Europe and US Fiddle While Migrant/Refugee Issue Burns
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/opinion/europes-huddled-masses.html
...Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, recently told my colleague Jim Yardley, “This is not Europe. This is a nightmare.” That nightmare is one of looming fragmentation, violence and walls for the half-billion people now moving freely between Warsaw and Lisbon.
It can be averted. The Europe of today is not the Europe of the 1930s. In Berlin, Angela Merkel stands tall, a European leader of immense stature. Still, the fissuring pressures are intense.
Sometimes, as Yeats noted, “the falcon cannot hear the falconer.” We live in an age of unraveling. The postwar is over. The post-Cold War is over. The United States, under President Obama, has quietly stepped back from Europe. Washington is nowhere to be seen on the refugee crisis, the absent power, much as it was absent from the Minsk process on the Ukraine crisis.
The world is most dangerous in a power vacuum. The geopolitical divides across the world are the most marked in at least a generation. This makes every issue more intractable. The United Nations has proved a complete dud on Syria. It took almost five years, 250,000 dead and more than 11 million displaced people for the Security Council to pass a resolution on a “road map” to peace. That map, for now, is utter fiction. For as many years, Obama did nothing.
Now refugees stream from Syria and elsewhere into Europe. If they carried a banner, it should read, “Reap what you sow, feckless world.” A digital migration of epic proportions is underway. Each refugee carries a smartphone and knows his or her desired destination.
From this New Europe to New Hampshire, unpredictable forces are at play. Show me a Donald Trump, even a slightly Iowa-humbled one, and I’ll see you with a Marine Le Pen.
The strange thing is this troubled Europe has rescued the United States. That’s new.
Without Merkel’s courageous decision to take in 1.1 million refugees last year, Europe would have faced catastrophe — and America, even in an election year, could not have ignored violent mayhem among its allies as borders closed and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were cast adrift.
Another 65,000 refugees arrived in Germany in January, setting the country on course for 780,000 more this year. Some 200,000 mainly Muslim children are entering German schools. Imagine if America, which has four times the German population, were to register 800,000 mainly Muslim children in schools in a few months. On reflection, don’t even try.
Nobody knows what Germany’s limit is. But there is one. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union will turn on her if the numbers keep rising. Other European nations are not going to take significant quotas: There’s scant democratic support for the right and ethical thing to do.
So Germany has to cut a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The deal will probably see Turkey getting piles of cash — and perhaps the visa waiver that Turks desperately want from Germany — in exchange for Turkey strictly curtailing the refugee flow to an agreed number who would not have to risk their lives in flimsy boats.
Turkish politics have become German domestic politics. A troubled Europe, cast loose from America, slouches toward Ankara to be saved.
Tags
Who is online
386 visitors
Without Merkel’s courageous decision to take in 1.1 million refugees last year, Europe would have faced catastrophe — and America, even in an election year, could not have ignored violent mayhem among its allies as borders closed and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were cast adrift.
Merkel's on her way out she F'd up big time and the tide has turned against her.
A troubled Europe, cast loose from America, slouches toward Ankara to be saved.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Europe (sans England), doesn't want us, till they need us, then they think we should do their bidding. The arrogance of the old world, mixed with a new world problem.
Other European nations are not going to take significant quotas: There’s scant democratic support for the right and ethical thing to do.
So Germany has to cut a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
If you take one of those old schoolroom globes and you spin it to the right place, you will see that Europe and the Middle East and Northern Africa could be described as all one region. Of course everything is relative, but from a globally geographic perspective these are close neighbors.
Right now, the story says, the Muslim population of Europe is 6%. If this region gets it's shit together Europe can still be saved on it's historic bases. If not, Europe may irrevocably change before too long (relatively).
In any case, it is impossible for Europe to be unaffected by what happens in Turkey and Syria and Iraq. They have to step up as a group and take this more seriously.
In any case, it is impossible for Europe to be unaffected by what happens in Turkey and Syria and Iraq. They have to step up as a group and take this more seriously.
How so?
Every country in Europe should have ending the civil war in Syria as one of their top national priorities. Do they ?
The "peace talks" have been suspended because of new Russian backed attacks by the Syrian government.
Europe needs to show a united front , against Russia if necessary to create pressure for sustained peace talks. But of course some of them want to partner with Russia in various ways, so they hesitate. If Muslim migration is such a life or death issue for Europe they have to treat it as such.
The question I have asked a few times now and haven't found a decent answer to is what are the surrounding countries in the region doing to take care of this tide of refugees? Some of the richest countries in the world are right there, speaking virtually the same language, have the same customs, similar religious beliefs, etc. Why is it the U.S. and Europe that has to be the receiver of these displaced peoples?
"...what are the surrounding countries in the region doing to take care of this tide of refugees?"
Therein lies the problem...and if the right pressures were brought by the rest of the world, the solution. However, that might mean the end of pandering to the oil-producing ME nations.
There is a difference between the more limited "huddled masses" of last century who came to America, with humility and desire to assimilate, with the brazen demands and disrespect of the masses now streaming into Europe. The existing citizens are not revolting for no reason, but of course the governments and mainstream media don't want you t see what is really happening - only sometimes the actual facts slip out, and are not only ignored but laws are being threatened and passed about being critical of this "tsunami". Europe is doomed.