EU EXPANSION VS. EUROPEAN INDIGESTION: The surest symptom of moral atrophy is smugness. The conviction of inalienable righteousness ignites a love affair with oneself that can be consummated only at the expense of everyone else. Americans are often accused of just such a passion, particularly when it comes to our dealings with the world - but we are plainly too ornery to settle down in front of the mirror. We dispute. From Terri Shiavo to social security, we disagree. Too often, we rant: that is our peculiar failing. I find it perverse in the extreme, and have on occasion warned of its consequences. But we are morally alive. Even the ranters can see that there's another side to the question.
Smugness is the European disease. An entire continent seems enthralled by the number of things they will never, ever do: the death penalty, preemptive war, defend democracy abroad, cut taxes, allow part-time work, get married, have children, produce popular movies, and so on, a long list of virtuous Euronegatives. Inertia, on this view, defeats sin. Of course, death would have the same effect, but that would remove the one great joy of existence, which is to be able to say - as the "leader of Norway's conservative Christian Democrats" is quoted as saying in The Nation - things like this:
"We have decided that raising a child is real work. And that this work provides value for the whole society. And that the society as a whole should pay for this valuable service. Americans like to talk about family values. We have decided to do more than talk; we use our tax revenues to pay for family values."
According to the Amato commission, the EU's choice is simple: enlargement or empire. Either we in the EU accept that we will have virtual colonies in our Balkan backyard for decades to come, or we start preparing the conditions in which the Balkans can join the European Union. The commission comes out decisively for enlargement. At a meeting next year, the EU should commit itself to a plan to bring the Balkans in by 2014 - an event that could be celebrated in a summit in Sarajevo, on the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. This would give a new and more positive meaning to a phrase popularised during the last war in Bosnia: "From Sarajevo to Sarajevo". [...]
The authors of the report...pose the alternative to the EU as "enlargement or empire". But seen from Kosovo, one could also say "from empire to empire". For the European Union is also a kind of empire, a modern - or, according to some, a postmodern - version not of the centralised Roman or British empires, but of the medieval Holy Roman empire, with most of the effective power held by its constituent parts. And what is proposed here is that Europe's postmodern or neo-medieval empire should now absorb the remains of Suleiman's empire. That becomes clear if you add the EU's confirmed intention to take in the heartland of the Ottoman empire, now called Turkey.
6:46:35 PM 
|
|
