Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Jean Monnet & Robert Schuman:

Today is Europe Day. On this day in Paris in 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman laid the first plans for what was eventually to become today's EU. With his now-famous declaration, Schuman sketched the outlines of an initiative to consolidate the coal and steel industries of Europe, binding nations—and their principal war-making industries—so closely together that renewed war would be unthinkable.

Jean Monnet was the diplomat who helped draft the declaration, and later became the first President of the European Coal and Steel Community, which would evolve to become the European Union.

Go ahead and read the declaration. Now substitute "gas and oil" for "coal and steel" and think of it in terms of the Middle East. Unfortunately, this is not a credible way out of the Middle Eastern mess for us (us being mankind, and not the U.S.).

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