In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

7th July, 2011

Even as we have reassumed the white man’s burden of bombing in Africa another battle, not unrelated is coming to a head: our battle to destroy the Eurozone.

The gloves are really off now and sparks are beginning to fly. It is difficult to overstate the significance of the spectacle of an atlanticist, neo-liberal politician like Barrosos being forced into undiplomatic spats with such long established institutions of western finance as the rating agencies. They are giving no quarter and continue to fuel bets against the euro, regardless of what orthodox, neo-liberal steps Europe takes to convince the markets. The attack dogs are not being called off and Europe’s post-war integration into the Anglo-American system is providing London and Washington with ample opportunities to turn the screw.

The rating agencies are not the only atlanticist institutions in play here. The European media is strikingly out of tune with European interests and obscures the roots of this crisis. London based hedge funds still seem to have considerable leeway despite some action from Berlin. The European elite, in general, is inhibited by a congenital anglophilia which is becoming increasingly inappropriate.

And then, above all, there is NATO. Here is an aspect of the Libya campaign little noted: it has drawn France out of the Franco-German axis which was the basis of European integration. This has been a major coup pulled off by Washington-London and can only have set Europe up for the latest offensive in the great currency war. Europe is being drawn into a war alongside the very people who are trying to destroy its currency!

If the Europeans thought they could quietly resolve the euro crisis without directly confronting London and Washington they must now have been disabused of the notion. To survive Europe must now break the Atlantic Alliance and seek its security and economic well-being with Russia and China. This split would be closely analagous with that between the Roman Empire in the West and the East. The emergence of Byzantium laid the basis of the survival of Graeco-Roman civilization: the emergence of an independent Europe will the decisive step in the fulfillment of the post-imperial, multipolar world order.