Corsi’s EU timeline

In the introduction to his excellent book ‘Late Great U.S.A.’ Jerome R. Corsi provides a useful potted history of the evolution of the European Union as well as a warning to his American readers:

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln strode forward onto the field of Gettysburg, some four months after the great battle. The short speech he delivered that day is one of the most enduring statements of American freedom ever uttered.

In that speech, Lincoln observed that the Civil War was a test of how long a nation ‘conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’ could endure.

In these few words, Lincoln captured the historic significance of America. The United States was the first nation ever brought forth to preserve the God-given rights endowed to all people. He also recognized the preciousness of any human institution designed to preserve those rights, especially one created ‘under God’ to be a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Before, governments had been created of the elite, by the elite, and for the elite.

That day, Lincoln prayed that the United States of America, so created and so dedicated, should ‘not perish from the earth.’

Today, we again face the possibility that the United States of America may not long endure. Our national sovereignty is in danger of being compromised in favor of an emerging regional government, designed of the elite, by the elite, and for the elite, who are working to achieve global ambitions in the pursuit of wealth and power for themselves.

There are movements afoot in Mexico, Canada, and the United States, similar to those in Europe that led to the formation of the European Union that, if left unchecked, will erode U.S. sovereignty and lead to a North American Union.


But how exactly did the Europe of World Wars I and II—a Europe that was fiercely nationalistic—become the Europe of today? In order to understand the significance of contemporary developments in the United States, it is imperative to compare them to those that occurred in Europe over half a century ago.

The Formation of the European Union

The European Union was formed by people determined to destroy the nation-states that had dominated European politics for centuries. Many European intellectuals, especially in Germany, blamed the two world wars on the rise of nationalism. Those planning to undercut national sovereignty in Europe knew they would succeed only if they kept their true intentions concealed. Any direct proposal to eliminate nation-states - most with proud histories extending across centuries - would have been overwhelmingly rejected by citizens loath to see their national identities absorbed into a ‘European’ consciousness.

Despite these odds, the backers of a European Union succeeded, due in large part to the efforts of Jean Monnet, widely regarded as the father of the European Union. Monnet was born on November 9, 1888, to a French cognac merchant. Discharged from the military for health reasons, Monnet spent much of World War I forging an international alliance between the French and British-led effort to defeat Germany. Monnet emerged from this experience a true globalist who believed that nation-states were ultimately destructive. Monnet believed more European wars were inevitable as long as Europeans saw themselves first as British, French, Italian, or German, and only secondarily as European.[1]

On August 5, 1943, as a member of the National Liberation Committee of the free French Government in Algiers, Monnet addressed the committee, stating:

There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection...The countries of Europe are not strong enough to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit.[2]

Monnet was instrumental in forging this federation, and he did so by prioritizing economic unity over political unity.

On May 9, 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Shuman, in a speech inspired by Monnet, announced what became known as ‘The Shuman Declaration,’ a plan to pool French and German coal and steel production.[3] Shuman argued that this solidarity would make war between France and Germany ‘not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.’[4] On December 18, 1951, ‘the Six’ - a group of European nations consisting of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands - signed the Treaty of Paris, formally establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).[5] Then, on March 25, 1957, the Six signed the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), commonly referred to in the United Kingdom as the European Common Market.[6]

From here, a series of incremental steps can be traced that moved a European common market into a European regional government. Once Europe started taking steps toward economic unity, political unity followed.

On March 25, 1957, the European Atomic Energy Commission was created by a second treaty of Rome, signed the same day that the more famous Treaty of Rome created the EEC. On October 17, 1957, a European Court of Justice was established in order to settle regional trade disputes. In 1960, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK set up the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). In 1965, the three already-established European communities - the European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Community - merged under the European Economic Community (EEC) moniker. In 1968, in a move toward abolishing duties at internal borders and establishing a uniform system for taxing imports among EEC countries, the European Customs Union was formed.

Brussels and Luxembourg were selected as the executive sites of the EEC almost by accident. In 1951, Luxembourg’s foreign minister had insisted that the European Coal and Steel Community set up headquarters in Luxembourg, but refused to accept any more ‘Eurocrats.’ When the Treaty of Rome established the EEC in 1957, Brussels became a ‘provisional site’ that eventually grew into a permanent fixture. In Luxembourg, ECSC committees were established, just as EEC committees were established in Brussels. Over time, these committees evolved into the bureaucratic ‘working groups’ that even today run the executive functions of the European Union.[7]

In 1978, the European Council met in Brussels and established a European monetary system based on a European currency unit (ECU) and an exchange rate mechanism (ERM). Initially the ECU was just used for travelers’ checks and interbank deposits. However, the agreement set the stage for the emergence of a common European currency. In 1986, the Single European Act modified the Treaty of Rome and set up a framework for a completely unified European market. Gradually, what began as a limited coal and steel agreement transformed into a common market and a European customs union, with the underpinnings for a European currency.

The Treaty of the European Union, signed in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on February 7, 1992, formed a full-fledged regional government.[8] The flag of twelve yellow stars in a circle against a blue background, first seen as the EEC flag in 1985, became the official flag of the European Union - just as the EU passport supplemented and then supplanted national passports from the various European nations participating in the union. Over a period of fifty years, the internal borders between EU countries were largely erased so European Union citizens could live and work in the EU country of their choice. Over this same period of time, a professional bureaucracy sprouted and grew in Brussels and Luxembourg. On January 1, 2002, the euro was introduced and the traditional national currencies of the participating EU countries were phased out.[9]

Today, some 70 to 80 percent of the laws passed in Europe involve nothing more than rubber stamping regulations already written by nameless ‘working group’ bureaucrats in Brussels or Luxembourg. Virtually gone is the ability of European countries to set their own policy direction and the ultimate arbiter of justice is the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, not the highest national court in each country.

In short, Monnet’s vision of a future where the nations of Europe would gradually surrender their sovereignty to participate in a regional government had been largely achieved.

The Incremental Approach and the Stealth Plan

The European Union succeeded because its supporters took an incremental approach. While advancing step by step toward a united Europe, they studiously avoided suggesting their goal was to create a ‘supra-government.’ What began as a coal and steel agreement advanced to a common market and ended as a regional government - exactly as Jean Monnet had always wanted as expressed in the closing words of his Memoirs:

The sovereign nations of the past could no longer solve the problems of the present; they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organized world of tomorrow.[10]

In The Great Deception, perhaps the most comprehensive examination of the emergence of the EU yet written, authors Christopher Booker and Richard North conclude:

Even though he had long since been honored as ‘the Father of Europe,’ Jean Monnet had always preferred to work behind the scenes, away from the limelight. He knew that, only by operating in the shadows, behind a cloak of obscurity, could he one day realize his dream. What he pulled off ... was to amount to a slow-motion coup d’etat: the most spectacular coup d’etat in history.[11]

Although he died in 1979 before seeing his plan for establishing an EU fully realized, Monnet lived to see many events unfold as he had recommended. The original nation-states, including the governments, courts, and parliaments of France, England, and Germany remained, but ‘only so they could gradually become subordinated to a new supranational government which was above them all.’[12]


From this brief history of the European Union, several defining characteristics emerge from which parallels can be drawn to the movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada:

• A highly motivated and passionate organizer
• Economic union as a means to economic growth, which was later followed by political union;
• A desire to foster security and eradicate war;
• A desire to establish a collective consciousness that superseded national consciousness;
• A de facto political union that resulted from economic treaties followed by formal ratification;
• The blurring of borders and the transfer of passports from the countries to the ‘supra-government’;
• A reticence to acknowledge the real goals of the movement;
• The creation of a common currency.

Had Germany, France, or Italy realized in 1957 that the Treaty of Rome would lead to a loss of self-government, the European Union movement would have been dead before it started. By 2002, however, most European states made the decision to abandon their national currencies in favor of the euro with little hesitation, despite the loss of national sovereignty entailed in the decision.

Will the same be said of the United States twenty or thirty years from today? If we don’t heed the handwriting on the wall, it might very well be.

The Late, Great USA

Abraham Lincoln understood that liberty is precious, so he stood on the field of Gettysburg and reminded people that it was their duty to continue ‘the great task remaining before us ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.’ Eternal vigilance, it has been said, is the price of freedom, and just as it was the duty of Americans in Lincoln’s day to fight to preserve that freedom, so it is the duty of Americans in our day.

The government established by our forefathers, a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,’ was not established quietly. Unlike Jean Monnet, the Founding Fathers were upfront about their goals for the new government they formed. The democratic process and the liberty it brings depend upon such openness. Elites are as susceptible to corruption as ordinary citizens. In a constitutional republic, the power of correction rests with all the people; but the people can only correct that of which they are aware. As the EU experience shows us, secrecy is the great friend of tyranny.

Unfortunately, steps similar to those that resulted in the European Union are being taken in America, Mexico, and Canada. If we do not wish to follow the EU into regional government, it’s the duty of each of us to hold our leaders accountable for placing our country’s sovereignty in danger. While it would be presumptuous to claim that a North American Union is inevitable, it is equally presumptuous to insist that it is impossible. This book will demonstrate that disturbing parallels exist between the stealth process that resulted in the EU, and the incremental actions being taken by the governments of the United States, Mexico, and Canada to unite our nations into an emerging regional configuration. Preserving U.S. sovereignty is up to those of us who still care about freedom and the nation our forefathers bestowed upon us.

Notes


1. Christopher Booker and Richard North, The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (New York: Continuum Books, 2003), 5.
2. Quoted in ‘Jean Monnet: 1888-1979,’ in ‘The history of the European Union: The European citizenship,’ at http://www.historiasiglo20.org/europe/rnonnet.htm .
3. Europa, ‘Gateway to the European Union,’ the official Internet portal to the European Union, in a year-by-year timeline entitled ‘The History of the European Union,’ at: http://europa.eu/abc/history/1950/index_%20en.htm . Referred to hereafter as ‘Europa Timeline.’
4. Documented in ‘A Timeline of the EU,’ BBC News, October 29, 2004, at: http://news.bbc.co.Uk/l/hi/world/europe/3583801.stm. Referred to hereafter as ‘BBC News Timeline.’
5. Europa Timeline at: http://europa.eu/abc/history/1951/index_en.htm.
6. Europa Timeline at: http://europa.eu/abc/history/1957/index_en.htm.
7. Great Deception, 86-87.
8. Europa Timeline at: http://europa.eu/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm.
9. BBC News Timeline, at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3583801.stm.
10. Closing words of Jean Monnet’s memoirs, quoted by Booker and North, op. cit. 1,1.
11. Great Deception, 3.
12. Ibid., 1.