The United States of Europe - 4

Europe is busy, busy, busy

Since 2009, this Dredd Blog series has taken a look at the complicated notion of The United States of Europe (U.S.E.)

That entity currently has the flavor known as The European Union (EU).

The main focus of this series and some associated posts (e.g. On The Origin of Security - 5, Middle East Newspaper Articles Concerning Spanking Syria, Clash of the Titans of Export) has been to show that Europe has grown up since WW-II and is now leaving home to make it on its own.

This is clearly seen by very recent developments:

The United States is considering imposing unilateral sanctions on Russia over its threatening moves in Ukraine, a shift in strategy that reflects the Obama administration's frustration with Europe's reluctance to take tougher action against Moscow, according to U.S. and European officials.

Until now, the U.S. has insisted on hitting Russia with penalties in concert with Europe in order to maximize the impact and present a united Western front. The European Union has a far stronger economic relationship with Russia, making the 28-nation bloc's participation key to ensuring sanctions packages have enough teeth to deter Russia.

But those same economic ties have made Europe fearful that tougher penalties against Russia could boomerang and hurt their own economies. After weeks of inaction, the officials say the U.S. is now prepared to move forward alone if EU officials fail to enact strong sanctions during a meeting Wednesday in Brussels.

(U.S. Preparing Unilateral Sanctions On Russia, emphasis added). This is a pattern that is developing behind the scenes as the default pattern.

That is, The United States of Europe is standing up to The United States of America on more and more issues:

Annex Statement of Heads of State or Government

The Heads of State or Government discussed recent developments concerning possible intelligence issues and the deep concerns that these events have raised among European citizens.

They underlined the close relationship between Europe and the USA and the value of that partnership. They expressed their conviction that the partnership must be based on respect and trust, including as concerns the work and cooperation of secret services.

They stressed that intelligence gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism. This applies to relations between European countries as well as to relations with the USA. A lack of trust could prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering.

The Heads of State or Government took note of the intention of France and Germany to seek bilateral talks with the USA with the aim of finding before the end of the year an understanding on mutual relations in that field. They noted that other EU countries are welcome to join this initiative.

They also pointed to the existing Working Group between the EU and the USA on the related issue of data protection and called for rapid and constructive progress in that respect.

(ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6). The pattern is that other nations no longer trust the U.S. to have their interests at heart.

The nations of Europe are more and more seeing the U.S. as "a user" because of our self-serving foreign policy based on imperialism (American Feudalism - 6).

The previous post in this series is here.