The Perils of Splendid Isolationism

I just spent 10 days in the US returning on the 11th of May to the best reality TV show going: the live coverage of the respective trips to the Queen first by Gordon Brown to offer his resignation-she accepted, and then by David Cameron who was offered the responsibility to form Her Majesty's Government-he accepted. Mr Cameron then ran off to finalise the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats thus creating the first coalition government in over 65 years.

There was another major anniversary of 65 years. Saturday was May 8th, the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe. The Russians celebrated it big time rolling out all their artillery and missiles in parades demonstrating "we're back"! The British, in classic style instead chose to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Blitz and of the evacuations of children from the cities.

I didn't see or hear anything about it in the States.

Parallel to this in Germany the results of the Nordrhein-Westfalen election were being digested-the conservative CDU lost 10% vis-a-vis '05 yet were still the largest party by a smidgen-and then the horsetrading over what the composition of the new State government would be.

And parallel to all of this the Finance Ministers of the EU were meeting to hammer out a solution to the problems of Greece and by extension, Portugal, Spain and perhaps other nations not to mention the Euro itself.

What was striking to me was that in the States all the discussions I either had or listened to on the Radio and TV about the crisis in Europe had a hue of Schadenfreude-how could Europe ever have thought they they could become a united people?!

I heard how slow Europe was to change and that the barriers to unity were insurmountable. Watching the theatre of tradition in the transfer of power from Labour to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition I will admit how bizarre the transition appeared.

But then I remembered the ceremony of the transfer of power from Mr Bush to Mr Obama: the shaking of hands, the new First Family waving goodbye as the old First Family flew off in a helicopter. I remembered the tortured birth of the United States and the horsetrading between the North and the South resulting in the 3/5ths Ratio to forge a Union which set the stage for a Civil War "Four score and seven years" later culminating in the election of a Black President 150 years later.

Perhaps I was a little parochial in my view of England.

But I was still reeling from the free fall of the Dow-Jones on Friday, at first blamed on the Greeks, then on a "fat"(stupid)finger that allegedly typed a B instead of an A in front of the word "illion"!

Sitting back in London I had time to reflect.

It made me think of how far Europe has moved in the last 65 years. The Iron Curtain has fallen. Germany has been reunited. Former Eastern Bloc countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia/Slovenia(sort of Yugoslavia), Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and the Czechs and Slovaks had all joined NATO. The EU had expanded to 25 countries, and now it found itself in the middle of a crisis of extreme proportions threatening its' very core.

Granted, the EU was more a customs union than a political entity, but it was marching towards that with the creation of the Euro and the creation of a Rapid Response Military Group. Its’ beginnings were in 1951 with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community at the Treaty of Paris followed by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the founding of the European Economic Community. Then in 1993 the Treaty of Maastricht created the European Union, and in 2000 the Euro.

Many Americans, and, for that matter, the Euro-sceptic press in the UK were heralding the collapse of the Euro and perhaps of the EU. I understand the English; I don't understand the Americans unless I am cynical.

I do understand the Europeans. After centuries of bitter conflict trying to establish a continental power and in the aftermath of the second horrific war in the 20th Century the countries of Western Europe got together and began a journey designed to bury the past and look to the future.

Last night in a political talk show on German TV 80 year old Heiner Geisler, former Chairman of the CDU and 84 year old Hans-Jochen Vogel, former Chairman of the SPD and the bitterest of enemies in their prime essentially joined hands and said that this crisis was a great opportunity to create a political union to match the currency union-and who better to lead that effort than the Germans.

Not as conquering demigods, but as leaders with the necessary economic and political clout to forge a union without resorting to the tried and failed attempts to do so through military might.