The Next Hundred Years War

Choosing up gangs.

After what French daily Le Figaro has described as a "virile" 10-hour meeting, David Cameron has walked away from closer European integration. In the bleary Brussels dawn, his mouth was drawn into a melancholic but virile rictus.

  UK Guardian

A virile rictus? How British.

It may be, in the words of one British diplomat, a "crap acronym", but the UK is now a founding member of the "Chuks" – joining the Czechs, Hungarians and Swedes in refusing to join from the outset the 23 other EU states preparing to endorse a new treaty to save the euro.

[...]

Unlike the Brics, this may turn out to be a short-lived grouping, as the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden said after its birth they would consult their national parliaments on joining.

Oh, yeah. They may need to do that.

Diplomats said it was unlikely the Czechs and Swedes would join, and question marks remain over the Hungarians.

Good grief. Almost as ridiculous as the Coalition of the Willing.

Close, Britain, but no cigar.  Ya got nuttin'.

As a clear damp dawn rose over Brussels on Friday morning, the tired and tetchy leaders of Europe emerged, bleary-eyed from nine hours of night-time sparring over how to rescue the single currency and indeed the entire European project.

[...]

Histrionics from France's Nicolas Sarkozy, poker-faced calm from Germany's Angela Merkel, David Cameron gambling the UK's place in Europe by opting to battle for Britain rather than helping to save the euro. When the dust settles, Friday 9 December may be seen as a watershed, the beginning of the end for Britain in Europe. But more than that – the emergence for the first time of a cold new Europe in which Germany is the undisputed, pre-eminent power imposing a decade of austerity on the eurozone as the price for its propping up the currency.

  UK Guardian

Well, a cold Europe dominated by Germany wouldn’t be entirely new, would it?

Whether or not the summit has saved the euro remains, of course, to be seen. At a single stroke, however, it has transformed Britain's place in Europe. With the fate of the currency at stake in the EU's worst crisis, Cameron opted for a fight and lost, placing the interests of the City of London before the European priority.

Sort of the George Bush method, eh? Bring it on. Perhaps Mr. Cameron is counting on Britain’s former colony for backup.

Cameron went to Brussels saddled with backbench taunts of being the new Neville Chamberlain […] nasty references to the 1938 appeasement of Hitler.

I guess he showed them.

In Greece, Italy and Spain the talkshows and newspapers are bristling with anti-German grudges, regularly bringing up the second world war, the Nazis, the alleged "Fourth Reich"

I think we have all the Nazis over here now.

"We are going to have to put up with a bit of Germanophobia," wrote Jakob Augstein in Der Spiegel this week. "Europe has returned to the stereotypes of the postwar years. The ugly German is back … it would be better for Germany to get things wrong together with its partners than to insist on being right alone."

That wouldn’t be very German.

Because of the German preoccupation with saving and not spending and what is seen as monetarist fetishism, says [Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform thinktank], "we face 10 years of austerity with grim German schoolmasters rapping everyone else over the knuckles".

Now THAT sounds German.

The shift in the way power is wielded in the EU has been building incrementally for 20 years, since German unification, the destruction of the deutsche mark, the birth of the single currency, and the liberation then integration of eastern Europe redrew the map and the politics of Europe.

Are there any salvageable pieces of that Berlin wall around?

"Eventually Germany too will need to spend and invest," says the senior EU official. "You will probably have a different French leader. Merkel could lose the next election. There can be a return to Keynesian economics. This may be a moment of the domination of German orthodoxy, but things can change."

They can always get worse.

I keep having the feeling that the universe has demanded a do-over of WWII. But just what outcome is it looking for?

Stick around and we shall see, I suppose.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.