Wow.  Sounds like the next play out of PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" -- the next objective under the so-called Pax Americana.

Creeps me out.  So much for the right of sovereign nations to democratic self-determination. 

P.S. The ironic thing is that their whole setup with their little group is soooo old European salon/court circle. I guess that's ok because Strauss said so? ;-)

The Neocons know that American resources alone will soon be inadequate to their overreaching dreams, so they hope to raise auxiliaries in the outlying provinces of the Empire. 

More delusional thinking out of the bubble. 

 

Oceania?

Does this mean America can withdraw it's troops from Europe? And quit paying for bases and stuff? No bases in Romania or other silly ideas like that?

It would certainly help the budget.

ash

['Why do I suspect those guys would be sent to some other foreign country?']

Looks like the boys in the band are getting a little anxious over that really huge elephant in the international room--China.  Like magnets with a very predictable set of properties, these nuts love polarity.  Actually, they NEED polarity, so they can talk in simplistic either/or tones of good and evil.

I suspect they imagine an alliance between the U.S. and Europe along not just corporate lines (already in place) but in terms of world-dominating ideology.

 

I'd like to propose a club called "Slap Neocons Across the Room".  It's purpose: To enlist enough people to, literally, slap Neocons from one end of a room to the other whenever they are seen in public.  Why slap rather than punch?  Because getting slapped around is very degrading especially to these neo-tough guys.

Many Europeanists say that the reason the establishment in Europe support the admission of Turkey to the EU so strongly (despite the number of single-issue voters who oppose the admission of Turkey) is that Turkey, unlike any European country, has a true professional, battle-ready army.  Turkey is a country like no other in the 21rst century--the very brightest of Turkey's college graduates often seek careers in the army. 

 I find it amusing that neo-cons are probably dismantling the American imperial prerogative faster than Dennis Kucinich might have.  By saying no to making Afghanistan a NATO mission, and by going against NATO leaders in Iraq, the US has discredited NATO as a protective force for the EU.  This, in combination with EU  plans to create a continent-wide defense policy, further combined with the manpower and expertise of Turkish soldiers in the EU, seems likely to create the beginnings of an independent,  democratically led, military rival to the US.  The next time we try invading a middle eastern country, might we see Turkish and Russian peacekeepers under European command stationed there to mediate and prevent us from going in?  We might.

Bill Kristol and his Neo-Con buddies will be laughed to scorn on this one. The Europeans know who he is and who the rest of those ideological idiots are because they get real news and they can define neo-con forward and backward and they know how they have been placed on our government and in the media while most Americans don't yet have a clue.   

So they  are going to  teach the Europens how  "to keep confidence in our values".   They should be a real hit about like Karen Hughes.

Maybe one day a creative spirit will write a musical in the tradition of  Gilbert and Sullivan about Bush and the Neo-Cons.  It is sad, pathetic, tragic and shameful, but one day we may be able to see it as black humor; that may be the only way we can file it in the dust bin of history and still keep our sanity.  

 

 

 

Although the scenario noted was a bit fantastical, even for the nonimmediate future, several issues come to mind.

First relates right back to the notion of a 'strong' Europe -- as a tool of US imperialism or as an independent bloc?  Riche's question is poignant, reminiscent of the book very popular in Japan a few years ago The Japan That Can Say No.  As an American, and neither an anti-American 'US out of North America' type American nor an isolationist of any kind, I think it is about time Europe and Japan, and a number of other countries in the mainstream of global politics who, not as enemies of the US but as allies of good sense, such as the current governments of India and South Africa and others got together to say no to rampant US imperialism. 

Can this be done?  It would represent a reaction to imperialist overreaching by the US, a limiting responsive force that would in a sense fulfil mrbenjones' idea that Bush has done more to limit US imperialism than Kucinich might ever do.  That latter notion, also found in the reknowned Marxist Gabriel Kolko's reasoning that W Bush was better than Kerry in 2004 as the former's unilateral imperialism was unsustainable, mixes wish and fact analysis.   The drive and need for limitation of US imperialism is there, but between the conception and the creation falls the shadow, to paraphrase TS Eliot.  It would be nice to see some kind of move to limitation, but so far I haven't seen it.   For all the talk about France and Germany opposing the Iraq War (while Japan has more or less tacitly accepted US policy in silence), none of these governments demonstrate the spine that would be necessary; indeed they are a little like the Democratic Party -- not so bad as the alternative, but not courageous enough to make it really matter.

I think that in Europe, Japan and other countries, like Australia, the demand for such an internationalist vision should be the primary underpinning of the peace movement.  One idea along these lines that I have suggested persistently (although after one NGO president agreed to take this before his UN NGO for approval, it then mysteriously disappeared, although he still sends me his unsolicited mass emails) is that there be as soon as possible a UN General Assembly Special Session on Iraq.  No veto power in the hands of the Security Council or NATO.  Just the community of nations before the press of the world telling it like it is, and starting the process of transition from the current occupation of Iraq to a genuinely automous government.  It might also be possible to initiate negotiations with the forces of resistance that are fighting the Coalition of the Willing, this without any implicit praising of these 'freedom fighters' who reliably are reported to have daily executions with children forced to watch in cities that they control, and other treats.   The point is that the process of negotiation might help bring forward a political leadership of the resistance that is other than an embodiment of brutality, and integrate many of the less noxious elements of the resistance into a truly broad-based and stable government.

But the issue of US imperialism did not begin in Iraq and does not end there.  Frankly, I am not gung-ho about NATO as the center of a new policy order, and was never enthusiastic at all about the expansion of NATO as the model for future security in Europe.  The OSCE and other organizations should deal more with European issues, while NATO, basically a Cold War institution, would be better off -- as far as the human interest is concerned -- on the back burner, 'just in case'.   The idea of a Europe united with Russia against the US in the foreseeable future in the form of even the kind of military challenge mentioned above seems outside the realm of the possible for the near or medium term future.  (Long term, as they say, anything is possible).

       But a firmer independent voice, including not just governments willing to stand for this position, an international platform of sorts, but even NGOs, political parties in particular countries, even if out of power, and others could provide a force, running for the European Parliament and other goals.

And don't expect Turkish membership in the EU any time soon.

I would be interested in what Mr Riche thinks of this idea, and what kinds of specific elements would be included in this anti-imperialist mainstream international platform centered in European societies like France.

Since in French, "con" means both "obnoxious" and "moron," the French will no doubt be grateful to the neo-cons for calling themselves what they are.

Pascal,

The neocons are chastened a bit, and have readjusted their strategy - but only slightly.  This new statement is merely a call to expand the neoconservative agenda beyond America to Europe.  It's benevolent hegemony plus.  We need to get strapped in intellectually, because this ideological battle will be the next big thing.

The neo-euro-cons clearly seek a militarily strong and globally assertive Atlanticist alliance to play the hegmonic and interventionist role that, ten years ago, they envisaged for America alone - and to share the costs.  They do seem to recognize that the American "unipolar moment" is over, but they still think the neocon cause can still be salvaged by enlarging the pole somewhat, and seizing on the possibility of creating a Euro-American unipolar moment.  They will try to build an alliance with those conservative, and newly conservative, Europeans who take a hard line toward Russia, China and the Muslim world, and see themselves as engaged in a struggle to preserve European values and civilization against the encroaching Eastern hordes, particularly the Muslim immigrants to Europe.

The movement will likely be characterized by the same themes  of cultural chauvinism and exceptionalism that mark American neoconservatism.  But American exceptionalism will be replaced with Western exceptionalism; with diatribes against civilizational decline, and the moral degeneracy and weakness of the contemporary left-liberal or Social Democratic West; and with calls to reject the pacifistic and socialitic tendencies of modern Europe, and recapture the past glories of the older, more assertive, conquering West.

Expect more paens to the Alexandrine conquests and Hellenism; to the civilizational glories and martial spirit of Rome; and to the  the Crusades and the 1400-year battle against the islamic hordes.  The characteristic neocon moral triumphalism will exalt the classical, Judaic and Christian culture of the West, and demean and disparage the Oriental Despotism of Islamic, Chinese and Asian Russia.

The same philosophical and political hatreds we see in American neoconservatism will remain.  They will remain steeped in their hatred of detente, of realism, of diplomacy, of socialism, of international  law, and above all, of Islam.  And they will focus much energy on the "enemies within" - the liberals and "self-hating Europeans" or "self-hating Westerners" who are weakening us through their treasonous and cowardly rejection of our superior cultural heritage.

As with American neoconservativism, they will take great pains to hide their own modernism and secular outlook, grounded in the enlightenment and classical pagan values, by building cynical and deceitful alliances with uneducated and easily duped religious conservative and ultranationalist elements.  An interesting challenge for them will lie in how they deal with the legacy of fascism.  In order to appeal to elements of the neo-fascist right, expect them to begin a dishonest intellectual campaign to distinguish "healthy" varieties of early fascism from later "degenerate" and virulently anti-Semitic forms.  (See the writings of Michael Ledeen for hints about the approach to be taken.)

The neo-euro-cons will also be challenged in the position they forge toward the European Union.  The Union serves their interests to the extent that it can be recruited to the side of the Euro-American alliance.  But the neocons tend to despise the universalist, conciliatory and realistic outlook of the Europeanists.  Many Europeans regard the process of development of the European union as an inspiration and model for a broader global union yet to be built.  That attitude - which lays more stress on conflict resolution, conciliatory diplomacy, noninterventionism and negotiated economic cooperation with countries China, Russia and Iran - revolts and terrifies the neocons who regard it both weak and amoral.

Their call should appeal to many Europeans of both the Christian Democratic and traditional rightist varieties, and it dovetails nicely with new conservative trends in Europe, including the Catholic chauvinism of Pope Benedict.

One last thing: I suspect they will also call on Europeans to reproduce more - at least non-Muslim Europeans.

Is there any proof, link or otherwise, that this is NOT a hoax?

Neithr the post here not the one linked in french has anything but rumour. The "document" at the french site is a plain text - no names or anything given. The link to the AEI is to discussion from 2002.

 

As long as there is nothing else I can not believe this is true. It's a nice for satire though.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the neocons up in arms a while back about the Rapid Reaction Force, the closest Europe has come to a coherent, unified defence force/policy, insisting that it must operate under NATO control?

The PNAC confirmed the information. See this article this morning in Libération:

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=328188 

Europee + Japan is a very good point. Culturally Japan is atually much closer to Europe in the ways that count, or Canada for that matter.

They may play American Baseball and not Cricket, but they socially, economically, and militarially they're more like Europeans.

Try reading this thread with my usual admonition in mind -- that the 'neocon' movement in the USA is really a front for worldwide white supremacy, the Darwinist pseudo-philosophy which states that everything possible must be done ('by any means necessary') to see that white people prosper at the expense of non-white people.
It's Naziism, plain and simple -- the crypto-submersion of the original teachings of Hitler and his 'master-race' elite.  They are playing all the same games, except a bit more skillfully now, because their objective must be to conduct their genocidal policies 'behind closed doors', so that the public doesn't see what they are up to.

Globally, a 'strong Europe' is code-words for 'keep white people on top by any means necessary'.  And you can bet that non-Europeans understand this truth.  When you see US neocons like the PNACzis going after European politics now, it is a tacit admission that they have lost one of the battles in their struggle for white supremacy, because they realize that the USA is now too vulnerable to serve as the foil and vehicle for their schemes -- the progressive and anti-fascist backlash is overwhelming them.

If you employ the 'filter' I suggest, you will see, I think, that most of the discutants at this site don't 'get it' -- because by and large, white people, anyone of a halfway decent sort, anyway, are in complete denial of their own white privilege and prejudices.  The whole discussion makes immensely more sense when you factor in the unfolding of organized racism on the international scene.

The major advantage that the racists have is that people are reticent to name racism -- it always seems to be the last thing people want to mention.  Effectively, the neocons are even able to recruit non-whites like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to their cause, because they stick to the ueber-text about 'democracy' and 'freedom', never referring honestly to their sub-text of 'we've got to keep whites on top of the global hierarchy of race'.

"In the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility.  The broad masses of a nation are always more deeply corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily.  Thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in small matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."
-- Adolf Hitler, from 'Mein Kampf' ('My Struggle')

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie.  It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie -- and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister
-- John Wilmerding, Brattleboro, VT, USA