The European Union:
diplomacy against the odds
Matthew writes:
A few months ago, I wrote my first research paper on the European Union--I'm a rookie. My generalized knowledge is limited. Regardless, I know what I know. I do know that the EEC is, indeed, diplomacy against the odds; furthermore, it's a semblance of all that is good in mankind...nothing worth doing is easy.
While researching the EEC I was reading an issue of The Economist from the early 1980s. The cover was dismal: basically, there was a tombstone with EEC on it and an epitaph that stated something like 'It could have been a great power, then it tried to be one.' In short, it reflected the derision and pessimism directed at the EEC's progress.
However, by now, the EU has demonstrated its resilience; plus, the organization has a currency that exchanges for American currency at 90%...that's progress. Its market facilitates the future; it is to be venerated and cared for.
Any reasonable patron of history and politics can see the unique accomplishment behind the EU, for the institution has fought its way through half a century of hell and protectionism.
Did Robert Schuman actually believe his European Coal and Steel Community would, in every practical sense, become the success that is the EU today...how the times change.
The inevitable question is how. Indeed, how has the EU managed to cope with so much? The answer resides in the fact that the EU was conceived and implemented as a communal effort; it was, and still is, an endeavor anchored in the art of reconciliation and deference.
Today, one can envisage the EU as enveloping the most noble of virtues: forgiveness, competition, trust, pride, progress, and perhaps most important of all,
resolve. It is facilitating the future, and it will be successful, in the end.
As it continues to grow, and it certainly will, problems will come and go, but it will be there...for God's faithful to strengthen.
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Related:
•
The Idea of United European
Nations
•
The European Prospect
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