Tuesday, February 03, 2004
WHAT THE US MUST UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE EU And I might add: not just the US but Britain and the rest of EUrope too. This report by the Institute of Economic Affairs is definitely well worth a read (link via samizdata). It's a good addition to the post below, because this is the position to the, well what is the proper word, right/eurosceptical/?/etc from my own position, while still being sensibly eurosceptical which cannot be said for a lot of other opponents of the EU (ahem, you know who you are). It raises just about every major problem with the EU and the way this impacts both on the UK and also the US, hence the title. It starts off:
When the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico was sent to his dawn firing squad in
1867 at Cerro de las Campanas he was accompanied by his cook whose last
words to him were: “You said it wouldn’t come to this! You know now that you
were wrong!” Recently, when regaled by indignant American friends with
complaints about European behaviour over Iraq, British eurosceptics have felt
rather like Maximillian’s cook.
Such sceptics have known for a long time that the `project’ of European
political integration would inevitably feed anti-Americanism and reinforce
opposition to US interests, and they have tried repeatedly to tell this to
Americans friends - but their advice has mostly gone unheeded.
Indeed. But this matters not just for the US, but also for Europeans, who should be concerned to see the Atlantic widening to the detriment of their own security and prosperity. The whole piece is 40-odd pages long so I will not go through all of it point-by-point, but it is definitely worth it.
When the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico was sent to his dawn firing squad in
1867 at Cerro de las Campanas he was accompanied by his cook whose last
words to him were: “You said it wouldn’t come to this! You know now that you
were wrong!” Recently, when regaled by indignant American friends with
complaints about European behaviour over Iraq, British eurosceptics have felt
rather like Maximillian’s cook.
Such sceptics have known for a long time that the `project’ of European
political integration would inevitably feed anti-Americanism and reinforce
opposition to US interests, and they have tried repeatedly to tell this to
Americans friends - but their advice has mostly gone unheeded.
Indeed. But this matters not just for the US, but also for Europeans, who should be concerned to see the Atlantic widening to the detriment of their own security and prosperity. The whole piece is 40-odd pages long so I will not go through all of it point-by-point, but it is definitely worth it.
