In an extensive piece in City Journal (h/t Jonathan L.), Dalrymple provides a comprehensive analysis of the still-unfolding European debt crisis. He shows why the example of Belgium demonstrates the pointlessness of the EU’s ostensible raison d’etre… …delineates the differences between Ireland and Greece, why they matter, and lauds the reaction of the Irish as an example for the rest of us to follow…. The Irish understood, as no other people seems to have understood, that they were complicit in the crisis. …and indicts the short-sightedness and lust for power of the EU’s founders: This seems to be the bottom line:
Reflection on the situation in tiny Belgium might introduce an element of doubt into the minds of the most fervent believers in the European Project. Belgium has existed ever since it was cobbled together in 1830; yet in all that time, it has not been able to create a durable national identity….Yet the political difficulties of Belgium do not give the European unionists pause for thought—or, if they do pause, they reach a peculiar conclusion: that what has not worked in two centuries in a small area with only two populations will work in a few years in a much larger area with a multitude of populations.
The European Union that was supposed to put an end to war on the continent has resuscitated antagonisms that might end in bellicosity, if not in outright war. And the European Project stands revealed as what any sensible person could have seen it always was: something akin to the construction of a massive, post-Tito Yugoslavia.
The term “European” is not meaningless, but whatever content the term may have, it is not sufficient for the formation of a viable polity.
This is a more lucid explanation of the European economic mess than I have found anywhere in, for instance, the ‘Financial Times’.
I agree, and the City Journal commenters seem to as well. I think this is one of his best pieces in a while.
The Euro is in a bad way, even if today Greece voted in the austerity government that will go along with the measures requested by the EU.
Hopefully the problems will not spread, but only time will tell.