Chronicles
A Magazine of American Culture
Vol. 22, No. 12, December 1998
A BEAR IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
By Bob Djurdjevic
General Section: VITAL SIGNS; Sub-section: FOREIGN AFFAIRS
This is not unlike the Soviet bear's
treatment of its Eastern European "allies," read minions. Only more perfidious.
For, the West Side bear has stuck its six big claws into the back of Madame Europe, and is
dragging her into its lair, while pretending to save her and her heir. ("Save her
from what?" - has been a mystery ever since the end of the Cold War and the demise of
the Soviet bear).
The first claw ripping into Europe is the "EU;" the second is the "euro;" the third is the "Y2K" (though the U.S. cannot claim direct credit for that); the fourth and fifth are the two "enlargements" - EU's and NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe; the sixth is "immigration." All six claws will eventually sap the competitive lifeblood out of the victim, if the current trends continue.
The first claw - European integration, first economic, then political - is clearly being pushed by the Wall Street and Washington-centered New World Order (NWO) globalists for the benefit of multinational, not national, or regional companies. Just look at the assault, for example, launched by Wall Street bankers.
Since 1992, the year the same West Side crowd forced Europe to open its markets to foreign competition, Wall Street banks have consistently dominated Europe's mergers and acquisitions. In 1996, for example, the U.S. banks accounted for two-thirds of all such deals. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch led the pack, according to a July 1997 New York Times report.
A further example of the top-down NWO coercion is that the Old Continent's electorate have clearly rejected the idea of pan-Europeanism, even as they voted for a pan-European Parliament. Most representatives elected in June 1994, for example, came from the various European nationalist parties.
Even in Germany, that bulwark of the EU integration, where Helmut Kohl's government has acted as a virtual U.S. government proxy on almost every issue, there has been a voter backlash. Kohl was defeated in the September elections by Social Democrats who were critical of the government's special relationship with NATO and the United States.
This is more evidence that the 1991 Maastricht Treaty was an example of the globalist elite's ramming the EU idea down the Europeans' throats. For, the EU adds a significant tax burden over and above the costs of each national government - like the United Nations bureaucracy.
The same argument can be made about the second claw of the NWO's Euro-destruction - conversion of national currencies to a "euro." There is no doubt that the "euro" is a benefit to the hordes of the U.S. and European consulting, legal and accounting firms engaged in the currency conversion projects. Not to mention the banks, think-tanks or other leaches feeding off of productive economic activities. Just as the Harvard-inspired "reforms" in Russia in 1992-1994 meant an enrichment opportunity for the few (quislings and foreigners) at the expense of the many (Russians).
Meanwhile, the proponents of the "euro" argue that a common currency will lower transaction costs. Maybe. But even if so, not before first raising them. Besides, only companies which operate on a pan-European scale may benefit from it. As for the rest, especially small businesses - the backbone of most European economies - the "euro" will mostly mean additional expenses and diminishing national sovereignty.
And then there are political risks associated with the "euro." "The new currency will become the target of allocation conflicts, the magnet for political action and the putty between continental forces," noted a July 1998 Bertelsmann Forum report. "The 'euro' could force a major process of financial compensation throughout Europe, thus triggering conflicts of a new intensity." Indeed.
The third claw tearing into the back of Europe is the "Y2K" problem, the so-called Millennium Bug. The "Y2K," of course, afflicts all of the industrialized world, not only Europe. But both Europe and Japan, two major competitors of the U.S.-based multinationals, are at least nine to 12 months behind the U.S. in addressing this issue, according to a recent CIA study.
Now, nine to 12 months may not sound like much in some industries where changes are measured in years or decades. But this is quite a setback for Europe in the high-tech world. The PC product cycles have been reduced to about 12 months. The Internet has now shrunk the "Web year" from 12-months to about 90 days. In short, the "Y2K" is likely to set Europe back even further relative to the U.S. than it is today.
The fourth and the fifth claws of the U.S.-inspired European self-destruction are the two "enlargements" - extending the EU membership to some Eastern European countries, and expanding NATO.
As Germany's own integration has clearly shown, even uniting two countries which share ethnic and cultural identities is a Herculean task. And a very expensive one. The enormous costs of reunification have practically brought the treasury of the largest European economy practically to its knees.
Since the reunification in October 1990, the well-heeled West Germans have poured more than $100 billion every year into East Germany so as to make their poorer brethren feel as equals at the family dinner table. Yet eight years later, many East Germans still feel as second class citizens in their own country. Which only goes to show that one cannot buy happiness or a sense of well-being with money.
Now multiply the difficulties and expenses of the German integration by a factor of 20 or more in order to appreciate the devastating impact the "enlargement" will have on the taxpayers.
The agricultural sector in Eastern Europe, for example, is still of crucial importance for employment and income generation in those countries. Yet agricultural production in Eastern Europe is currently about 30 percent of that in the EU countries, and the prices are only at around 50-70 percent of the EU levels, according to the Bertelsmann Forum report. Adding only ten Eastern European countries to the EU would increase its cultivated acreage by 44 percent. Economics 101 would suggest that a consequence of such a sharp increase in agricultural production would be lower cost of food in most of Europe.
But don't count on it. For, that's where "Socialism 101" comes in. The "enlargement" would actually lead to a "substantially increased burden on the EU budget," the Bertelsmann Forum concluded. Why? Because the EU bureaucrats subsidize the western European farmers with guaranteed prices, instead of allowing a "free market" competition to take place.
The way the French see U.S.-Albright foreign policy:
And then there is the NATO "enlargement," the number five claw in Madame Europe's back. Most people think that this is about "European security" since that's what the establishment media are telling us. It is not. How could it be when there is no enemy in sight for thousands of miles? The NATO enlargement is about enlargement of the U.S. death merchants' wallets - by the tens of billions of dollars which the new members will have to spend to bring their armed forces up to the NATO standards. Another boon for the U.S. multinationals; another burden for European taxpayers.
This brings us to the number sixth claw stuck in Europe's back - its liberal immigration policy, mirroring that in the U.S. Ostensibly pursued in the name of "multiculturalism," it is actually a euphemism for helping Big Business lower its labor rates.
Just as the "browning of America" has been "a demographic effect of seismic proportions" since the Immigration Act of 1965, according to Peter Brimelow, a Fortune magazine editor and author of the book, "Alien Nation," helping destroy the cohesion of the mostly Christian Europe has been the agenda of the same materialistic globalist crowd. Enter the millions of "Gast Arbeiters" ("guest workers") from Turkey, Algeria, Albania, Tunisia, Middle Eastern countries... and by the time they multiply and/or bring their own brethren along, Europe will have lost its cultural identity, just as we are losing it in the United States. We will both become "continents of mutts;" full of the "Full Monties" - desperate, destitute and displaced indigenous workers, just as those depicted in this excellent British film.
Now take all six globalist bear claws together - build-up of the EU bureaucracy, the "euro," the "Y2K," the two "enlargements," plus the "immigration" - ripping and gripping at Europe SIMULTANEOUSLY! Only the devil himself could have devised such a way to "help" Europe.
If the globalists' "thesis" is a centralized, integrated European Union, and it is; then the "antithesis," resulting from a popular backlash against this devil's plan, may be Europe Undone, i.e., a disintegration of Europe.
No surprise there. Almost five centuries ago (in 1513), Nicolo Machiavelli wrote in "The Prince" "There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage - than the creation of a new order of things." Guess the New World Order globalists haven't read anything written prior to Karl Marx?
The death of NATO and/or of the EU would not be a bad outcome for American or European taxpayers, if such useless institutions were the only things to die as the globalists' New World Order crumbles. But a possibility of another Greco-Turkish conflict igniting a "World War I"-style confrontation between the great powers, and of engulfing all of Europe in it, sends shivers down one's spine. The end result may be loss of millions of lives again, perhaps forever dooming the U.S. influence on the Old Continent, just as the World War I ended the Austro-Hungarian empire.
What kind of Europe may emerge from all this? A feudal one. Not in terms of the tools of production. "Feudal" - in a sense that nation-states may break up into smaller, more manageable regional statelets, mostly along the ethnic lines.
If so, this may be a round-about way to realize an old idea. At the time of full-bore globalism in post-Cold War Europe, the idea sounded so "off the wall" that even its author called it "Eurotopia." Prof. A.H. Heineken, of the Amsterdam-based Stichting voor de Historische Wetenshap (Historical Research Institute), dusted off some old ideas, and then polished them up into a proposal for a "United States of Europe." According to his plan, Europe's 350 million inhabitants would live in 75 independent states, each with a population of about five to 10 million.
Why the five-to-10 million limit? "Because where the population exceeds 10 million, there is a manifest case for decentralization," Heineken quoted Prof. C. Northcote Parkinson, a Brit, from his 1970 report. In other words, it's a matter of efficiency. "A state of 30 to 50 million is hopelessly inefficient," Prof. Heineken concurred. Not to mention those of 150 million inhabitans of more.
Both Heineken and Parkinson drew upon the ideas of an Austrian sociologist. Leopold Kohr expressed similar thoughts in his book, "The Breakdown of Nations," published in 1957. Thats right - 1957, not 1975! Kohr wrote that, "it is always bigness, and only bigness, which is the problem of existence - social, as well as physical." Yet here are Wall Street and Washington still trying to build ever bigger institutions - both at home and abroad!
If a "feudal" Europe were to emerge from the ruins of the globalist New World Order, it would certainly spell the end of the world as we know it. But not the end of the world. For, what happens after a fire or an avalanche wreaks havoc in a forest? What follows is - life! A life richer and more vibrant than the one which the cataclysm had destroyed.
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Bob Djurdjevic heads up Annex Research (www.djurdjevic.com) and Truth in Media (www.beograd.com/truth).
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A "P.S." by the author (Nov. 24, 1998): And just think, the E.U., the "euro," the NATO expansion, and other globalist designs for (how to destroy) Europe are all proceeding full steam ahead notwithstanding the fact than 54% of the Europen Union citizens are AGAINST it (the EU), according to a poll by the London-based Henley Center! (see the Wall Street Journal, 10/19/98). Obviously the "demo farce" is as evident in Europe as in the U.S. where 62% of the electorate chose not to vote in the Nov. 3, 1998 elections.