vera susa
27-10-2009, 03:09 AM
Blair for emperor,
minus the crown
http://images.smh.com.au/2009/02/27/399569/90peter-hartcher-90x60.jpgPETER HARTCHER |
The position that Caesar, Napoleon
and Hitler wanted but couldn't get
now seems likely to go to Tony Blair.
October 27, 2009
Comments 8
The mightiest strongmen in European history
used brute force to become the leader of a unified Europe.
Yet where they were frustrated Tony Blair seems set to succeed,
not through force but by a perverse kind of politics.
The 27 nations forming the European Union
are on the cusp of giving the EU more heft and a clearer voice.
Part of the EU's Lisbon Treaty creates a new leadership post
that's been dubbed president of Europe.
Why?
''The realisation of Europeans is that the EU has increased in size,
yet Europe's weight in the world has shrunk," says Antonio Missiroli
of the European Policy Centre, a think tank in Brussels.
The EU has burgeoned from 15 members to 27 in five years,
and three more have applied to join.
With half a billion people and an $18 trillion economy,
as a single entity it is bigger than the US.
Yet its voice has been growing fainter against
the assertive rising powers of China and India.
Europe's representation at the top table of global economic governance
has shrivelled before our very eyes just in the last few weeks.
While European states had half the seats at the table
whenever the now obsolete Group of Eight (G8) met,
they have only one-quarter of the spots at the Group of 20,
the newly confirmed cockpit of the global economy.
And the EU has a fragmented and unwieldy decision-making process
with no face to present to the world.
The current set-up, with a six-month rotating presidency,
is a joke.
The common complaint from Washington - "What is Europe?
Who can we negotiate with? Tell me his phone number?" - hit home.
"The question for the ancient nation states of Europe is -
are they ready to relinquish some visibility for themselves
so the EU can have more coherence and influence in the world?"
says Missiroli.
Until the global economic crisis hit, the answer appeared to be no.
The Lisbon Treaty - eight years in the making - proposed three key
improvements for EU governance: a new presidency with a five-year term,
a new post of foreign policy supremo, and a streamlined decision-making
process.
But while almost all EU countries agreed to it,
53 per cent of voters in one of its smallest members,
Ireland, voted it down last year.
The European project was in crisis. But when the world economic earthquake was set off in New York, the tsunami of economic distress hit Europe and changed the calculus. The Irish changed their minds. This month, they approved it by 67 per cent. The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, was the final obstacle, refusing to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. But in the last few days, after winning a minor concession, he changed his mind.
Oddly enough, the EU has proposed a time for the new presidency
to take effect - on January 1 - but has not agreed on the powers
of the new leader. Or a candidate.
But the EU's leaders are expected to debate this when they meet
on Thursday and Friday.
So it was no coincidence that David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary
and a Labour ally of Blair's, strongly endorsed Blair for the presidency
as someone who could make the traffic stop when he landed in Beijing
or Washington.
The real reason, however, runs deeper.
Britain's Labour Government appears to be in its death throes,
with an election due in June.
The Eurosceptic Tory leader, David Cameron,
has vowed to call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty
if it is not already in place.
The British Government, in seeking to install Blair beforehand, is trying to entrench the former Labour leader as a way of putting a British voice on
the EU as a frustration and a counterweight to a Conservative government.
Miliband evidently hopes other European leaders will embrace Blair for
a similar reason, to keep at least some British engagement in the EU.
A swift agreement would put the treaty in force, and Blair in power,
before Cameron was in a position to block it.
Strikingly, the EU is working to consolidate even as East Asia's powers
are debating proposals for a new Asian grouping modelled on the EU.
The progress of each will spur the other. But will it really deliver a Europe with more heft?
A leading thinker on Europe, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, chairman of the
Centre for Economic and Political Research in Paris, says the EU is
the world's biggest economy, but it can only use the instruments of
a small one.
He argues its very structure means that it cannot deploy a united
industrial policy, an exchange rate policy, or a fiscal policy.
"The individual European nations
have lost sovereignty,
but this sovereignty
has not translated
to the European level,"
Fitoussi says.
Tony Blair may soon become
the new emperor of Europe,
but he will be an emperor
without an army.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So basically: KEEP THE ORANGE/GREENIE Poster Boy there
and people won't notice that 'The Real Men' are packing up and
GOING "HOME".
And for more background on
WHO'S BOLTING and WHERE "HOME" IS, you may want to
scan on from, at least, these pages:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86338&page=37
minus the crown
http://images.smh.com.au/2009/02/27/399569/90peter-hartcher-90x60.jpgPETER HARTCHER |
The position that Caesar, Napoleon
and Hitler wanted but couldn't get
now seems likely to go to Tony Blair.
October 27, 2009
Comments 8
The mightiest strongmen in European history
used brute force to become the leader of a unified Europe.
Yet where they were frustrated Tony Blair seems set to succeed,
not through force but by a perverse kind of politics.
The 27 nations forming the European Union
are on the cusp of giving the EU more heft and a clearer voice.
Part of the EU's Lisbon Treaty creates a new leadership post
that's been dubbed president of Europe.
Why?
''The realisation of Europeans is that the EU has increased in size,
yet Europe's weight in the world has shrunk," says Antonio Missiroli
of the European Policy Centre, a think tank in Brussels.
The EU has burgeoned from 15 members to 27 in five years,
and three more have applied to join.
With half a billion people and an $18 trillion economy,
as a single entity it is bigger than the US.
Yet its voice has been growing fainter against
the assertive rising powers of China and India.
Europe's representation at the top table of global economic governance
has shrivelled before our very eyes just in the last few weeks.
While European states had half the seats at the table
whenever the now obsolete Group of Eight (G8) met,
they have only one-quarter of the spots at the Group of 20,
the newly confirmed cockpit of the global economy.
And the EU has a fragmented and unwieldy decision-making process
with no face to present to the world.
The current set-up, with a six-month rotating presidency,
is a joke.
The common complaint from Washington - "What is Europe?
Who can we negotiate with? Tell me his phone number?" - hit home.
"The question for the ancient nation states of Europe is -
are they ready to relinquish some visibility for themselves
so the EU can have more coherence and influence in the world?"
says Missiroli.
Until the global economic crisis hit, the answer appeared to be no.
The Lisbon Treaty - eight years in the making - proposed three key
improvements for EU governance: a new presidency with a five-year term,
a new post of foreign policy supremo, and a streamlined decision-making
process.
But while almost all EU countries agreed to it,
53 per cent of voters in one of its smallest members,
Ireland, voted it down last year.
The European project was in crisis. But when the world economic earthquake was set off in New York, the tsunami of economic distress hit Europe and changed the calculus. The Irish changed their minds. This month, they approved it by 67 per cent. The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, was the final obstacle, refusing to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. But in the last few days, after winning a minor concession, he changed his mind.
Oddly enough, the EU has proposed a time for the new presidency
to take effect - on January 1 - but has not agreed on the powers
of the new leader. Or a candidate.
But the EU's leaders are expected to debate this when they meet
on Thursday and Friday.
So it was no coincidence that David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary
and a Labour ally of Blair's, strongly endorsed Blair for the presidency
as someone who could make the traffic stop when he landed in Beijing
or Washington.
The real reason, however, runs deeper.
Britain's Labour Government appears to be in its death throes,
with an election due in June.
The Eurosceptic Tory leader, David Cameron,
has vowed to call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty
if it is not already in place.
The British Government, in seeking to install Blair beforehand, is trying to entrench the former Labour leader as a way of putting a British voice on
the EU as a frustration and a counterweight to a Conservative government.
Miliband evidently hopes other European leaders will embrace Blair for
a similar reason, to keep at least some British engagement in the EU.
A swift agreement would put the treaty in force, and Blair in power,
before Cameron was in a position to block it.
Strikingly, the EU is working to consolidate even as East Asia's powers
are debating proposals for a new Asian grouping modelled on the EU.
The progress of each will spur the other. But will it really deliver a Europe with more heft?
A leading thinker on Europe, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, chairman of the
Centre for Economic and Political Research in Paris, says the EU is
the world's biggest economy, but it can only use the instruments of
a small one.
He argues its very structure means that it cannot deploy a united
industrial policy, an exchange rate policy, or a fiscal policy.
"The individual European nations
have lost sovereignty,
but this sovereignty
has not translated
to the European level,"
Fitoussi says.
Tony Blair may soon become
the new emperor of Europe,
but he will be an emperor
without an army.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So basically: KEEP THE ORANGE/GREENIE Poster Boy there
and people won't notice that 'The Real Men' are packing up and
GOING "HOME".
And for more background on
WHO'S BOLTING and WHERE "HOME" IS, you may want to
scan on from, at least, these pages:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86338&page=37