Monday, January 30, 2017

They'll Not Wreck Europe With Our Help Any More

I could get used to Trump as president if he keeps this up:

Asked on Thursday during the BBC’s political talk show This Week why he wanted to be the US ambassador to the EU when he was clearly not a fan, Ted Malloch said: “I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped to bring down the Soviet Union, so maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming.”

During the course of the programme, Malloch, who is currently a professor at Henley Business School, said Trump was pro-Brexit and had no enthusiasm for EU integration: “He doesn’t like an organisation that is supranational, that is unelected, where the bureaucrats run amok, and is not frankly a proper democracy,” the would-be ambassador said.

Finally, we have an envoy who wants the European Union to die with festering boils:

I am no fan of the European Union proto-dictatorship project. I think it will be a disaster for the United States and lead to the loss of democracy in Europe. Europe will become a Soviet Union Lite that will be neutral at best, selling arms to our enemies; or hostile, ending a century of our policy that has prevented an opponent from organizing the continent's resources against us.

The proto-empire European Union is indeed a Soviet Union Lite in the making. The ambassador is absolutely right.

And while I could understand at some level a Cold War reason to get a stronger EU under the pressure of a looming USSR threat to western Europe, I do not understand why it has been our policy since 1989--under Democrats and Republicans--to support the formation of an ever closer union of European states under the EU banner.

We can have friends in geographic Europe. We cannot have a political Europe as a friend.

Thankfully, if we just stand out of the way rather than propping it up, the EU will collapse on its own.

UPDATE: Tusk was fine as a Pole but lousy as a European:

European Council President Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump has joined Russia, China and radical Islam among threats to Europe and called on Europeans to stick together to avoid domination by three other continental powers.

Tusk is mixing up political Europe of a single governing entity (the EU) and geographic Europe describing a region of many free nations.

America threatens political Europe. Tusk's statement actually defends my point. America in fact defends geographic Europe through NATO.

Russia and political Islam (Islamist jihadis) threaten geographic Europe.

I'm unclear on China's threat to either Europe, unless Tusk has a perception of economic power threatening them.