Should the E.U. appoint and
send an envoy to Russia in spite of the fact that E.U. and state officials are
not of one mind on a strategy to pressure Russia’s head, Putin, to the
negotiating table to compromise? The power of the state governments at the federal
level complicates efforts by Commission officials to present Putin with a
specific list of sanctions because the governors are not on the same page even
after Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat in April, 2026. Ironically, desperately
needed reforms to the E.U.’s federal system itself have been as politically
difficult even to propose as has getting Putin to the negotiating table.
Focusing on the latter while ignoring the former is a self-inflicted wound that
has weakened the Europeans on the world stage. Incidentally, another
self-inflicted state of denial involves assuming that such drastic cultural
differences exist between two small E.U. states, such as Denmark and the
Netherlands, while assuming that all of the U.S. states across a continent
and beyond are basically the same, culturally. Recently, a European, who is
actually a U.S. citizen, said as much to me! Denial is the main defense
mechanism in the E.U. Even painstaking effort to render this political
brain-sickness transparent is no match for the underlying ideological fervor
that has so severely enervated the European Union from becoming a more perfect
union.
As American, Ukrainian, and
Russian negotiating delegations were flying around the world in early December,
2025 to conduct various negotiating sessions, all the while without the presidents
of Russia and Ukraine meeting, it was difficult for bystanders to keep an eye
on the proverbial ball as it was being kicked around by offers and
counter-offers, and complicated by the high-profiled presence of the
businessman, Jared Kushner, who happened to be married to one of U.S. President
Trump’s daughters. Kushner was also highly visible in the negotiations on Gaza,
which almost certainly included real-estate development. To be sure, commercial
and investment deals can easily remain subterranean while the public discourse
stays on the political relations between nations, and even just the latter may
lack transparency. Democratic accountability in democratic republics as
concerning the conduct and results of foreign policy can be difficult. Especially
difficult to gauge was the hand being closely held by Russia’s President Putin.
I contend that his willingness to negotiate was consistently overestimated by
the West and Ukraine.
To go to much effort to
construct an economy on the scale of an empire only to refer instead to the economies
within such a union, whether the E.U. or U.S. is to pay excessive homage to
an ideology that can be termed Euroskeptic and anti-federalist, respectively. To
refer to economies in one union and the economy in the other is
just one means by which an ideology can distort a person’s reasoning and
perception without the person being conscious of the underlying logical
inconsistency. Such an inconsistency is incurred not only in “having it both
ways” in the E.U. being a common market even as the states are referred to as economies
even though many share a currency and thus a central bank, but also in
referring to the federal system as if it were a mere “bloc,” or “network.” In all of these cases of ideological
word-games, the E.U. itself is minimized and thus implicitly marginalized from
within. With Russia invading Ukraine and Israel eviscerating the Muslim
residents of Gaza, self-marginalization for ideological purposes is indeed
costly. Even referring to the federal official who is in charge of foreign
policy as a “high representative” is implicitly denigrating and thus counter-productive
to the E.U. being able to stand up to Putin and even Netanyahu in 2025.
After the U.S. took the
decision to impose reciprocal and car tariffs on the E.U., it did not take long
for several of the E.U. states to pressure the federal executive branch, the
European Commission, to punch holes in the E.U.’s counter-tariffs so favored
industries in the E.U. would not face higher prices on supplies from the United
States. As in U.S. states, E.U. states have their own dominant industries, whose
financial interests it is only natural for government to protect, as jobs
translate into votes. But pressuring the E.U.’s federal government to carve out
exceptions for imports desired by favored industries at the state level, such
as automobiles in the E.U. state of Germany, would deny the E.U. the full
benefit of a united front that federalism can provide against other countries.
For maximum leverage in trade negotiations, unilaterally removing
counter-tariffs is not wise; it is like a person intentionally tripping over
himself while trying to get to the grocery store. Given the regional pressures,
trade is rightfully one of the enumerated powers, or exclusive competencies, of
the E.U. rather than a shared competency or a power retained by the states.
With all the economic and political turmoil from the anticipated American tariffs, it may be tempting, especially for financially-oriented CEOs and billionaires looking at quarterly reports, to call the whole thing off even though doing so would deflate the American attempt to renegotiate trade bilaterally with other countries. The concerns of the wealthy, whether corporations or individuals, have their place, but arguably should not be allowed to "lead the proverbial dog from behind, lest the dog run in circles and get nowhere." Moreover, the notion that any goal that is difficult and takes some time to materialize can or even should be vetoed by momentary passions at the outset is problematic and short-sighted. That U.S. President Trump's announcement of bilateral tariffs quickly brought fifty countries to the negotiating table is significant as a good sign for the United States, as long as that country's powerful business plutocracy (i.e., private concentrations of wealth that seek to govern) can be kept from vetoing the emergent trade policy, which at least in part is oriented to trade negotiation and ultimately to the notion that fair trade is conducive to increased free trade.
The paradigm used by a former state can undermine any negotiations between it and a federal government. Even the reference to a federal government, if contrary to such a paradigm, can subtly undercut relations. The typical focus on the matters to be negotiated, such as new trade relations, easily miss the negative impact of a biased paradigm that is more based in Euroskeptic states’ rights (i.e., anti-federalism) that on the actual relation being between a former state and the European Union.
What is that nebulous thing called politics? Might it be that the practice is essentially exploiting or creating what are known as principal-agent costs? That is, might politics boil down to a skill in the agent (elected representative) in putting his political or economic interests ahead of doing the bidding of his principal(s) (i.e., his constituent body). In the U.S. Senate bill in early 2013 to obviate the “fiscal cliff,” for example, the Democrats may have agreed to benefits for the Republican lawmakers’ campaign backers in exchange for going along with a more progressive federal income tax system. Among the added provisions were special expensing rules for certain film and television productions—no doubt those made by particular campaign contributors. The provision for tax-exempt financing for the New York Liberty Zone around the former World Trade Center may also have been a favor to a particular someone. Lest it is wondered what an extension of the American Samoa economic development credit was doing in an expedited measure to obviate the “fiscal cliff,” the answer may have had to do with a particular Republican lawmaker’s relationship with someone having an interest in American Samoa. I can only speculate here, as I was not privy to the actual relationships and negotiations. However, the sheer strangeness of such provisions in such a bill suggests that the particular political or economic interests of particular Republican lawmakers may have been the culprit.
Under the terms of the debt-ceiling budget agreement enacted during the summer in 2011, members of a joint Congressional committee, evenly divided between the parties as well as between the two chambers, had until Nov. 23 of that year to recommend ways to reduce budget deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. Both houses had to vote on the package by Dec. 23, 2011. If no legislation is enacted, the government would automatically cut almost $500 billion from military spending, with an equal amount from nonmilitary programs, between 2013 and 2021.
Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally.
It is perhaps only natural---only human—for us to take
ourselves and our produced artifacts too seriously. Diplomats and other
government officials, for example, fret arduously over mere words. When those
words are etched in governmental or treaty parchment, the effort is
understandable. The flaw of excess is evident in all the time and effort that
go into the joint communiques of international conferences and meetings. I
submit that the real politic at such occasions is much more significant even if
nothing shows from it for some time.
At the March 18, 2017 meeting of the Group of 20, which
includes the E.U. and U.S., the joint statement “became an unlikely focus of
controversy” issuing in “a tortured compromise stating, in effect, that trade
is a good thing.”[1] I
submit that the use of such language is spurious—certainly much less than the
attendees and even their principals back home supposed. The real politic was
instead that the U.S. was “overturning long-held assumptions about
international commerce,” and such transformational change takes time even just
to register in minds ensconced in the status quo. That is to say, the real
shift in power would need to play out in actual negotiations on trade, rather
than in how to word a meeting’s joint statement.
A European official, Wolfgang Schauble, perhaps straining at the meeting to understand the new American position. (source: NYT)
In October 2016, Darren
Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, became the newest member of PepsiCo’s
board ofdirectors.
Whereas Walker worked at the time for a more just and equitable society, Pepsi
was making the bulk of its money by selling sugary drinks and fatty snacks and
there being a well-established link between obesity and economic inequality. Would
he be working at cross-purposes? “There’s a risk that he will be viewed
as inconsistent,” said Michael Edwards, a former Ford Foundation executive at
the time.[1]
The company itself could also be viewed as being inconsistent—lobbying against
anti-obesity public-health legislation while putting Walker on the board of
directors.
Clarion calls of confrontation roiled through the E.U. after
the state election in Greece on January 25, 2015. Would the E.U., heavily
dominated by its largest state, and the European Central Bank (ECB) accept a
larger public deficit (i.e., more government spending to alleviate the
austerity) and continue the cheap loans, or would Alexis Tsipras, the new Greek
prime minister, have to choose between continued austerity and default?
The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.
Framing the contours of a debate goes a long way toward
winning it. Part of such framing involves efforts to make derogatory labels
stick to the opposing side. Through a number of decades in the twentieth
century, communist was the weapon of
choice. Actors who refused to name names found themselves blacklisted as
pro-communist, or having communist sympathies. A decade after the fall of the
U.S.S.R., labeling an organization or person as a terrorist came into its own
as the all-too-easy means of depriving an opposing side of credibility. By
2015, some people believed that anytime a person of a particular Middle-Eastern
religion kills someone, that person is a terrorist. The word’s very definition
was somehow pliable enough to accommodate prejudice and simple dislike. This is
not to say that real terrorists are squalid creatures; rather, my point is that
people had realized that they could score political points by applying the
label to their opponents and making it stick. Israel, for instance, had
successfully gotten the E.U. to label the Palestinian political party Hamas as
a terrorist organization. Yet as 2014 was coming to an end, the label was
becoming unstuck, with broader implications for the wider debate on Israel and
Palestine.
It can be said that the media's currency is credibility. If so, the American media may have outdid itself yet again in characterizing the federal government's sequester in 2013 as an imminent disaster of Congressional design. Countdown clocks going back days only escalated the orchestrated yet subterranean calculus of attention-getting and fear-mongering by the usual suspects. Not only did the actual sequester not turn out to be a train wreck; the enforced budget discipline brought the spending line significantly more into line with the revenue line.
Later in the same year, the clocks were back for the government partial shutdown and a default deadline. CNN outdid itself. Not only did the network sport a clock counting down to the partial shutdown; the countdown clock turned into a precise indicator of the ongoing duration of the partial shutdown down to the second, even after eleven days! The unnecessary, dogmatic inclusion of minutes and seconds could only have been intended to deliberately stretch out the manufactured sense of alarm or crisis beyond its unnatural life. The mendacity and manipulation are of course unethical, yet the novel practice had already become the industry's norm so the viewers naturally assumed it must be proper and well-proportioned.
Even as the days, hours, minutes and seconds mounted, CNN added a second clock just below the first in order to countdown the upcoming default deadline. Fortunately, after a day or two of numbers galore, someone at the network made the momentous decision to simplify the "shutdown" clock into a count of days. Unlike the excessive day-count by the networks as the hostage situation in Iran went on and on in 1979, CNN's "Government Shutdown" day-count and "Debt Ceiling Deadline" clock were seemingly etched onto the screen (except during commercials, of course). Although the advent of the 24/7 news-channel eased this shift appreciably, the trajectory itself can be graphed as a curve evincing a sort of cancerous decadence spreading through the body politic. I want to unpack the very nature of that pathogen by placing a slice of the media on a microscope slide.
A look at the catastrophic partial government shutdown. Wikimedia Commons.
Is what we have here one artificial "catastrophe" on top of another? That the first had never really gotten off the ground as catastrophic was apparently beside the point as the media began crying wolf yet again. Perhaps imminent catastrophe as a sort of continuing resolution had already become the primary strategy of television news editors, who were at least outwardly impervious to whether or not the last crisis had actually turned out to be catastrophic as they had thought and pronounced. No learning curve extraneous to what sells was allowed by those who refuse to look in the rear-view mirror. The new "reality" (or reality show) premised on a permanent adrenaline-rush (coffee no longer being required) had been found to be cheap to produce, and thus it had become the default. For added fun, the viewers could look forward to a cacophony of puffed-up talking mouths forming a cavalcade of exaggerated metaphors with no curtain call in sight.
The confluence of the government's partial shutdown and the prospect of a default fueled a confluence in turn of journalists and politicians around a storyline to which only they and Wall Street were privy. Meanwhile, the usual suspects treated the public to an exaggerated roller-coaster ride over the supposition that the cars really could suddenly fall to the ground. The manufacturers were even considerate enough to supply a countdown clock!
Source: NPR.org
Besides magnifying the significance of each public statement and meeting by labeling almost every twist and turn "BREAKING NEWS," broadcast and online/print journalists as well as the ubiquitous pundits happily joined members of Congress in misappropriating war terminology even to someone's refusal to talk to someone else on Capitol Hill.
For example, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said at one point on CNN, "It is a nasty, bloody fight." Meanwhile, U.S. House representatives were referring to the difficulty in reaching a deal as a terrible battle. Had any of them been to the real battlefields at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania? Had the former Speaker, perhaps when he was studying for the doctorate in American history? Lest the thick, humid air of the odious irony cause anyone difficulty in breathing, I can supply a bayonet to cut through the miasma of soupy air.
To correct the squalid, sensationalizing habit of militarizing the "sausage making" in Congress, an actual military veteran gives us a needed reality-check in an ad sponsored by a vet group and aired on CNN just before the former Speaker over-reached. The veteran declares with an obvious note of disgust and disbelief, "It is not an epic battle. I've been in an epic battle and running the government is not one of them." I was instantly reminded of Sen. Lloyd Benson's clever response to Sen. Dan Quayle in the vice-presidential debate in 1988.
As if recalling faded images of soil tainted with the blood of those who had sacrificed their lives does not go over the top, the Huffington Post ran the following headline: "[U.S. Senator] Joe Manchin: Democrats May Consider 'Nuclear Option' On Debt Ceiling." Was it really necessary to stir the old fears of those Americans who could still remember the corrosive taste of the Cold War? Selfish and inconsiderate, or perhaps the old sin of pride overlaid with whipped presumptuous,may aptly describe the underlying mentality. Yet even sickness can be found in the nucleus of the interlarding pathogen.
Ironically, Wolf Blitzer of CNN turned away after only a minute or so from Sen. Rubio speaking live in the U.S. Senate chamber on the Iranian nuclear talks then going on only days after Sen. Manchin made his infamous "nuclear option" threat. In spite of the fact that getting Iran to the negotiating table had just been a significant step toward a solution and the media around the world was covering the talks, the veteran news anchor in America relegated the issue as soon as he discerned that the topic was not the upcoming debt-ceiling. As though an infant missing his thumb for two seconds, Blitzer quickly said (paraphrasing), "Senator Rubio on the Senate floor is just talking about Iran. I want to turn to . . . on what is going on right now on Capitol Hill." Nothing was going on.
I was astonished that the folks at CNN could be so obsessed with microscopic, minute reports of this and that meeting of lawmakers, a brief public statement of no substance (e.g., "We want fairness."), and various trial-balloons seemingly meant to preempt running up against the debt-ceiling at "ZERO HOUR." In hindsight, few people would notice that President Obama signed the bill after midnight, hence past the zero hour. the Apocalypse. Put another way, the timing of the bill finally becoming law early on October 17th invalidates all the clocks counting down the minutes and seconds, as well as the USA Today newspaper front-page headline on October 16th proclaiming "ZERO HOUR" as if the world as we know it would end at midnight without the debt-ceiling having been extended. As conflict is the stuff of a good show, the paper's editors flanked the "ZERO HOUR" (in a flaming red square) with photos the Speaker of the U.S. House and the U.S. President, seemingly staring each other down. Conflict sells, as do even artificial, arbitrary deadlines invented and then fed to a beguiled public. After the fact, few people even think to look in the rear-view mirror, and so we can expect the manipulation to go on.
Why is the application of zero hour to the debt ceiling fake? It is important for us to realize the severity of our lapse so we won't be taken so easily in the future. The U.S. Government would not go into default the minute, or even necessarily days, after the debt ceiling has been reached unless cash on hand is not sufficient to pay the bills due immediately. That is, not being able to borrow more does not preclude the government from using its cash on hand and incoming revenue from taxes and other sources to pay the bills as they come due. Regarding the October 17th "deadline" at 12:01 a.m., the big bills (e.g., Social Security and interest payments) were not to come due until October 21 and then again on November 1st. Even though Treasury's software may not have been able to "pick and choose" what to pay in order to stave off actual default (i.e., missing an interest payment to U.S. bond-holders), presumably a law passed by Congress and signed by the president would override such logistical matters. Furthermore, because no interest payments were due on October 17th, not to mention exactly at 12:01 a.m., actual default would not have occurred at the end of "zero hour" or even the next day! Nevertheless, the media, Congressional lawmakers, and the self-anointed pundits qua experts easily foisted the lie on a gullible public eager to believe anything said on television or in print.
Given the government's cash on hand and strong revenue stream coming in, I suspect that the feared trade-off between paying interest on the debt or issuing Social Security checks is a false dichotomy. To be sure, the ethics of paying wealthy bond-holders while retirees, the sick, and the hungry go without sustenance is daunting, if not prohibitory. Such a breach of ethics would be on top of the media's hidden agenda or biased discretion to maximize "me, me, me" and profits at the expense of the journalist mission to report the news let the viewers make up their own minds. Moreover, to deliberately foment fear excessively violates Kant's "Kingdom of Ends," wherein beings having a rational nature are treated not just as means, but also as ends in themselves.
The real crunch point would have come with the first of the huge pay-outs, which would not be until October 21st. Even putting off non-interest bills coming due before that date would not be an actual default, which is defined as missing a payment of interest and/or principal to creditors. The "ZERO HOUR" was a hoax, which, unfortunately, could have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Fortunately, Wall Street wasn't buying into the stunt. Had the drama been allowed to play out until October 20th, the continuing financial uncertainty alone might have caused a "run on the bank" even if the traders and major investors were privy to the end-game already worked out in Washington. Smoke and mirrors can spur someone into starting an actual fire.
Another casualty from the media's obsession based on the assumed validity of a "zero hour" is what I would call the monopoly of the story crowding out virtually all other news. As if creating the countdown clocks in the first place is not bizarre enough, the refusal to break away even for five minutes has all the earmarks of a pathology or dysfunctional mindset even if the intent of the network executives and anchors was to maximize the audience-share for the first half of October. Even if the viewers had already been suckered into the purported significance of the "breaking news" flashes regarding trivial "developments" in line with profitability, gaining from lying violates journalistic ethics and the mentality involved is sordid. At the very least, that journalistic strategy enables a personality disorder. For example, twelve hours before the declared zero hour ending at midnight, voices presumably screaming in Blitzer's ear-piece would not tolerate even five or ten minutes on the Iran talks then concluding, even though similar voices had saturated the entire morning with hours of unrestrained verbal diarrhea ad nauseam zooming in on every little twist and turn. The refusal to break away from a dearth of real news to briefly cover a story being heavily reported on that day by news networks around the world is a huge red flag begging to be examined. The pathogen goes far deeper than merely a tunneled perspective and even a lack of judgment (in one's own field!). At the subterranean level at CNN must lie a dysfunctional organizational culture enabled by the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
To be sure, an actual default by the U.S. Government would have serious economic implications. Sen. John McCain reported that the likely impact on the market, according to Wall Street bankers and stock analysts, would be "very, very negative." That the media used "Armageddon" rather than "very, very negative" and referred to October 17th as "the magic day" and to midnight there of as "Zero Hour" is a red flag. Even if most of us are color-blind, the choices that were made in the (misuse of) discretion say something about the mentality underneath the carefully-cropped haircuts. Meanwhile, the continuing partisan remarks by members of Congress belie their artful shrieks that the sky would soon fall unless the other party caves. For days, the public had been blanketed with baleful warnings of imminent catastrophe. In other words, if the lawmakers really did think a financial meltdown might occur, they would not be prioritizing political points unless risking their own wealth, not to mention the U.S. economy (and thus their jobs), was of no concern.
Days before the public new that a deal was in the works in the Senate, Sen. Reid's "Don't screw it up" comment was caught by a microphone as the mayor of Washington, D.C. stopped the majority leader on the Capitol steps to ask for enough money to operate the city (including trash pick up). What is the it? A grammar detective would point to the missing antecedent as being very suspicious.
Also suspicious, with even just 12 hours to go before the global financial system could turn into a pumpkin at midnight, the Dow Industrials was up more than 100 points. Had the traders and major investors believed that an actual default was possible, the dire consequences coming with even low probability would have been factored into the market. The Wall Street elite must have known that even a House vote well after zero hour would not trigger a default. In short, the countdown clocks and word of a zero hour were both a ruse perpetrated on an beguiled public (you and me). Feels nice, doesn't it? Yet we continue right along in the matrix.
I submit for your consideration the possibility that Congressional lawmakers, the president, Wall Streeters, and even perhaps the media already knew that Act 3 would end with a dramatic (i.e., attention-grabbing) climax and a favorable ending. With the "it" set, the incumbents could enact various displays like peacocks to give themselves political cover or simply look good amid all the manufactured attention. Meanwhile, the American people were being manipulated into believing in the existence of an epic bloody battle ending on time, as planned, just before "ZERO HOUR." If I am correct with this scenario, the players on the mighty stage do not deserve a standing ovation for having saved the day. Least of all are we to permit them an encore, even if one has already been pre-determined and thus inevitable.
One major criticism of the E.U. has concerned its “democratic
deficit.” The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, has taken most
of the criticism because the bureaucrats are not elected. Even though the
European Council consists of elected state executives, the state legislatures
are viewed as “closer to the people” and therefore more democratic. At the E.U.
level, the European Parliament is the most directly democratic, as the EP’s
representatives are directly elected by E.U. citizens. Therefore, one means of
reducing the “democratic deficit” has been to increase the Parliament’s
authority relative to those of the Commission and the Council. Lest it be
thought that this solution has no drawbacks, the case of whether E.U. ships
should be permitted to be beached for recycling in South Asia illustrates a
problem. From: "Federalism and the Democratic Deficit: The E.U. as Suboptimal?"
When U.S. President Barak Obama and the E.U. Presidents José Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy announced that talks would begin on a free trade agreement between the E.U. and U.S., the hope was that a sweeping deal would “largely eliminate trade tariffs and harmonize regulations across a broad range of industries” in “the world’s biggest two-way economic relationship.” [1] That E.U. ministers meeting days earlier had decided to protect the “cultural exception” to international trade rules “for the sake of preserving” the distinctive cultures of the E.U. states was cause for concern, should the U.S. seek to exempt the financial sector in exchange. [2] France had long been concerned that the English-speaking California film industry would swamp smaller French studios to the detriment of the French language and culture. Even though exceptions threatening a broader trade deal are indeed protectionist, in this case European federalism is also at issue. This factor could legitimate the exemption such that a countering U.S. exemption would not be equivalent and thus justified.
In negotiating free-trade deals with the U.S. and Japan, E.U.
officials had to reckon with differing concerns of particular state interests,
given the salience of the state governments at the E.U. level. For example,
while Germany and Britain were pushing for a deal, Nicole Bricq, the French
trade minister, was reflecting the concerns of French producers in urging
caution. The impact on trade negotiations could only be to turn them into Swiss
cheese.
Nicole Bricq, French trade minister, seeking to slow the E.U. down in negotiating free-trade deals with the U.S. and Japan. Getty Images
Just days before the House of
Commons debated whether Britain should secede from the E.U., Prime Minister
David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg, met with Herman Van Rompuy, President
(or chair) of the European Council, to discuss Cameron’s threat to veto any
proposed seven-year E.U. budget that is higher than the previous budget
(allowing for inflation). The European Commission had proposed a 5% increase
over the current budget, setting the stage for a clash of the titans across the
federal and state levels. The British refusal even to negotiate on the federal
budget exposed a major vulnerability in the E.U. itself just as it was being
relied on internationally to protect the euro from succumbing to the systemic
risk of Greece or Spain defaulting. The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.
As Greek party leaders struggled to put together a government in May 2012 after a splintering election, a major (and contentious) issue was whether to demand a renegotiation of the bailout agreement. Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left known as Syriza (which made large gains in the election), was declaring the agreement null and void given the mandate implied by the gains made on the far right and left (both being opposed to the austerity program). Tsipras believed he “had changed the debate to the point that the formerly dominant parties that had signed the loan agreement were . . . indicating they might agree to demand it be renegotiated.”[1] His statements were enough to prompt a firm Nein! from Angela Merkel in Berlin and a related “tightening of the screws” from the committee of the European Financial Stability Facility.
President Mahmoud Abbas of the
Palestinian Authority reached a deal for a unity government with Hamas on
February 6, 2012—which was also the sixtieth anniversary of the Accession Day
of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned
that a unity government with Hamas would rule out any chance of making peace
with Israel. Meanwhile, the E.U. and U.S., as well as the state of Israel, had
conditioned recognition and aid to Hamas on that party renouncing violence,
recognizing Israel, and agreeing to previous agreements reached between the
P.L.O. and Israel. In short, for all that achieving a unity government requires
in terms of hard decisions and effort, the accomplishment was not exactly
valued by Israel and the West. Aside from the baleful consequences in refusing
to recognize something of value out of stubbornness and inflexibility, Israel
and the West may have been hurting themselves by ruling out a chance for peace
at the outset.
