to look like they were solving the fake crices that they could script the narrative to, and basically wanted their very own flunky in the White House.

If Brussels has focused in the past five years on consolidating the enlarged European Union and the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the Barroso II Commission is determined to frame an agenda for a global Europe and that cannot be achieved without the US.

However, the European Union does not possess anything like a global foreign and security policy, or even a transatlantic policy, notes Stelzenmüller. The relationship between the EU and the US is old, broad and deep, she added, but it is not strategic – at least not as far as America is concerned, she added.

In other words, it is just as irrelevant as the sum of its’ parts, and needs the truly engaged entities in the world to play dress-up and pretend that they matter – until someday they are declared to matter having done nothing substantive to get there.

“Frame an agenda for a global?” My guess is that even Obama isn’t enough of an ingenue to bite. Add to that the hilarious attempt to characterize the make-work issues like the sea that isn’t rising and the European appeals for aid that they can’t swing, the EU has a “values” in themselves:

Denying that there was a "values crisis" in transatlantic relations, Ashton said the relationship would continue "forever".

Taking issue with Ashton, Estonian President Toomas Ilves said the problems that had dominated transatlantic relations for the last 60 years had been solved. "Europe is not on the radar screen in the way it has been in the past," he said, adding that "the real problems for the United States lie elsewhere"

As in we fixed your damned problems. You remember them: fascism, your liberties threatened by something called the CCCP, that Communism thing that murdered 100 million people, that religion you had of wanting to dismantle the free markets. Now go get a life, already. Europe LOST the ground with the United States by trying to trip it up at every turn, even with MINUTE issues that EUROPE initiated: i.e. they wanted the innocent waifs of Gitmo freed into their loving arms for the purpose of nagging interminably, but then didn’t. They didn’t want to be “left out” of Afghanistan, but most of the big playaz in Europe tacitly oppose it and were only willing to provide forces that wouldn’t expose themselves to risk. They demanded that aid go to Haiti, but criticized any minor detail that they could find. etc., etc., etc.

They think that THAT makes them involved – a “global Europe”. Obama should not even meet with them on the same simple grounds that one would not meet with a rebel entity that calls itself a nation, but has no functioning elements of governance that impact their external affairs, such as a diplomatic corps, an elected legislature, a stable military under the control of civilian leadership, a succession structure, and little internal bickering which would make one suspect that they’ll break down at any moment, and so on. The EU in any real respect has NONE of those things. In terms of classic legal legitimacy, it’s on par with Somalia when you really look at it, and yet they want to be universally declared the world’s pinnacle of Solomonic wisdom, and given the keys to a car that they don’t make the payments on.

Absolutely not, and certainly not making American security depend on them in any way either. Quite simply, they haven’t even yet done anything to demonstrate that they can be trusted.

And by the way, impotent rage and passive-aggression is NOT a policy strategy that will get the “Brussels Republic” any of the servile “partners” that they’re hoping to rope in.