UNITED STATES OF EUROPE (1995), AN IDEA WHICH WAS DEAD ON ARIVAL

EU: Unworkable, Unwieldy, Unpopular…

And Outdated, Because It Is Based on Obsolete Industrial Era Principles

It was on April 19, 1995, over 20 years ago now, that I published an editorial about the merits of the “United States of Europe.” I called it “Eurotopia” (not my original term).

It was an idea advanced by two professors – C. Northcote Parkinson of Britain (1970s) and Prof A.H. Heineken of the Netherlands (early 1990s). And based on research by the Austrian sociologist Leopold Kohr from the 1950s.

Quite a European professorial trio, wouldn’t you say? Their work spread over four decades.

And no, Prof Parkinson has no connection with the infamous deadly disease, nor does Prof Heineken with the famous Dutch beer. At least not as fas as I know anyway. 🙂

Here’s premise of that theory.. in a nutshell:

It is always bigness, and only bigness, which is the problem of existence – social, as well as physical.” Prof Kohr concluded. So we must “cut down the substances and organisms which have outgrown their natural limits.”(Leopold Kohr, 1957)

Three years earlier, without being aware of the foregoing, I argued the very same point with the then chairman of EDS, Les Alberthal. I urged him to break up his company. Because EDS, then the largest IT services company in the world, started by Ross Perot in the 1960, was becoming “Unworkable, Unwieldy, Unpopular…” – to borrow the adjectives from this report’s title. Much like the EU today.

“Bigness in business has become a liability rather than an advantage,” I said. I compared a successful modern (1992) services business enterprise to an amoeba – which splits up before becoming too big (and, therefore, inefficient).

Alberthal tried to break up the company but was eventually replaced by other industrial centrists. So EDS bit the dust. The company was swallowed up eventually by HP in 2008, another industrial era dinosaur now on its way to extinction.

That – is what also lies ahead for the European Union, another industrial era top-down creation. Another dinosaur.

Death of Democracy

The EU’s demise will be accelerated by the way it obliterated a democratic choice by one of its members. Over 61% of Greeks voted on July 12 to reject the proposal-ultimatum put to the by the EU and global bankers. Yet a week later, the Greek government which urged the voters to reject the deal capitulated under the EU bankers’ and politicians’ pressure and sold out their country into financial slavery.

Things didn’t used to be that way in Europe. Before the EU was imposed on the continent by the multinational corporations, people’s decisions were respected. In 1972 and in 1994 Norway’s government, for example, tried to join the EU. Both times, the Norwegians said NO to the deal. The government hasn’t brought up the issue since.

Ditto in Iceland. Its government applied for the EU membership in 2009 only to withdraw from the negotiations with the EU officials earlier this year. The Icelanders and the Norwegians saw the same warning light as the Greeks. They did not want to become financial slaves of the New World Order.

By the way, Norway ranks as the No. 1 country in the world in terms of human development and standard of living. Iceland is No. 13. Greece is No. 29 – out of 198 countries analyzed in this ranking. 

So it pays to be wise and well educated. For, “if you lie down with dogs, you get up with flees.”

Alas, the Greeks had already tied a golden noose around their collective necks when they took the EU and IMF money. Too late now to try to get out. The heavy “Troika” boot was already on their necks. And is now pressing down even harder.

“United Stated of Europe”

So what might have saved Europe from the inevitable collapse under the centrist EU government?

Over 20 years ago, I wrote this:

“So is there a way out of our current foreign policy quagmire in Europe? Is there also a solution to increased strife world over? Yes, there is:

Prof. Heineken proposed a “United States of Europe.”

According to his plan, Europe’s 350 million inhabitants would live in 75 independent states, each with a population of about five to 10 million.

I wrote that in April 1995 when the EU consisted of 11 countries. Now the EU has the population of 507 million and counts 28 countries among its members.

Prof. Heineken pointed out that the German or Italian states, for example, never existed before the second half of the 19th century. In other words, they are younger than even the U.S.!

Did you know that? Bet your teachers never mentioned that when they talked of Europe as the Old Continent and of America as the New World.

“Furthermore, at the time of the French revolution (1789), the majority of the population in that country did not even speak French. And they certainly were “not able to sing the ‘Marseillaise,’ the newly-minted national anthem,” argues Prof. Heineken. It was only at the end of the 19th century that the French peasants morphed into “Frenchmen.” Before then, they were people who hailed from various provinces in the country we now call France.”

In other words, the whole notion of statehood and nationality is an industrial era invention. It is not natural! And it cannot last in its present form!

“Yet, the main reason that the Heineken proposal would not work is because it runs against another law of nature – the survival of the fittest, which Charles Darwin so eloquently explained – also in the last century.”

“Why would Europe’s most powerful countries, such as Germany, France, Britain or Italy, for example, volunteer to be split up into five or more weaker entities? Can you really see the Greeks giving up their northern territories to a new state called Macedonia, after having kicked so much fuss over the mere use of the name by the former Yugoslav republic? What are the chances of the “incorrigible Serbs” ceding Kosovo, the cradle of their civilization, to Albania, while leaving their Western Serb brethren in belligerent states called Croatia and Bosnia? Why would the Romanian leaders agree to have their country broken up into three pieces while seeing that Hungary, remains intact?”

As the Serbian general, Ratko Mladic once told me during the Bosnian war, “borders are drawn in blood,” i.e., not by some academicians’ or diplomats’ pens.

And so, thanks to NATO’s military intervention, Bosnia was split up into a separate country. Ditto re. Kosovo. Montenegro split up from Serbia under foreign political pressures on its quisling government.

So yes, the new borders were mostly written in blood (right). And yet they look amazingly similar to the Eurotopia map Prof Heineken produced (above left).

Back to my 1995 piece…

“So, Heineken’s ideas were not perfect. To his credit, even the author called them “a Eurotopia?” (i.e., a European utopia). But there is no question that such a Europe, with its borders modified in blood or otherwise to correct some of the above anomalies, would be a safer place than is the current “Old Continent.”

“It may be wiser to accept these developments (toward decentralization and independence) than to work against them,” suggested Prof. Heineken.

Alas, nobody in the EU heeded his advice. The bankers and multinationals won the day. And off to future wars Europe goes.

Here’s how I finished that 1995 piece:

“It would take an event of cataclysmic proportion, such as another world war, to force the formerly dominant species to cede some power to the weaker ones. And, as Darwin would have probably agreed, they would do it out of fear, not as a charity gesture.

“If the above analysis proves accurate, it would probably spell the end of the world as we know it. But not the end of the world.

For, did you ever observe what happens after a fire or an avalanche had wreaked havoc in a forest? What follows is – life! And it is a life richer and fuller than the one which the cataclysm had destroyed.”

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UPDATE JULY 9, 2015

WHAT ABOUT AMERICAN DEBT CRISIS? WHY ARE THE MEDIA SILENT ABOUT THAT?

United States vs. Greek Debt: Talk about a pot calling a kettle black

Worse, our U.S. debt is growing much faster than incomes… (also see TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES OF TAX OPPRESSION IN AMERICA, APRIL 20, 2015).

Which means, “the harder we work, the ‘behinder’ we get.”

Similarly, the national debt per capita of some other European countries that are hurling stones at the poor Greeks, like Italy for example, is also worse than Greece’s (about $49,000 vs. $34,000 per capita). 

As for the total world debt, it is a staggering figure. Take a look…

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For more, see…

• GREECE BETRAYED BY OWN GOVERNMENT, LOSES FISCAL SOVEREIGNTY
• QUO VADIS, GREECE? (Where to, Greece?)
• BRICS COULD HELP FUND GREECE IF ATHENS APPLIED
• €URO WAS DOOMED FROM THE START, EVEN BEFORE ITS BIRTH
• GREECE SAYS “OXI” (N€IN-NO) TO EURO/GLOBAL BANKSTERS… NOW WHAT?

• USURY AND TREATIES BASED ON HUMILIATION DON’T WORK, JUNE 13, 2015
• TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES OF TAX OPPRESSION IN AMERICA, APRIL 20, 2015