Eurocrats can almost taste the collapse of their grand experiment in world government. And they aren't very happy.
President Donald Trump has joined Russia, China and radical Islam as a threat to Europe, the president of the European Council Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
In a letter to national leaders before a summit that he will chair in Malta to prepare the European Union's future after Britain leaves, the conservative former Polish prime minister called on Europeans to stick together to avoid domination by three other continental powers.
Saying the E.U. faces its biggest challenges in its 60-year history, the senior official said an "assertive China,""Russia's aggressive policy" toward its neighbors, "radical Islam" fueling anarchy in the Middle East and Africa were key external threats. These, he said, "as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration, all make our future highly unpredictable."
"Radical Islam" is largely a threat to Europe because of the policies of the European Union. Though the past policies of the British, French and German governments, not to mention Russia, get plenty of the blame. And for that matter the United States. But it was the EU that set off this current crisis. Most notably Merkel who is now the pillar of the EU.
Leaders in Brussels have been particularly concerned that Trump has supported Brexit and spoken of other countries following Britain out of the bloc.
"The disintegration of the European Union will not lead to the restoration of some mythical, full sovereignty of its member states, but to their real and factual dependence on the great superpowers: the United States, Russia and China," Tusk wrote to the E.U. leaders. "Only together can we be fully independent."
Except when you can't make policy, control your borders or leave the EU... then you are the opposite of independent.
Dependency is more of a concern for Poland than it is for the UK or France. But there must be a better way of maintaining a European alliance and the independence of the individual nation states. And even within the EU, some porcines are more equal than others. The trouble with the EU is that it has more to do with leftist obsessions of global government than with a viable European system.
Now the utopian experiment is coming apart.