Chris Patten, the European Union’s commissioner for external relations, has said that without UN authority for a war against Iraq, the EU will find it difficult to release funds for the rebuilding of Iraq after the war. Among other things he said the following:
"As a general rule, are wars not more likely to recruit terrorists than to deter them? It is hard to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, when history suggests it is more usually the product of long internal development in a society."
Germany is also a member of the European Union.
Nice slam, "Germany is also a member of the EU."
But, for the sake of scrutiny, is it not the case that germany’s democracy was rather impossed upon them by Napoleon and the need for military strength? Bismark tried his best... but democracy came, and the way in which it proceeded ended up forming a lot of the legal theory which is undermining american law today (see, Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty) Germany was a tetering democracy/monarchy of sorts... The first war came. A weak germany encouraged Hitler. The second war arrived. Seeds of the UN and League of Nations planted. Germany was divided and conquered. All of Europe was replanted under the Marshall plan to protect democracy from communism. Germany was reunited when the Berlin wall fell, all was to be perfect, there was a sentiment of unity. Really the EU is a product of long fermenting internal developments in Germany. The EU is a product of the german and french enlightenment. We should withdraw from the UN, if Britain could save itself it would withdraw from the EU and the UN.
So yeah Germany is a member of the EU, but who literally willed the EU into existence?
Some crazy stuff happened in the 19th and 20th century not the least bit of which didn’t involve a gun...which in my opinion raises questions about the European brand of "liberal-democracy" and the importance of the objective content of such a word. The actual history of this brand was a product of the constant collision of Bildung with gun-powder and guilotine.
Those who praise nation building and even many who don’t hail the Marshall Plan, but I have my doubts even here. That the EU threatens not to help rebuild Iraq, and that we would expect them to do so means a lot more than I am capable of understanding.