The End of Westphalia

You know there’s a chance that hell has frozen over when you see an article titled “A Stealth Coup d’État in the United States” published in Pravda, quoting Thomas Jefferson and authored by a retired United States Army colonel.

Democrat and Republican elected officials continue to block any objective investigation of Barack Obama’s personal history because it would reveal dereliction of duty by most and criminal conspiracy by many.

The politicians recognize that if the truth was told about the depth of the corruption and the extent of the criminality in the government, the American people would rise up in open rebellion against those who have undermined the Constitution and flouted the rule of law.

As Abraham Lincoln said, the American people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. The loyalty of the American people is to our country and our Constitution, not to shady officeholders or petty bureaucrats.

Between now and Election Day on November 6, 2012, there is a window of opportunity to stop the coup d’état, restore the Constitution, uphold the rule of law and pave the way for the election and appointment of honest members of government.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

The battle line of the Second American Revolution has been drawn: expose Obama and the entire corrupt system protecting him will also be exposed.

The time for education and persuasion is over. The time for resistance has come.

Without commenting on the substance of the article, most people will agree that it’s tone is consistent with the increasing polarization of American, and indeed global politics. It’s now “us” against “them” — everywhere. The term “stealth coup” as applied to Europe is democratic deficit, which denotes the alleged transfer of power to small group of bureaucrats almost without anyone noticing.

Democratic deficit in the European Union was initially used to denote the loss of democratic accountability inherent in national parliaments transferring their right to legislate to ministers meeting in the Council of ministers of the EU. It was considered that this transfer of power should be compensated for by giving an elected European Parliament the right to approve or reject EU legislation. Now that there is an elected European Parliament that (albeit recently) acquired such powers (exercised jointly with the Council in a bicameral legislature), the term has taken on a different and less precise meaning, often linked to the distance between EU institutions and citizens. Opinions differ on how to remedy this, and some argue that the deficit is structural, i.e. cannot be resolved without changing the nature of the Union.

Everybody’s got a demographic deficit and we are told that it’s not a bug, but a feature. In the last few weeks, the leader of Spain has “called on euro members to give up sovereignty over their budgets to cement a fiscal union, reversing his stance from three months earlier”. Nor is he alone. German chancellor Angela Merkel has called for a political union as a precondition to Germany considering further bailouts.

A “political union” or phrases like ‘European political integration’ are really a polite way of saying “all your base are belong to us”, a bon mot which if anything means that your nation state as you knew it, is over. Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, the UK, the US — who needs it?

The tendency is so global and yet its currents so unseen that even Henry Kissinger has noticed it only with regard to its effects on Third World countries. He observes that they too have been effectively abolished. Kissinger calls the phenomenon the overthrow of the Westphalian state. Writing in the Washington Post, Kissinger argued that President Obama’s actions in Libya and Syria have now signified the end of internal sovereignty. It’s a cataclysmic event, which like the light from a distant star, has yet to reach the popular through the layers of smoke and mirrors of the MSM.

The modern concept of world order arose in 1648 from the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War. In that conflict, competing dynasties sent armies across political borders to impose their conflicting religious norms. This 17th-century version of regime change killed perhaps a third of the population of Central Europe.

To prevent a repetition of this carnage, the Treaty of Westphalia separated international from domestic politics. States, built on national and cultural units, were deemed sovereign within their borders; international politics was confined to their interaction across established boundaries. For the founders, the new concepts of national interest and balance of power amounted to a limitation, not an expansion, of the role of force; it substituted the preservation of equilibrium for the forced conversion of populations. …

The diplomacy generated by the Arab Spring replaces Westphalian principles of equilibrium with a generalized doctrine of humanitarian intervention. In this context, civil conflicts are viewed internationally through prisms of democratic or sectarian concerns. Outside powers demand that the incumbent government negotiate with its opponents for the purpose of transferring power. But because, for both sides, the issue is generally survival, these appeals usually fall on deaf ears. Where the parties are of comparable strength, some degree of outside intervention, including military force, is then invoked to break the deadlock.

Nations — and those who formerly controlled them through the vote in countries where they voted — ain’t what they used to be. They’re in the way now. In place of Merkel’s “it’s for the Euro” the principle “it’s for the children” is substituted for a reason everywhere else. But the problem, as Kissinger points out, is that having abolished the Westphalian principle in one country after another where does it stop?

If adopted as a principle of foreign policy, this form of intervention raises broader questions for U.S. strategy. Does America consider itself obliged to support every popular uprising against any non-democratic government, including those heretofore considered important in sustaining the international system? Is, for example, Saudi Arabia an ally only until public demonstrations develop on its territory? Are we prepared to concede to other states the right to intervene elsewhere on behalf of coreligionists or ethnic kin?

There is nowhere obvious to stop. So the trend will probably keep right on going, not only internationally but domestically.

To those who say matters pertaining to America’s involvement in foreign wars are limited by a Congressional Declaration of War should note two things. First, the President didn’t think it was necessary to even ask Congress about the Libya operation, nor was it in the loop with the regard to the Arab Spring. Second, the President has in general been disinclined to require anything from Congress if his executive action, the reasons for which are protected by executive privilege, will do. For more on this subject, refer alas, to Pravda.

The next and obvious question is why anyone would need Congress any more than one needs a government in Madrid? Remember, it’s for the children.

All of a sudden, almost without anyone noticing it, the entire world is experiencing a “democratic deficit”. Politics has slipped out of popular control. Entire European countries are on the verge of functional abolition without even so much as the courtesy of a faked plebescite.

The silver lining in the situation, if it can be spoken of as such, is that all these shadowy groups towards which sovereignty is being increasingly concentrated are running out of money. Zerohedge points out that Spanish banks are in such dire straits that they are offering toasters and Spiderman beach towels to induce depositors to entrust their savings a little longer to them, the towels being substituted for the toasters, which have run out.

Just how broke they all are was expressed by Italian Prime Minister Monti, not of the three card fame, who “has warned of the apocalyptic consequences of failure at next week’s summit of EU leaders, outlining a potential death spiral whose consequences would become more political than economic.”

One the common characteristics of too-big-to-fail schemes which are on their last legs is the strange juxtaposition between their espoused and vaulting ambitions and tawdry and petty reality. Recently the Obama administration hosted a group of Philadelphia gay activists at the White House. There they were honored by a Marine band. They returned the gesture by posing for photographs giving the finger to the portraits of Ronald Reagan on the White House walls.

But where’s the money? Despite the fetes at the White House the President’s campaign spent more in May than it took raised. In other words, the munchies at the White House ultimately cost more than these gay activists contributed. Here’s hoping they can sell those photos for the price of a cup of coffee in the coming months. As for myself, I would take the toaster.