It’s a done deal!
“Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia are all set to join the EU in May 2004.”
Following an intense round of Gallic shrugging, Belgian glad-handing, German tax raising, Italian bribing and Swedish introspection, Brussels has munificently agreed to don the mantle of the late Soviet Union and squat like a toad on the peoples of Eastern Europe.
My message to the ten lucky winners of ‘Economic Jeopardy’: you guys need your collective heads tested! Don’t you know that there is no destination printed on that ticket you’ve just bought to ride the Great Rattling Train of Regulation?
Still, there is hope for the Turks, left yapping like angry terriers outside as the stone gates of the Belgian Empire slammed shut in their faces:
“European leaders meeting at a landmark EU Summit in Copenhagen this week thwarted Turkish and Anglo-American hopes for early negotiations for the country’s entry into the European Union, opting instead for a review of its progress on its economy, human rights and democracy by the end of 2004.”
A review!! Oh come on, we all know what that means. Sometime towards the end of 2004 a roomful of enarques in Brussels will take some time out from their daily task of grinding out reams of pointless legislation to call up Jacques Chirac and ask him if he has changed his mind about the Saracens. ‘Non’. Review complete.
No, the real mystery is why the US appears to be so keen to stuff Turkey into the Euro-oven. Do they think it will strengthen the EU? Why would they want to do that? Have they not been keeping up with current events in the State Department?
Or, alternatively, perhaps they realise only too well that the French and Germans are never going to accede to Turkish membership and are therefore sponsoring the proposition in order to lever open a few nascent cracks?
Of course, if Washington wants to be really smart they could always drop a line to Ankara offering them membership of NAFTA. The Turkish terriers would snap at it, I’d wager. They clearly want to join the West. They want to be in the rich boys’ club. Oo-oo-oo I wanna be like you-oo-oo. So let them. In fact, Washington could really set the cat amongst the Princely pigeons by going further and offering NAFTA status to the ten soon-to-be-strangled-in-red-tape candidates above as well.
Of course the EUnuchs would be furious. Wouldn’t want that now, would we (snigger!).
My message to the Turks; we Brits are in and want out, you’re out and want in. Fancy a swap?
Swap, are you demented? If a FTA is created the first offers of membership will be to our Allies: the Brits, Ozzies and Kiwis. Next in line would be Turkey and then the Czechs, Poles and perhaps a few others. Associate membership (to be defined): Spain, Italy and perhaps Norway and the Danes.
Purely a coincidence that this would encircle the EUnicks.
Were Britian to join, no doubt the French would ask their East German friends to wall off your Chunnel.
Edward,
If you were to do this, I think you should also include Iceland and Norway in the first tranche of candidates.
This emphasis on the Anglosphere ignores the contribution that some countries make to US defence. Cultural affiliation is less important than existing alliances.
I understand the Turks have already approached the Bush administration regarding NAFTA membership. They described the meeting in warm terms.
😉
Chile is all but in. I’m fairly certain that Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey and Isreal are welcome. If the eastern Europeans would rather join NAFTA than be joined to the EU, I’m sure something can be done.
As much as we’d love to have’m, I’m under the impression that large majorities in the UK and Ireland would rather be a part of the EU than citizens of independent nations in NAFTA.
The E.U. hands out 80,000 pages of documents just to give people a “general idea” (not the details) of the regulations they will have to impose if their countries join (this does not include all the FUTURE regulations of course).
And some people in Washington D.C. still think of the E.U. as “sort of a free trade zone” rather than the collectivist (and fanatically antiAmerican) want-to-be superstate that it is.
Wait a sec–ISTR somebody telling me (on another political discussion mailing list) that Turkey is already in an FTA with the US (and so is Israel, he said).
Sorry–this was from quite awhile back, and anyway, I don’t recall my correspondent really giving any details; he simply stated that Turkey and Israel are each already in their own FTA with the US.
Does anyone here know any further details about this? Isn’t this pretty much the same thing as NAFTA membership? What’s the differance?
BTW, this discussion reminds me that a few years back, the former US House Speaker Gingrich, as well as the Canadian publisher Conrad Black, both publicly suggesting that the UK join NAFTA. What ever became of this idea? (A few years ago, when I tried to follow up on this idea, I came across a VIRULENTLY Anti-American [practically proto-Nazi, if one would subtitute “Jew” for Americans”] British op-ed piece lambasting the idea). Are there any groups or leaders still promoting this?
Regarding Chile and Australia:
Don’t think Chile will ever be allowed in. Conservative and Libertarian groups have been advocating this since forever; but America’s Organized Labor, and their Leftist institutional allies, are too strong for that. Organized Labor realized the “mistake” they made in “allowing” NAFTA, and they wont’ repeat it again. Besides, Chile is a “Latin American” nation, and [sarcasm]”everyone knows” (of course!)[/sarcasm] that the evil greedyCorporate Elite would want Chile in “only” so they can build more maquiladoras there. And besides, “everyone knows” that NAFTA only benefitted the Corporate Elite and that Mexico is still some kind of slave-colony…and Chile is also some kind of slave colony too, thanks to Pinochet’s neoliberalism and all that, yada-yada-yada…yes, it’s stupid, but this Leftist prejudice is so prevalent, so ingrained, and practically immune to things like “facts.” This is, more or less, a “popular” attitude. If Chile was ever seriously considered being admitted to NAFTA, there will be plenty of ignorant letters being sent to American newspapers and posted to the Web….
As for Australia, again I can’t see that happening. Isn’t there supposed to be a lot of Anti-American bigotry there? What about that very-negative reaction to that Post-Bali letter from their Prime Minister… “Everyone” was saying that the Bali massacre was America’s fault, and that if only Autralia would have the “wisdom” to ditch America, the Islamists will leave them alone… or something like that… Again, anybody know anything else about this? How would the Australian electorate/public really react to Australian inclusion in NAFTA?
As for Eastern Europe, that’s also similar to Chile; the idea of including Eastern Europe in NAFTA has been discussed in American Conservative and Libertarian circles since the Revolutions of 1989, but I can’t recall seeing any discussion of this concept in the mainstream media. But IF the discussion were to go mainstream–again, like Chile: “cheap labor, cheap labor…lax enviromental law…benefitting the Evil Corporations…yadda-yadda…” With additional commentary (with supporting news footage of poor people) on how much poorer the Eastern Europeans are without their former socialist safety net, etc.
Maybe the American public/electorate *might* accept Britain or Australia joining NAFTA, and maybe enough people are informed-enough about Chile, but would they accept “impoverished” Eastern
Europe?
Does anyone know of any groups or leaders pushing for such an expanded NAFTA? I would like to learn more about such advocates, how they can be supported, etc. (I can’t recall any real discussion of this in the mainstream.)