Sunday, 10 November 2024
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heilbron pricedownloadDefence 'against external threats' is not only about classical defence but preserving western civilisation in the long term- over a span of a century or more. Europeans have failed to see the big picture - which is prerequisite to understanding what the plot is, writes David Heilbron Price. The potential rupture of UK and Continental European defence efforts is just one tear in the larger canvas. Who gains if UK and EU do not patch things up? Europe is presently war-wounded and in the sick bed. It is overspending trillions of Euros that will affect its future for a generation or more.

We are presently suffering from the devastation of the Covid 19 plague. The economy has crashed. Major social changes, never considered possible before, have suddenly taken place. Small firms and workers have lost their livelihood, with often zero chance of regaining a life's work. Society has been turned upside down.
Some say 'normal' will never return. Families are separated. Old people are isolated. Then, through politicians' blind care for national health systems, the same senior citizens are infected in 'care homes'. The old take by far the biggest toll. Normal hospitals, recreation centres, public meetings and churches are closed.
What happened to the freedoms that people fought world wars to defend? Fierce family arguments rage among those that feel the government rules must be adhered to and others who say they are logically incoherent. The rupture of bonds and trust in government may have irreversible consequences for our future.
Disease is war in the human body. It can also be war on society. What have the EU and UK defence agencies done to prevent this disruption, both foreseeing it and presenting policy? The EU has not even tackled properly the security aspects of disease and the cartels in the pharmaceutical industries.
Germs are considered to be the ultimate weapon. But in this case Covid is not a major plague and the death rate is no more than a bad winter. Its effects have, however, been massive. The Wuhan virus acts as a torpedo of economic destruction bringing with it a wave of seemingly deliberately orchestrated panic and fear. Why is panic out of all proportion to the problem? To date China, with 1.4 billion people, recorded just 4634 deaths : Other countries less.
Why? Who gains from such devastation of the West? Certainly those who see warfare as multifaceted and a long-term clash for global Civilisations like the Chinese think in terms of a centuries-long struggle for mastery of the planet. The ideology predates Mao. They have flexible, opportunistic strategies that use all means to gain it.
The Chinese have moved away from the communist pipe-dreams of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. They are fired up by a new syncretic version that sees world submission to the Middle Kingdom or rather Middle Republic ruled by the dictators of the proletariat.
Soviet communism left the West in an effete state. The West won the arms race but its youth had absorbed Marxism's poison of materialism. Dialectical materialism was the reason the USSR failed. It is the reason materialistic China will fail. Any society based on materialism will fail.
The Magna Carta and the US Constitution, the European Community, which has brought Europe its longest peace, were not inspired by materialism but directly from our common spiritual heritage. The Soviet bloc was shown to be dialectically derelict by Protestants in East Germany, Catholics in Poland and Hungary, and Orthodox and Jews in USSR. The Nazis and the Fascists of Italy suffered the same opposition and the same fate.
Given the lessons of the last century, the West should hopefully begin to understand that it must defend itself against ideologies that have existed for millennia and seek global dominance. That must include religious ideologies that deny the obvious truths and values of the West.
False religious doctrines can be as devastating as false political doctrines. Half a century ago the West, especially Europe, suffered devastation as severe as a major war. Its huge global currency reserves were snatched away. Europe was reduced to poverty levels and debt. The cause? A global cartel applying ideology to change western foreign policy.
In this case it was religious. After the failure of Egypt, Syria and its allies to annihilate Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, Islamic oil exporters (AOPEC) placed a total oil embargo on the West. That was the equivalent of a declaration of war. Why? The European States weren't involved in any fighting. The Arab States wanted to overturn any pro-Israel policy of the Europeans.
When this policy stumbled they introduced a four-fold increase of the price of oil. They doubled down and quadrupled the price again in 1979. European factories closed with all that implies. Has Europe today really recovered from this? Certainly the City of London has taken advantage of the flood of recycled petrodollars picked from millions of European pockets, but for the west it debased and diluted the currencies. It has only resulted in turning the currency into a moth-ridden inflationary rag of what was once solid money. A dot.com economy based on imaginary money and bloated stock market graphs will find itself part of a Great Reset.
That monetary illusion makes the west vulnerable to other dangers. Global finance cartels could turn the population into poor slaves. In history it is a well-known technique. What is the solution? Is it just to make sure that UK and EU retain common defence structures of the EU? That would hardly be adequate to deal with any of the above assaults on western civilisation.
What is required is an up-to-date Community approach to defence that brings together all democratic interests of all society. Today foreign and global forces can attack critical aspects of society by using modern means of communications. Defence is no longer just nuclear weapons, hypersonic rockets and airplanes. It is also about money, raw materials, religion, chemicals and disease. It is about space wars and the use of the Moon.
The European Defence Community of the 1950s was agreed in all parliaments except the French (then dominated by Gaullists and Communists). It was foreseen to work in coordination with the Council of Europe and the safeguards of its Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
That organic link was broken. How? Much of the democratic vision that the Community structure offered was attenuated in the Gaullist and nationalist 1960s and 1970s. De Gaulle turned out to be a dupe or a nineteenth century Napoleonic dreamer. French Prime Minister Robert Schuman, in contrast, had taken a quite different and highly innovative step to end Europe's incessant wars and provide a strong common defence.
He said in 1948 that the Community must be based on strong, democratic States that sought the means to end wars between themselves. He had initiated both the Council of Europe and the Community system with the idea that they should work hand in glove. NATO was the expansion of the initiative he took in creating the Brussels Treaty Organisation for Continental defence. He was co-author of the Washington Treaty and in particular article 5 (mutual defence).
The disinformation battle was won by the Soviet Union. Eurocommunists, like Altiero Spinelli, sold gullible politicians a fake bill of goods called a federal Europe. It would only be successful, they said, if European political parties abandoned the democratic Community structure and put the Council of Europe and its human rights in the dustbin. What he did not say was written in his earlier wartime manifesto. He wrote that his goal was to 'emancipate the working class' and abolish private property.
The 'federalists' had no idea what institutions to put in place. The only process they knew was 'dialectical materialism' and an end to the rich plutocrat classes whoever they were. The self-selecting theorists would be the new ruling class. This federalist fake, starting with the 1986 Single European Act, set back Europe for decades. The Community system was replaced by the undemocratic EU, run by the closed-door European Council and the secretive COREPER. The powerful EuroGroup, a committee not mentioned in the treaties as an institution, controls the money and hence the lives of many Europeans.
From a defence point of view this is flashing red lights. Lack of real democracy makes Europe vulnerable to outside trouble-makers as well as insidious insiders. How does that contrast with a democratic Community system? The European Coal and Steel Community of 1950 provided Europe's first agency to break international cartels in armaments and other sectors. Coal, steel, arms and banking cartels forced an arms race on indolent governments. That led to World Wars 1 and II. An industrial cartel with major international links to US and other capitalists paid for Hitler.
The later European Atomic Energy Community prevented the outbreak of atomic war amongst its member States. The European Economic Community / Customs Union provided the means to prevent trade wars among member States and protect all against external threats.
Today we need to regain the big picture. There is no reason to limit western defence to the present Member States of the EU. The projected European Health Community of 1952 was open to all European States from Turkey to Iceland. It would have been invaluable in fighting Covid.
Europe's democratic structure is not fit to provide the debating and deciding mechanism for warfare that might attack on all sides. For example in the UK major parliamentary reform was necessary before the Chinese virus struck. Brexit was the result, not democratic reform of the EU.
For defence strategy and management that indistinct parliamentary voice was stifled by the pandemic. Parliaments and 'democracy' became virtual. The press was suppressed. The needed democratic structure should allow the voices of all people to be heard. They are the ones who can detect early warning signs.
Industrialists, trade-unionists and consumers can provide much expert analysis of the threats to Europe. A democratic Europe is its best defence. The rickety structures of today, shaken by pandemics from China, energy embargoes and extortion from ideological foes, materialism, neo-Marxist propaganda, and arms cartels will not make Europeans feel safe and secure at home.
A return to first principles is urgent.

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