Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Churchill's United States of Europe
Contrary to much mis-reporting of what Churchill actually advocated in terms of a United Europe, his belief was in a two-fold European solution; the first was a reconstituted 'League of Nations' in the UNO, to which the UK would belong, and the second a federation between France, the German Länder and Europe's other small states but excluding the United Kingdom. He formulated this as early as 1946, at a time when France and the US were still committed to implementing a version of the Morgenthau Plan aimed at depriving her of all industrial capacity, governing the Saar and Ruhr as international zones, and reducing Germany's population by 24m to a level at which she could only just subsist.
Churchill had revolted against Morgenthau when the plan was first proposed in Tehran in 1943. By Quebec in 1944, the US had explicitly linked a $6.5bn credit for the UK to Churchill's acceptance of the Plan; Roosevelt, in an act of utter crassness, actually required Churchill to sign the Morgenthau Plan before they signed the credit agreement, prompting Churchill to exclaim "What do you want me to do? Get on my hind legs and beg like Fala?". Morgenthau became occupation policy as JCS1067.
The other key influential supporter and proponent of the Morgenthau Plan was Jean Monnet, later to achieve notoriety as the 'Father of Europe'. The Monnet Plan and Morgenthau Plan had a single shared aim; to deprive Germany permanently of any industrial capacity, and of any export capacity. Through 1945 and 1946 the US and French long-term aims of German population reduction came dangerously close to realisation; disease and starvation stalked Germany, in the wasteland ruins and in the POW camps Typhoid, Cholera and Diptheria raged. At a time when UK and French civilians has returned to pre-war nutrition levels, German civilians were subsisting on as little as 1,000 Kcals a day - comparable to Concentration Camp rations. A great part of the problem was that 17m more Germans than calculated had to be fed in the US, UK and French zones - the 13m Germans who crossed the Elbe, 8m DPs and slave labourers, and 5m POWs who surrendered to the West were vastly in excess of expectations.
Against this background Churchill spoke at Zurich in September 1946 (RECORDING);
".. we must re-create the European family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe, and the first practical step will be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join a union we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and who can. The salvation of the common people of every race and every land from war and servitude must be established on solid foundations, and must be created by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than to submit to tyranny. In this urgent work France and Germany must take the lead together."
But he made clear that Britain and the Commonwealth would not be members of this USE;
"Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America — and, I trust, Soviet Russia, for then indeed all would be well — must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live. Therefore I say to you “Let Europe arise!”"
Churchill also advocated that a United States of Europe, with France and Germany at its core, take its place alongside Britain and the great powers at the United Nations;
" There is no reason why a regional organisation of Europe should in any way conflict with the world organisation of the United Nations. On the contrary, I believe that the larger synthesis can only survive if it is founded upon broad natural groupings. There is already a natural grouping in the Western Hemisphere. We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations. These do not weaken, on the contrary they strengthen, the world organisation. They are in fact its main support. And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the honourable destiny of man?"
By September 1946 the prospect of mass starvation in Germany was real. The vengeful, retributive policies of Morgenthau and Jean Monnet were leading to a genocide of the German people. Churchill's dictum that "The USA always does the right thing - eventually" proved true again when James F Bymes spoke in Stuttgart to repudiate the Morgenthau and Monnet Plans; in "Restatement of Policy on Germany" the US ditched the hateful JCS1067 and JCS1779 - the Marshall Plan - was launched.
This wasn't quite the end. The 'Morgenthau boys' committed one last act of spite and destruction in breaking the German banking system, and Jean Monnet held onto both the Saar and control over German coal and steel production for many years.
But it was Britain's conscience, through Churchill, that from 1943 to the end of 1946 spoke up to save Germany from US and French intentions for her destruction. "In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill"
May's Prodnose Centralism
As hard as it may be, imagine that Theresa May was a minister of powerful intellect, political commitment and imagination. Imagine that in forming measures to tackle local, neighbourhood problems she looked to local, neighbourhood solutions rather than to formulaic, costly, central Statist, ineffective and offensive blanket laws that will make little difference. But no. Any minister who believes that the tidiness of folks' front gardens is a legitimate matter of concern for the nation's Home Secretary is so far beyond rationality as to be lost wholly to the siren voices of Whitehall.
We don't need elected Police Commissioners. We needs Parish Constables and more JPs.
The Parish Constable, or High Constable, was a citizen whose affairs had reached a certain financial equilibrium, at least enough for him to perform the duties of this unpaid office for a year. Either elected by ratepayers or appointed by the local bench of JPs, the office would rotate between miller, innkeeper, yeoman, smith and bootmaker. The modern equivalent would be men or women with the full power of constables in uniform within their own parish who would lead all matters of bread and butter policing in their patch. It was never popular; those who did their turn as high constables did so out of duty rather than will, and it was a sign of a man's political and social maturity when he did his stint, on call 24/7 for a year. Any abuse of power would be paid-back by neighbours when the protection of the office ended, but successive high constables would protect their predecessors from revenge by those justly prosecuted however wealthy or locally influential.
Together with a local bench of JPs who licensed the inns and disposed of all non-indictable offences, with the flexibility to apply the Law of England as local circumstances allowed, the high constable formed a basis of public order that worked very well until industrialisation made metropolitan parishes too populous to manage, and the Met was created in London before the old rural parishes were radically sub-divided into the new Metropolitan ones.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Grexit mechanics
As to exactly how Greece can be forced from the Euro without a newly elected Greek government having a say in the matter, the decision could well rest with the group of men pictured below - the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.
It all depends now on Greek depositors. If the run on the Greek banks continues, the decision will land in the lap of the ECB, as Greek blogger Inside Greece explains;
To make up for the loss of deposits over the last two years, the ECB has allowed Greek banks, shut out from intermarket borrowing and lacking collateral that the central bank would accept, to be financed through emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). This means that the banks are able to borrow from the Bank of Greece, rather than the ECB, by putting up collateral that is theoretically more risky than bonds, such as small business loans or mortgages. It is thought that Greek banks have borrowed about 60 billion euros this way. But the supply of money is finite. Parliament has set the limit for the ELA scheme at 90 billion euros and Greek banks do not have limitless collateral.
Furthermore, there is the possibility that the ELA tap could be turned off if central bankers in Frankfurt become concerned about Greek banks becoming insolvent. In order to access ELA, currently the banks’ only source of funding, albeit a dwindling on, the ECB board needs to give its approval. But ELA funding could be halted with a two-thirds majority decision. This would cut off Greek banks from liquidity and Greece would be forced to begin printing its own money. Since it can’t print euros, the only option would be to return to the drachma.
Sunday, 20 May 2012
It's out of their hands now
The only message coming from the G8 is that they haven't a clue what to do. Besides the vacuous rhetoric - "Growth through Austerity", "Jobs not Spending", "Strong Plans for Action" - you can be sure that worst-case contingency plans are under discussion; border closures, emergency food and health relief, military mobilisation, evacuation of friendly nationals, but definitely not, as one MSM report suggested this morning, martial law. For the political oligarchy to accept martial law they have to accept failure and redundancy, and they're a way away from that yet. They want to use the military to impose control, not give control to them.
Another report warns of the 'Fury about to erupt' in Europe as realisation dawns that everyone's been lied to, that it WAS a political project after all, a secret project that has cost the wealth of an entire generation. It could happen within days; it's all down now to people, and markets. And how long have we got before this:-
Becomes this:-
What's in a name?
Bluetoothy and infrared have just about made redundant the odd collection of cards and phone numbers scribbled on scraps that one used to empty from the pockets after a good night out. I recently cleared out a bedside table draw in the spare room which for some reason had become a depository for such things from the 1990s. What curious days! Many were written inside the flap of matchbooks (remember them?) that catalogued exactly where I spent my drinking time in those days; too many from the French House, but an odd one from an 'International' 5* hotel bar giving me Escobar's number. I racked my brain. A Columbian hitman? Someone after a job? 'Escobar' had no surname, so didn't count. Proper introductions always include the parties enunciating their surnames clearly. If you have a surname you're Somebody. A surname such as Cecil, Deveraux, Percy or Howard allows a follow-on such as 'Northumberland Percys?' to which the wrong response establishes the interlocutor's lack of cred.
Bibbers with aspirations to poetic or literary ambition also always state their surnames clearly. Even at the risk of earning the Peter Cook response "You're writing a book? Yes, neither am I" which could have applied to nine out of ten topers in the dear old French. As I cleared the draw I unfolded the torn half of a menu card with the scrawled name 'Llewellyn-Coleslaw' and a number. Llewellyn-Coleslaw? Was I reading correctly? Perhaps not. The writing was poor. Then I remembered. The chap with the pretty blond wife and the clock. They lived in some obscure old farm / rectory in Wales of the sort I could imagine well, with three walls made of the sort of Welsh stone that abounds in slimy green algae and the front wall rendered in cracked Portland cement mortar, with leaking slates, rotting window frames and old bits of agricultural machinery under nettle-clumps. He'd come to London to sell the last thing he had of value, a clock that he believed to be worth £32,000. I remember the figure exactly - he repeated it often. Unfortunately the dealers disagreed, valuing it at less than a tenth of this figure, it having been abused as an umbrella cupboard and broom closet for many years. The missing part came back to me. The wife had been sent to a cordon-bleu cookery school by her parents to prepare for the county-set marriage market (do they still do that?) but the only thing she'd come away with was a decent recipe for Coleslaw, which she promised to give me if I called. I didn't call of course - not wanting the inevitable invitation down for the weekend, then the inevitable pleading to buy the clock.
Saturday, 19 May 2012
Cameron avoids Camp David gaffes. So far.
The Boy may be crap as an international statesman, but at least he's so far avoided the embarrassment that his predecessors from the Rotten Parliament caused at Camp David; first Blair in budgie-strangler cords so tight he couldn't even get his fingers in the pockets, then Brown so unpleasant and stiff that President Bush made several determined efforts to tip him out of the golf cart, to which a white-knuckled Broon clung like a fat kid to an ice cream. It's not much, but it's something.
The Storm Must Break
Select any simile you choose; leaden skies before the storm, at the top of the roller coaster, running before the wind - they all mean it's just one-way now, with no going back, no pause. The alternative to the fracturing of the Eurozone is full political and economic union, and this simply isn't going to happen in the time available. Markets are moving rapidly to a show-down, and contrary to comments from the like of Peston and Chote, I think this catharsis will actually prove a boon for Britain.
However, we must insulate the functioning of the economy from the reckless liabilities racked up by the failed financial sector. The bank split into retail and buccaneer must happen not in 2017 but in 2012; interest rates, domestic lending and bank charges must be determined by the profits and losses on retail banking activity alone, and British bank customers must not pay the losses for the banks' mindless foreign avarice. Let the casino banks fall, and all their poison liabilities with them. They gave nothing to British taxpayers, and they should take nothing from them.
The European oligarchy, the noisome coupling of political class and big business, will be as reluctant as a cat with its claws in the sofa to relinquish its grip. They will do everything they can to twist, deceive, load more and more of the financial burden of the Big Lie on ordinary taxpayers. This must be resisted.
The Eurozone fracture will offer nothing but opportunities for British business; a core Eurozone of the wealthy will keep the MkII Euro exchange rates advantageous. A collapse of Euro banks will leave Euro firms starved of investment and ripe for takeover or replacement by UK firms with piles of hoarded cash. Frankfurt will crash and burn, leaving London as the global centre for insurance, FX and commodities. The stripping away of all those disguised Euro subsidies - everything from DERV fuel duties to CAP knock-on benefits to food processors - will make every British farm and transport company more competitive, will create a level playing field for British SMEs. Our labour market flexibility and advantageous future pension liabilities (made even more advantageous by a booming equities market) will put us ahead of Euro competitors. There is nothing inherently superior about German workers or German productivity; the German boom has been at the expense of Europe's periphery and due to the EU's distortion of European markets. Now is the time for Britain to compete on equal terms. We can do it.
Friday, 18 May 2012
The German dilemma
Being fair to the Germans, the renunciation of military means in favour of economic and political means to realise German extra-territorial ambitions is a good thing. As long as the problem of lebensraum remains (as it still does), as long as Germany is still too big for her borders, then European federal union remains the only game in town. However, so terrified is Germany of any hint of a return to her militaristic past that, as Der Spiegel reports, she risks being sidelined by an unwillingness to join the gung-ho big boys' adventures such as Libya.
My sympathies really do go out to Germany on this. She's sticking fast to the extra-territorial use of the Bundeswehr solely for either peacekeeping or post-conflict reconstruction; this was stretched a little by then Defense Minister Peter Struck for operations in Afghanistan, who extended not the extra-territorial remit but the Bundeswehr's Home Defence remit, characteriused as 'Defence in the Hindu Kush' against an asymetric threat. However, Libya was a step too far. There was no credible threat to Germany, and the mission didn't fit either the peacekeeping or reconstruction remits. So Germany declined to join-in.
Der Spiegel reports;
In January, representatives of the NATO member states attended the traditional Defense Planning Symposium at the NATO school in the Bavarian town of Oberammergau. The figures that German Brigadier General Ansgar Rieks presented to the partners were greeted with amazement. The attendees wanted to know why, after completion of the Bundeswehr reforms, only 10,000 of up to 185,000 German troops are to be available for foreign missions.
But take a look at Germany's other commitments. As part of the 'European Headline Goal' - the ability to respond to an international crisis without the USA - she provides 32,000 troops (18,000 at any time) to the European Rapid Reaction Force. The German contribution includes armoured, air assault, and light infantry brigade headquarters and seven combat battalions. The Air Force provides core elements of air component headquarters, six combat squadrons with 93 aircraft, eight surface-to-air missile squadrons, and air transport. The Navy makes available maritime headquarters, 13 combat ships and support elements. Furthermore, the Bundeswehr is manning a permanent military operations headquarters at Potsdam, which can be transformed into the core element of a multinational operational headquarters.
Germany also had 7,000 troops committed to Bosnia heading the SFOR reconstruction efforts there, and maintains a large number under EUFOR, and had some 3,000 committed to Afghanistan.
The loud noises now coming from NATO are around Germany's contribution to something that came out of the 2002 NATO Prague summit, at the USA's suggestion, of a NATO Response Force (NRF) of some 21,000 troops capable of being airlifted long distances at short notice. Not only does an unconditional commitment to such a force not chime with Germany's extra territorial remit, but the troops Germany has allocated to the Prague Commitment are, erm, exactly the same troops committed at the same time to the European Rapid Reaction Force. And she's made clear that their extra-territorial deployment must be cleared in advance by the German Parliament. Not what an economically-challenged US-dominated NATO wants to hear, clearly, from Europe's strongest economy. And hence, I suspect, the whispering campaign that has given us the Der Spiegel piece.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
From Wehrmacht to Weltmacht
The delusion at the heart of the Federasts' entire European agenda is glibly parroted by Stefan Kornelius writing for Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung;
But who decides for Europe? Its incomplete institutions? If these functioned more effectively, they would benefit from greater confidence. The fact that critical questions – the issue of democratic legitimacy, the level of supervision and control – have yet to be settled is proof of the continent’s political immaturity. At the same time, national institutions are also too weak to take on the entire weight of Europe. Nation states with their limited interests cannot be expected to represent an entity which, in terms of trade, has long been subject to forces of globalisation: only unity will enable the continent to gain the respect that it merits as a world power.
And there we have all the familiar old chestnuts in one basket. More power needed for European institutions; Europe is a single economic entity, Europe is a World Power. What nonsense. What risible tosh. That sensible people can persuade themselves to give credence to this guff, this flatus defies belief.
Firstly, Europe is not and will never be an 'economic entity'. the divergence between European nations is greater than that of any grouping you can imagine; even if you take a random grouping of every country in the world beginning in 'M' their group economic divergence is less than that of Europe. (H/T Greg)
And as for wearing jackboots big enough to make weaker nations 'respect' you, and dreams of being a World Power ('Weltmacht' in German), it seems we've heard this sort of thing from Munich before. As Klemperer noted, 'Prefix Welt- ("world", as in Weltanschauung,
"intuition/view of the world"): this was quite a rare, specific and
cultured term before the Third Reich, but became an everyday word. It
came to designate the instinctive understanding of complex geo-political
problems by the Nazis, which allowed them to openly begin invasions,
twist facts or violate human rights, in the name of a higher ideal and
in accordance to their theory of the world.'
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Two lessons learned
One of the great joys of mature years is realising that one never stops learning, that one can have been mistaken or ignorant or simply unaware of some nugget of wisdom and there is always a quiet satisfaction as some new level of understanding or appreciation dawns. Even when it confounds what one has always thought one thinks.
As Mladic finally goes on trial, I recall a long conversation over supper a couple of months ago with a couple of young Slovenians, just about as old as the last Balkans war. Part of a new generation no longer liable to military service, their education system has nonetheless left them with a detailed academic knowledge of the war, its causes and progress, and balanced enough to appreciate the role that Slovenia's early break from Tito's old alliance had in precipitating the later carnage. What they lacked, however, what they were distant from, was any visceral or emotional response. They were as far removed from a personal involvement as we who were born in the years after WWII were from the extermination camps and the casual reprisals executions in occupied lands. As we talked there was a wetness in my eyes as I recalled the shooting by a Serb sniper of a pair of young lovers trying to flee their doomed town, the grainy news images of their bodies on the 'Bridge of Sighs'. They didn't know it. As for the mass murder in Srebrenice, they shrugged. Dreadful. Such things could not happen any more. They gave me hope; they were without bitterness, and whatever nationalism they had was not apparent. It is those who either lived the hell itself or those such as me who watched the whole tragedy unfold nightly on the TV news who retained the greatest prejudice, the greatest satisfaction at Mladic facing justice. And this is healthy and good.
The second seedpearl of wisdom followed my instinctive outrage at the news that members of DUTCHBAT, the Netherlands UN force charged with peacekeeping in Srebrenice, were to receive belated medals for their service. The MSM story is that the sexually ambivalent, stoned, long-haired Dutchies shamefully failed to protect the town, hid in their base and allowed the Serb massacres. Such at least was the testimony given by one US general to the Senate. Before I put finger to keyboard, providence directed me to the dialogue on ARRSE, the unofficial army messageboard, on this. The consensus view from the professionals can be summed up by one comment "The fall of Srebrenica had diddly squat to do with Dutch soldiers be
they gay, straight or undecided. It had everything to do with the
ineptitude and negligence of the worlds politicians."
So no polemic today. And again I'm just a little wiser than I was yesterday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)