A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE springs to mind when we look at the state of the Western democracies today. We in the West are in the midst of the greatest economic downturn and debt crises in our collective history. While in terms of foreign policy, the Arab Spring threatens our security with a war in the Middle East, and Iran is fully prepared to orchestrate such a war.
I cannot remember in my lifetime of 61 years my country being in such a perilous situation as it is in today. Indeed, it is not as fanciful as it would have been 20 years ago, to wonder whether what we call the West has, like some distant star, gone supernova. In other words, has the Western democracies finally concluded their life cycle? Like all empires (and, economically speaking, this is what the West has been), the West’s time is up and it is time for the countries of the Far East to replace us. China, India, Japan, South Korea…you name it, they manufacture it.
In Europe, the sovereign debt crises has forced the EU to go cap in hand to China, as well as seek an ending to the nation state in Europe through political and economic union. The EU, having mismanaged the single currency, now seek to continue with their suicide pact and go hell for leather toward a federal Europe where nationhood and sovereignty are brazenly despatched by a mere stroke of a politician’s pen.
This process however will cause civil unrest unless the public are carried forward with the politicians by being given a referendum.
The pincers are beginning to nip. The Arab Spring has liberated Egyptians and Libyans from the hell of dictatorship and allowed the people to vote for their government.
We in the West supported these developments either diplomatically or, in Libya’s case, militarily. But as with Syria we have no idea what will follow. Once the flood subsides and the elections have taken place; will all Arab eyes turn toward Israel? Will their governments be secular and tolerant, or will the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists gain power and seek Israel’s annihilation?
THESE ARE TROUBLING TIMES indeed. The economic sacrifices the people of Europe are being asked to make may provoke resistance, despite all the promises an Italian or Greek technocrat makes to the markets. These sacrifices are needed, not only to keep the EU afloat but the whole of the Western world. Never in our history could we have foreseen the day when a small country like Greece could bankrupt America. But this is what, in a convoluted way, a mismanaged introduction of a continental single European currency can now do… and was warned that it could happen.
Jacques Delors, the architect of the single currency has admitted to its failure from its start. He even acknowledged that the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ (i.e. the UK) had been proven right, with their (Margaret Thatcher) warnings at the time of its creation.
As our leaders are focusing on the debt crises, the events in Syria should also be worrying to the Foreign Office. Syria is supported by Iran, and Hezbollah is supported by Syria and Iran. While the Israelis (to which all this Arab anger will eventually turn) would prefer the Assad devil they know to what may come after; so they seek to remain neutral and silent. But when it comes to Iran and its capacity to do real harm to the Jewish state; then they will act alone if need be, despite the Obama administrations protestations.
THIS WEEK IS meant to be the last chance for the EU to save both the euro and itself. The whole European project, we are told, will be dispatched into the dustbin of history if Angela Merkle and Nicolas Sarkozy’s remedy is not accepted by the rest of the euro zone countries.
David Cameron, as always, uses the rhetoric of scepticism by promising to use our veto on any new treaty that puts the City, our greatest earner, at a disadvantage. While his promise to claw back powers from Europe that were given them by previous governments, has met with resistance from the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, who, using the most contemptuous of hyperbole suggests that it is no time, with the present euro crises, to renegotiate our relationship with Europe with ‘ the financial stability of the Western World at stake’.
Clarke’s intervention, is of course fanciful. It was he, after all who went native and supported a single currency, or whatever other concoction the EU would have suggested for the UK. So why must we take advice from a two-time loser like Clarke?
Ken Clarke is a spent force. His only activity it seems, is to remain inactive by sleeping through televised debates of autumn statements on the government benches - as well as any other parliamentary procedure that demands his attendance.
Clarke, politically speaking, is in his dotage and should be placed on the benches of the House of Lords. For he has outlived his usefulness to contemporary politics. His time has passed, because his view of Europe has been discredited.
THIS MOSAIC of economic and diplomatic trouble for the West comes at a time when all Western nations are without any leadership of quality; which only adds to my sense of fatalism and fear for the next generation.
Western leadership in Europe steered the continent straight toward the iceberg; believing the euro would one day replace the mighty dollar, and believing there was no impediment on the horizon great enough to sink it.
The euro was mismanaged by third rate politicians, who are today seeking to cast further spells over the continent by continuing with the same recipe, but with added spice. Rather than apologise to the people, as a Japanese politician or businessman would do; they arrogantly demand further sacrifice and ever deeper union.
As far as foreign policy is concerned, our Western leaders fair little better. When they should be siding with Israel at a time in her history when the Arab world is threatening her yet again, they chose only to insult Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu; and demand he once more opens up the peace process, and concede the 1967 boarders to the PA; even though to do so, would leave Israel defenceless.
The storm clouds of the Arab Spring are starting to encircle Israel, and it will soon be time, I fear, for another conflict with her neighbours. Iran is building up her arsenal of nuclear weaponry and supplying Hezbollah and Hamas with armaments smuggled into Gaza via Egypt.
Once the Arab Spring has turned into summer; what is the betting that Iran will seek to influence the Libyans, Egyptians, Syrians and Tunisians by promising a powerful remedy for the ‘Jewish problem’ in their back yard?
Our politicians today are followers, not leaders. They court popularity and their horizon is always the next election; our leaders today (in the UK at least) have little empathy for their country’s history. They comprise lawyers, business men and women, ex-union men and women and the most obnoxious of all, media types and spin doctors. The majority either have no thought for, or any love of the nation they were born into. This present trawl were born, like myself, after the second world war and became the selfish 1960’s generation whose grandsons and granddaughters are now encamped outside of St Pauls or some traveller domicile in Essex.
If those serving in parliament today had any kind of regard for their nation, they would not sit idly by on the green benches, while their nation is being subsumed into the European collective, as a mere county council.
It seems to me that, the first quality a nation’s leader needs is leadership. Those prime ministers who exemplify the position they held were those, like Margaret Thatcher who came to be despised at home, but lauded abroad. This was because she had a vision for her country and proceeded to enact it whatever the cost to the party she led. She did so because the nation was, at the time, in desperate need of leadership by someone who did not revile patriotism as the many Europhiles within the Tory Party have done since.
TODAY THIS COUNTRY is in need of the same kind of leadership but has fallen well short. Today we have David Cameron, a Blair-like clone who’s premier ambition is to remain in power. It is easy to give the people what they want – it is far more difficult to deny them their wants in the nation’s interest.
The turmoil that now engulfs the European continent will not be ended by seeking an inner ring of the 17 euro countries, and an outer ring of 10 countries.
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