European Unity is it Dead??

European Unity: a Dead Dream?
By Daniel G. Jennings
The plan for a United States of Europe was dealt a potentially fatal blow in Mid June when the ordinary people of two of the continent’s most important nations, France and the Netherlands, rejected the proposed European Constitution. What does this development mean for the United States, Europe and the world?
Basically, it means that the ordinary people of Europe don’t agree with their leaders’ plans for a grand European Union. It also means that the people of Europe fear both the European Union and the elitists behind it.
Now the bureaucrats in Brussels (the European “capital”) and their apologists will say that the European constitution was rejected by a few ignorant nationalists in France and Holland. The election numbers tell a very different story, the majority of the French and Dutch populations, people of many different political and philosophical views, have rejected the European Constitution. More importantly Europeans of all political persuasions fear that the European Union is a threat to their values, their freedoms and their ways of life.
It’s obvious that the Dutch regard the European Union as a threat to their liberties and lifestyles. The Dutch are obviously afraid that the European Union might interfere with their freedoms, for example European bureaucrats might try to end Holland’s vaunted legalized marijuana use or restrict the gay lifestyle. The Dutch in particular are having second thoughts about unlimited immigration. After all last year one of their most famous citizens, filmmaker Theo von Gogh, was murdered in the streets because he dared try to exercise his rights and make a film critical of Islam and Muslim treatment of women.
In France, the opposition to the European Union is just as strong among labor unionists and socialists who fear that European bureaucrats will try to end that nation’s welfare state and force capitalism upon the French People, as among nationalists. As in the Netherlands the people are unsure about immigration and fearful that Euocrats will interfere with their traditional lifestyle.
The French and Dutch defeats have given the Eurocrats second thoughts, already plans for a vote on the European Constitution in Britain have been put on hold. If the French and Dutch loathe the Euroconstitution, the Brits will hate it.
The whole experiment of European Unity is now in question. Since the people of Europe have rejected the constitution, Europe’s leaders have a few choices.
Choice one would be to find some way to force European Unity upon Europe’s peoples. This would be a prescription for a very destructive war, the extremists of left and right would fight and the military establishments of the European countries would be with them. Since United Europe has no army of its own, the only recourse would be to bring in outside forces probably African mercenaries. Would the European elitists turn soldiers of fortune loose on their own people? It’s hard to say but I doubt they’d take such a course of action unless they had the United States on their side. Since no American politician is going to send a single GI to Europe to fight for the European Union it’s doubtful there will be a war for United Europe.
A more likely outcome is that the European Union will become a hollow and meaningless institution like the United Nations. The Union will have no real power or authority, instead its representatives will gather in Brussels on a regular basis to pass meaningless resolutions as Europe sinks further into decline. All manner of grand designs will be laid out and nothing will come of them. Then after a couple of decades the increasingly impoverished European nations will realize that the whole thing is waste of money and pull the plug on the whole bad joke.
Then perhaps someday in the future when Europe is sufficiently impoverished and weak its leaders will start talking unity again in a desperate attempt to stave off final collapse.