Brexit and a Two-Union Europe

Because of the shock of Brexit, one may be forgiven for overlooking the fact that this week could rightfully be called “the week of trade bloc summits”.

In Europe, the 27 remaining leaders of the EU have gathered for two days in Brussels to adopt a common position concerning the upcoming withdrawal of Great Britain from the union.

On the North American continent, President Obama has met with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in a last-ditch attempt to safeguard NAFTA against the relentless attacks it is facing from the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Last but not least, the leaders of the Pacific Alliance – the newest Latin American trade bloc made up of Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico – have held a two-day summit of their own to further cooperation in the areas of trade and investment.

The most important summit is by far the one which took place in Brussels, where political leaders were trying hard to reach a common position concerning the terms under which would take place the departure of Britain from the bloc. The initial anger generated by Brexit is slowly giving way to the realisation that the very existence of the world’s oldest trade bloc is now under threat.

With the future of the Union in doubt, federalization plans sold to the European public under the guise of an “ever-closer union” were stopped in their tracks by British voters. The project of a “United States of Europe” – as initially conceived by the CIA in the ‘fifties and advanced by stealth by like-minded European politicians over the span of decades – will in all likelihood have to be abandoned for good.

In order for readers to grasp the folly of such a project, let’s assume that the leaders of NAFTA decided to launch a trade bloc conceived only as a stepping stone to full monetary, fiscal and ultimately political union between the US, Mexico and Canada. To push our comparison further, let’s also imagine that the initial nucleus of NAFTA countries started expanding to Central and South America with the aim of eventually becoming a pan-American economic and political bloc dominating the entire Western hemisphere.

The Germans are currently trying to convince British conservative politicians that once outside the EU, the UK should adopt the Norwegian model. In other words, a country like Britain with a population of some 65 million and a 3-trillion dollar GDP is supposed to be treated like the small members of the European Economic Area (EEA), the latter of which comprises, beside Norway, geopolitically insignificant states like Liechtenstein, Andorra or San Marino.

So far, British Brexiters have called for informal negotiations with Brussels before invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. What in fact they should be doing is having informal talks with the leaders of like-minded EU states that are most likely to follow Britain’s lead. Once these negotiations are concluded, the formation of a brand new, competing trade bloc should be announced to the European public.

The obvious candidates for such a trade bloc would first and foremost be the Nordic kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark, with a combined population of 15 million and an aggregate GDP of some 850 billion USD. The second group that could be persuaded to join would be the Visegrad-4, made up of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. The combined population of the latter is about 65 million, with an aggregate GDP of 1.9 trillion USD.

Together with Britain, the new trade bloc would thus have a total population of 145 million and an aggregate GDP of close to 6 trillion USD. It would be sure to have a much better bargaining position than the UK all by itself in negotiating trade agreements with what is going to be left of the European Union. This is in fact exactly what is happening on the Latin American continent, where the 5 year-old Pacific Alliance co-exists side by side with Mercosur, the older trade bloc which comprises the bulk of the countries in the region.

Our continent could certainly accommodate a two-union Europe and two competing trade blocs that could only improve the overall economic performance of both. With political integration now behind them, the remaining members of the EU could themselves start to concentrate their efforts more on improving trade and investment and less on geographic expansion.

Secret History of the EU Project

 June 10, 2016

Pew research data released a few days ago indicates a growing dissatisfaction with the EU even in countries like France and the Netherlands, founding members of the Union.

It would be easy, of course, to blame the spread of euroscepticism on Brexit, on the 2008 financial debacle or last year’s migration crisis. In fact, as I will attempt to demonstrate further, it is the design flaws inherent in the European project that now undermine its survival.

This project – involving “an ever-closer union” of European nations – originated on the other side of the Atlantic and had started as a covert operation of the then newly-formed CIA. These essential details were hidden from the public for decades. Even I, as an historian, was made aware of them thanks to the interventions on French TV of Mrs. Marie-France Garaud, the eminence grise of presidents De Gaulle, Pompidou and Chirac.

Recently declassified CIA-OSS archives also prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that men whom we have considered for years to be the EU’s founding fathers (Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and so on) were in fact paid to impose the CIA’s European project on an unsuspecting public opinion.

The CIA’s project was chiefly inspired by former OSS boss “Wild Bill” Donovan and by John Foster Dulles, former CIA director. Together with a small group of other lawyers, they elaborated the mad project of an “United States of Europe”. It was supposed to be realized in stages, by stealth and without European nations being fully informed about the ultimate shape or objectives of the EU institutions created in the mid-fifties.

Its original design flaws reflected the founders’ lack of grasp of European history, geography and geopolitics. Donovan and Dulles, steeped in European clandestine operations during WWII instead, had also developed an unhealthy admiration for existing Nazi blueprints to unite the continent’s countries and/or of Nazi high-ranking officials like Walther Funk. Their ideas by and large were incorporated into the CIA project, with the consequences only now made apparent by the financial and sovereign debt crises of the past decade.

However, had the initiators of the CIA project taken into consideration their own, American geopolitical scholarship concerning the organization of Europe after the war, Germany would have never been included into NATO but had been kept neutral instead, possibly undivided and under military occupation. Nicholas Spykman, the founder of American geopolitics, writing in 1941 considered that:

 

“Any proposal for the unification of Europe would tend to put them in a subordinate position to Germany (regardless of the legal provisions of the arrangement), since Germany, unless broken up into fragments, will still be the biggest nation on the continent. It is hardly conceivable that countries now fighting for their freedom would turn around and voluntarily submit to any such arrangement. It is equally improbable that the United States, after having made such tremendous sacrifices to help free these countries from the German yoke, would consent to the restoration of German domination.” (Nicholas Spykman,“The Geography of the Peace”, 1944)

 

 

 

Today when we look back at the crucial 1947-1957 decade, we can start to understand why the EU Commission and institutions are manned by an opaque bureaucracy unresponsive to public scrutiny, which is hell-bent on advancing the agenda of global corporations at the expense of the European citizen. Being a covert project inspired and financed by the CIA, the EU is indeed unable to fulfil the aspirations for progress of the European nations, although for a few decades it has seemed to function in that sense.

Towards the end, however, the central tenets of the project – the creation of the United States of Europe, Brussels’ centrally-planned economic and fiscal management, the common currency – became the foremost priorities of the subservient EU bureaucracy and of some EU political leaders alike. But this was also the point where European nations could not continue to support the project and started having serious doubts about the whole construction.

In hindsight, after two devastating world wars, the creation of NATO and the Marshall Plan would have been sufficient to keep the peace on the continent and return it to prosperity. The CIA on the other hand, which during the same period also financed the creation of the Bilderberg club, wanted to make sure that American multinationals and later global corporations can fully profit from European reconstruction and the accompanying economic development. Hence the adoption of an European union project and the creation of European institutions which were from the outset under the influence or management of people vetted and approved by the CIA/Bilderberg bosses.

The un-European nature of the entire EU project is its major flaw, although there are others, as well. No such project originating in the New World – even if elaborated with the best of intentions (which of course is not the case) – could ever be expected to work for long on the old continent. And vice-versa.

The EU’s apparent fleeting success had more to do with European reconstruction efforts and with the ubiquitous desire for peace after the two devastating wars. During the past two decades, unfortunately, CIA-sponsored politicians and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic have overplayed their hand and the entire edifice is crumbling as a result. While it is hard to gauge right now what alternative structures and arrangements will ultimately replace the EU, what’s for certain is that European nations should never again go to war with each other or allow outside powers and institutions to make vital decisions on their behalf concerning their collective future.