The New Munich Conference

The EU’s extraordinary summit meeting to address Russia’s naked aggression against Georgia released its statement on 1 September (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,575761,00.html). This was a propitious date as it marks the 69th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland that started World War II in Europe. Perhaps the EU could have waited until the 16th, the 69th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland. But I think the EU should have released their statement earlier, on 28 August, to commemorate the Munich Conference. This was the conference where the West, lead by the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, appeased away Czechoslovakia’s freedom to avoid any possible conflict with Adolf Hitler.

It’s no wonder that the eastern members of the EU were the ones most interested in passing some kind of meaningful sanctions against Russia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiiw85psm-Q; http://www.president.pl/x.node?id=20043119). After all, they have experience in being sold out by the West to Russian aggression. They certainly remember the Soviet’s imperialism following World War Two.

Appeasement is a discredited policy. Knowing this, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s actions are motivated by craven cowardice. Georgia is learning that treaties and promises are meaningless without the will to enforce them. As already demonstrated in the former Yugoslavia, the EU lacks the will to enforce collective security. It is as emasculated as the League of Nations. Without the will to project its force in issues crucial to its very existence – such as, for example, freedom – one must question the legitimacy of the EU itself.

Perhaps “national self-determination” has become passé for the Eurocracy. Perhaps the sufferings of people in one “country” (now considered an outmoded construct in our post-modern world) are of little concern for the greater good (for a truly pathetic assessment of the glories and qualities of the post-modern world, including “The rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behavior,” and “Security is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and mutual vulnerability,” see Robert Cooper, “The Post Modern State,” http://fpc.org.uk/articles/169).

Or, perhaps the Eurocrats’ post-modernism is just a cover for cowardice. I think the latter.