The explicit reality of ‘closed covenants’ is what drove the monarchies toward extinction in World War One. Given that Parliaments throughout Europe are intrinsically unsteady, many hewed from unenumerated Republican ideals make them easily susceptible to the soft demographic insurgency of Islamism. If Europe has a Christian foundation, it must find a way out of the thicket of militant secular humanism, if it is to survive.
England comes to mind as the centerpiece upon which the edifice stands or falls. England has no enumerated constitution. Its a Republican regime within a hereditary monarchy. It will NOT sustain any longterm engagement with Islam. This is why Brexit negotiations ought to be fought out along lines of engagement that strengthen the concept of a nation state. British sovereignty isn’t coupled to any exclusive racial component that we see throughout the continental interior, so if England can survive a retrenchment out of Brussels, it can prepare for “the long war” and survive. If not, it enters this protracted conflict weakened, inward and unresolved.
Looking over the Continent throughout 2016 I identified several populist movements that openly repudiate the transnational model of an ‘ever closer union’. These are basically reactionary populist movements that seek a return to the nation state properly understood.
The U.S. could assist in the remaking of a continental wide nation state system, IF it could fix its monetary policy toward sound money in a new Bretton Woods agreement. Monetary reform partisans in both the House & Senate failed team Trump’s effort to replace Chair Yellen with someone with sound money credentials. Given how the House failed to repeal and replace Obamacare only added to the leadership gap characterizing this president’s first year in office.
Having entered the White House seeking domestic renewal, Trump has repeatedly been drawn into conflicts from North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and others, not to mention the entire continent of Africa. The world after the demise of Russian Marxism has spawned social, ideological revolutions, insurgencies, counter-insurgencies and limited wars that could easily exhaust the pax Americana. This is why Mattis, McMaster and most of team Trump’s National Security Council members sought to work through local regional governments in the attempt to stem the tide of Islamism. This isn’t new, but it damages the kind of working ethos our Defense department is used to dealing with. The tone throughout combatant commanders in regional conflicts the world over is this: do more with less. That means our immediate future rests with light infantry. Just look at the Iranians.
How does this working environment resemble the 19th century?
We’ve entered an anarchic international area of criminal syndicates, narco-terrorism, weak states whereby faltering nation states must rely on armed strength, diplomacy and alliances. Power matters in this type of conflict and the U.S. regime has sought to temper its reach and grasp by working through its alliance system. It means State, Defense and the entire working bureaucratic albatross must be shaped from within our Republican system, IF its going to work in gaining traction by strengthening local governance. This is the new ethos required for ‘the long slog’; and it isn’t welcomed in the halls of our Defense establishment.
Watch for regional developments in realpolitik from the Saudi’s as they openly seek an alliance with Israel. Watch Moscow openly solicit Istanbul (Ankara) in its need to safeguard Syria’s Iranian proxies.
As for China, he doesn’t seek to breed revolutionary aims throughout Asia but hegemony in the ethically divergent southern littoral where the Han masters have always been hated.
The goal for all these Plutocrats is simple: self preservation. But in seeking to sustain their own rule at home, they’ve sought alliances to damage the American’s. We should oblige them and make them learn what Machiavelli knew at heart: make your enemies fear you!
William Holland
William Holland 