Who’s Really Buying What they’re Selling?

Joe Carducci has a term for the power play being acted out by a dysfunctional Arab society, calling it a “powerful weakness” being thrown on the west’s plate.

With little irony, Catherine Ashton is proud of the same enfeeblement and ineffectualism:

The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around. Its influence flows from the fact that it is disinterested in its support for democracy, development and the rule of law. It can be an honest broker – but backed up by diplomacy, aid and great expertise.

To which observer of strategy James Rogers notes:

What? Like in the Caucasus and North Africa? Or, previously, in the former Yugoslavia? Should our willingness to allow whole countries to fall apart or get invaded – countries in our own neighbourhood – really be seen as our ‘strength’? Is it not because Brussels (and the Member States) has been so ‘disinterested’ in its support for constitutional government abroad that its policies have been so ineffective? Mrs. Ashton should perhaps express a little more humility here, particularly in light of recent events. If anything, given the turmoil in the eastern neighbourhood in August 2008 and the southern neighbourhood now – in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – far from ‘great expertise’ among European diplomats and strategists, there seems to be a certain lack of it!

With stunning ignorance about the world, Aston continues:

Whatever the subject, the ambition of countries round the world, from the biggest and richest to the smallest and poorest, is the same: to make the EU their ally.

Hardly. The Russians don’t. The American just deal with you because you’re even more of a strategic threat if you fail, and immigrants as a rule aren’t attracted enough to your societies to integrate amicably.

That isn’t love. That’s called making yourself irrelevant. Her position is the equivalent of palliative care. One certainly not buying it is M. N. Silva, a graduate of International Relations and a critic of security and intelligence affairs.

The European Union though is a house of cards. Its growth/integration is built on incompatible cultures, on divergent legal systems, clashing strategic interests, and an ever growing lack of orientation and strategic thought – if there ever was one. In September I asked a panel of EU experts what the strategy of EU enlargement was, they smiled and rhetorically asked what the strategy of the EU itself was – the strategy was just the success of the project. They continued to smile, I did not. This is the typical pink destiny blind faith that Liberal Internationalists always display, believing themselves to be the creators of an end-of-history chronological exception which will generate paradise on Earth. I refuse to reckon an ounce of rationalisation in people who dismiss the need for strategy in a civilisational revolutionising endeavour.

And I think it’s safe to say that the likes of the Baroness who once was heavily involved with the KGB’s most destructive wet dream, the CNDUK. It fits into this European preoccupation with self as well. While she doesn’t state it, many a continental thinker genuinely believes that the rest of the world cares about their union, and sees its’ formation as a pattern for international policy itself. It isn’t – it’s been a decade of chaos with no sign of ending, and if it weren’t for having the United States to guarantee its’ security, it would be overtly chaotic to the point of lawlessness.

As I’ve stated, European cooperation would be essential to the strategic success of the different European nations in a world of civilisation-states. To have delegated that strategic goal to universalists will unfortunately prove to be a historic mistake of epic proportions.