Spanish officers inspecting the remains of a garrison on Monte Arruit, July 1921. Annual, Morocco. Credit: Public Domain.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jul 20 2021 (IPS)

It would seem that those responsible for the recent immigration crisis in Ceuta and Melilla have coordinated their strategy to commemorate the centenary of one of the most serious defeats that Spain has suffered in its foreign relations. One hundred years ago, the Spanish armies suffered one of the most painful losses in its history.

From July 21 to August 9, 1921, the military detachments that had tried to consolidate the colonial presence in the territory of the Riff, north of the northern area of ​​the so-called Protectorate located on the Mediterranean slope of the present Kingdom of Morocco, were bloody massacred in the so-called Annual Disaster.

This episode has been imprinted in the memory of not only of the military, but also in the national conscience.

In succinct terms, what happened in North Africa in the second decade of the 20th century was a consequence of a more spectacular disaster suffered by the Spanish empire at the end of the previous century.

Joaquín Roy

As a resounding burial of the Spanish empire, which had lost almost all American territories in the 19th century, in 1898 the United States ended the Spanish presence in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, by imposing the surrender and cession of those territories after the incident of the sinking of the battleship Maine in the bay of Havana.

Embarrassed by the defeat, the Spanish military passed the blame for the awesome disaster onto the politicians. The final traumatic event originated various consequences in Spain, among which are a period of introspection and meditation on the national essence, presided over by the “Generation of ’98”, and the emergence of a regenerationism led by various sectors of public influence.

While the monarchy in the regency period could hardly stand out in remedying the state of national prostration, the military was preparing to seek the construction of a substitute empire.

In continuation of the previous incursions in North Africa, the coalition of conservative forces with military sectors, in search of alternative companies to the loss of the imperial territories, believed to find a replacement empire in North Africa.

The recruitment of military contingents based on forced replacement troops produced the serious incidents of protest at the ports of embarkation. The opposition that originated the so-called Tragic Week of Barcelona in 1909 stood out then, with the result of a fierce repression. The government survived. Spain was destined to invent another empire.

The distribution of the immense African territories among the European powers resulted in the award to Spain of the northern part that comprised the Riff, with a rugged geography populated by a human contingent that has hardly been identified with the precarious unity of Morocco.

The administration of the so-called Protectorate would be a difficult mission to fulfill until its disappearance. The withdrawal order had its holocaust in the place called Annual, where the Spanish detachment of eleven thousand five hundred soldiers was massacred and the survivors were put to the knife. These bloody events were novelistically relived by important writers such as Ramón J. Sender.

In this scenario, the Spanish Legion was founded, following the model of the French. Led by Millán Astray, one of its most prominent leaders was Commander Francisco Franco, who rose through the ranks on merits of war and later became the youngest general in the European armies.

The positions of the Spanish military in North Africa were desired both by the commanders and by the troops themselves who were involved in corruption.

Almost miraculously saved the city of Melilla, the Spanish presence received a considerable effort with the joint operation of the Spanish and French forces in the so-called landing of Al Hoceima (exaggeratedly considered as a precedent of the Normandy operation), a coastal area that still presents the survival of the Spanish “presidios”.

As a result of that remarkable joint operation, the Riff’s leader Abd el-Krim surrendered and was subsequently released. He survived his many adversaries and died in Cairo in 1963. He is considered one of the “inventors” of guerrilla strategy.

The monarchy of Alfonso XIII survived when he handed over power to General Primo de Rivera, but after his fall from grace, the institution soon disappeared when in the municipal elections of 1931 the conservative parties lost electoral favor in the big cities.

The King abdicated and the Second Republic was declared. In 1936 Franco rebelled. The troops led by the coup general left from Morocco at the beginning of the Civil War.

Ceuta and Melilla are remains of that neocolonial stage, recently converted into “autonomous cities” within the Spanish territorial administration. Despite the abandonment of the territory of the Sahara, as a result of the Green March of 1975 when the Franco regime died, Spain insists on the evaluation of the UN opinion subject to a referendum that Morocco has refused to carry out, claiming sovereignty over its inhabitants, a thesis that clashes with that of Algeria, where the Sahrawis take refuge.

Although Morocco’s tactic seems focused on the occupation of Ceuta and Melilla, in reality the priority is the control of the entire Sahara and domination of the southern slope of the Strait of Gibraltar. This strategic detail is a priority for the United States, which has generally supported Moroccan interests, as has France, a power that in turn supports Algeria’s theses.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, moments after breaking into the Chamber of Deputies, on the afternoon of February 23, 1981, which began a coup in Spain, with the seizure of Parliament and armed uprisings in several cities. Its failure ended up consolidating the recently restored democracy. Credit: RTVE.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Feb 22 2021 (IPS)

Forty years ago, on February 23, 1981 (later known as 23-F), in the middle of the afternoon in a cold Madrid atmosphere, the most serious attack against the reborn Spanish democracy took place. An armed contingent of more than 200 Civil Guard agents invaded the Congress of Deputies and threatened the dissolution of the government and the establishment of a dictatorship.

Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, wielding a regulation pistol, the invaders interrupted the voting process for the new President of the Council of Ministers, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, who was to succeed Adolfo Suárez, who had resigned a few days earlier. Tejero claimed that his action was endorsed by King Juan Carlos I.

The dramatic incident had been inaugurated by the firing of machine-gun bursts by the invaders towards the roof of the building, while the parliamentarians were ordered to lie on the ground under their seats. Only three deputies stood upright: President Suárez, Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, and the outgoing vice president of the government and Minister of Defense, General Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado.

Joaquín Roy

Suárez, who had been the architect of the recovery of democracy in 1978 with the approval of the new Constitution together with King Juan Carlos, had ended up exhausted in an environment full of confrontations caused mainly by the harassment that the terrorist group ETA had been imposing in the political environment through attacks against police, civilians and military.

The serious event was resolved after intense hours of action when King Juan Carlos issued a statement on television in which, in clear terms, he remembered the coup plotters and their possible collaborators as Head of State about their obligations.

The previous context of the serious events was full of danger signals that were confirmed. Among the details that led the King to make the drastic decision, the environment of his family stands out, it was overpopulated with historical errors that were paid dearly. That panorama extended as much in time as in space.

In the first place, the most remote antecedent was the mistake made by Juan Carlos’ own grandfather, Alfonso XIII, when in the twenties of the previous century, he was pressured by the military and ended up accepting the role of General Primo de Rivera in 1923.

A few years until 1930 were enough for his influence to be exhausted and the evolution of national politics to testify to the triumph of the left in the important cities in the municipal elections of 1931. The Second Spanish Republic survived until the coup General Franco’s military force that unleashed the Civil War of 1936-39, and the subsequent establishment of the Franco dictatorship until 1975.

Juan Carlos also had the latent impact of such a political error on his wife’s own family, Queen Sofía. Her brother, King Constantine of Greece, could not resist the pressure of the military, to whom he handed over the initiative to power in 1967. Later this decision meant the end of the Greek monarchy and the establishment of a republican regime in 1973.

The atmosphere that presided over Madrid that fatal 23 February insisted on the memory of the monarchical errors of the past. Therefore, avoiding the jerky decisions of the past prevented the repetition of historical tragedies.

Today’s circumstances, given the apparent survival of certain social and political instability, in the midst of an economic-pandemic crisis, advise an analysis of the feasibility of a serious and drastic resolution of political discrepancies. It is convenient, therefore, to meditate on attempts of indiscipline in certain military sectors, as they have been expressed in manifestos issued by sectors of military leaders under the retirement statute.

A serene analysis of these incidents generates deserves an evaluation as they consider themselves limited to those sectors led by a nostalgic minority. In contrast, the professionalism of the sectors that have served in the last decades in peace missions, development aid, and even assistance in the fight against the pandemic, are claimed. But that does not totally eliminate the latent threat of discontent, accompanied by the poor performance of political parties when faced with new dangers.

With some concern, therefore, one must observe the deterioration in the exercise of the once important position of the Popular Party, whose advantage on the national stage has been notably eroded. In addition to the fact that the PP has practically disappeared from the Catalan scene, the failure of the centrist parties (UCD was the best example of the transition) that could act as hinges in the manner of liberal-centrist formations in some European countries, like UK and Germany.

The knockout given to Ciudadanos (which aspired to be a supermodern UCD), coupled with the stratospheric rise of ultra right-wing VOX, should be placed into the center of the meditation on the instability of the political fabric.

It must also occupy a prime place in speculation about the threat of a coup, hard or soft, or simply expendable concern. The 23-F anniversary is a good occasion to detect the latent presence of Tejero on the congressional floor or consider that the removal of Franco’s body from the Valley of the Fallen means something permanent.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

Summary of the 14 February 2021 Parliament of Catalonia election results. Credit: Generalitat de Catalunya

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Feb 18 2021 (IPS)

The recent result of the elections for the Parliament of Catalonia has presented a mixture of repetition of certain previous aspects and some spectacular novelties. But the everlasting dimension of any parliamentary confrontation of the proportional variant remains unscathed.

Despite the development of the modern polling systems, plus the interpretation of the data facilitated in recent years, a difficult prediction remains. That involves the decisions that the parties have to make in the cases that they must craft alliances to form a government when virtual ties appear.

“And now, what?”. The central question remains unscathed. But it is not only the one presented by anonymous voters, nor by the experts and the leaders themselves who must make precise decisions. It is the general question presented by Gerard Piqué, the star footballer of FC Barcelona who has only been surpassed in popularity by Messi.

Naturally, Piqué does not dare to offer solutions. Therefore it is convenient to face the possible alternatives to solve the complicated panorama of the results.

Although it is not the exclusive result of these elections, a historical aspect of the parliamentary evolution of Catalonia since the recovery of democracy in 1978 is fully established. The Catalan elections are no longer a kind of democratic exercise peculiar to Catalans, with little connection to the rest of Spain, and Europe as whole.

Catalan parliamentarianism has suffered from a European quality. The elections to form the European Parliament have been seen historically as a kind of “national primaries”. European voters glanced inward and voted sometimes as rendering a punishment, and other times as a reward for the domestic behavior of national parties.

It is true, however, that this behavior has recently improved thanks to the tenacious reform of the European legislation that allows, for example, EU national residents in another states to vote in another country. Another remedy is the inclination to propose Europe-wide candidacies. But the burden of the national weight continues to be felt.

In the theater of the Catalan elections, that European has been noticeable. The elections in Catalonia have been seen for years as the preserve of Catalanism, since the “Castilians” considered the Catalan contests a peculiarity of Catalans.

The result was that the Spanish speakers stayed at home. That is why the Catalan socialist candidates usually won in the elections in Spain, while in Catalonia the party developed by then moderate nationalist Jordi Pujol did. This scheme has practically disappeared.

There are sectors, on the right more than on the left, that have tried to insert arguments that insist on the existence of “ethnic” elements (if not “racist”) in the configuration of the voting ideals of pro-independence alternatives,

Joaquín Roy

But this danger has been generally neutralized. Significantly, the bulk of the different arguments prioritize a “civic” nationalism, of choice.

In the current panorama, it is convenient to highlight, first, the news that stands out. In other words, has a man bit a dog? Obviously some facts are worth taking into account because of their obvious novelty and therefore because of their impact on the consequences of the election.

In this dimension, the details that concern the right-wing parties, both extreme and moderate, stand out. Significantly, the changes in this ideological sector have been suffered both by the parties considered as “constitutionalist” and by those that in some way consider themselves as “disruptive” due to their varying degree of loyalty to the independence creed.

In the first dimension, it is advisable to weigh the spectacular setback suffered by Ciudadanos. This formation was created by the centrist leader Albert Rivera in Catalonia as a dam against the tenacious monopoly of Convergence nationalism, later transformed into independence seeking.

It consisted of expanding its theater of operations to the rest of the Spanish territory, leaving the Catalan stage under the direction of Inés Arrimadas, a young woman born in Andalusia, who impressed with her command of Catalan.

In the elections held under the control of the Spanish government due to the application of article 155 of the Constitution, after the suspension of Catalan autonomy as a sanction for holding the independence referendum on October 1, 2017, Arrimadas managed to capture the largest number of seats in the Catalan Parliament. But she could not sublimate the next step, since the pro-independence parties jointly outperformed Ciudadanos in whatever alliance they presented.

Then, temporarily being a kind of referee on the state stage, Rivera found himself rejected in his attempt to neutralize the leading rightist Popular Party. The failure has now been reflected in the disaster received in the Catalan Parliament. Collateral damage could be its annihilation on the Spanish global scene.

This possible scenario has now been dramatized by the appearance of the far-right VOX in the Spanish theater, breaking through the previously reserved area of ​​the Popular Party, and now by its spectacular entry into the Parliament of Catalonia, becoming its fourth most important formation.

For a long time, the Spanish political fabric prided itself on not suffering from the presence of an extreme right. Now, the myth has collapsed. It is pointless to argue that VOX is not the same as the cases of Germany (Alternative), France (Le Pen), Hungary (Orbán) or Poland (Justice and Peace). It was a novelty, feared and latent, without ever being sublimated. Now it is a stark electoral reality.

The weakening of the remnants of moderate nationalism in Catalonia, represented now by the PDCat, testifies that the impact of the official response (trial, conviction, prison) to the independence attempt of the referendum has only reinforced the influence of the parties that prioritize independence through plebiscite insistence.

Naturally, there remains the solid argument of the constitutionalist left presented by the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC), which almost doubled the number of seats by presenting Salvador Illa as a candidate, boosted by the solid publicity of his effective role as Minister of Health of the government of Pedro Sánchez. As mentioned in this context, the centrist parties have not only disappeared in Spain, but in Catalonia they have little to do, unless paradoxically that role is reserved precisely for the PSC itself.

Listed to the left are formations that, without identifying with independence, insist on the support of the urgencies of the most needy sectors. As disparate as Comuns-Podem (the Catalan branch of the populist party of Pablo Iglesias, partner of the PSOE in Madrid) and the anti-capitalist CUP can grant the necessary votes to the pro-independence parties for the formation of a government and the appointment of the President of the Generalitat.

All the formations are aware of the economic problems, derived both from the atrocious impact of the pandemic, and from the structural unemployment dramatized by the confinement decreed as a remedy for the virus.

The interrelation between politics and the economy is also detected at the moment of weighing the evident rise of the economic power of Madrid in the last decade, and its banking concentration, apart from the exodus of the social offices of Catalan companies towards Valencia and other capitals, as a refuge from the independence movement.

The electoral results leave other details, confirmation of the past, or corrections of certain dimensions. For example, the dilemma between independence and constitutionalism is reflected in the continuation of the concentration of the former in the interior areas of the Catalan territory, while constitutionalism (from the right or from the left) populates urban areas, especially Barcelona.

If the elections have not revealed the emergence of an undisputed leader, trying to answer Piqué’s question, it is convenient to weigh the result of a solution that emerges as a favorite: the resignation of Illa and the PSC to opt for the vote of Parliament.

That “gift” would later be rewarded by taking a leap towards Madrid: Esquerra would continue supporting the PSOE in the governorship of the Spanish Congress and the approval of the national budgets.

Returning to Barcelona, ​​would the success of ERC produce the reborn leadership of Oriol Junqueras, for whom Aragonés would be holding the position? This detail would lead us to face the urgent outcome of the issue (problem?) of the imprisonment of the leaders of the “procés” and the referendum.

The present status of partial freedom that the condemned have unusually enjoyed during the elections, therefore, takes on an unusual role. The pressure to approve an amnesty becomes the irreplaceable focus for any consideration of the consequences of the elections. In other words, the simple counting of the votes to configure the executive leadership in Parliament is not the end.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

Joe Biden takes the oath of office as the 46th President of the United States. Credit: Twitter.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

What for Donald Trump was an insult, for Joe Biden is an acknowledgment: the new president of the United States is the establishment in its purest form. No other similar case is remembered of having reached the presidency with a better preparation. For almost half a century he has been “inside the beltway.” It is the sector occupied by the District of Columbia, which claims to be recognized as a state, surrounded by a huge highway. Biden would be perfectly accepted as a traffic guard, without passing the exam.

But as he will settle at his desk in the Oval Office, as soon as he would open the folders smeared by the previous White House tenant, he will be horrified. The agenda that awaits him is a challenge for the innate ritualism of the perennial senator from Delaware. But he won’t be daunted by the task.

He has a paradoxical advantage over his predecessor: Biden is a good loser. A similar case of enthusiasm in betting on the presidency is not detected in recent memory. He has been rejected in previous attempts for the nomination of his party.

On the domestic agenda, Biden must try to clarify the current state of America’s everlasting and elusive identity. Never since Huntington’s suicide attempt by applying his thesis of the clash of civilizations to the core of American identity, no one has inflicted a similar wound to the American soul.

Joaquín Roy

Biden will have to correct the doubt that to be a citizen of the United States you only need to want to be. Trump dangerously questioned it. To verify this nonsense, you only have to inspect the data of the vast majority of the assailants in Congress. That impression is also replicated by a global portrait of an uncomfortable majority of Trump’s more than 70 million voters.

The United States, which is an idea, not a country, must be resurrected by Biden. Trump acted like some kind of evil prince who kissed a sleeping witch. Biden will return her to eternal sleep. In turn, he will choose to rescue from kidnapping the beautiful princess who was silent for four years.

As it will be seen through the rest of the impeachment process, Biden must ensure internal security with a balanced message of toughness against any violation of the law. Leaving a crass example of insurrection unpunished would be a fatal mistake.

To straighten the nature of the social fabric, once and for all, Biden will do well to fulfill his project of facilitating the passage to legal residency and citizenship for the millions immigrants in limbo. They are already within the country.

A different problem is how to deal with the ones who are opting for desperate marches towards the border. Biden will have to made deals with Mexico to cooperate.

Ironically, this pressure from immigration is at the same time the given certification of the strength of the United States. The minute no one would like to migrate to the heart of the country, the United States would cease to exist.

Looking at the prospects for the 2022 election, Biden will have to lead his strong electorate in order to make the current results in Congress and Senate to consolidate and grow. It will depend on the perception that the new measures that have been implemented are not lost.

Abroad, as part of the swift return to multilateralism, Biden must accelerate the recovery of sidelined officials in the State Department. At the same time, he will have to replace the multitude of directly appointed ambassadors by true professionals. In this diplomatic terrain, Europe must be given urgent priority.

The external face of the United States must send a clear message to Putin that the courtship with Trump is over. For Washington, the message should be that cooperation with the European Union and the consistency of NATO are above personal whims. Biden will also have to end the ambiguity about the relationship with the uncomfortable medieval Arab monarchies. Same about the support for the current Israeli government. China should receive a clear message.

In Latin America, Biden will have to proceed with caution. If the new wave of “pink” regimes is confirmed, driven by the disgust of the electorates in the face of government disasters, crime and corruption, Biden would do well to treat each case individually.

It is not ruled out that he will proceed to toughen the relationship with Venezuela, but he will probably choose to a subtle reestablishment of Obama’s policy towards Cuba. The hardening of attitude towards Havana generally reinforces the tough reaction of the Cuban government. The result is that the most affected continue to be the long-suffering Cuban citizens.

And if Biden does not succeed in some of those chapters of the busy schedule, as a “good loser”, he will take note and opt to correct the defects and end successfully his presidency. And then – why not? – opt for a re-election, or at least hand over the power to Kamala Harris.

Credit: White House.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

When the “year in which we lived dangerously” has ended, let’s ask about a “new era”, once the defeat of Donald Trump has been confirmed.

The new scene is presided by uncertainty. This sentiment is caused by damage caused by the Trump presidency. The only doubt is about the permanence of the disaster caused by the four-year period that is now ending.

Inserted in the context of satisfaction with the cessation of the nightmare, a prediction of a certain nostalgia is detected.

It is based on a strategy of confrontation in the face of what was labeled as the formation of a dictatorship within the oldest democracy in documented history. We wondered what we would do when we woke up. We were obsessed by a schedule filled by a single issue.

Some of us feared that in the supreme moment of expectation of the success of a confrontational strategy we would be reminded that in the panorama of importance and loneliness of questioning the irrational policy of the president we would be unfairly accused. Unusually, we had had an unwanted accomplice in the urgent eviction of the uncomfortable tenant from the White House.

We did not know how we could be grateful, so to speak, for the assistance of the pandemic that still grips the planet. The irrational behavior of the president in the successive stages of the Cobid19, its development, expansion and implantation throughout the planet, had become Trump’s worst enemy and the best ally of the opposition’s behavior.

Joaquín Roy

At the same time there was an awful sentiment consisting of the implantation of the virus and the consequent denial of Trump joining the efforts of the political opposition to achieve the defenestration, even if it was at the limit of his administration.

Every infected human being in the United States, plus every certified death, followed up by Trump’s erratic health policy, were recorded as “votes” in the tally of the November 3 election. The hope that Covid-19 would magically vanish overnight, as Trump himself surrealistically predicted in the early spring of 2020, would spell the demise of the towering enemy that had loomed over the White House.

Meanwhile, the opposition to the president in the apparent majority of the United States and in a universal proportion abroad were dedicating their efforts on an agenda exclusively full of reaction to each one of the president’s outrages. But there was an absence of a strategy with an agenda for “the day after”.

In the Democratic field there was no plan for the future. The discussion about the best candidates dragged on. That detail was not clarified until the decision in favor of Biden and Harris was done. In an environment reluctant to the formation of “kitchen cabinets” there was no government program to be implemented after 3 November.

In view of the poorly concealed feeling of insecurity, it was feared that one day it would be possible to exclaim with poorly concealed nostalgia: “against Trump we lived better.”

This expression has its origin in the thought that the Spanish Communist Party expressed at the time of the re-installation of democracy in Spain after the disappearance of the Franco regime.

Its precedent was the claim that the remnants of the regime put forward: “with Franco we lived better.” The communists, their reserved space was occupied by the neo-democrats, confessed that when they were in the opposition they had more effective power than in parliamentary democracy.

The oposition to Trump may be forced to express itself in the same way once the system is fully opened at the end of January. This feeling will have based all his conduct on criticism of each and every one of the government’s “policies”.

In reality, they were merely whims expressed in the wee hours of the morning by clicking noises on the mobile. The monumental void left by Trump’s mismanagement will still be occupied by an appropriate vaccine and the verification of its excellence, a task that would be extended throughout the rest of 2021.

It will depend on the effectiveness of the implementation of the urgent measures of the new government that the electorate will not be tempted to listen again to the siren songs of 2016.

The reconstruction of the economy, the reduction of the damage caused to the neediest sectors, the better integration of immigration, and the determined fight to eliminate racism are some of the most urgent tasks of the new government.

Only with its reasonable resolution will it be avoided that part of the 70 million who voted for the outgoing president would be tempted to exclaim: “with Trump we lived better.”

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

The Berlaymont building in Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). Credit EU.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

An anecdote tells, never sufficiently confirmed, that in the hardest moments of the Second World War when Stalin was dictating his orders of battle to his subordinates, he was told that perhaps it would be advisable to consult with the Pope. The Soviet dictator replied: “And how many armored divisions does the Pope have?”

The rationale of the question has been used in international relations theory and practice consistently to illustrate a vision of the realist school, in the company of classical interpretations such as those of Thucydides and von Clausewitz.

Stalin’s reflection has often been adduced to interpret the real level of influence of the European Union on the international scene since the middle of the last century.

It has never been easy to explain the birth and survival of Monnet and Schuman’s invention by means of a variant of realism.

One of the clichés about the soul of the EU is as an example of possessing a “soft power”, according to the founding arguments of Joseph Nye.

Joaquín Roy

It agrees with the birth of an entity whose initial leaders were mostly Christian Democrats, who based their logic on reconciliation and who promoted a new entity based on an unusual “declaration of interdependence.” While the bulk of the history of international relations exuded the phenomenon of war, the EU stubbornly justified its existence on the strategy of peace.

Citizens outside Europe tried to answer the question about the reason for the founding of the EU with strange answers such as competition with the United States, the improvement of the European economy, and the reinforcement of capitalism. The goal of making war “unthinkable, and materially impossible” was rarely alluded to.

Since then it has not been easy to understand the EU, because to do so, “one must be French or very intelligent” as Madeleine Albright once said. She rightly described the EU as extremely complex, especially if you insist on viewing it through the lens of “hard power.”

The funny thing is that its survival has been an enigma for more than 70 years, in an already long existence sown along with experiences as shocking as the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and now the questioning of the fundamentals of the United States.

Despite such impressive achievements as the adoption of the euro, the marked improvement in the standard of living of Europeans, their comparatively superior longevity, the pleasant feeling of being able to travel and reside throughout the EU, there is a certain discomfort and inner feeling, their survival is in doubt.

The explosion produced by Brexit, barely softening the effects of the 2008 economic crisis, while some of the evils of the past are reborn (nationalism, authoritarianism, racism), and the community territory is beset by uncontrolled immigration, has not helped to soften fears.

Inside and outside, the predictions of its disappearance are insistent. And specialists wonder why, while many voices disagree with these pessimistic predictions.

Anu Bradford, author of “The Brussels Effect” (Oxford University, 2020)

Anu Bradford, a law professor at Columbia University in New York, belongs to this sector. She is the author of a book that has been considered as the most influential of the decade in the field of international relations and the EU in particular.  Its title is The Brussels Effect (Oxford University, 2020), repeatedly reproduced as a term that is destined to be enthroned in the permanent vocabulary of the EU. The central thesis is that the EU, despite its lack of “hard power”, has achieved not only its survival, but a position of preeminence in the world theater.

But this nature of a global agent does not come from the traditional methods of imposing its interests, but simply through the use of a weapon of something as simple as law, developed in the design of a network of norms in the internal scene of the industry, business, the environment, agriculture, and protection against climate change.

But these norms are not imposed on the external territories, in a traditional imperialist way, but, exceptionally, they are self-adopted by the external businesses themselves, voluntarily.

How is this achieved, without the imposition of the hard power of the EU? Bradford’s answer is very simple: external actors, in the United States, Latin America, Asia, weigh between the cost of adding the standards of EU regulations or losing such a substantial market. They hesitate before being forced to adopt community standards or even be their goods rejected, once the process of entering the gigantic EU single market has begun.

They wisely choose to make the necessary investment and place the blue sticker with the twelve golden stars of the EU as a guarantee, a courtesy gift from the “pope” Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The EU does not oblige anyone: it is the choice of external economic interests.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

Nuno21/Shutterstock / The Conversation

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Nov 9 2020 (IPS)

To believe that Biden’s triumph is the end of the drama that has unfolded since January 2016 is an example of a mirage with fatal consequences. Pretending that those more than 70 million voters who have followed Trump to the end will disappear from the map on January 20 with the inauguration of Biden and Harris reveals a blindness to how much America has changed in recent generations.

But what is even more worrisome is not the survival of the ideology of those who elevated Trump. The enigma is how did that long third of the electorate occupy a vital territory?

Numerous observers of the evolution of the American political soul raised voices of alarm in recent months. They wondered about the dangerous conversion of the United States political system into an unusual imitation of the fabric existing in other countries that had fallen into the nets of authoritarianism.

Worse still is they had been swallowed up by the extreme ideologies that appeared in Europe in the 1930s. These drove countries with a long cultural tradition to turn into totalitarian dictatorships. These voices advanced the comparison of what was happening by applying Trump’s whims, turned into policies that resembled the practical programs of the Hitler regime since 1933.

In the society of the United States at the beginning of the new century, the existence of broad sectors that felt cornered, disappointed, and isolated began to be detected. They were not the traditional enclaves of racial minorities or remnants of European immigrants who had not fully fitted into the social and economic fabric.

Joaquín Roy

They were, so to speak, “full-blooded Americans.” They saw that the American dream was beginning to turn into a hurtful nightmare, from which they could not wake up despite having faithfully complied with the report card that the system had given to their parents or grandparents.

Wages were not keeping up with the rising cost of living. Mortgages ate much of the income. If they were inhabitants of rural areas, they felt trapped by invisible borders. If they grew up with a basic education, access to college was limited by their income or the stratospheric cost of private institutions. An explanation had to be found for this apparent scam.

That was not the America, in short, that they had been promised. It was urgent to find the culprits for this fraud. In addition, it was necessary to detect the existence of new leaders who would not be that hateful and corrupt establishment in Washington.

Suddenly, they were orphans from another direction, whose space was occupied by an “outsider”, Donald Trump. He arrived pristine, without the blemish of traditional politics. It guaranteed the decontamination of the Washington swamp.

In a reasonably educated nation, it would truly be a feat to have followed the tunes of a flute player, who had revealed the causes of their misfortune. As Hitler enthralled a cultured people like the troubled interwar Germans, Trump fascinated the Americans with his simplistic solutions.

In Germany of 1930s, urban decay was attributed to the alleged capture of certain businesses by Jews. The solution began with the breaking up of the shop windows, the prohibition of certain professions, and finally imprisonment. The German people, educated and disciplined, swallowed the lie without question.

The regime accurately sold the supposed need to expand the territory by the call of the Lebensraum. The simple solution was the Anschluss of Austria, and then the bite into the ethnically German territories in Czechoslovakia. The people applauded, but did not seem satisfied: Poland had to be invaded and then respond to the Anglo-French protest with the forceful Blitzkrieg. The German people cheered, as Hitler paraded triumphantly around the Arc de Triomphe.

As Trump ascended the throne, many Americans who had been drawn to urban areas found that the neat neighborhoods of the suburbs ended up being contaminated by the invasion of racial minorities, previously hardly detected. They felt uncomfortable sharing the space with blacks and, what was more hurtful, with Hispanics, who also spoke an incomprehensible language. And most of them were accused of being drug traffickers.

The remedy from the White House was to close the border to the invaders with a wall. Trump also promised that the Mexicans themselves would pay for it. He continued by dividing the families of those who had already entered, making it difficult for them to attend university, and delaying their citizenship to the maximum.

The “lifelong Americans” were enthralled. And the Republican Party was satisfied with the renewal of its positions in the Senate. Arbitrary measures bordered on unconstitutionality. But the goal of “making America great again” became the central watchword.

In the Germany of Hitler’s rise, everything was subordinated to the very end of reestablishing or inventing the glories of the past, to the chords of a Wagner opera. The absence of questioning the sovereignty of the Fuhrer guaranteed the fulfillment of the script.

Believing itself to be the best nation in Europe justified the madness of the invasion of the Soviet Union, without realizing that such an operation caused the downfall of Napoleon. The National Socialist Party guaranteed order and the SS inherited the role of the Brown Shirts to tame the Wehrmacht that swallowed up the professional military, who had not digested the defeat of 1918 well.

The disaster that began in Stalingrad and culminated with Russian troops raising the flag at the top of the Reichstag, was riveted by Allied bombardments that left Dresden and Hamburg in ruins, populated by millions of wandering soldiers, while the furnaces were still smoking in the death camps and a million German women of all ages were raped. The sentence was so forceful that only in this way did the Germans learn their lesson and became a model of cooperation in Europe and the world.

But it is unknown how the application of the same strategy could have ended if Trump’s misrule plan had followed the same path. Now only the seventy million who have voted him to “make America great again” have remained silent. But the SS in the Republican Senate and the recent infiltrators in the Supreme Court also remain unscathed. It’s a gigantic denazification task for Biden, without Nuremberg-style trials.

Credit: Greenpeace

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

The election tie, whatever the end result, that has been revealed is not a temporary phenomenon. The protagonist of Trump’s resistance is not the tenant of the White House of the last four years. The real agent, although the constitutional winner is Biden, is that sector that for decades was considered an abnormality.

The harsh reality is that the general perception outside of the United States did not understand the message of 2016. And perhaps it still does not understand it now. And, worse, it will never understand it, if one does not pay attention to the peculiarities of this society, dramatized by Trump.

As soon as the glory of winning World War II faded, America’s apparent national cohesion disappeared. Some continued to believe that they had monopolized the soul of the country, founded on exceptionalism, “the light of the beacon on the hill.” But some alarm signals began to sound with the repression of the so-called Hollywood Communists.

Dissidents silenced themselves as early as the 1960s, Kennedy’s assassination was not seen as a danger to the national consensus. But an underground feeling demanded to come out of the closet. Nixon called it the silent majority. It was speechless during the Vietnam tragedy. It conveniently drugged itself with the satisfaction of the end of the Cold War… and of history.

Just then a handful of novelists had wondered as Zavalita, the secondary character in the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa “Conversation in‘ La Catedral ’”: “at what point did Peru get screwed”. Some daring commentators would try too late to allude to the reaction to the sinking of the Maine in Havana, which prompted the United States to invade further Latin America, irritating Cuban patriots. The consequence half a century later this produced the Castro Revolution.

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The Washington establishment barely flinched and believed it would recover with the end of the Cold War and also “of history”, according to the myth of Fukuyama. But that ephemeral glory failed to hide the internal problems that successive US presidents was impotent to correct. Imbalances, discrimination, marginalization, discomfort, and basic grief over the appearance of defects in the American dream were detected.

The problem was that the victims were no longer exclusively the traditional losers (black, Hispanic, native), but also components of the formerly middle layers of society. In addition, the components of the economic elite had been added.

They seemed not to be content with the tax advantages they had enjoyed. They also tried to control the political evolution without getting involved in the electoral contests, an ordinary function that they left in the hands of professionals.

The result of recent presidential elections is a clear portrait of three Americas, each in its own way believing that it has the right to be “great again,” according to Trump’s slogan. It was already noticed with Obama’s double election: the potential electorate had been sharply divided into three.

A third has stayed home, always. Another third has voted for the various Democratic Party options. The final rest has historically taken refuge in the Republicans, sheltered by that sector that does not seem to respond to specific party lines. Now it has equipped himself with all the paraphernalia that has captured half the vote in the recent elections.

But the novelty of the last decade, after the defenestration of the traditionalism of the Bushes, is not the appearance of Trump. The news is the consolidation of the leadership of the third sector that Trump has awakened. It is not a temporary phenomenon. In reality, it existed since the founding myth of the United States was questioned by that third that has remained latent, timid of prominence.

Like a sleeping princess, she lacked only the kiss of a daring prince, who was not tied to partisan conventions. It does not matter that the princess behaved like a witch to the other two-thirds of the electorate. That quirk hasn’t mattered to Trump, who has captured the role of the prince.

Whatever the official result of the elections, the truth is that the previously hidden America will continue to lurk (with more determination if Trump wins). It will press for the abandonment of the traditional alliances of the United States, it will reject any regional integration scheme (barely reduced to a functional NAFTA), it will continue to reject re-entry into UNESCO, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (OMS), and it will not even pragmatically take advantage of its privileged place at the UN.

In the defense field, it will not know how to use wisely the “soft” power of military superiority, it will play dangerously with the abandonment of NATO, it could get involved in dangerous operations in the Middle East, fatally mistaking his useful allies. Continuing the bet of unconditional support for the current Israeli government would be a zero-pay bet.

Any miscalculation with China and Russia could render a high cost, especially in the face of an American society that is fed up with warlike excuses that do not reverse social returns and only fill the graves available in Arlington.

But, in the event of an effective final victory for Biden, the agenda that the new president will have to face would precisely include the latent and permanent presence of an America hitherto silent by the grace of Trump.

In this scenario, the new president will not be able to avoid the spectacle of social destruction, the division into irreconcilable factions, the urgent installation (with a residence permit tending to sublimate oneself in citizenship) of the huge groups of recent immigrants.

And in general, abroad it should be coldly understood that the new US government will not going to be radically different from what is considered essential to the practically immovable US interests. Biden will have to respond to the demands not only of his voters, but also of the reasonable interests of the country and the consequent pressures of his society.

Europe, for example, must understand that the demand for the involvement of its governments in continental defense does not respond simply to a whim of the current leader, but not to a reconstitution of the military fabric. The American society will continue to pressure its government to obtain legitimate benefits in terms of the results of the trade agreements. Therefore, it will be necessary to achieve a beneficial harmony for both parties.

Finally, Latin America must strive to present a minimum common front if it wants to obtain new advantages, not based on arbitrary decisions of temporary origin. When dealing with the United States, whether with Biden or Trump, the division will always be detrimental, especially for the interests of Latin American citizens.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center of the European Union at the University of Miami.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Credit: Biden Campaign.

By Joaquín Roy
Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

For Europe, the region closest by culture and political tradition to the United States, the mood of the day after the presidential election may be very different from that assumed a priori depending on the verdict.

It is believed that, according to polls and sporadic opinions expressed in analytical articles and direct statements by leaders, support for the Democratic victory is majority. This sentiment is also shared by most of the opinions of the extra-European world, called “liberal-democratic”.

Although it cannot be said that the sentiment is universal, it is also believed that the support of authoritarian regimes for Trump’s candidacy is scarce, with the few exceptions of some leaders who from some quarters have dared to pour out scandalous judgments.

It is not clear, therefore, that, with the exception of Russia and Brazil, the authoritarianism of the rest of the planet is an endorsement of the current occupant of the White House.

Therefore, if that desire is fulfilled, which is frequently alluded as fair, that the citizens of the rest of the world would deserve to participate in the election of the president of the United States, it can be said, especially with respect to Europe, that a triumph of Biden and Harris would be greeted with fireworks.

It is not clear if these strange “voters” are aware of what the new US government would look like and if it would respond to their interests.

Nor is it easy to know before the plebiscite what kind of government in the United States will suit the wishes of Europe.

The reason for this indecision is predominantly due to the persistence of the stereotype that this complex reality is projected onto Europe on the other side of the Atlantic. If this diagnosis is generalized over time, it is even more so today taking into account the seismic changes that the North American society itself has suffered.

Joaquín Roy

These have been buried for a long time and have suddenly surfaced dramatically to the surprise of many citizens, with the exception of the group of voters that raised Trump to the presidency in 2006 and who stubbornly persists in keeping him on the pedestal.

America is no longer the imagined nation of the past (all nations are “imagined,” as Benedict Anderson proposed). The mystique of Normandy and free speech that triumphed when the New York Times and the liberal press that brought down Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and tamed George W. Bush (2001-2009) no longer works the same.

But at the same time the media felt powerless to stop the madness in Iraq, just as years before it was speechless in the face of the tragedy in Vietnam. Nobody believes in the “end of history” anymore, an effective image of the then respected “scholar”, Francis Fukuyama, when he labeled the end of the Cold War as the burial of the ideologies that had competed the market with liberal democracy. Many scholars laughed silently, being left without intellectual work.

But buried history not only survived thanks to the survival of abuse, poverty, and inequality. Trump sold very well the existence of the ills of the United States, attributed to immigrants, the so-called “socialism”, and evil liberalism. We had to “make America great again.”

Now he has finished his special task with a “hat trick” (scoring three goals in a game) by appointing three conservative judges in the Supreme Court. Earlier he had accomplished the feat of systematically and quietly placing dozens of magistrates for life at the judicial levels immediately below.

The neutrality of the third power has been questioned for a whole generation, at least until the death of all the Republican judges who, taking into account the age of the last magistrate, will go a long way.

If Biden’s victory occurs, the majority Democratic sector that will have supported him will have achieved a feat in the face of fear, unrest, and that rise of demons that were supposed to have disappeared. But this victory can also be attributed not only to Trump’s authoritarian behavior during those four years in power, but also to a great extent to his mistakes in administering an effective policy to combat the pandemic.

Ironically, therefore, Trump would had been defeated not by a Democratic political opposition but also by “divine” action. The Cobid19 would had acted like those evil medieval viruses sent by the devil, which decimate the population, and has punished the tyrant. It is not going to be a comfortable conclusion.

That “help” from the pandemic is going to take a toll in the new Biden-Harris era. The surviving marriage made up of the virus and Trump will begin plotting his revenge.

Meanwhile, the new government will have to face new horsemen of the apocalypse: a shattered economy, a huge debt, the revenge of the ultra-right, police resentment, the persistent frustration of blacks and minorities, and a return to the resistance to a determined economic opening, which was a past mark of Democratic politics.

Biden’s America, pressured by urgent reconstruction, may opt for ambivalent behavior regarding foreign involvement. “America first” will remain latent with Biden.

At the very least, Democrats can be satisfied with the reestablishment of internationalism, the recovery of the good name (the essence of the United States still has a value on political Wall Street), moderate regional integration, arms control agreements , the agreements in favor of the fight against climate change, and the fight against drug trafficking and international crime. The international community can still trust the United States.

In contrast, in the case of a Trump reelection, it can worsen, not only in the national territory, but also in the spillover that occurs, racism, violence, corruption, poverty and inequality. The “end of history” may mean the beginning of another history, with the disappearance of the United States from the map built since 1945, which paradoxically will have been replaced by an unusual planet.

It would be like that terrifying scene from the best Hollywood movies with the streets littered with wrecked cars, the surviving inhabitants competing for the rest of the food available, and the apes watching the scene from the top of the cracked skyscrapers.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center of the University of Miami

Protests have been taking place in cities across the United States. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Why, in the United States, where change is the most pronounced hallmark, do some aspects never change? Why do many bad habits resist giving way to novelties that prove to be the basis of the success of the most developed country on earth and still the leading power?  Why is the explanation for that leadership due to a few factors? Why does Trump profess a visceral opposition to immigration, knowing that it is the key to the country’s success? Because millions of his compatriots interpret the sinew of American DNA as a threat to their comparative social advantage.

Meanwhile, in this drama, blacks continue to bear the brunt of it all. The explanation for their endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

No one can say that their grandparents were forced to change residence. Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

Joaquín Roy

This country is the most genuine example of national construction opposed to that based on ethnicity, religion, race. America is the most definite specimen of the nation of choice, based on personal conviction.

It is not by chance that theorists of nationalism call this alternative “liberal.” The “American dream” explains its survival. As long as millions of citizens of other continents answer Ernest Renan’s question with a negative vote every night in his imaginary “daily plebiscite”, and decide to opt for the residency trick, the United States will exist.

The day a majority of Americans vote negative for residency, the country would be deserted. There is nothing that unites Americans, except their desire to be. Their religion is summarized in the offer provided by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He does not give them a guarantee, but a promise. And it is enough for them.

However, the absence of a residency obligation has two crucial exceptions: black and indigenous minorities. These two sectors contrast in their implementation in what for them is, more than a dream, an “American nightmare.”

Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

The original owners of the immense territory, although their immemorial ancestors crossed the Straits of Alaska at the dawn of North America, have been reduced to their reservations, marginalized, eaten away by poverty and alcoholism. Even in the sporadic mythos in Hollywood movies, Sitting Bull and his imitators do not overcome the mystique of Buffalo Bill.

The blacks were unfortunately marked by the original sin of not having booked a ticket for the forced trip to the United States. Their implantation has been resisted from the beginning by themselves and by the descendants of the merchants who deposited them in America.

With their emancipation and its disastrous execution, the peculiarity of their residence became more apparent. When they were stripped of the benefits that they had given away to their owners for free, their value was lost in Wall Street.

The successive corrective measures of discrimination and segregation only made the division of society even more evident. Despite the actions of Martin Luther King, who paid for his daring with his life, legal advances supercharged racist resentment from a part of society that resisted reform. “Affirmative Action” and food stamps multiplied the opposition.

Simultaneously, the black community, which had ceased to call itself “colored,” to take a curious journey back to being classified as “African,” watched with amazement as other newcomers from other continents were climbing ranks.

Latin Americans began to outnumber blacks not only in economic resources, but in numbers. As a result of the new census parameters, while whites held 63%, Hispanics (15%) and Asians (10%) cornered blacks (13%).

Internally, the new “African-Americans” decided to opt for a peculiar nationalism: they defended themselves with their signs of “black is beautiful”, they enthroned their peculiar English inherited from their owners, and they monopolized some entertainment professions.

Some were more fortunate and co-opted the rosters of basketball teams. For their part, some managed to settle on the ladders of power as senators and congress people, thanks in part to the restructuring of electoral districts.

Then they even aimed, with the decisive support of white sectors, to opt for the incredible: the presidency of the United States. It was already too much and the opposition to this impudence did not forgive Obama or the rest of the community, and even less the Democrats and liberals.

The mirage of the election of the first black president bypassed the resistance of deep America and the withdrawal of the “silent majority” that Nixon tried to awaken. Now Trump has reinvented it.

It was forgotten that only about a third of the electorate voted for Obama, while another third chose the Republican candidates. Another third stayed home. Among those 60-70% of Americans who abstained from voting on the traditional electoral correction, crouched was the mostly white sector, both high-income and lower-middle-class that followed the sounds of the piper Trump.

Those who rejected the candidate Hillary Clinton believed, and still believe, that their faltering economies have been pierced by the rise of the historically vanquished. They now believe that their pristine suburbs, real or imagined, are threatened by the “socialist” hordes of predominantly Latino origin, and the “terrorists” who insist on protesting against what they consider dangerous interference by the security forces in daily life.

The only thing missing is that the statistical evidence of the black overpopulation of the prisons and the number of crime victims of the same origin is “enriched” with sad deaths of blacks at the hands of white policemen.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

Leo Messi. Credit: FCB.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

The Barcelona Football Club disaster in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, which was once more appropriately called the European Cup, is indeed a cataclysmic event, unprecedented, with predicted drastic and hurtful consequences.

Future Barça fans, when faced with the hardships of life, will argue that “more was lost in … not in Cuba … but in Lisbon.”

The end of Barcelona in the maximum European competition has all the characteristics to be not only the closing of a chapter of its sporting journey, but the end of an entire era of a team led by Messi.

The Barça of two long decades, trained by technicians who tried to follow the anthological schemes of Johan Cruiff and Pep Guardiola, transferred their style to the Spanish team that won two European Cups and a world trophy.

That strategy was embodied in the Cruiff doctrine composed of the three Ps: position, possession and pressure. Now the new European style is predicted to be based on physical power and speed, embraced by Bayern Munich, who have destroyed Barça.

What can also be blurred in the future Barça is a set of identity signs that had made it emblematic. Barça has been the refuge of foreigners who chose to nest in Catalonia at different times.

It was founded in the late 19th century by a handful of Germans and English, led by the Swiss Hans Gamper. It was presented with a name that did not fit with the academic rules: Football Club Barcelona, ​​which only the Franco regime managed to hispanicize by force into Club de Fútbol Barcelona.

This external insert in the Barcelona of that time, which had already exceeded its medieval limits with the Cerdá Plan grid, sent a global message that received the “national” response from a sector that called itself the Club Deportivo Español, later spiced up as Real. Thus a rivalry generally resolved in favor of Barça would be born, which would not hide its foreign inclinations.

Joaquín Roy

As an example, its “culers”, in a friendly match in 1925 booed the Spanish Royal March, the national anthem, and applauded the God Save the King performed by an English Navy band that had landed in the port of Barcelona.

That whim would cost Barcelona five years of closure decreed by General Primo de Rivera, a strong man of Alfonso XIII. Dazed by financial debts, Gamper was forced into exile and upon his return his health deteriorated to the point that he committed suicide.

Politics continued intertwined with the life of the club, and at the beginning of the Civil War, with Catalonia allied on the Republican side, one of its presidents, Josep Sunyol, of the pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana, was shot by Franco’s troops.

At the end of the conflict, a group of its players, who had moved to Latin America in search of income that had evaporated during the war, opted for self-imposed exile and their return was prohibited by Franco.

Despite the fact that Barça managed to recover and win several national competitions, thanks in part to the leadership of the Hungarian Kubala, only under the direction of Cruiff’s “Dream Team” it did manage to capture the longed-for first European Cup until 1992 at Wembley with the goal by Koeman.

In line with the rebirth of democracy, Barça built a nationalist image, although not pro-independence, since the majority of its mass was socially conservative in its upper sectors, and moderately leftist in its bases.

Some presidents contributed to claim that Barça exceeded sporting limits. Narcís de Carreras forged an emblematic slogan: “Barça is more than a club.” The shirt incorporated the Catalan flag on its neck and back. The captain, a position to which Messi was elevated, wore, in addition to the regulation armband, another with the “senyera”.

The slow transformation of Catalan nationalism into independence-seeking, which increased the percentages of radical votes to almost half the electorate, coincided with the rise of Barça to the heights of European football, without dangerously contaminating the collective image of the club.

The international style was reinforced by the incorporation of young products from La Masía, the players’ school. Spanish-speaking immigrants used the support for Barça as a remedy for the always difficult integration. Even outside the Spanish borders, Barça was recognized as one more product of globalization.

But after Guardiola’s departure, various presidents, poorly advised by the stars, inserted a long dozen players with a difficult fit (such as Neymar, Coutinho and Giezmann) and others with financially unjustifiable contracts.

Simultaneously, the offspring of La Masía were unable to join the team. Only Sergi Roberto had reached the Spanish team, in contrast to the seven Barcelona starters who won the World Cup in South Africa.

The few national titles and the unaffordable Champions League did nothing more than make up the triumphant emptiness of yesteryear. The musketeers who had once forged Messi’s supremacy had grown old. You could smell the decline. Future failures will be relativized with a comforting sigh of “more was lost in Lisbon.”

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

King Felipe VI of Spain and his father king emeritus Juan Carlos. Credit: Palacio de la Zarzuela.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

Long ago, I was reviewing the offer of readings on the Internet, as a break from the search for academic sources for one of those articles with which to comply with professional rules, impress colleagues and students, and continue climbing steps in the university.

I first came across an interview and then a quick review of a book, the ideas of which I found extremely helpful in solving intellectual dilemmas. The interview was a quick conversation between a new journalist and a veteran movie star: Jane Fonda.

I have not confessed to being a fan of the American actress nor have I recognized her father more than as a bare-bones actor. But some time ago I was struck by the marriage (third or fourth) of Jane with whom would be the founder of a pioneering television network, a model never well imitated: CNN, the work of Ted Turner.

Over the years, I have become a trapped consumer of this news invention, to the point that now, in the midst of the double pandemic (the virus and the one caused by Trump), I cannot do without the chain, even if it is to avoid the trump FOX.

In that interview (expanded on in her book, Prime Time) Jane Fonda proposed life as a series of theatrical acts. The first phase is training, which can be extended to professional and family life consolidation, the second stage. Her proposal is that the third stage is like a third act of theater.

Joaquín Roy

The evolution of life is, rather than a curve that goes up and then down, it is more like an ascending ladder. It is the third stage or act when you can be more productive, from the age of sixty or even after retirement. It is precisely in this phase when one can no longer afford to make the mistakes of the two preceding ones. In the third act you can do everything, except ridicule.

Ridicule is what King Emeritus Juan Carlos I is committing, after a long career, two previous acts in which history will recognize him full of personal achievements and political contributions.

In the first act, coinciding with his youth and personal settlement, he concentrated on complying with a script dictated by the harsh history of the first half of the 20th century in Spain.

The end of the monarchy of his grandfather Alfonso XIII, the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship imposed the rules of the game that he had to fulfill if he wanted his family to return to the throne, even if it was with the commendable sacrifice of his father Don Juan. The silence of Juan Carlos fulfilling all the steps is recognized as the basis of the achievements of the second act started.

Thanks to the collusion of the “Juancarlistas”, who were not monarchists, democracy was consolidated, culminating in the 23rd performance, of which their supposed double role as accomplice and hero has not yet been demonstrated.

The truth is that history weighed heavily on the family’s decision-making: Constantine, Queen Sofia’s brother, had lost the throne of Greece for his support of the military. Alfonso XIII had signed his delayed defenestration when he left command to General Primo de Rivera. Letting himself be carried away by General Armada, while Tejero pointed at the deputies was equivalent to a harakiri.

The truth is that this apparently impeccable second act began to show signs of malfunctioning as the already established democratic regime suffered the consequences of the faltering alternation between the two main parties.

The Socialist Party (significantly the mainstay of the Juancarlista monarchy) seemed exhausted after the repetition of Felipe González’s mandate. The coming to power of José María Aznar would be followed by a troubled foreign policy inclined towards the United States, affected by the Iraq adventure.

The moderating power of Juan Carlos suffered from lack of influence at the turn of the century due to the economic crisis. In that context, already in the third act of the monarch, it was seen how the behavior of the monarch was reeling.

Her daughter and son-in-law were accused of corruption, and the entire monarchy suffered an unprecedented trial. Her son’s wedding and the accession to the throne as Felipe VI failed to cover the damage of the father’s deteriorated behavior. The elephant Bostwana’s hunt, accompanied by his sentimental partner, led to abdication.

The discovery of the collection and laundering of commissions for the construction of the AVE to Mecca has been the drop that has filled the glass and that has culminated with the escape towards an innovative variant of exile.

In his third act, Juan Carlos I can even lose the privilege of being king emeritus. Jane Fonda will remind you that in the third act you cannot have free liberties that lead to ridicule. As an urgent remedy, with his son they have adopted the “social distance” (not six feet, but kilometers). Juan Carlos will also have to put on the mask to, in addition to protecting himself from the pandemic and avoid infecting the Spanish people, hide his now-disappeared smile.

Joaquín Roy is Professor Jean Monnet and Director of the Center for the European Union at the University of Miami

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

In the cinematic context of the death of the Italian and universal composer, Ennio Morricone, author of the background music of more than four hundred films, as an indirect tribute, Europe took a solid step.

The European Union’s (EU) forceful ban on accepting travelers from the rest of the world has been decided simultaneously with a collective option: an internal opening that covers the entire territory of the Schengen Agreement, an enlarged EU that includes some special non-members (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and the microstates).

Furthermore, the EU seems to favor some countries that belong to its protection ring of its immediate neighborhood: Algeria, Georgia, Tunisia and Morocco. It also gives a vote of confidence to the candidates for the immediate enlargement: Serbia and Montenegro.

In Asia and Africa, Europe recognizes the goodness of Rwanda and Thailand. The EU is pleased, once again, to show a solid portrait.

Joaquín Roy

The novelty of the ban is that the EU, replicating the title of a Sergio Leone film, among the most famous works with Morriconi’s musical dressing, sent an unwelcome message to the “ugly”, some heavyweights (Russia, Brazil ).

But the EU flatly pointed out to the “ugly” classic, the United States, that has earned that aesthetic distinction thanks to the showcase appearance of Donald Trump. As a further ignominy, Brussels admits important mutual allies and peers of the United States: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and South Korea.

In the Latin American subcontinent, Europe reserved to award an impressive individual medal, as if it were a Nobel Prize, to the new “good”: the small Uruguay.

Even protected in the hope of his hasty visit to Trump, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) could not escape being labeled “bad.” Noticeable is the everlasting contrast with Canada: Mexico is still “so far from God and so close to the United States”, just as Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz cursed more than a century ago. Ottawa is just as close to Washington, but it’s not affected by the neighborhood.

On this occasion, the EU leadership did not miss a golden opportunity to show a solid collective face, very often absent, becoming the object of internal criticism and external disdain

Observers from the Latin American scene have been quick to give some explanation to this seemingly shocking global decision. The key for the contrastive assessment, on the one hand, recognition and reaction, on the other, is very simple and, at the same time, complex.

On the one hand, the internal framework of the EU itself must be considered. On this occasion, the EU leadership did not miss a golden opportunity to show a solid collective face, very often absent, becoming the object of internal criticism and external disdain. It is always very difficult to find where the “phone” for Europe resides, as Henry Kissinger once claimed.

Therefore, Europe closes its doors to the most prominent competitors. But, hypocritically, gives a conditioned welcome to none other than China. There is no question of making the Asian giant uncomfortable, leaving the door ajar. Europe notes that Wuhan is the source of the virus (but not as blatantly as Trump repeats), but Brussels acknowledges Beijing’s dictatorial power in controlling the effects.

The result of Washington’s treatment will be that Brussels will become a new renewed object of irritation by Trump, if that tantrum is already something new. Meanwhile, the US Democrats led by Biden will certainly be happy to remind the President of his failed strategy against Covid 19. At the same time, the selection of little Uruguay, champion of the “good”, can boast of the successful control of the pandemic.

In contrast, the awarding of diplomas will highlight the ridicule of ominous giant Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, the tropical Trump. Even Chile, the country that, led by Sebastián Piñera, initially seemed to show a positive strategy, has remained in the “bad” group.

Without needing to say it explicitly, two “bad guys” are equally qualified by Europe and the United States: Cuba and Venezuela. They have no hope. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is already controlled by Colombia. Cuba excludes itself for its insularity, geographical and political.

Despite all this panorama, the European Union, always so stingy and sinuous, has reserved a special “right of admission”.

Fulfilling its privilege of being fundamentally intergovernmental in its external relations, while border control is a taboo subject, it will review every 14 days (as if it were a quarantine) the composition of the distribution of prizes and sticks. It would not be surprising if some “bad” ones reappear as “good”. But the “ugly” par excellence should put on the mask.

It remains open, finally, to ask about the scenario of winners and losers due to the application of this measure, especially shocking in the American continent.

Firstly, Europe may be harmed by the closure to North American travelers, so much in need of tourism. Export businesses and airlines will take the hit, if the ban is upheld.

In Latin America the losers will be “the underdogs”, to continue remembering the novel by Mariano Azuela. They will see their traditional escapes in emigration diminished and the consequent benefit of remittances.

Argentina, Brazil and Mexico will recall their weak position in a global network that only recognizes them as giants with feet of clay.

But the EU has self-imposed an expansion of the “bad” ones: the United Kingdom, France and Germany have restricted travel to Spain, causing the collapse of tourism.

Joaquín Roy is Professor Jean Monnet and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami jroy@miami.edu

Donald Trump addresses the UN's General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jul 10 2020 (IPS)

“As we were saying yesterday.” When, after an abnormal interruption of the school calendar, as happened recently with the extension of spring break (which does not coincide with “Easter”), I return to teach a class surprising my students with this phrase: “as we were saying yesterday. “

The students’ reaction, when asked about the origin of these words, is a general silence. I try to explain its background and take the opportunity to provide a review of the history of Spain (perfectly unknown) and Europe (somewhat better known).

Secondary is that they learn the biography of Fray Luis de León, the distinguished professor at the University of Salamanca, that they grasp some concepts of the Inquisition, something better known as part of the so-called Black Legend against Spain, very well established in American society, heir to the British.

In short, I reflected on my special circumstance of relationship with the generous readers and editors who have accepted me during more than half a century of producing columns for newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America. I considered it fair to clarify the reason for this hiatus of almost two years when I left silent the computer keyboard and freed editors from the heavy task of processing my texts.

Joaquín Roy

They were simply personal reasons, and an accumulation of academic work. It was not because of internal obstacles in the newspapers, to which I only have to thank for their patience for years and a certain disdain for discontinuing the offer. I hope you take it into account now that I intend to resume writing functions, with a new version of “as we said yesterday”

Why am I coming back now? Latent in several weeks as the pandemic eternalized and the institutional chaos of response was repeated, it has been installed in my perception of the country where I have lived since President Lyndon Johnson decided not to stand for re-election. I have felt the need to face the explanation of the very serious existential situation of that political entity, turned into a nation, in reality simply an idea, that we call the United States.

And the most concrete reason has been the installation of a person in (hopefully temporary) control of the course of the country. For the first time, in more than five decades of full residence in the United States, I feel the sense of danger of self-destruction of an admirable work, in every way. This fear is not exclusively due to the personality of the President.

The record of his conduct includes mistreatment of their subordinates, disdain for many of America's traditional allies (Germany, Italy, France), and ill-concealed admiration for a handful of authoritarian or decidedly dictatorial colleagues (Putin, Bolsonaro). He enjoys disregard of public health officials (Fauci, the most prominent), culminating in personal insults against his predecessor Obama, an action that is a fragrant violation of customary uses of American political liturgy

It simply reflects or takes advantage of the feelings of an imposing part of society that Richard Nixon (comparatively much less fearsome than Trump) called “the silent majority”. Now he has emerged from his burrow with impressive naturalness, spiced with a slogan to “make America great again”, as the motto embedded in the President’s baseball cap says.

The moment the United States now lives under Trump is much more serious than the Watergate experience. Among other comparisons, the honorable decision that Nixon made with his resignation, when detecting that the dismissal was imminent through impeachment, is not in the Trump script. Reinforced by the imperfect expulsion process carried out by the Democrats, in the Trump scenario there is only the overcoming of each and every one of the violations of political good taste and the breach of the most basic protocol laws.

The record of his conduct includes mistreatment of their subordinates, disdain for many of America’s traditional allies (Germany, Italy, France), and ill-concealed admiration for a handful of authoritarian or decidedly dictatorial colleagues (Putin, Bolsonaro). He enjoys disregard of public health officials (Fauci, the most prominent), culminating in personal insults against his predecessor Obama, an action that is a fragrant violation of customary uses of American political liturgy.

After his obscene appearance at the front of a Washington Episcopal parish, where traditionally the newly elected presidents come, brandishing a Bible, after having cleaned the grounds of peaceful demonstrators with tear gas and battering, his own Joint Chief of Staff was embarrassed to be forced to accompany him. A dozen senior military veterans (some recently in office charged and abruptly fired) have censured him, something unusual in military history.

Embarrassed, select Republican leaders comment privately (some already in public) on the disaster of the party founded by Lincoln, by actions that will only leave a trace of the fetid smell of failure. They accuse him of being incompetent, ignorant, inept, outdatedly stupid and now causing the collapse of pandemic treatment. Unusual phenomenon, a conservative minority yearns for Trump’s defeat in November.

His hatred for immigrants (legal or undocumented) contrasts with the motto embedded on the support of the Statue of Liberty. In the words of the poet Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your crowds, moaning to breathe free.”

For all these reasons I have decided to return, with the generosity of the editors and the magnanimity of the readers.

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Mar 14 2018 (IPS)

It is revealing that a ruler who did not serve in the military, nor enjoys any experience in war affairs, has a special inclination to use a vocabulary more typical of bloody clashes between states than in diplomatic relations.

Donald Trump, both in his electronic messages and in his television addresses, adores the use of military terminology to illustrate his plans. He likes the word “war” to label his government program.

Curiously, almost as a prelude to the surprising and apparent truce that can be put in place with North Korea, Trump has made a declaration of war “Urbi et Orbi”. The first salvo has been the announcement of the imposition of tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum. In addition, he has presumed the qualification that trade wars are good.

The alarm that has generated this decision has been widespread, with the threat of widening the ground to other products. The statements of response from the rest of the planet oscillate between perplexity and the start-up of protective measures of their business partners, friends and foes.

Joaquín Roy

Although Trump announced that his close neighbors, Canada and Mexico are forgiven, neither Trudeau nor Peña Nieto  trust him at all.

If mutual reluctance on both shores of Rio Grande is a permanent dressing of history, the apparent loyalty between Washington and Ottawa suffers from question marks that only the permanently installed courtesy barely manages to mask.

Trump has succeeded in having the Mexicans pass on to the Canadians the lamentation attributed to Porfirio Díaz: “Poor Mexico (Canada), so far from God and so close to the United States.”

The tottering NAFTA alarmed both partners and not even the promise of an improvement in conditions have managed to clear the threat of its disappearance.

That is why the Canadians have endeavored to solidify the agreement with the European Union, just as the Mexicans have reinforced their own alliance with the EU, the strongest between Brussels and the Americas.

The truth is that Trump’s tactic has confirmed his personal refusing of trade agreements and regional block alliances, stressing the option of unilaterality as a primordial strategy, presided by the claim of “America, first.”

And not only is that such decision is obvious, but the language used is the one of confrontation, as a springboard to victory, cemented on the argument of superiority.

If the European Union and China opt for retaliation with the imposition of tariffs on US products, consumers in Alabama, Ohio, and North Dakota, in addition to the classic Trump voters in Appalachia, will need to adjust the shopping cart. Perhaps this matters little to his family and wealthy Fortune 500 owners who have populated his administration, but those who depend on a salary at the end of the week will not be happy. They'll thank him in the election

But the arsenal of the American president’s decision is not reduced to his personal conception and ill-disguised arrogance, but also hides a weakness and fear of losing re-election.

In spite of the opposition of his wife Melania, Trump is not resigned to disappearing from the reduced political map to enjoy a solitary four-year mandate.

It would be like descending to the level of Carter and Bush Sr, who were ousted by their opponents. Trump needs more help than his millionaire donors.

He needs the little people who raised him to victory. He needs those who believe in the imposition of tariff rates and the construction of walls, more convincing than the one that seeks to raise before Mexico.

They naively will vote again under the promise of job creation. In the event that he succeeds in his strategy, Trump will probably be slapped by history.

He will remember that among the failures of the imposition of tariffs, executed as the simple squeezing of the trigger in a Western, often results in a shot on the foot.

Historians still explain the case of the Smoot-Hawley decision, imposed in 1930. Instead of softening the effects of the Great Depression of the late 1920 ‘s, it reduced US exports by 61%.

In an effect on the other side of the Atlantic, some experts even argued that the unfortunate decision helped the emergence of Nazi Germany and other Fascist niceties, in some countries hit by the growing economic war that preceded the bloody confrontation.

If the European Union and China opt for retaliation with the imposition of tariffs on US products, consumers in Alabama, Ohio, and North Dakota, in addition to the classic Trump voters in Appalachia, will need to adjust the shopping cart.

Perhaps this matters little to his family and wealthy Fortune 500 owners who have populated his administration, but those who depend on a salary at the end of the week will not be happy. They’ll thank him in the election.

While it may be true that some practices of US partners and competitors are not exactly fair, the method that the most reasonable advisers suggest is negotiation and brokering within the World Trade Organization (WHO).

Although Trump has heard that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, Carl von Clausovitz himself could remember with the logic of realism that in the end no one wins the wars and that many lose them. Trump may be a collateral casualty of “friendly fire.”

The author can be reached at jroy@miami.edu

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Feb 20 2018 (IPS)

It is the country of paradox, based on the double column of creativity and tradition. Americans are unable to escape the twin submission to the adamnism of being the first and the last to accept that the rest of the planet can be more original and may outrank them in any field.

Expelled, transferred, fled from Europe, they refuse to admit that the reconstructed European civilization, which they have neglected since 1776, can be superior to them. Sometimes, as Trump came up with, they would willingly admit Norwegians, especially if this option would prevent the arrival of citizens from the shithole dumps of the galaxy. It is a useless alternative.

Joaquín Roy

The United States is in danger if it strives stubbornly to maintain myths that slow its progress. Its idyllic interpretation of its foundational moments prevents Americans from accepting how much the world has changed by technology, social habits and laws, aspects among many others to which the genuine Mayflower and Ellis Island civilization has contributed in an impressive way. But the United States insists on believing that change, especially if it implies the admission of a subtle inferiority with respect to Europe, is detrimental to the survival of its identity.

The new massacre at another school (could have been in a mall, it does not matter) reminds us that the leaders of the United States and millions of citizens injure themselves with permanent damage. They erroneously interpret certain pioneering premises of their fundamental laws to their detriment. They confuse epochs and concepts sheltered under a security blanket that is shown as brutally perforated.

The so-called “right to bear arms” (what does not mean to use them at will), enthroned in the Second Amendment, has its origin in the era when there were neither federal armed forces nor the original states had the resources to maintain security. There were no structures that guaranteed the monopoly of the exercise of force (and protective violence, if appropriate) that is the hallmark of the Nation-State that inherited the authority of the old kingdoms and empires.

The new massacre at another school (could have been in a mall, it does not matter) reminds us that the leaders of the United States and millions of citizens injure themselves with permanent damage. They erroneously interpret certain pioneering premises of their fundamental laws to their detriment. They confuse epochs and concepts sheltered under a security blanket that is shown as brutally perforated.


The perverse belief that individuals are policemen and drivers of tanks in defense of their families and heritage, beyond the living room of their homes, can contribute to a comfort in which the individual is sacred. Society is secondary. The American “exceptionalism” prevents accepting that in other countries the forging of private armies and the collection of lethal weapons is not allowed, beyond the museum pieces. The opposite would be to admit the superiority of a Europe that had to be rescued from its own sins on two occasions. Europeans are masters in stumbling over the same stone, but after WWI they have learnt.

In this new massacre, more young people and children are victims of a system with atrocious deficiencies of mental health, education, and (why not?) well understood discipline. The key to these extremely serious incidents lies in the shortcomings of health plans that are gripped by the same myth of superiority and animosity towards what is interpreted (horror!) as “socialism”. The “system” (to call it somehow that) of health of the United States is a disaster of colossal proportions. But nobody seems capable of correcting it, innovating it or changing it. It is another result of the survival of foundational myths.

The beneficiaries of this health chaos are diverse. Of particular note are the private insurance companies that offer coverage to privileged users, who can afford to pay the fees and co-pay. They are followed by the manufacturers of medicines that claim the need to recover the costs of research (often developed with public funds). Then there are the doctors who must pay the debts incurred in obtaining their licenses in private universities. And finally, there are the politicians who play on the side of opposition to medicine and public health, universal and free, under the claim that this modality is a variant of “socialism”, a word pronounced with a “communist” accent

The losers are the millions of disinherited citizens who do not have access to jobs with mandatory coverage and shared financing. The worst affected are the unemployed who must be temporarily admitted to public hospitals or covered by charities. But there are those who recklessly go free until surgery leaves them without a home and inheritance. And when someone, like Obama, tries to change this chaos, he is crucified and his project becomes a primary target of annihilation.

When one asks why millions of Europeans are willing to accept these “socialist” solutions, in many of the capitalist countries with the highest rates of development, equality, education, low crime, reasonable birth rates and life expectancy, the answer is simple: because they accept to pay high taxes. Americans themselves pay the same high contributions, and swear without questioning that primary and secondary education remains public, universal. They accept this “socialist” modality.

But Americans and the politicians who stubbornly oppose  a reform are not willing to do the same with health, a fundamental right as life, freedom and … the pursuit of happiness, as the jeffersonian motto says. And they allow this unjust madness until the next group murder, committed by a madman, lacking basic health coverage, armed to the teeth, protected by the constitutional amendment that allows him to “have and bear arms.”

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami.
jroy@miami.edu

Excerpt:

Joaquín Roy

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jun 27 2016 (IPS)

The hopes of many of those who confidently expected the British electorate to vote, by a slender margin, for the country to remain in the EU have been dashed. All that is left to do now is to ponder the causes and background of this regrettable event, and consider its likely consequences, especially for relations with the United States.

In the first place one must point out and – and this is a general criticism of the present British political system – that Prime Minister David Cameron was hugely irresponsible to steer his country into this risky adventure. It has resulted in the worst calamity to befall Britain in the last half century and has inflicted severe damage not only on the EU but also on all the countries of the North Atlantic rim.

Cameron went out on a limb, thinking to secure total control over the country for his Conservative Party for the next several years. Next he pursued a surrealist referendum campaign agenda, seeking to persuade the public to vote to remain in the EU, against the Brexit proposal that he himself had engineered. He relied on the advantages and special privileges promised to the UK by the EU if the British people voted to remain.

Brussels had already warned that the EU would not grant Britain any further concessions or benefits over and above the conditions that apply in common to all EU members. It pointed out that Britain was in fact already a privileged partner, having opted out of the common currency (the euro) under a special agreement that did not even fix a timescale for its putative future membership of the euro area.

London also retains full control of Britain’s borders, having declined to sign the innovative Schengen Agreement which abolished many internal borders and introduced passport-free movement across the 26 Schengen countries.

The EU has indeed done everything in its power to keep the UK government and people happy and flaunting their prized British exceptionalism.

And now the fateful moment is at hand. The effect on Europe has been devastating. The one possible advantage for the EU – which has discreetly remained unvoiced – is that of ridding itself of an awkward partner, a dinner guest with an unfortunate habit of drawing attention to itself in negative ways. Britain slammed the brakes on progress towards fuller European integration and was a temptation to other recalcitrant EU countries to follow its bad example.

Recently concerns were raised in Washington over the Brexit referendum.

President Barack Obama himself did his best to urge Britons to stick with the EU when he visited London in April.

Cameron, and the people who voted for the UK to leave the EU, have done Obama a disservice. Britain’s image in the United States will deteriorate to unprecedented depths. The vaunted special relationship between the U.S. and Britain will no longer be an effective force underpinning one of the strongest alliances in recent history.

The first victim of the debacle may be the approval process for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, which is already looking shaky, at least for the immediate future.

The TTIP was meant to replicate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an ambitious deal to cut trade barriers, set labour and environmental standards and protect corporate intellectual property. The TPP was signed in principle by twelve Pacific Rim countries including the United States, and now awaits approval by legislators in each of the countries.

The rise of populism and anti-free trade sentiment is reflected in speeches by both U.S. presidential candidates, and is likely to slow down what is now viewed as “excessive globalisation”. There is a return to a style of nationalism that exerts control over economic as well as political initiatives.

The next U.S. president will find it difficult to advance their country’s alliance with London on defence issues. The UK will have freed itself from what was already problematic military cooperation with Europe, and only its link with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will endure. Some European NATO partners will be cautious about developing joint operations with a fellow member they view as uncommitted to agreements within the EU.

In the matter of trade per se, Washington will not take kindly to the new position of the City of London once it has lost its enviable status as a financial hub embedded in the EU. Siren songs from other European capitals solidly anchored in the soon-to-be expanded European community will be hard to resist, especially if European leaders adopt policies to strengthen the euro zone.

In Latin America, Brexit will be read as a confirmation that supranational practices and thoroughgoing integration are no longer a priority for the UK. The referendum result sends the message that national sovereignty is now paramount. All the time and effort the EU has spent over the years to promote the advantages of the European model of integration, based on the strength of its treaties and the effectiveness of its institutions, will be regretted as a sheer waste of time and energy.

An alternative “model of integration” based on the U.S. agenda, favouring one-off arrangements or treaties limited in scope exclusively to trade issues, will prevail over the already weakened European model.

The Caribbean region has strong historical and cultural ties to Britain. It will suffer from a less secure bond with the UK and will incline more closely to Washington.

The continent of the Americas, which is closest to Britain from the point of view of history and culture as well as in political and economic terms, will thus find itself further apart from Europe than before.

Joaquin Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Centre at  the University of Miami.  jroy@Miami.edu

Translated by Valerie Dee

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, May 13 2016 (IPS)

It was no news to observers, analysts and potential voters that Hillary Clinton would seek the Democratic nomination again to run for president of the United States in November 2016. This was not a surprise. But what only a bold analyst could have speculated is that Bill Clinton’s wife would end up facing off against such unlikely rivals.

On one hand, she would face novel competition in her party from another, very different, senator. Hillary would have to present herself as the candidate who truly represented the ideals of the Democratic Party, in contrast to Bernie Sanders, who declared himself a “socialist”. Although no one expects him to defeat her in the primaries, Sanders has put up an unexpectedly strong showing.

On the other hand, even more surprising and unusual was that Hillary would go up against a one-of-a-kind Republican candidate, who has triggered much consternation and extreme comments. If Donald Trump’s nomination is confirmed in Cleveland, it will go down in U.S. history as one of the strangest political races. Voters, observers and analysts are still wondering about the reasons underlying his spectacular ascent – which Clinton should worry about, if she means to defeat him.

The Sanders phenomenon can be explained to some extent using traditional analytical methods. The ideological inclinations of the senator from Vermont are not really that new. So far it has merely been a curious case of a political leader not afraid to use terminology outside of the grasp of most citizens and voters. It is not easy to translate what is known in Europe as “social democracy” into U.S. English. “Social Democrat” or “Democratic Socialist” are terms that don’t fit into the everyday vocabulary of people in the U.S. So to simplify, he opted for “Socialist”, which in the U.S. has more radical connotations, and which popular culture has turned into a synonym for “Communist”. This is the sense in which Sanders’ positions differ from Hillary’s.

His ideas have enjoyed a warm reception among young university graduates with less employable degrees, students struggling with the high cost of tuition, women of a certain cultural level, the unemployed, victims of the recession, people who have fallen out of the already shrunken middle class, and those disenchanted with the traditional propaganda of the political parties.

The case of Trump, meanwhile, has roots that go deep, far from the superficiality indicated by the things he says. The billionaire without experience in formal politics sends out a basic message, promising to make the United States “great” again. He plans a series of confrontations abroad, and not only on the economic front. But at the same time, his foreign policy stance is reminiscent of the most extreme form of isolationism that reigned in this country just before the times of crisis and armed conflict that the United States faced in the two world wars.

Trump alludes to a mythical country that actually only exists in the memory of people in the U.S. who are nostalgic about something they themselves never experienced and which is only sustained by high-flying speeches. It is an idyllic, basically Anglo-Protestant America which reluctantly accepted the necessary waves of immigration from the rest of the world. He uses the rhetoric needed to build a national identity in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th.

Trump’s simple message focuses on calamities from outside: Companies abroad undermine U.S. industry by producing cheap merchandise that then floods the U.S. market, while undesirable undocumented immigrants steal local jobs. The remedy: high import duties and walls along the border.

As indicated in Sanders’ campaign speeches, the real enemy shared by the voters of Clinton and Trump is the rampant poverty and inequality plaguing what is still the most powerful country on earth. The citizens are losing confidence in the country and they feel let down by the lack of answers from the Washington establishment.

Hillary will have to clearly differentiate her message in the election campaign from these two visions of the United States. Sanders’ is the most grounded in reality; Trump’s is a fantasy. But both are real from an electoral standpoint.

Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Mar 24 2016 (IPS)

The enemy isn’t Brussels: it’s Europe. The so-called Islamic State clearly signaled this by attacking, even more than the airport, a metro station. Maelbeek is not just another subway stop in the Belgian capital. Although the symbolism could have been more dramatic if the terrorists had chosen the neighouring station named after Robert Schuman…but perhaps the tighter security there dissuaded them.

The fact is that it is the symbolic heart of the European Union. Thousands of officials from the three EU institutions – the Council, the Parliament and the Commission – pass through that stop every day.

The Council, the highest EU body, represents the sacrosanct interests of the member states, which since the outbreak of terrorism and the refugee crisis have monopolised decision-making in the bloc. The Parliament, which defends the values of the citizens, feels that its voice is being ignored. The Commission, which defends the essence of the EU treaties, has submitted to the will of the member states.

In contrast with the gratuitous accusations about the EU’s supposed inefficacy, the fact remains that historically it has been a spectacular success which has guaranteed for decades what did not exist in Europe for centuries: stability, peace, progress, justice.

Joaquin Roy

That has been demonstrated by the actions of thousands of immigrants and refugees who have chosen, against all obstacles, to seek refuge in Europe and the EU. They are thousands of people willing to face any risk and pay any price (monetary or personal) to place themselves under the protection of one of the few systems on the planet that can give them what they long for.

This detail has been noticed by the terrorists who have finally identified the ultimate enemy of their actions. It isn’t the states, national societies, governments, or individual capital cities that have already been the victims of their hate, but an entity that tenaciously demands recognition.

The EU still has the potential to become an effective shield, not only to guarantee Europe’s survival as a civilisation, but to be an effective agent of the practical efficacy to fulfill the needs of its citizens. At the same time, it shows that people overseas who desperately want to be under Europe’s protection are right.

Up to now, the terrorists’ targets have been mainly national, in order to trigger, so far without success, a nationalistic and self-protecting reaction by governments fearful of losing their purported national sovereignty.

The attack on the emblematic subway station, the belly-button of the EU institutions, sent a crystal-clear message: the enemy is not the state. It is the collective entity that still manages to safeguard the achievements which, since nearly the end of World War II, still capture the admiration of the rest of the world.

The governments, through faint-hearted decisions in the Council of Europe itself, have on various occasions responded fearfully to terrorist attacks by curbing collective decisions. For example, in a misguided response to last November’s attacks in Paris, the French government eschewed the EU solidarity clause contained in article 222 of the EU treaty, and chose instead to invoke article 42.7 (similar to NATO’s article 5), triggering mutual defence among the member states.

Like other European countries, France decided to reduce European sovereignty, dangerously putting aside the Schengen agreement for border-free travel.

Instead of reinforcing the powers of the institutions, there was a move to strengthen national sovereignty. To obtain the cooperation of the alternative guardians of Europe’s collective authority, Turkey’s complicity in creating a barrier to the invasion of refugees was “bought” under the promise of facilitating its admission to the EU. The idea was that Brussels did not have the necessary power, which bolstered the arguments of the nationalists and of the terrorists themselves.

The attack on the Brussels metro station reminds us that terror itself recognises that the enemy is precisely the entity that the Europeans themselves want to weaken. Perhaps the time has come to return to the origins and assume, once and for all, that it was the national state that was guilty of the holocaust represented by the two European wars which nearly destroyed civilisation on the old continent. What is needed is not what numerous governments and citizen groups are demanding: less Europe. What is urgently necessary is to salvage Maelbeek station.

Instead of dismantling Schengen, what is needed is a treaty that is solid, inside and out, and that guarantees the free traffic of citizens and visitors. To bolster this argument, a supranational force should be created to oversee the borders in a collective manner, not subject to the whims of the states. What is needed is more Europe, not less.

Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Feb 24 2016 (IPS)

At this stage of the process that began in December 2014 with the surprise announcement of the opening of relations between the United States and Cuba, hardly anything counts as spectacular news. The detail in the decision by Washington and Havana that made news in the traditional sense (man bites dog) was that the plan to sit down and talk implied that Cuba gave up its prior demand that the embargo be lifted. The United States, for its part, accepted that Cuba did not undertake to make any special changes to its own political system.

Joaquín Roy

Since then, each side has been following a basic script that should one day lead to complete opening. All we need ask ourselves is what U.S. President Barack Obama has to gain with his visit to Cuba on 21-22 March, a decision not without risks, and what might be the motivation for its early date. The key is as much the forthcoming Cuban calendar as that of the United States.

In the Cuban context, developments in the political and economic situation in Latin America do not support an attitude of inertia and waiting for circumstances to improve while Raúl Castro’s term of government runs out (although that does not necessarily mean a regime change). Substantial changes are occurring in some areas of Latin America that will have an inescapable effect in Havana.

The instability in Venezuela, together with the change of government in Argentina, could trigger a modification of Cuba’s alliances. Although it is too soon to predict a major reconfiguration of alliances, a gradual fall of left-leaning populism and a return to the prevalence of moderation and neo-liberalism cannot be ruled out. Therefore, balancing the enduring presence of Cuba in Latin America with good relations with Washington is a priority. Here, Obama comes to the rescue.

The U.S. President has the advantage that his formerly risky wager on Cuba no longer affects his political present or future. He is no longer a presidential candidate. The issue of Cuba no longer has the weight it had years ago in the electoral context of Florida, where the vote count no longer depends on the Cuban issue. The influence of sectors opposed to normalisation and the end of the embargo has been eroded by the passage of time and circumstances.

In the rest of U.S. territory, Cuba does not exist as a “problem”. This is becoming clear in the Republican and Democratic primary campaigns, where not even candidates of Cuban origin (Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) can exploit what used to be an advantage. What is more, demanding the end of trade barriers is seen as beneficial to the economies of many states producing goods that Cuba needs and wants to buy.

Returning to the Cuba-Latin America scenario, the changes in political and social tensions bring about the benefit of lower pressure in other regions of the planet. With the disappearance of Cuba as a source of infiltration in different areas (Africa, the Caribbean, South America), Havana is even taking on a cooperative role as mediator in domestic conflicts (Colombia). It cooperates on drug control functions (although there is suspicion that individuals are implicated). It guarantees the security of access routes to the Panama Canal and must deal with U.S. stubbornness in maintaining Guantánamo.

The only challenge and risk posed by Cuba for the United States is its own instability, caused by economic deterioration that may affect the political fabric and provoke internal conflicts, which (at the moment) only its own armed forces and security agencies can contain. Security agencies in Washington and the Pentagon are aware that the United States is already sufficiently preoccupied with more explosive scenarios in other parts of the world (Middle East, Asia). Therefore for the White House, whoever its occupant may be, the priority is to enjoy a certain amount of stability south of Key West. Cuban President Raúl Castro has no doubt taken note.

According to this logic, a number of operations are whittling away the force of the embargo. There has been a tremendous increase in visits to Cuba by U.S. citizens fitting into the authorised categories (studies, religious organisations, aid of various kinds) and by thousands of Cubans by birth who have the curious privilege of visiting their families. The impact of entry to the U.S. of Cubans with visas must also be taken into account: a minimum of 20,000 a year was authorised by Clinton to stop the boatlift in 1994. In addition to these arrivals is the systematic trickle of immigrants reaching U.S. territory through third countries in the Central American corridor.

This complex panorama is part of the scenario of Obama’s trip to Cuba, and the Cuban government is well aware of it. It will be part of the legacy of the transition, whatever shape it takes.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Aug 13 2015 (IPS)

Recovering from a broken femur following a bicycle accident suffered in Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry – former senator and former presidential candidate – is anxious to accelerate his convalescence and will visit Cuba on Friday Aug. 14, where he will hoist the Stars and Stripes flag over the emblematic U.S. embassy building in Havana.

Joaquín Roy

But Kerry will not going to a strange place: in reality, he will be going back home. As he catches a glimpse of the Capitol building in the Cuban capital, he will certainly think that it looks familiar – no wonder, it is a copy of the one on Capitol Hill back in Washington.

More than Mexico (from which the United States snatched half of its territory) and Puerto Rico (the peak of the 1898 Spanish-American War, together with the Philippines), Cuba is the land in Latin America which is the most naturally “American-Yankee”. Nothing is more palpable confirmation of this than to see the appalling ease with which anyone who has recently arrived in Cuba from Miami adapts to the local environment.

At this point, one must ask why it has taken so long to “normalise” what should have been a close relationship between the empire and a modest island about 160 kilometres from Key West.

“More was lost in Cuba” has been the cry of several generations of Spaniards as they considered a family or business misfortune. What did the United States lose in Cuba through having maintained that lengthy embargo in place, whose goal has been recognised as a failure?

More than substantial property, most of which actually belonged to Spaniards or their immediate descendants, Washington lost the arrogance of its hegemonic superiority after World War II.

The conversion of Cuba into a Marxist-Leninist state, allied with the Soviet Union – the arch-enemy of the United States – and the total destruction of the capitalist system, plus the exile of a stratum of a remarkable society, was a painful slap on the face of such magnitude that no U.S. president was willing to forgive and go down in history for being the first who had bowed before Castro.“The United States is what Latin America wanted to be and could not be. Hence, Castro insisted on converting the country [Cuba] into an enemy, a task in which he was helped by the unfortunate policies of Washington”

This explains the inertia of maintaining the embargo, an error that bit by bit has been weakened in the economic field. But any explanation must also take into account the primary role played by Fidel Castro, lord and master of the situation.

His leadership will be remembered in history, although probably without absolving him (as he promised when he was condemned in 1956 after his first failed rebellion). He has had no match since Simon Bolívar.  His success is credited to his extreme understanding of the meaning of the United States in the historical evolution of Latin America and its innate identity. Unlike the erroneous vision of other leaders, Castro understood that United States was an intrinsic part of the Latin American personality, and Cuba in particular.

The United States is what Latin America wanted to be and could not be. Hence, Castro insisted on converting the country into an enemy, a task in which he was helped by the unfortunate policies of Washington. Nevertheless, he retained the notion that in reality Cubans do not hate the United States, but only despise the temporary occupants of the White House and the detested U.S. security institutions.

Castro knew perfectly well that while Cuba was by defect becoming a nation after gaining independence mortgaged by the Platt Amendment (another of Washington’s errors), it was also becoming inexorably “Americanised”.

The new empire reinforced this error through its support for or tolerance of dictators and corrupt Cuban rulers of the 1930s and 1940s, details that Castro exploited in a ruthless Machiavellian fashion to attempt to demonstrate the alien nature of the United States.

That is why, faced with maintenance of the embargo, Castro responded with actions that provoked the negative reaction of Washington.

When there were phases of relative calm (as happened under the Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton administrations) Castro sent troops to Africa, or shut down planes of Brothers to the Rescue (a Miami-based activist organization formed by Cuban exiles), generating adoption of the Helms-Burton Act which codified the embargo. He also got the European Union to adopt a Common Position, a sort of weak “embargo” to “keep up with the Joneses”.

Why does this scaffolding now appear to be coming down – because the justifications of the past do not have the arguments that are necessary for pragmatism today. The United States needs a secure and steady environment it its backyard. Barack Obama has more important issues to deal with in the rest of the world. Cuba has become a nuisance.

The other reason is because Raúl Castro is not like his brother and is clutching at the straw of the United States “returning home”.

But the change will not be easy. The political conditions of normalisation inserted in the Helms-Burton Act are formidable (disappearance of the Castro brothers or many high officials named by them, establishment of political parties, freedom of expression, elimination of Radio/TV Martí, etc.).

Erosion by slow progress (as in the economic field) will not be sufficient. It will be necessary for Congress to repeal the legislation en bloc. This time Raul is not going to commit a fatal error. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 7 2015 (IPS)

The decisive result of the Greek referendum held Jul. 5, in which voters overwhelmingly rejected (61.3 to 38.7 percent) the terms of an international bailout, has opened a new chapter not only for the future of Greece, but also in terms of the essence of the European Union itself.

Paradoxically, the future of the euro may become a secondary issue.

Joaquín Roy

In the coming week, the pages will be turned on some chapters of European history that had been regarded as a fixed part of the script.

The fact that, in their time, previous Greek governments blatantly misrepresented the country’s financial situation in order to secure entry into the euro zone will have to be put aside.

The authorities in Brussels will have to be forgiven for turning a blind eye so that the country using the world’s oldest existing currency, and that had founded a mythical democracy, should not be excluded from the inaugural party of Europe’s spectacular expansion.

The eternal European habit of brinkmanship and coming to last-minute arrangements – so that summits produce neither winners nor losers, but everyone can go home feeling vindicated – will have to be given up for practical reasons.

This battle may still cause significant damage and a high number of casualties.

In the first place, although the voting reflects clear overall rejection of E.U. impositions, Greek society remains dangerously divided on the choice presented to it by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The problems the Greek people face in their daily lives will not disappear after the referendum.“If there is no new bailout or a massive debt write-off, the [Greek] government may be forced by its inability to satisfy the citizenry’s demands to choose between two evils … the humiliation of urgent humanitarian aid from the European Union … [or] the dangerous path of seeking protection from external interests”

Those who voted in favour of accepting the conditions of the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will blame those who backed Tsipras for the costs they will all have to bear. Those who voted No and “won” the contest may well feel disappointed when they see the economic situation worsening, or not noticeably improving.

The referendum results indicate that conservatives and the middle classes decided to support the bailout conditions because they at least had some assets. On the other hand, the majority of people who have nothing, or who have lost nearly everything, preferred to carry on the struggle and reject E.U. pressures.

It is worth noting that the proportion of No votes in the referendum was higher than the proportion of ballots cast for the left-wing Tsipras in the recent elections that propelled his party to power.

If there is no new bailout or a massive debt write-off, the government may be forced by its inability to satisfy the citizenry’s demands to choose between two evils. On the one hand it may have to accept the humiliation of urgent humanitarian aid from the European Union, as has been suggested at the eleventh hour. On the other hand, it might take the dangerous path of seeking protection from external interests, as recent overtures towards Moscow appear to indicate.

E.U. leaders may pursue the threats they made in the final hours of the referendum campaign. The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, might have found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to take action to back up his last-minute arguments about the dire consequences of exiting the euro. Now, however, he has backed down and appears to be leaning toward negotiation.

Other E.U. leaders are also in awkward positions. Where will European Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker be if Berlin’s hard line prevails?

Or conversely, where will everyone be if traditional negotiation and classic compromise are now being reconsidered?

A traditional forecast is that the European leaders in Brussels, backed by the IMF, will opt for negotiation, because they do not want to go down in history as participants in a conflict with unpredictable consequences. It does not suit the Greek prime minister to overstep the mark, either, and he could therefore make the European Union an offer it cannot refuse. For their part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other holders of the enormous debt know that if Greece exits the euro, repayment will be impossible.

In the distance, the United States has expressed concern over the development of this process. Economic convulsion in Europe is not in the interests of Washington; moreover, from its standpoint, two issues are crucial for preventing damage from spilling over into other vital dimensions.

The first is the threat that Greece may be tempted to drift into the sphere of Russia’s protection.

The second is the disturbing sight of the European Union under a divided leadership and with damaged financial underpinnings at the height of negotiations for the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States.

Indecisive leaders in Europe will make it very difficult for U.S. President Barack Obama to exercise his negotiation mandate granted by Congress, increasing the likelihood that the project will be delayed until a new U.S. president takes office.

In conclusion, the decisions taken now in Brussels and other European capitals will determine whether or not there will be further harm to the essence of the European Union – and to the euro, the jewel in the crown and the cause of the whole drama. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Pablo Piacentini/Phil Harris   

Translated by Valerie Dee

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Apr 14 2015 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama has earned a place in history for taking the first steps towards rectifying a policy that has lasted over half a century without ever achieving its primary goal of ending the Castro regime in Cuba.

At the Seventh Summit of the Americas, held in Panama City Apr. 10-11, Obama set aside the tortuous negotiations with his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro and the impossible pursuit of consensus with his domestic opponents. Going out on a limb, he made an unconditional offer. He knew, or he sensed, that Castro would have no option but to accept.

Joaquín Roy

The Cuban economy is on the verge of collapse and the regime is receiving subtle pressure from a population that has already endured all manner of trials.

Signs of weakening in Venezuela, its protector, with which it exchanged social favours (in the fields of health and education) for subsidised oil, are gathering like hurricane storm clouds over the Raúl Castro regime

Instead of shaking the tree to knock the ripe fruit to the ground, Obama chose to do the unexpected: to prop it up and instead encourage its survival.

Obama is committing to stability in Cuba as the lesser evil, compared with sparking an internal explosion, with conflict between irreconcilable sectors and the imposition of a military solution more rigid than the current level of control. Washington knows that only the Cuban armed forces can guarantee order. The last thing the Pentagon aspires to is to take on that unenviable role.

Thus, between underpinning the Raúl Castro government and the doubtful prospect of attempting instantaneous transformation, the pragmatic option was to renew full diplomatic relations and, in the near future, lift the embargo.

Raúl Castro, for his part, yielded ground on the oft-repeated demand for an end to the embargo as a prior condition for any negotiations, and has responded wisely to the challenge. He contented himself with the consolation prize of reviewing the history (incidentally, an appalling one) of U.S. policy towards Cuba, in his nearly one-hour speech at the Summit.

“Obama is committing to stability in Cuba as the lesser evil, compared with sparking an internal explosion, with conflict between irreconcilable sectors and the imposition of a military solution more rigid than the current level of control”
To sugar the pill, however, he generously recognised that Obama, who was not even born at the time of the Cuban Revolution, shares no blame for the blockade. In this way, Castro contributed decisively to Obama’s triumph at the summit.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has emerged from this inter-American gathering as the clear loser. The key to his failure was not having calculated his limitations and having undervalued the resources of his fellow presidents. Initially, Maduro logically exploited Obama’s mistake in decreeing that Venezuela is a “threat” and imposing sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials.

A large number of governments and analysts criticised the language used in the U.S. decree. In the run-up to the summit, Obama publicly recanted and admitted that Venezuela is no such threat to his country.

Maduro’s weak showing at the Summit was due to a combination of his own personality, the reactions of important external actors (significantly distant from the United States), the weak support of many of his traditional allies or sympathisers in Latin America, and the absence of unconditional support from Cuba.

It should be noted that the United States barely made its presence felt over this issue, although U.S. State Department counsellor Thomas Shannon made an effort to smooth over Maduro’s excesses and visited the Venezuelan president in Caracas ahead of the summit.

Maduro’s actions were already burdened by the imprisonment of a number of his opponents on questionable charges. As a result, protests spread worldwide, especially in Latin America, but also in Europe.

A score of former Latin American presidents signed a protest document which was presented at the summit.

Although these former presidents might be regarded as conservative and liberal, they were joined by former Spanish president José María Aznar (a notorious target of attacks by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and, afterwards, Maduro himself) and former Spanish socialist president Felipe González, who offered to act as defence lawyer for Antonio Ledezma, the mayor of Caracas, who is one of those imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime.

Maduro’s attempt to have a condemnation of the U.S. decree included in the summit’s final communiqué ended in another defeat. Although efforts were made to eliminate direct mention of the United States, the outcome was that the summit issued no final declaration because of lack of consensus.

In spite of the loquacity of its partners and protégés in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Venezuela’s Latin American supporters showed caution and avoided direct confrontation with Washington.

The same was evidently true of the Caribbean countries; fearful of losing supplies of subsidised Venezuelan oil, they made their request to Obama for preferential treatment by the United States at the meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in Jamaica earlier in the month.

But Maduro’s main failure was not realising that Raúl Castro would have to choose between fear of diminished supplies of cheap Venezuelan crude and rapprochement with Washington. It remains unknown how Cuba will be able to continue supplying Cuban teachers and healthcare personnel to Venezuela, until now the jewel in the crown of the alliance between Havana and Caracas in the context of ALBA.

Translated by Valerie Dee/Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Joaquín Roy can be contacted at jroy@Miami.edu

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
MADRID, Mar 31 2015 (IPS)

The visit to Cuba of Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on Mar. 23-24, and the forthcoming visit in May planned by French President François Hollande, have fast-tracked the agenda of relations between the European Union and Cuba.

The sudden announcement of normalisation of diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba in December last year set the context for the rapprochement between Brussels and Havana.

Joaquín Roy

At the time, negotiations were already under way on a bilateral ‘Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement’; after years of confrontation, the European Union was prepared to abandon the “common position” imposed by Brussels on the Fidel Castro regime in 1996.

While Washington’s stance was that the persistence of a strictly Marxist regime deserved the imposition of conditions for ending its embargo, the European Union and a consensus of its governments held to the policy of so-called “constructive engagement”. EU member states continued to relate to Cuba on an individual basis according to their special historical links, economic interests and a range of views on human rights.

After a number of tensions were overcome, in 2014 Brussels decided to adopt a pragmatic programme that would lead to a cooperation agreement similar to those signed between the European Union and every other country and bloc in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For many years E.U. relations with Cuba were mainly represented by initiatives led by Spain, which veered from spearheading the imposition of demands on Havana, especially at critical times during right-wing People’s Party (PP) governments, to pursuing an incentives strategy under the left-wing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).“While Washington’s stance was that the persistence of a strictly Marxist regime deserved the imposition of conditions for ending its embargo, the European Union and a consensus of its governments held to the policy of so-called ‘constructive engagement’ [with Cuba]”

The process even came to be sarcastically called a “Hispanic-Spanish issue”.  In this context, a number of European states behaved according to their own convenience, with no essential change in the overall scenario.

Cuba avoided dealing with the broader European community, opting instead a for country-by-country approach. But the world was changing, and the real value of Europe’s stock in Cuba fell.

Then it was the right time for Brussels to seize the day and take advantage of the circumstances to negotiate with Cuba, with an open agenda that would include dismantling the “common position”.

After discrete exchanges, both sides decided to sit down for talks. Surprisingly, Cuba was open to a process without which the common position would be eliminated, as had been its strong traditional demand.

Spain itself was facing a delicate internal situation and needed to seek stability on other fronts. Consolidation of its relations with Latin America depended on juggling the claims and expectations of different domestic ideological groupings. Moreover, the vote of the Latin American bloc was vitally important for Spain’s candidature to the U.N. Security Council, a consideration that counselled extreme caution on the part of Madrid.

In the new era, it is hard to predict what role Spain will play in the Cuban transition, but in principle it has remarkable potential, and not just because of the weight of history and the contemporary importance of the “special relationship” between the two countries.

It is relevant to note that U.S. influence on Cuba’s own national identity has not been limited to imposing its hegemonic power. A hefty dose of the “American way of life” has become an essential part of the Cuban being.

The “enemy” was never the United States per se, but its concrete policies of harassment. The ease with which Cuban exiles of different epochs and different social backgrounds fit into U.S. society shows the naturalness of this curious relationship. Normalisation of relations will help reinforce the link.

European interests would do well to take note because the rebirth of the natural relationship between the United States and Cuba will provide strong competition to the relative advantage that European interests have so far achieved, and could significantly reduce it.

The outcome of competition from U.S. economic and political power in Cuba vis-á-vis renewed European operations will depend to a large extent on the nature and intensity of Washington’s renewed involvement with the island. Europe could maintain its relative advantage if the Cuban authorities themselves, or the surviving embargo restrictions, however moderated, set limits to U.S. activity.

It is worth emphasising that European activities in Cuba will continue to be limited, within E.U. institutional structures as well as on the pragmatic agendas of its member countries, as long as the U.S. embargo lasts. Restrictions on trade and investments continue to affect full freedom of movement by European companies in Cuba itself, as well as their transnational alliances in the rest of the world where U.S. interests are dominant.

As a result, even in a relatively open relationship, the real possibilities for a European advantage remain largely speculative, and may even decline, especially in the area of trade and investments.

The key factor in this uncertainty is a legacy of more than half a century of the absence of relations, which have not been ”normal” during this period yet which aspire to become so in the future. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Translated by Valerie Dee – Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Joaquin Roy can be contacted at jroy@miami.edu

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico, Nov 1 2014 (IPS)

Mexico can charm, irritate, wound, inspire and confuse the casual visitor as well as the informed researcher. But no one is ever left indifferent by it. Mexico leaves an indelible mark.

To understand it properly, one has to assume that there is not one Mexico, but many. This is partly what made Lesley Byrd Simpson’s book ‘Many Mexicos’ a famous bestseller in the 1960s; it is still required reading for travellers and academics alike.

Joaquín Roy

One Mexico appears to be caught in a time warp. Another is cruelly open to nearly all the evils and tragedies of the present age.

One lives in the past, while the other is not sure of its place in the future. One exudes peace and happiness. Another is systematically killing itself. One is generous, the other takes delight in robbery and corruption.

All the versions of Mexico have been exposed to view by the tragedy of the disappearance and probable massacre in late September of more than 40 young rural schoolteachers in the state of Guerrero.

A diabolical combination of hunger and poverty with private and government corruption, linked with drug trafficking, has contributed to this atrocity. The education profession which could have provided a modest corrective to Mexico’s endemic inequality – and that of the rest of Latin America, the world’s most unequal region – has instead become its victim. “One Mexico appears to be caught in a time warp. Another is cruelly open to nearly all the evils and tragedies of the present age. One lives in the past, while the other is not sure of its place in the future. One exudes peace and happiness. Another is systematically killing itself”

After turning a blind eye to countless past complaints, the crimes of illegal detention, kidnapping and extortion have now blown up in the face of three layers of government (municipal, state and federal). The authorities expected that the idyllic Mexico would once again cover up the reality of the vestiges of what Mario Vargas Llosa aptly called “the perfect dictatorship” – now the title of a blockbuster movie.

A remnant of the mirage of “the end of history” proposed by Francis Fukuyama, Mexico today is a stubborn exemplar of the endurance of the apparently eternal Mexico that refuses to disappear.

The services rendered by the populist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the United States, by maintaining domestic order in a country that might potentially develop into a second Cuba of over 100 million people, have achieved its reinstatement after surviving two six-year terms of the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

The economic reforms instituted by the new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who affects a modern image with Kennedy-esque overtones, appear to be castles in the air. A new airport for the capital city, a high-speed rail network and a spectacular proposal for private participation in exploiting energy sources are to perform the miracle of launching Mexico definitively into modernity and progress.

The rough underside of Mexico has reminded the president that things are not so easy. Insisting on the validity of all the national myths does not appear to be sufficient to erase the serious shortcomings of one of the few countries in the world with a character and a solid history of its own. 

Mexico vies with Brazil for the leadership of Latin America, and rivals a handful of nations around the world in terms of international presence. It boasts remarkable banking activity which acts as a magnet for investments and the development of technology parks.

Its streets and highways are jammed with traffic, including a surprising number of high-end cars. But most of its citizens have no alternative but to walk or take crowded buses to get to work, a process that takes up a scandalous amount of their time in return for insulting wages.

However, Mexicans seem to be more optimistic than citizens of many other countries in the rest of the world, displaying a strong sense of loyalty on national holidays, when they wave enormous flags and even hoist them above the crosses on the tops of churches.

It is repeatedly said that Mexico is eternal. The Olmecs, Aztecs and Mayas are claimed as part of the nation. A decorous veil is drawn over the colonial and imperial periods, but there is generous and serious recognition of the Spanish contribution after President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) welcomed Spanish exiles to the country.

Mexico is a varied civic community modelled on inclusiveness and individual decision-making, not based on ethnicity, blood ties or religion. Mexico is the future, without renouncing the heritage of the past.

But undying loyalty reaps an unacceptably meagre reward. Recently, the Mexican government set the daily minimum wage at about five dollars. Across the border, U.S. President Barack Obama announced an hourly minimum wage of 14 dollars.

No wonder, then, that Mexicans vote with their feet and are drawn inexorably to the magnet of the United States. With more than 40 million Mexicans living north of the Rio Grande, the unity of the body politic is an illusion.

If this nation depends on the labours of rural schoolteachers of indigenous extraction being paid barely subsistence wages, who are discriminated against, forcibly disappeared and massacred, the project of Peña Nieto and the new PRI is Utopian. Many Mexicos will continue to coexist side by side. For how long? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

At last, after the obligatory summer break, the European Union (EU) has some new faces to fill the top vacancies on the team that began to emerge from the May 25 parliamentary elections.

Before the recess, conservative Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker had been appointed to the presidency of the European Commission, the executive body of the 28-nation bloc.

Joaquín Roy

There was stiff opposition from some governments, particularly from British Prime Minister David Cameron, but in the spirit of the Treaty of Lisbon the post was offered to the candidate of the political group winning most seats in the new European Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).

The second agreement was to leave German socialist Martin Schultz in his present post as president of the Parliament for another two and a half years. A balance was thereby struck between moderates of the right and of the left.

The thorniest issues remained to be faced. The traditional “Carolingian” (Franco-German) Europe was still in control of the bloc, and renewal was needed. Eastern Europe was demanding a larger role and there was a notable absence of women.

Juncker had already made it known that he would not accept a new Commission that did not have at least one-third women members. The established order, an unabashedly male-dominated club, gave no signs of correcting itself. The EU’s customary intricate balancing act was set in motion.“Renzi wanted to attack head-on Italy’s poor track record in European affairs in recent years, tarnished by the deplorable presence of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in power and in opposition, a handicap that affected his predecessor Enrico Letta before him”

The jigsaw pieces began to fall into place. Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s candidacy fell out of favour. Then followed a dual move by the community. First, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a conservative from the entourage of former president Lech Walesa, was appointed president of the EU Council, made up of its heads of state and government.

Secondly, Federica Mogherini, the Italian foreign minister, was catapulted to the position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (FASP).

Proposing her candidacy, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi doggedly fought resistance from representatives of the Baltic states who regarded her as too soft on Russia, citing the example of her invitation to President Vladimir Putin to a meeting in July.

The sweetener of Tusk’s designation mollified the resistance of Eastern European countries, but not the reluctance of other nations that regarded the inexperienced Mogherini, just 41 in June, as not strong enough to face external enemies in a convulsed world.

However, Renzi, himself only 39, was playing a risky juggling act with several balls in the air. Mogherini was his message to the power clique in Rome to try to end the illusion that political respect requires having reached an age of around 100.

Moreover, Renzi wanted to attack head-on Italy’s poor track record in European affairs in recent years, tarnished by the deplorable presence of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in power and in opposition, a handicap that affected his predecessor Enrico Letta before him.

Furthermore, Renzi wanted to create an opportunity to influence European Union foreign policy through Mogherini’s cooperation.

Renzi’s bold proposal may backfire on him, precisely because of the weakness of the Italian system, which is tolerating leadership by a moderate Socialist so long as he does not shake its foundations.

Within the European community, Renzi will have to rely on the support of his Socialist counterparts, who have been going through a bad patch recently. They have suffered from the crisis, which has forced them to apply neoliberal austerity policies, causing heads to roll from Scandinavia to Portugal and Greece.

For her part, Mogherini will have to face traditional problems and new challenges. The establishment already mistrusts her because of her age. She will find little support from a group of people, most of whom could be her parents.

On the Commission, where she is vice president, she will hardly be comforted by the handful of women Juncker manages to recruit. On the Council she will have the support of only four ladies, led by Angela Merkel, in a boardroom full of boring men in dark suits and dreadful ties, each of them obsessed with managing foreign policy on their own terms and at their own risk.

The worst of the bad omens for the appointment is the suspicion that the EU’s hard core does not believe the position of High Representative to be important, given that the main security and defence competences remain in the national domains.

Mogherini’s second challenge, like that of her predecessor Catherine Ashton of the United Kingdom, is to cope with the enduring imprint of the founder of the position, Javier Solana of Spain.

However, her ambition and track record already surpass those of the eminently forgettable Ashton, a Brussels official who had already booked her ticket on the Eurostar train under the Channel back to London when she was unexpectedly appointed to FASP.

Mogherini can document her solid preparation for such a high-profile job over two decades, with her degree in Political Science, her exchange experience on an Erasmus scholarship in the French city of Aix-en-Provence, and her thesis on political Islam.

A mother of two with a gentle smile and light-coloured eyes, she gives the impression of an assistant professor working up the academic ladder towards a full professorship. But she could surprise some of the detractors who are already prophesying her failure.

She is a professional in a field that needs new vocations and fresh vision. She will lead the most impressive diplomatic team on the planet, made up of the ministries of 28 countries and the European External Action Service. She deserves good luck, not just for herself and Renzi, but for all Europeans and people beyond. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 14 2014 (IPS)

A few decades ago, even before the end of the Cold War and before and after Ronald Reagan’s election to the White House, analyses regularly referred to U.S. decadence. At other times, it was Europe’s turn for pessimistic descriptions, especially when it could not overcome its ambivalence over deepening integration, and above all because of the failure of its constitutional project. 

The West was in crisis. And now the pair are apparently going through a similar phase, with each one trying to outdo the other in inferiority.

The United States seems to be in the doldrums because of the apparently erratic foreign policy of President Barack Obama, who does not seem to be profiting from surmounting the legacy of George W. Bush’s actions in the Middle East.

Joaquín Roy

Obama’s agenda based on “leading from behind” is creating serious problems that would damage his re-election chances if he were eligible (which he is not).

Hillary Clinton may inherit this liability if she finally decides to run for the presidency. What is certain is that indecision in Syria, the disaster of Iraq’s disintegration and the still unsolved challenge of Russia in Ukraine, create a picture of the United States in international decline.“Both partners [Europe and the United States] are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations” – Joaquín Roy

The European Union, for its part, does not offer a more hopeful scenario, and only if it is able to strengthen its institutions following the European Parliament elections in May will it be able to overcome the generalised forecast of a problematic future.

Gripped by the rise of populism and neo-nationalism and with its economy weighed down by inequality and lack of sustained growth, the European Union is a long way from offering alternative leadership and hope for the rest of the planet, and appropriately partnering the United States to beat the global crisis.

Yet curiously, this odd couple, which can be subsumed in what is generously called the West, can pride itself on an immense capital that is a basis not only for survival, but of sustained leadership for the rest of the world.

In both cases, a systematic humanitarian tragedy reveals their mutual strength and guarantees their future survival. Dramatic, repeated migration processes produce huge human capital flows to both Europe and the United States compared with other regions.

On the one hand, thousands of Latin American teenagers are invading the United States in search of a much better future than they are leaving behind in Central America, racked by crime, poverty and inequality.

On the other hand, the shores of Italy are being bombarded by desperate migrants cast up by traffickers, resulting in shipwrecks and deaths by suffocation. Elsewhere, attempts to take the Spanish border by storm in the enclaves in Morocco have ceased to call attention as newsworthy.

What do these apparently dissimilar scenarios reveal?

Quite simply, that the strength of these partners in crisis is based on their relatively powerful magnetism for migrants.

For all the present difficulties suffered by many European countries, the prospect of life in Europe is comparatively far better than in Africa or Asia, and even Latin America, in spite of the fact that many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

The future and the present of the United States – as it always was in the past – remains linked to the immigration pool. Hence, U.S. sectors that oppose migration reform are not only destined to fail, they are also currently rendering poor service to their country.

Both regions, now engaged in exploring a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, are destined to surpass other world regions in terms of standard of living and future expectations.

Both partners are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations.

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The growing importance of the Pacific rim has been a dominant narrative of recent years. One reason is the entrance of Chinese interests into Latin America and growing economic ties between Asia and the U.S. and Europe. The feverish mythology of globalisation also contributed to advancing this transformational tale. The Pentagon is positioning the bulk of its fleet in Pacific ports as if it expected another Pearl Harbour.

This trend, however, runs counter not only to the course of the last 500 years of history but to the current situation as well, both of which testify to the enduring power of the transatlantic ties.

For a start, it should be recognised that the establishment of a free-trade zone among the countries in NAFTA (North American Free-Trade Accord) and the European Union (EU) would create the largest economic area of the planet and one without competition from any alliance in Asia. The U.S. and the EU alone comprise the largest and most prosperous market on the planet, accounting for 54 percent of the gross world product (GWP) in absolute terms and 40 percent of global purchasing power. EU-U.S. trade accounts for 30 percent of the world total while their trade in services accounts for 40 percent. Whether in goods or services, each region is the most important and irreplaceable supplier of the other.

The U.S. and Europe are also the primary source and destination of direct foreign investment for each other, accounting for more than 60 percent of all domestic investment and 75 percent of foreign investment. For example, American investment in Holland from 2000-2010 exceeded by a factor of ten U.S. investment in China; and American investment in Britain was seven times greater than its investment in the Asian giant.

In the same decade, 60 percent of the foreign investment by U.S. companies was in Europe, while the figure for European companies’ investment in the U.S. was 75 percent.

The EU and U.S. account for 80 percent of foreign development assistance worldwide. While their combined population (800 million) is but 12 percent of the global total, they generate over 50 percent of the gross global product – 28 percent by the EU and 25 percent by the U.S. In the decade mentioned above, the combined EU/U.S. contributions in foreign development assistance exceeded 100 billion dollars.

Turning our gaze towards the South, while trade links between Europe and Latin America are relatively modest, the dependence of the latter on the U.S. and Europe is unrivalled. Europe is the second largest investor in Latin America and the largest donor. Spain in particular owes its globalisation to the operations of its companies in Latin America. After English, Spanish is the second most spoken second language in the world with the second largest number of students.

While the U.S. is criticised for its cyclical periods of apparent disdain for Latin America – like the present – these are always followed by a rediscovery of the continent as its natural partner (or victim). While the U.S. is frequently accused of considering Europe as its guaranteed ally and trusted economic partner, when Europe’s problems set off alarm bells (as with the current euro zone crisis), Washington reacts and knows what its priorities are and where its interests lie.

In all of the above, the strength of transatlantic triangle has been definitively proved. Indeed, the very name derives from the myth of Atlantis. This triangle continues to be more valuable than the vague network at the opposite shores of the Pacific because of a number of factors, strategic and economic, that have little to do with history and human and social ties.

Neither the ascent of the BRICS (one of which is Brazil) nor the dawn of Asian trade with Latin America is enough to override more than half a millennium of coexistence and shared values which underlie the great strength and durability of the Atlantic triangle. If there is an ideal macroregion for strategic alliances (to use EU terminology), it is to be found from Alaska to the Tierra del Fuego and Saint Petersburg to Santiago de Chile, from the Bosphorus to California, and Panama to Gibraltar. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joaquin Roy is Jean Monnet professor and director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami (jroy@Miami.edu).

Not in the last three generations has Spain experienced a crisis as total, devastating, and incomprehensible as the current one. Francisco Silvela, a thinker of the late 19th century and president of the Spanish government, said in August 1898 after the country was stripped of its colonies that Spain “had no pulse”. To a certain degree, the same is true today, especially of those in the government, despite the cuts. Only the protests contradict this feeling. The rest of the country is simply reeling from the financial crisis.

While it shares common features with other countries in Europe, in Spain the origin of the current malaise can be traced back to the evolution of society in the decades after the Civil War (1936-1939).

Until recently the vast majority of the Spanish people were illiterate, lived precariously in miserable crowded housing, ate poorly, dressed in rags, and travelled in carts pulled by mules or later packed into suffocating trains.

All of this started to change at the beginning of the 1960s in response to three factors: the Stabilisation Plan with which the state ended its policy of economic autarchy, the arrival of investment and tourists, and the emigration of the excess labour force and the resulting flood of remittances into the country.

Things changed, albeit slowly. At the beginning of the 1960s there were clear signs of the growth of a middle class and improvements in conditions of the working class, especially in cities. Small cars appeared in the streets; then came the widespread use of refrigerators and home appliances like dishwashers and washing machines.

Later, the new generations of Spaniards worked furiously to be able to afford their own homes rather than live with their parents, which had always been the norm. In fact in a few decades in this regard Spain outstripped Germany and northern Europe, which never gave up the convenience of renting. For many Spaniards, having one’s own place was not enough and they sought the status symbol of a second home.

It is understandable how this spectacular rise in the standard of living was considered to be a just reward for the efforts of both those who entered the workforce as well as their parents. The change was largely the product of people working multiple jobs and longer hours and by the entry of women into the workforce in unprecedented numbers.

In short, Spain’s economic leap was not the product of handouts. If people had public sector jobs, they won them through a carefully run system of competitive hiring that at the time, at least, was only slightly tainted by political corruption.

The welfare state reached Spain only in the second half of the 20th century, having evolved much earlier elsewhere in Europe. Inspired not by communist thought but rather by German chancellor Otto Bismarck, it was then strengthened by the Francisco Franco regime (1936-1975) as another way of winning the docility of his subjects. Franco’s previous technique used the people’s fear of war and repression.

Spain thus transformed itself from a society largely based on agriculture and animal husbandry into a modest industrial power and later a predominantly service sector economy.

With the restoration of democracy after Franco’s exit, the country’s advance accelerated. Spain’s entry into the European Union (EU) was successful both politically and economically, as the country surpassed the average Gross Domestic Product for EU members. Spain was not “different”, as the Franco motto had proclaimed. It was the ninth largest economic power on the planet, the number-three tourist destination, and the largest donor of economic assistance to Latin America, where its investments exceeded those of the rest of the EU and even the United States. Meanwhile it was creating artists and sports figures of international standing, while Spanish became the world’s “number one second language”.

In this context, with easy credit provided by the Common Market and with the introduction of the euro, the lure of consumerism grew irresistible. Because of this, the Spanish economy, which was then based largely on construction, simply collapsed when the world financial crisis hit. The repercussions were catastrophic. The rescue plan (a euphemism for intervention) was a bitter pill and hard to swallow. As after the crisis of 1898, the country now has to regain its pulse, even if this can only come through the eruption of protests. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Joaquin Roy is “Jean Monnet” professor and director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami (jroy@Miami.edu).

A year ago the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was greeted with general satisfaction and considerable relief. Was it already possible to glimpse (for example, in the spectacle of the Egyptian leader being judged bedridden in a cage) the difficulties that lay ahead for North Africa and the Middle East fulfilling the promise of the “Arab Spring”?

The cruel end of Gaddafi, trapped and lynched on nearly live television, and his anonymous burial, was a foretaste of what lay ahead and would cause discomfort to the European powers and the United States, whose intelligence services had already warned of the precariousness of the process of change.

After a prolonged period of relative stability of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, thanks to the cooperation of Cairo, which received as much military aid as Tel Aviv, the alarms went off when the Palestinian government decided to go to the United Nations asking for admission.

The next blow came, as feared, from Iran, which confirmed its rejection of the inspectors’ demands and its refusal to stop its project to develop nuclear energy, which was suspected of being a cover for a nuclear weapons programme.

If London, Paris, and Washington do not succeed in changing Teheran’s path, Israel would be willing and ready to bomb the country’s nuclear sites. The U.S. and Iran find themselves at historical loggerheads. The regime of the ayatollahs cannot forgive Washington’s long support of the Shah, while Washington still smarts at the humiliation of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, which contributed significantly to making Jimmy Carter a one-term president. Both sides reserve the right to revile and spar with the other.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently took advantage of an opportunistic alliance with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to annoy the United States in its own “backyard”, paying visits to Caracas, Quito, and Havana. But this did not greatly displease Washington, as it isn’t clear whether the Iranian president has a clear strategy or whether this is simply theatre for his bosses, to whom he must give the impression of being a global player.

This may be also the case with his threat to close the Gulf of Hormuz, which the US has stated it would react to with force. It is the only case in which Obama has gone this far, moreover, in a year in which he would be best served by stability before the elections next November.

Closing the straits would mean economic ruin for Teheran, which would lose the income from its oil exports. Moreover, Ahmadinejad’s threat provoked Saudi Arabia to warn that it would follow the U.S.’ lead in terms of using force. The terror that this Hormuz eventuality has provoked in Washington is striking.

In this complex scenario, there is another awkward contestant and a humanitarian situation that has seized world attention: Syria, which since the explosion last spring has shown all signs of being the next domino to fall, became a central object of concern when domestic protests sparked systematic repression by the Assad regime and the detonation of “asymmetric” civil war much along the lines of that in Libya.

The other factor was the predictable surge in Islamism as a political force both in the transition of certain countries already in the grips of change (Tunisia, Egypt) and others where predictions see Islam as an essential character on the political stage. What we have yet to see is whether this Islamism will be compatible with the U.S.’s and Europe’s expectations of democracy.

While the dramatic developments above do not necessarily have direct effects on neighbouring countries, it is clear that Turkey is a reference point and essential protagonist, passively and actively. Given the doubtfulness of its entry into the European Union, Ankara needs to explore other areas in which to assert itself as a regional player. Erdogan has presented the Turkish model -with possible adjustments to the ideology of his Islamically-inclined party along the lines of Europe’s Christian democratic parties – as a formula for regimes seeking their own political-religious compromise.

Though plagued by internal problems, including the eternal challenge of the Kurds and the still unresolved face-off with the military – who resist any change to the system put in place by Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey – Erdogan faces the dilemma of looking across his border and seeing a crisis build in Syria and having to decide whether or not to intervene.

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(*) Joaquin Roy is ‘Jean Monnet’ Professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. jroy@Miami.edu

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The official end of the Iraq war is an admission of defeat. It will serve as a bitter reminder of all that everyone loses in wars, victors included. From the foundation of the republic, war has been a constant feature of US history but produced a clear victory only on a few occasions.

The only two exceptions were the result of different causes: the Civil War was justified if one accepts that it was fought to end slavery. The more emblematic case was the double goal of bringing about the annihilation of the Axis Powers in Europe and Asia in the Second World War.

Although the Korean War might have resulted in another victory, the fact that it ended in a stalemate followed by the partitioning of the peninsula diminished somewhat the virtue of having led the UN coalition. The same could be said of the First World War, given that the truce put in place after the armistice deprived the Americans of a full victory. Much earlier, two military actions left permanent scars of shame and resentment: the invasion and capture of a large part of Mexico under the sweeping mandate of Manifest Destiny, and then what was called the “Spanish American War” in Cuba.

These two conflicts led to the birth and consolidation of Latin American anti-imperialism. The Mexican adventure produced what a century and a half later could be seen as an invitation to “reconquer” through both legal and criminalised immigration. In Cuba the eventual blowback took the form of the revolution of Fidel Castro. The successive invasions of a wide range of countries in the Caribbean and Central America, together with Washington’s support of B-movie dictators, served only to spur the periodic appearance of populist strongmen who built their identities on empty anti-imperialism.

Of all the US wars, Vietnam is the defeat par excellence. It cost the deaths of more than 50,000 Americans and a dizzying number of Vietnamese civilian deaths. It can now be estimated that the US withdrawal from Iraq leaves a toll of over 4000 American casualties and 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

In a reflection of the country’s rampant hypocrisy, the bodies of the soldiers killed in combat have been transported back to the United States in near secrecy for burial. This is the price American civilians are ready to pay for maintaining completely volunteer professional armed forces and is their thanks for the services the soldiers perform and the sacrifices they make.

Now that Iraq has been turned back over to the Iraqis, what remains is the slaughter of daily bombings. The hypocritical and self-satisfied response of many Americans is “I told you so.” In reality, large numbers of Americans were shamefully disengaged and pliant in terms of both the course set by the George W. Bush White House after the September 11 attacks and then Bush’s reelection. The country was paralysed at the time by the fear of seeming unpatriotic by being in any way critical of the “civilising mission” embarked upon by the American military machine.

And thus Americans allowed themselves to be fooled by the fiction that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Bush continued to be entranced by the slogans minted by his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, who pushed the idea that the situation in Iraq represented a unique historic opportunity -a sort of second Cold War victory- to establish control over this strategically essential area. In essence, the strategy boiled down to taking possession of oil wells and selling their product.

Today, regrettably, the same people who failed to stand up against this tragic action are smiling with satisfaction that they were right. In keeping with this malevolent logic, the best way of maintaining stability in certain parts of the planet is leaving autocrats in charge of their lands.

Paradoxically, George W. Bush was wrong and should have acted as his father did, stopping the march on Baghdad after the Kuwait war was won.

It is tragic to now conclude that peoples like that of Iraq, or other non-existent nation states, cannot be left to rule themselves, seeing how after one ration of force-fed democracy there is a return to violence, tribal hatred, the rejection of what are called “western values”, and the appearance of neighbours (read Iran) fishing for opportunities. Given the alternatives and the costs, next time these unfortunate countries should be left to themselves. One need only note what happened to Mubarak’s Egypt and Gaddafi’s Libya. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joaquin Roy is “Jean Monnet” Professor and director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. jroy@Miami.edu

By Joaquín Roy and - -
ISTANBUL, Sep 12 2011 (IPS)

The apparently eternal problem of Turkey’s entry into the European Union seems even further from resolution. Istanbul, its largest city, is sending mixed signals. The call to prayer from the minarets mixes with the roar of rush hour traffic. The hawking and bargaining in the monumental grand bazaar is thoroughly infiltrated by Western “civilisation”.

But if it is to find acceptance in European thought and politics, Turkey has to overcome a number of obstacles, some so large that they have exhausted the desire of the government and the people for EU membership. Ten years ago 70 percent of the population wanted to join the EU; today barely a quarter do, while fifty percent actively oppose the idea. This has become the largest obstacle.

The obligatory visit to the area of Istanbul that features the Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace, and Hagia Sophia (first a Christian basilica, then a mosque, and now a state museum) makes it perfectly clear that Turkey’s past is fully incorporated into the present. Flooded with tourists, the monumentality of this royal quarter demonstrates that there is a major Islamic component of Turkey’s national discourse even though the official (and untrustworthy) figures about its citizens’ religious habits cite a mere 30 percent of fervent believers.

But the real obstacle to Turkey’s membership in the EU is not religion; it is numbers: there are just “too many” Turks, 74 million to be precise. Turkey would be the largest member of the EU in area and would threaten the demographic preeminence of Germany, which has a population of 81 million. Turkey’s entry would also mean the addition of a language or family of languages spoken by over 200 million people in countries that stretch all the way to China.

The question of language is related to yet another obstacle to Turkey’s entry into the EU: the survival of a latent (or explicit) nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire, though this may simply be a matter of identity that can be explained away as a mode of self-protection against the impossibility of a marriage with Brussels. In other words, the shrinkage of territory caused by the implacable political and military decline that culminated in the First World War is no obstacle to the survival of a Greater Turkey, which would have a linguistic base and enjoy the support of certain nearby countries. It is not clear whether the existence of a Greater Turkey with a stabilizing influence would be an advantage or a vague challenge for NATO or the EU.

But Turkey’s main liability is the persistence of a standoff between two irreconcilable elements which are locked in a competition that barely shows signs of resolution even now: civilian power versus the military. What is curious about this antagonism is that most Turkish government officials are inflexible in their commitment to maintaining the separation of religion and the state. This is a pillar of the code introduced by Kemal Ataturk in 1922 as a central element of the country’s modernisation. It is the military’s understanding that its mission is to defend this separation that led it to interfere in politics in the first place – a practice that puts Brussels on edge.

The political trajectory of the country since that time has been jolted by the evolution of the Justice and Development Party, which made impressive gains at the polls in the last elections. Led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its orientation is “moderately” Islamic. Backed by both a middle class lifted by economic development and the masses desiring improvement, Erdogan has managed to master the military, arresting and sending into retirement a segment of restive high officials and then provoking the resignation of almost the entire general staff. His next gambit may be constitutional reform now that he has a parliamentary majority. The big question is whether or not he will strengthen Islam.

Hanging over the entire question of EU membership is the veto that Greece promises to wield as long as Turkey occupies half of Cyprus and fears persist of a wave of uncontrolled Turkish migration. The solution, for now, is digging a moat along the porous border.

And finally, Turkey must suffer the consequences of the insistence by successive administrations in Washington to use the promise of EU membership as a reward for helping defend Washington’s interests in the Middle East.

For Ankara, thus, the path to a place in the EU appears long and hard, but this does not seem to be disturbing the sleep of the Turks. Whose loss this is is an open question. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joaquin Roy, ‘Jean Monnet” professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami.

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By Hazel Henderson, Joaquín Roy, and - -
SAINT AUGUSTINE, Jan 25 2011 (IPS)

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) results for the final quarter of 2010 are an unreliable gauge of recovery and progress in Europe, the US, China, Brazil, and most other countries. A new survey by GlobeScan and Ethical Markets, titled “Beyond GDP”, reaffirms that large majorities favour reforming the money-based GDP economic yardstick and adopting many of the available indicators of health, education, infrastructure, poverty gaps, and environmental quality found in their 2007 survey for the European Commission (www.beyond-gdp.eu). The new survey was conducted in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Kenya, Russia, the UK, and the US and released on January 21.

Yet statistical agencies still use GDP, an inaccurate “rear view mirror” that omits vital indicators of future trends.

The chorus of critics of “GDP fetishism” now point to many more accurate indicators forecasting national well-being, sustainability, and quality of life. Britain’s David Cameron has ordered his Office of National Statistics to develop new measures by 2012, similar to Canada’s Index of Well-being.

The survey’s conclusions mirror those of the 2009 Stiglitz-Sen commission to french president Nicholas Sarkozy: that gdp had become a “fetish” and it was time to move on [1]. Reasons for the continued use of GDP include deregulation and the growing influence of money and finance in politics. In OECD countries, special interests and their allies in politics and in ministries of finance, economic development, trade, central banks, and stock markets grew to dominate government policies.

The survey showed that many companies, investors, and much of the public recognise that in GDP a well-trained work force, efficient public infrastructure, and productive ecosystems are all counted at zero.

GDP’s macro-economic, money-denominated, over-aggregated methods are unnecessary in our Internet age, which enables multi-disciplinary indicators and metrics, using systems approaches.

The fallout from the continued reliance on GDP is considerable: as deregulation and privatization became widespread, infrastructure (ignored in GDP) was short-changed, while ministries of education, health, social welfare, consumer, and environmental protection lost influence. Their support and that of NGOs for overhauling GDP accounts was insufficient to breach the bastions of macroeconomics. Statisticians claimed it was too difficult. Market enthusiasm, buttressed by financial forces and powerful interests were all justified by these traditional economic theories.

In the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, 170 countries signed Agenda 21 Article 40 and so pledged to overhaul GDP to reflect infrastructure, social capital, unpaid work, and environmental assets. Indicators proliferated on infrastructure assets, environmental quality, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, public health, access to clean water, education, poverty gaps, social welfare, and quality of life.

Yet, all these well-researched indicators have remained sidelined from GDP accounting and designated “satellite accounts”, which devalued their importance and relegated them to academia, NGOs, and the margins of society. mass media, financed by advertising, still focuses on driving mass consumption, gdp, and other macro-economic indicators.

Stressing the need for “faster growth”, most fail to clarify that they and politicians use GDP-growth as the tacit definition of overall progress. Other indexes of national progress (www.beyond-gdp.eu) include the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) since 1990, the Living Planet Index of WWF, and the Ecological Footprint to measure global conditions.

Meanwhile, the rise of socially-responsible business and investment has led to new corporate accounting standards -beyond earlier “efficient market” models- to measure performance by environmental, social, and governance standards (ESG), the “triple bottom line”.

It is time to require all companies to internalize the “externalities”, i.e., to fully account for their social and environmental costs of production on their balance sheets. Many companies have succeeded in overhauling accounting practice toward this “triple bottom line”.

The new breed of micro-economists corrected company balance sheets and incorporated the new indicators. But macro-economists, the fossilized incumbent industries they serve, and their allies in politics and government agencies still seek to preserve their freedom to “externalize” social and environmental costs. They benefit from the view of “progress” in GDP-measured growth.

Thus, our economies continue to pump out carbon and other pollutants while ignoring social and environmental assets, hiding poverty gaps as well as infrastructure assets, all of which are missing in GDP. Financial markets wager on the future of the euro and bet on member countries’ sovereign bonds, while demanding “austerity”, forcing taxpayers to pay again for bankers’ follies. Calls by European leaders for bondholder “haircuts” are fiercely opposed.

We can now steer our societies away from dangerous inequalities, pollutants, and climate change toward the cleaner, greener economies we are all building and track progress with the Green Transition Scoreboard, totalling all private investments since 2007 in growing green sectors worldwide at USD 1.6 trillion in 2010.

As distrust, anger, resentment at the unfairness of the bailouts emerge in the US and Europe, indicators on public infrastructure, environment, health, education, and quality of life are even more important for our future. Nations can find new paths out of austerity and recession as casino finance is curbed and returned to its former, proper role in serving the world’s real economies. The Beyond GDP survey shows that the public is ahead of politicians ( www.globescan.com). (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Hazel Henderson, author, president of Ethical Markets Media (US and Brazil), co-developed with the Calvert Group the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators ( www.calvert-henderson.com) and co-authored “Qualitative Growth” (2009).

[1] “Stiglitz-Sen Moving in the Right Direction, but Slowly,” IPS, Sept. 18, 2009, https://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp”idnews=48492

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Any examination of the current state of Germany must keep in mind the past of this country, which has forced itself to banish the ghosts of its tormented history.  A new exposition on the age of Hitler and German society of his day has become the centrepiece of any meditation on the national fabric of the country, the most important in Europe and the focus of the most wrenching events of the 20th century on the Old Continent.

By Joaquín Roy and - -
MIAMI, Sep 30 2010 (IPS)

A recent European summit degenerated into an unfortunate confrontation within the context of European integration. There was a heated exchange between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission president and former Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Barroso over the expulsion of EU citizens -in this case Romanian citizens (gypsies, ‘Roma’)- from French territory. The EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, compared the act to deportations during World War II. Sarkozy bluntly responded that she could receive in her native Luxembourg all the gypsies she wished. Reding admitted her language was rather exaggerated, but the scandal did not subside.

The origin of this alarming polemic was France’s deportation of more than 8,000 gypsies, who were flown back to Bucharest. As evidence of the serious divisions that plague the EU, some premiers sided diplomatically with Sarkozy, considering that illegal immigration in their own countries might lead to similar incidents. German chancellor Angela Merkel rushed to deny Sarkozy’s assertion that she was considering similar measures which would have grave consequences given her country’s sorry past.

More than a simple violation of human rights, France’s action has trampled on two kinds of actual legislation: EU law guaranteeing the freedom of movement within its borders (along the other freedoms of goods, capital, and services) and the general human rights guarantees enshrined in the Convention of the Council of Europe (a separate organisation). As prestigious jurists have pointed out, all EU citizens (and families, regardless of citizenship) have the right to move from one EU state to another, for whatever reason.

Moreover, all EU citizens have the right to select permanent residence in any EU state whatever the motivation. Acclaimed scholar of the EU professor Araceli Mangas, of the University of Salamanca in Spain, has explicitly confirmed that this is a fundamental right that has been integral to EU law from the Treaty of Rome (1957) to the latest Reform Treaty of Lisbon.

In addition to guaranteeing the freedom of movement and residence, EU law also prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality or racial and ethnic origin.

These rights are not unconditional and differ from those enjoyed by nationals. For example, community law requires new residents to demonstrate that they have means of support so that they don’t end up on public assistance. Does this mean that a country can expel individuals that lack such means? Yes, but this determination must be made on a case-by-case basis, and justification must be grounded in concern for public order, security, or public safety.

In short, France can order the deportation only of those Roma found to have directly participated in serious incidents. EU law stipulates that individuals in question must be given due legal process and can be deported only after a judicial decision is rendered. In the case of the expelled Roma, France has respected neither the spirit nor the letter of the law. Moreover, EU law prohibits permanent expulsions and provides for a status review every three years. If the court finds in the deportee’s favour, he or she has a right to economic compensation and return to the country. The European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 (of the Council of Europe) also recognises ‘collective expulsions’ as a ‘grave violation’ .

Already ‘condemned’ in the court of public opinion, the French government now awaits the result of inquiry by the European Commission. How the EU institutions react will determine whether the damage already caused will spill over into other sectors of the EU, a prospect that the process of European integration ill needs. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joaquin Roy is ‘Jean Monnet’ Professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami jroy@Miami.edu

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