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europe
November 2009 
Mission Impossible?!
Posted on May 19th, 2009
by 
Albert
Albert
Timothy Garton Ash did it again.
He adressed a new role for European foreign policy. And once again he is right.
The missing link however remains a design, a perspective and and evolutionary understanding of growth dynamics for collective holons.
As Europe consists as much of regions, cities, countries and diverse identities in the sense of vertical complexity . A defining purpose for 500 milion Europeans needs to be built.
And political intention to shape Europes future according to intelligent development maps.
So diagnosis of TGA is- as nearly always- correct. it simply needs an understanding of MeshWorks, of integral poltics and of the diverse layers of european spirals.
Now TGA has the word. The article was writen for the Guardian and republished in
www.ecfr.eu
We need a European foreign policy. Improbable? Yes. Impossible. No.
Critics consider us weak and divided. But with political will and public support, we could finally get our act together
Fly-over country. An old people's home. A continent choosing irrelevance. "An international actor in a state of strategic confusion." Weak, divided and hypocritical. Perhapsburg. That is what you hear about Europe from observers in Washington, Moscow and Beijing. And that is what we Europeans have to change.
Even if you are a European with no emotional, intellectual or idealistic attachment whatsoever to the European Union – even if, that is to say, you are Britain's likely next foreign secretary, William Hague – the rational case for the 27 member states of the EU to have a stronger, more co-ordinated foreign policy is overwhelming. In a world increasingly shaped by the rise of non-European great powers, especially China, the relative power of even the largest European state has diminished, is diminishing, and will continue to diminish. (This is not to be confused with national decline: a country can simultaneously be getting richer and becoming relatively less powerful in the world.)
If you think I am talking about some remote calculus of influence abroad, the diplomats' daily salmon and wine but of marginal interest to an ordinary joe, think again. As we have all discovered in the last six months, our own jobs, life savings, mortgages, health and personal safety are directly affected by global challenges such as the worldwide financial and economic crisis, mass migration, international organised crime, climate change and the threat of pandemics – none of which can by met by any state on its own. Even on the coolest Palmerstonian calculation of national self-interest, the case for a larger concentration of power among neighbouring, economically integrated states is irrefutable.
Here in Stockholm, a group of Europeans, including think-tankers, businesspeople, writers, diplomats, civil society activists, a brace of former presidents and a bevy of former foreign ministers, met earlier this week to pursue the necessary conclusion. The US has a long-established Council on Foreign Relations, one of whose purposes is to improve American foreign policy. The recently established European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), by contrast, has to work towards the creation of a European foreign policy before it can begin to improve it. As they say in the old cookbooks: first find your hare. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the ECFR and serve on its board.)
The obstacles in the way of creating something that deserves the name of European foreign policy are large. They are institutional, political and, in the broadest sense, cultural. Europe has spent far too much time already on its institutional arrangements. The patchwork Lisbon treaty, which is certainly not a European constitution, will enable us to improve some of them, provided the Irish vote yes to it (given a few added inducements, such as each country retaining a European commissioner) in a second referendum this autumn, and the Eurosceptic Polish and Czech presidents sign what their parliaments have already voted for.
read more...
See also:
Birth Hour of First Pan European Think Tank
He adressed a new role for European foreign policy. And once again he is right.
The missing link however remains a design, a perspective and and evolutionary understanding of growth dynamics for collective holons.
As Europe consists as much of regions, cities, countries and diverse identities in the sense of vertical complexity . A defining purpose for 500 milion Europeans needs to be built.
And political intention to shape Europes future according to intelligent development maps.
So diagnosis of TGA is- as nearly always- correct. it simply needs an understanding of MeshWorks, of integral poltics and of the diverse layers of european spirals.
Now TGA has the word. The article was writen for the Guardian and republished in
www.ecfr.eu
We need a European foreign policy. Improbable? Yes. Impossible. No.
Critics consider us weak and divided. But with political will and public support, we could finally get our act together
Fly-over country. An old people's home. A continent choosing irrelevance. "An international actor in a state of strategic confusion." Weak, divided and hypocritical. Perhapsburg. That is what you hear about Europe from observers in Washington, Moscow and Beijing. And that is what we Europeans have to change.
Even if you are a European with no emotional, intellectual or idealistic attachment whatsoever to the European Union – even if, that is to say, you are Britain's likely next foreign secretary, William Hague – the rational case for the 27 member states of the EU to have a stronger, more co-ordinated foreign policy is overwhelming. In a world increasingly shaped by the rise of non-European great powers, especially China, the relative power of even the largest European state has diminished, is diminishing, and will continue to diminish. (This is not to be confused with national decline: a country can simultaneously be getting richer and becoming relatively less powerful in the world.)
If you think I am talking about some remote calculus of influence abroad, the diplomats' daily salmon and wine but of marginal interest to an ordinary joe, think again. As we have all discovered in the last six months, our own jobs, life savings, mortgages, health and personal safety are directly affected by global challenges such as the worldwide financial and economic crisis, mass migration, international organised crime, climate change and the threat of pandemics – none of which can by met by any state on its own. Even on the coolest Palmerstonian calculation of national self-interest, the case for a larger concentration of power among neighbouring, economically integrated states is irrefutable.
Here in Stockholm, a group of Europeans, including think-tankers, businesspeople, writers, diplomats, civil society activists, a brace of former presidents and a bevy of former foreign ministers, met earlier this week to pursue the necessary conclusion. The US has a long-established Council on Foreign Relations, one of whose purposes is to improve American foreign policy. The recently established European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), by contrast, has to work towards the creation of a European foreign policy before it can begin to improve it. As they say in the old cookbooks: first find your hare. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the ECFR and serve on its board.)
The obstacles in the way of creating something that deserves the name of European foreign policy are large. They are institutional, political and, in the broadest sense, cultural. Europe has spent far too much time already on its institutional arrangements. The patchwork Lisbon treaty, which is certainly not a European constitution, will enable us to improve some of them, provided the Irish vote yes to it (given a few added inducements, such as each country retaining a European commissioner) in a second referendum this autumn, and the Eurosceptic Polish and Czech presidents sign what their parliaments have already voted for.
read more...
See also:
Birth Hour of First Pan European Think Tank
Access: Public
A single olive tree, ringed by toys and a child's bicycle, stands silhouetted against a crescent moon. The sapling marks the spot where, a year ago, Jimmy Kedoshim was killed instantly by a rocket fired from Gaza while he dug his garden on a sunny Friday evening. He was 48, a father of three and a former Israeli national para-gliding champion. ”He was my friend; his wife was my son's nanny and we miss him,” says his neighbour, Chen Abrahams. Like Jimmy, she has spent most of her life in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz founded on communitarian dreams and built on the frontier of hell.The wire-fenced border with Gaza looms out of the darkness a few hundred yards away. In response to the rockets that killed Jimmy and around a dozen residents of the nearby town of Sderot, Israel bombed the Palestinian territory to rubble in an onslaught that claimed 1,400lives last winter, provoking international outrage and charges of war crimes.That attrition slowed but did not stop the Gazan missiles. Rockets still scream across the boundary, forcing residents to run for cover. Bungalows on the kibbutz are soon to be equipped with fortified rooms, and the school that Chen's nine-year-old son attends resembles a windowless bunker. ”He has known sirens and bomb shelters all his life,” she says. ”The souls of our children have been scratched by tragedy.” Despite the strain of living under perpetual threat,Chen's anger is directed against her own government. Israel, in her view, was wrong to mount its attack. ”War solves nothing,” she says. ”I want my son to grow up knowing the people of Gaza. My child, unlike theirs, has food and schoolbooks. All of us need some peace.”
Mission impossible, maybe, but for ALL the PEOPLE of the Middle East,
IT IS RESPONSIBLE & POSITIVE ACTION that IS required; NOT just talk from yet another European Body, which IS itself as much driven by the collective “top-down” legacy of the Thatcher/Blair/Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush “eras”.
Its not about Top Down. Neither Grass Roots.
Its about the formation of the European soul in diverse constellations. its not about leftist, liberal or conservative streams. its about transpartisan approaches which respect the diverse memetic landscapes in UK, Continental Core Europe, Eastern Europa and Turkey.
its about the ability shape exceutive power. Obama initiated something in US. Integrating as much as possible. However even he must make comprmises even now, after the first 100 days.
So European trangenerational and transnational core intelligencies need integration on various levels. A Top Mega Project for integral aproaches. Not for the fainthearted:):)
An excellent paper towards this historic Mega Project I found in this article from Peter Merry:
Global Change by Natural Design
Here we go…
Now reminding again what the red Queen sadf to Alice:):)
Albert
AN excellent paper indeed but as Peter Merry himself has said …
This framework - the rules of the game, if you like - are the main reason that we need simultaneous implementation of a new set of policies across the world. If they were implemented together, the whole framework would change, and create an “operating environment” which rewarded beneficial action and deterred detrimental action, so that the nation state and corporation which implemented people and planet-friendly policies would not be disadvantaged in any way but would actually increase their competitiveness. So a condition to be met in this project is the transcending of national economic interest as it is currently framed.
… and THIS CAN ONLY happen in the REAL WORLD, that the PEOPLE are faced with, as a result of the PEOPLE first coming to terms with THE BIG PICTURE ILLUSION
Thats right. After having come to terms with this illusion action is required. And with responsibility, integrity and often with sacrifice. Accepting even pain and loss. Accepting possibly profound disadvantages for a long time.
Commitment with ALL its consequences. Life choices with existential profundity and risk taking. The greater the complexity the greater the risks and possible pathologies….
One more voice about Europe -from Germany - is Peter Sloterdijk..
Read this 2005 interview:
Damned to Expertocracy
The end of democracy? Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk talks with Marius Meller about Europe's crisis and authoritarian capitalism.
The article originally appeared in German in Der Tagesspiegel, on June 24, 2005.
Peter Sloterdijk, born in 1947, teaches aesthetics and philosophy on the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. Together with Rüdiger Safranski he hosts the television show “PhilosophischeQuartett” on ZDF. His new book “Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals” (inside the internal space of world capital) has just been published by Suhrkamp Verlag.