German Foreign Policy Instiute worried about Paris London axis.
Dateline: 11th September 2012
Those who have been following the Freenations website for many years will perhaps recall the article comparing Europe and German expansionism in 1904 with similar moves evident in 2004. www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2004-09-29.html So many parallels between the pre First World war and 2004 were evident, particularly in the Balkans, that even the dozy British Foreign Office, awakening at last in the early 21st century, have been moved to cooperate with Paris to check the German advance! Those threats are well documented in my books Europe’s Full Circle and Fascist Europe Rising(available through this website see Publications) and recent comments from German and Austrian politicians have hardly lessened the threatening tone:
Angela Merkel’s CDU budget expert, Klaus-Peter Willsch, speaking of ECB bail outs said that “Germany, as the main creditor, must have a right to veto any decision.” On the fiscal pact Merkel said: “The debt brakes will be binding and valid for ever never will you be able to change them through a parliamentary majority”. Thomas Straubhaar, director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, called for the establishment of a “European protectorate” over Greece and Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter suggested that Greece could be thrown out of the EU as a result of its economic crisis.
1904 saw the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France as a response to growing German industrial and imperial power and the 2010 military agreement between France and Britain envisaged sharing military capacity (including aircraft carriers) and funding advanced military technology as well as a joint international force of 6,000 troops (The Combined Joint Expeditionary Force) acting under both Governments – but NOT under the European Union.
While it has been evident for some time that France’s naïve attempt to rein in German power through the imposition of the Euro had backfired (with German power growing as France’s declined, Paris-Berlin tensions over their cooperation in EADS the aircraft manufacturer and Berlin dictating the entire response to the economic and financial catastrophe which is the Eurozone) it has become obvious to the French that London after all represents a better military and industrial ally than Berlin with the possibility of French action outside the confines of the EU and using the joint power of two “sovereign nations”. The joint air attack in aid of Libyan revolutionaries was a prime example. France and Britain found common cause in that affair while the French foreign policy establishment might well have recalled their suspicions of the German initiated break ups of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and industrial and commercial expansion into Eastern Europe on the back of EU membership and EU “citizenship”.
Britain’s future nuclear powered electricity industry is almost entirely dependent on the French electricity company EDF and for many years our sea going airforce is going to be launched from French aircraft carriers. As German Foreign Policy reports, this close cooperation in such vital sectors has unnerved German foreign policy experts at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) (German Society for Foreign Policy) who worry that the decades of political, economic and military cooperation with Paris is coming to an abrupt end. At best this is a French attempt to diversify its foreign policy assets. At worst it is a deliberate well thought out reaction to German industrial power, German economic success, and German financial dictatorship of the terms of interminable Euro-zone rescue packages. Sotto voce it might be even more significant – a reaction against the European Union’s increasing integration and the constraints on French national sovereignty. German politicians not long ago were claiming that “Europe now speaks German”. If it does then the words are not very flattering. “Fourth Reich” they shout in Spain, “Heil Merkel” they shout in Athens!
DGAP therefore suggests a big build up of Franco German military cooperation in the military and in the armament industries in order to counter the new Entente Cordiale with Britain. There has long been a German French military brigade, a joint training school for helicopter pilots and the massive EADS, Europe’s largest aircraft and space business.
Now, according to German Foreign Policy, France and Britain find that they “agree to a great extent on their strategic positions on international crises” and have even gone so far as preparing basic defence documents cooperating on defence white papers and national security strategies. The combination of two sovereign states defence budgets (however diminished by the current crisis) will raise the level of high technology innovation for defence – one area being in drone technology. This now well established Franco British cooperation in armed services, in military strategy, in nuclear power and defence production is now complemented by a Franco British interest in forcing the European Central Bank to exploit German economic power to rescue the bankrupt nations of the Mediterranean – not least because they might soon be joined by France!
So even in these strategic fields of defence, armaments, nuclear power and aerospace German Europe’s attempts to build a centralised, integrated United States of Europe have led instead to increased resentment, fragmentation and a slow return to cooperation between nation states. A lesson for the entire EU “project”.
Rodney Atkinson
11th September 2012
