EU-US Integration and the More Equal Citizen

A recent European Union Parliamentary press release called for President Obama to politically and economically integrate the United States with the European Union. The measures would create two councils: the Political Council, charged with setting a common foreign security policy; and the Economic Council overseeing unification of the markets. I expect integration would also include changes in citizenship based upon the EU Citizens Programme guidelines. The programme creates a global citizen, or an EU citizenship which is “open to the world”.

Expected to preside over the Political Council would be EU High Representative for Common Foreign Security Policy, a position presently held by Javier Solana. The role of the U.S. Congress would be that of “making proposals” rendering it as powerless as the European Parliament. Should this integration take place, global governance stakeholders will have achieved what Alliance of Civilizations’ Giandomenico Picco called for at the 2005 Madrid Counter-Terrorism Conference—a “Safe Democracy”—one in which national parliaments no longer are the “monopolist voice of the people”. Bear in mind that the UN Alliance of Civilizations initiative is the globalization of Solana’s social cohesion policies.

The press release also called upon the U.S. to ratify and accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Ratification would subject American citizens to prosecution by the world court for human rights violations. Stakeholders in the global governance apparatus openly tell us what they consider to be human rights violations: political dissent; monotheistic religious belief or belief systems not condusive to sustainable development; separatist or divisive thought; etc. Anything identified as interfering with the “common humanity’s” joining into a “collective whole” has been declared to be an “enemy of the civilization”. For example:

• “UNESCO promotes respect for all dimensions of cultural diversity since it is the very fabric of humankind and the “common heritage of humanity”, as stipulated in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity…the Declaration is dedicated to preventing segregation and fundamentalism which, in the name of cultural differences, could sanctify those differences and in doing so, counter the message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As we can read…No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by international law, nor to limit their scope.” – Rosa Guerreiro, UNESCO Why terrorism? Strasbourg April 25-27, 2007
  


• “Religion as a social force can be harnessed to build bridges or manipulate to erect walls. How religion functions in society depends upon a number of factors, among them, the political, economic, and cultural environment in which the particular religion operates. Justice, love and compassion – values that are highly cherished in any religion…Since these values are universal, religion, which serves as a conduit for them, should also be preached and practised in a genuinely universal manner. This is what one expects the practitioners of religions to do in the coming century to counter the challenge of globalization. They should discard the narrow, exclusive concept of religion, which often confines virtue and goodness to one’s own kind. Justice and compassion in this exclusive approach seldom transcend one’s own religious boundaries. We should eliminate forever such religious exclusivists.” – Dr. Abduljalil Sajid, The Role of Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Fighting Terrorism, Extremism, and Intolerance and Resolving Conflicts; Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe.

The New Order has been guaranteed Rome Statute governance powers even in nations that do not ratify the statute. The UN initiative called Responsibility to Protect , or R2P, redefines nations’ sovereignties as shifting “from sovereignty as control to sovereignty as responsibility”. A nation, under the R2P framework, is subject to military intervention should it be unwilling or unable to prosecute individuals who violate international human rights laws. The rationale is that R2P’s function is to protect the human rights of the global citizen (“we the peoples of the United Nations”) which gives it the right to suspend an uncooperative nation’s sovereignty. The UN has gained support for R2P by presenting the case that it needs a mechanism to stop and prevent crimes such as genocide, an objective which is difficult to argue. It is the underlying pieces that pose the problem. The United Nations has built a case in which it has declared half of the world’s population to be terrorists. What is it that they intend to do with this population? In the interest of counter-terrorism measures, could the crime of genocide committed by the UN's hand be considered just? Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the intent is to redesign the internet and use it as a weapon against "terrorists". He also said measures would be taken to remove "terrorists" from the world’s financial system.

EU-US integration is not new. Military integration already has taken place and is recognizable in the form of the 2003 Berlin-Plus Agreement. This agreement ensures the transfer of American assets to the EU’s Political Security Committee—a committee presided over by Solana—should it be needed for crisis management. Solana interprets this to include American service personnel.

I suspect, based upon the past and present behavior of the United States, that our leadership plans to pursue integration to avoid becoming a failed state. R2P characterizes an economically collapsed nation as a sem-failed state. A failed state is where degredation occurs to the point a government is no longer able to control the population within its borders. Last year while the banks were announcing failure, Bush Administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced integration of 20,000 Rapid Reaction Forces into every major U.S. city would be forthcoming. Gates’ has continued his role as Defense Secretary under the Obama Administration. These Rapid Reaction Forces appear very similar to Solana’s Headline Goal Battlegroups. Already, within the United States, there are signs that UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy language is now being incorporated in counter-terrorism training materials. Missouri law enforcement counter-terrorism training materials have emerged indicating that the police should look for signs such as third-party political bumper stickers, political dissent, etc. in identification of terrorist suspects.

I can think of many reasons why we should not integrate, but those who have already experienced intregration pains best tell the story. Consider EU rotational President Vaclav Klaus' warnings that the European Union’s governance structures resemble that of former Soviet-era dictatorships. Or from the South American-EU integration process we have Rita Giacalone’s warnings. Dr. Giacalone, Professor of Economic History and Coordinator of the Group of Regional Integration, tells us that South American countries have entered into association agreements with with the EU out of necessity and not conviction. She conveys that integrating countries have drawn that “the EU, under the name of democracy and good governance, is imposing “a complex system of domination and management of the non Western world” and that the European project is inherently antidemocratic.