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As I often say here, if you look closely at the EU structure, it is the Kaiser's plan for a post-WW1 German Europe, with a weak periphery tied to a (Franco)Teutonic core. (map from Fischer's "Germany's Aims in the First World War"). Were I German, I would support the EU.
The EU is, roughly, the Kaiser's plan for post-WW1 Europe: a Teutonic centre & currency plus a cooperative/vassal periphery. This is not some conspiracy but the EU working as it should esp where its economic & organisational centre lies. It is also what makes #Brexit inevitable.
Adoption of the Euro locked formerly sovereign nations into a German entente. All these low growth countries would have devalued their currencies years ago to make exports more attractive and invite tourists. Instead they are stuck in a decade's stagnation https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/02/15/thomas-fazi-the-italian-crisis-is-devastating-the-eu-has-been-vicious/
If you look at the Kaiserian dream for Europe post-war, it was a Teutonic manufacturing core that would have bound to it essentially agricultural vassals. Viewed from Berlin, the EU accomplishes this aim, well, and also provides buffers against the perennial threat from Russia.
As revolutionary Russia split up the Tsar's empire and its fiefdoms, and the Reds running amok, by 1918, new territories opened up at Brest-Litovsk & beyond. It is here, esp with Merkel reaching out to Putin, that we see parallels and problems also develop with the present.
I am sceptical of what future the EU has-to speak of an actual European culture requires, historically, conquest and hegemony. To speak of any European culture at present is to acknowledge a Teuton's hegemony the EU embodies. Yet what of those in between Berlin & Moscow? Esp V4?
The British were always a very odd fit. First, the EU's members are, more or less, the Germans and those they conquered. The British identity is entirely different esp since 1940. Second, the British Empire was sea-borne & British policy was to avoid the continent's squabbles
The Sir Eyre Crowe Memorandum of 1907 set out the historic British position vis-a-vis a rising Imperial Germany very clearly and, even now, hints at the perennial British problem (a sea power that trades 'invisibles') with engaging with "Europe"
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_British_Relations_with_France_and_Germany … …
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_British_Relations_with_France_and_Germany … …
Crowe helped guide the British Empire into WW1 & lived in Germany and spoke German fluently, one give away being his using British and England interchangably, which is wrong but common among German speakers. His memo pays close reading
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_British_Relations_with_France_and_Germany
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_British_Relations_with_France_and_Germany
As in 1907, so in 2019, it is hard to see how the UK remained, anyway, in a German entente. The British joined the EU, reluctantly, in 1973, and even then much support was for NATO reasons. But now? Whereas is the British interest in being forced to play continental games?
To the degree the future EU tries to develop a military, then that is a threat to NATO: which in turn links the UK, US, Canada to European security. If NATO is degraded by the EU's (delusional) ambitions, the problems of those stuck between Paris, Berlin and Moscow become acute.
Moreover, viewed from London, Britain has had better relations with Russia for far longer than with most members of the EU (save the oldest ally Portugal). Post the inevitable #Brexit , we enter a new world of geopolitics but one that looks, to those that notice, centuries old
The purpose of NATO, per Sir Hastings Ismay, was "to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out". As the EU is prioritised by Paris and Berlin over the old NATO structures that brought Anglophone muscle to secure Europe, one can only, really, see chaos ahead.
To the extent that Germany is indirectly restoring the Kaiserian hegemony (through the EU's guise) and the Russians are trying to restore what was once Tsarist, the real parallels are not with any silly 1930s analogy but to the world before 1914.
Fritz Fischer's analysis of Imperial Germany's pre-WW1 debate over a proposed Mitteluropa trading bloc to counter a rising United States and a Britain in 'splendid isolation' from the continent makes for endlessly fascinating reading.
Over a century later, forms have changed but no issues of any substance have changed, from the Urals to the Atlantic #Brexit #Geopolitics
The secret to understanding the EU is neither the French or Germans actually believe in it - the EU is simply a larger vehicle to amplify their national power (as the HRE was). The British spent ~40 years failing to understand this reality & only left when they had worked it out.
