In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

8th July, 2012

Francois Hollande’s clear espousal of Hilary Clinton’s position at the recent “Friends of Syria” conference, a gathering of international outlaws dedicated to a regime change programme for Syria supposedly at the behest of the Syrian people, should set alarm bells ringing for those who support the emerging Euroland project.

Of course, his position could be ascribed to the harsh realities of geopolitical realpolitik. Perhaps he has gained an understanding with Obama regarding the co-existence of the Euro and the dollar- in other words Anglo-America may have called off their attack dogs, the financial speculators and rating agencies who have , at every point, driven forward the euro-crisis. That is an interesting possibility and one that makes perfect sense since the assault on the Euro had become counter-productive in that it was merely driving Euroland towards Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS, marginalising Britain in Europe and pouring an awful lot of money down the drain speculating against a euro which refused to collapse. In other words, the anti-Euro financial and propaganda war was leading to strategic disaster for the Anglo-Americans and they may have realized this and moved to correct it, to reintegrate Europe into “the West”. Certainly, the tone of the British media has changed of late and the outright hostility has become attenuated. Of course, this begs the question why they embarked on the anti-European campaign in the first place and why these factors are no longer in play. They are still in play and peaceful co-existence between the dollar and the euro represents a retreat by the empire which can’t attack on all fronts and it is a retreat which will have consequences. The ailing dollar which was once gold-backed is now nothing but cascades of electronic digits and verges on becoming worthless. It cannot tolerate competition as a global currency: it cannot tolerate the euro. Perhaps the alleged defeat of Merkel over direct bailouts of European banks by the ECB, Europe’s quantitative easing, has softened this contradiction for the meantime. So we may have an historic, and very unstable, compromise: the euro stays and European construction goes ahead but within the framework of “the West”.
On the other hand, Anglo-America may be succeeding in dividing Europe with France as the weak link being set against Germany. Assad’s interview correctly pointing out that the US was actively subverting his country appeared yesterday on Germany’s ARD television: I don’t expect it appeared on France 24 or any other French channel. Germany was distinctly unfavourable to the attack on Libya and presumably is also lukewarm on Al Qaeda operations in Syria. But as Radio Free Europe put
“The United States, France, and Britain called for tougher sanctions against Damascus and slammed Russia and China for hampering efforts to end the conflict.”
No mention of Germany but France is back in its old role as a sub-empire of the Anglo-Americans- what a come down from the days of De Gaulle or even Chirac and Franco-German-Russian opposition to the Iraq War. If Sarkozy was
Napoleon III, “le petit”, Hollande looks like another Clemenceau- is this why they “took out”Strauss-Kahn?
In all events, Clinton and Hague must be very pleased with the Paris affair. It’s just like old times with the Europeans effortlessly induced into another own goal as with Kosovo, now a suppurating wound in south-East Europe and gangrenous base for US operations, pimping and drug-running.
Perhaps Hollande is merely constrained by popular opinion which, schooled by the same media which have been assiduously subverting the euro, seems to favour our decision on behalf of the Syrian people that Assad must go. The French left certainly does and with all the assurance of history’s bearers of enlightenment. but the dream of reason produces some strange bedfellows: in Alejo Carpentier’s novel El Siglo de las Luces( The Age of Enlightenment) our revolutionary heroes end up descending to the streets of Madrid on 2nd of May, 1810 to confront Napoleon’s armies alongside the forces of Catholic reaction; our latter-day enlighteners are being caught in flagrante with the dark forces of Islamic terror long cultivated by the CIA. It’s not a scandal they can hope to survive and now is a good moment to announce the death of the left. Trotsky’s permanent revolution always was a useful instrument of the empire and Obamaism is the same thing divested of socialist and proletarian rhetoric. All that ‘no borders” talk which comes pouring out of the Occupy Movement is nothing other than its co-option behind the subversion of America’s enemies which turns out to be virtually everyone, the nation state itself. But this is not an epoch of no borders but of the moving beyond borders to the creation of international co-operation and the creation of new strucres of regional, continental and global governance. I take it as axiomatic that the social, political, scientific and psychological atomisn of the Enlightenment is not an adequate vehicule for such a task. The “state of nature” ideologies which have reigned almost unchecked since the demise of the city state of antiquity must now be left behind.
However Hollande’s stance is interpreted it contradicts his supposed aims of an integrated Europe as an independent force in the world. A Europe pitted against Russia, China and the Global South will always merely be subaltern to Anglo-America. At the same time the contradiction between the dollar and the euro has not gone away and Wall street and the City may return to the offensive once the dollar comes under unbearable pressure as it soon must. The Euroland project remains a key element in the emerging multipolar world order. We cannot allow it to fail, we cannot allow a prolonged East-West conflict to take root. Such a conflict is in the interests of the Anglo-American oligarchy who cannot survive politically without permanent war, hot or cold. We Europeans, and the rest of humanity, can ill afford it but, evidently, we can’t yet move forward without closer self-examination and particularly without laying aside our residual imperial and supremacist legacy.