How History Can Make a Myth of a Political Globalization

Globalization is a nice process in today's world. It has various aspects: economic, cultural, sociological and so on. Its basic principle is integration regarding those aspects. Countries and national identity are presumed to remain. The final goal is a better world without bashing past and today's national, ethnic and communal belongings.

My political, economic and social beliefs completely overlap with such tenet. Unfortunately, after millenia of incompatibility between peoples, this tenet has become nothing more than a basically, but not fully, accomplished mission. Rome was not built in a single day: same thing with globalization. However, I can never see it happen not simply because of political, economic, social and financial inequality but also because of people's mentality. My meager experience has proven it so far: my observation indicates that people always want to have a strong leader but then again they are not satisfied and make plans on dethroning him or her. Thus there is no such thing as a perfect order: from the tribal one to communism and capitalism there have always been, and will always be, complaints.

In this article I am going to discuss the European integration. It first came to some imminent people's minds in the second part of the 19th century. Unfortunately, scenario is completely different - the French-Prussian War and later on the two World Wars after which it finally gained significant popularity thanks to the Marshall Plan and the Monnet Plan: plans that advocated European economic integration in an exhausted and destroyed Europe. There were a lot of meetings and controversies between leaders of Western Europe (Central and Eastern Europe were under the Soviet sphere of influence) but the result of the meetings was the today's European Union.

The today's European Union is perceived as a sort of an equivalent to the United States. In fact, one of its founding fathers back in 1950s offered it to be called the United States of Europe. There is shared sovereignty between member states, the latter's economies are interconnected, customs taxes do not exist anymore, people move freely from one country to another just like U.S. citizens move from one state to another. Amazing! Now French know they are French but they have completely forgotten their long-lasting enmity with the German people. And not only that: from now on borders will remain as they are.

Since Europe is the continent where I was born and since it is the continent that I am most acquainted with based on what I have seen life, on TV, read in books, and discussed with friends - I can tell I cannot see the desired result. Two Europeans from different countries who greet each other subconsciously know that the person facing them is foreigner. It is not necessarily hatred what comes to their mind in this particular situation but unfortunately certain form of prejudice still exists.

What is extremely disturbing is separatist sentiments that exist in some regions in Europe where, for example, a country's minority is majority. There are plenty of examples: Albanians in Western Macedonia, Hungarians in Romania, Basques in Spain, Albanians in Kosovo and others. Those are examples of majority-minority regions where the local majority wants their rights promoted to autonomy and why not independence.

Such questionable local patriotism exists in Belgium - a country whose capital city is both national and European Union capital. Belgium consists of Flamand-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking citizens. It is today's most decentralized European state and its future is vague. Residents in Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia can't get along and neither can't their politicians who act on national level for the sake of their region and not for that of the country. Flanders and Wallonia are two regions that differ not only in language being spoken but also in the state of the economy: the Flanders economy is in good condition while the Wallonia experiences difficulties and besides, Wallonia residents are not as well-off as Flanders residents. So what we have in Belgium today is two linguistically and economically different regions and a federal government that resigned because of its unpopularity and unability to cope with the issues.

That happens in one of the founders of the European Union: Belgium. Prognoses vary but the nowadays' status quo and roles are least likely to be preserved. Among the basic most popular ones are further segregation of the two regions into two different countries and confederation similar to the one in Switzerland.

Do people, besides Belgians themselves, care about the future of the country? I have no concrete answer to this question but in my opinion they have to care. The most insignificant reason why people do have to care is the fact that Belgium's capital is the EU capital as well and having Belgium vanished from the European map may symbolically mean the beginning of the end of the European Union. It may turn out to be that the European Union is a myth: that after all borders in fact do matter.

Another reason why people have to care in my opinion is that a possible segregation might cause a chain reaction, regardless of the fact that Europe is integrated in a way that there's no need for any regional independence, autonomy or certain form of sovereignty. In this case I believe that the state of the economy doesn't matter because richer regions will want to secede from poorer regions in order to spend their budget on whatever they want without caring much about the poorer region.

A third red flag is the size of the overall European bureaucracy. More independent countries or autonomous territories means more governments, ministries and agencies which therefore is more costly. Most people are generally unaware of those details and they will not pay much attention to them when considering seceding. All the more, the struscture and the status quo of the European parliament are to be changed accordingly. This change leads to a pretty complex structure that is much more difficult to analyze by political scientists, let alone the people who will be so confused that they would not be able to figure out who is in charge of what because certain institutions' functions will partly overlap, to say the least.

I consider lobbying the fourth red flag: weaker lobbyists will have less opportunities to have an impact on most decisions in the European parliament. Thus stronger lobbyists' impact will increase and as a result they will be the ones to determine laws and conditions regardless of who is in control of which branch.

Possible decisions that could solve the problem in Europe:

1. Consensus: The most popular solution but is it easy to achieve?! I don't think so as long as funds are not injected in poorer regions' economies so that it, at least partly, compensates the financial inequality. Job opportunities should also be taken into consideration in order to reduce unemployment wherever it is necessary.

2. Help from abroad: Such possible European crisis does not satisfy the U.S. and Chinese interests. On the contrary, they need the European market as much as the European market needs them, all the more that Europeans generally buy goods at higher prices than do Americans. Oil prices are a good example. Like I said above, more countries and autonomous territories lead to more governments which leads to more institutions which leads to more governmental expenses and citizens' taxes. Besides, in my opinion, help from abroad in the form of political pressure or certain incentives is not difficult to achieve.

3. Change in the educational system: According to my observations, educational system is problematic in Europe. Reform in the educational system is necessary in the form of richer interpretation of history, greater attention paid to promoting not only national but also European belonging is a good start. That could be achieved in some elementary middle and high school subjects. The European educational system should also focus more on foreign languages or at least English so that the language barrier is no longer a problem. All this is a rather complicated task but for the sake of the harmony in the relationships between the European peoples, it has to be achieved.

4. Measures to increase national, cultural, social and financial integration, of course without any use of coercion: I can't see such measures to have any effect without educational reform. In my opinion, they have to be initiated later.

Mysteries in a Recent Military Operation

Thursday, July 3, 2008, is another historic day. On that day 15 hostages were liberated from FARC - a marxist-leninist terrorist organization operating on part of the territories of Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, according to http://www.fas.org/. The terrorist organization is most famous for its activities in Colombia. Among those 15 hostages 3 are American citizens, 11 are Colombian citizens and 1 is a person of double citizenship. That person is the one whom the media paid most attention to. Of course, I am talking about Ingrid Bentacourt. A charismatic woman, a former presidential candidate, a person of Colombian and French citizenship, a loving mother, a dedicated politician - those are few of the characteristics that this woman is presented with.

Six years ago presidential campaigns in Colombia were on their way. Presidential candidates were giving their messages to the Colombian people on television, on radio and on open air. Two were the main competitors for the honorable position in the Columbian government: Alvaro Uribe and Ingrid Bentacourt. The latter decided to campaign everywhere - even on territories that were under the rule of FARC, and that was a mistake that even she admitted to have regreted to do it although not entirely. The consequences were, the guerilla kidnapped her and she has never been seen again for the next six years.

Mysteries

What a boneheaded mistake, some would say, to campaign on a territory that is under the rule of a terrorist organization that is famous for having about 700 people as hostages! Some of those people who have this statement in their minds may be asking themselves why exactly Ingrid Bentacourt decided to campaign there. Is it because of bravery? Or is it because of stupidity? Some probably even see certain form of conspiracy, that is, she knew the whole scenario from the very beginning but wanted it to happen because it served certain interests like the Israeli ones, for example, and those conspiracy theorists will indicate the Israeli secret services involved in the recent military operation as an argument of their statement. Unfortunately, wherever where there are Israeli or people of Jewish origin involved, conspiracy is present in some people's minds. However, there is no need to comment on this particular hypothesis since it is more of a search of popularity rather than anything else. I cannot call it a mystery. After all, Ingrid Bentacourt is not the only politician kidnapped by FARC so far. The terrorist organization's 700 victims are mainly politicians. Some of them are even alleged to be FBI agents.

What I call mystery is the military operation that led to the liberation of those 15 hostages. It was a military operation that did not cost lives or injured people - the Colombian army just managed to save them without the FARC's consent. Or at least it is the general information that the media gave us. If this is true, it is worthy of a Rambo-type American action film in which the good eventually vanquishes the evil like it always does.

Here's what the military operation was all about described by Colombia's Minister of Defense Mr. Santos:

The hostages were divided into three groups, so the
guerrillas were persuaded to bring them all together at a point where they would
supposedly be transported to the south of the country to be under the direct
orders of Alfonso Cano, 'the rebels' top leader... It was arranged that the
hostages would be picked up at a predetermined site by helicopters belonging to
a non-existent humanitarian organization, and for Cesar himself and another
member of his staff to travel with the captives to personally hand them over to
Alfonso Cano... But the helicopters, which were really army aircraft, picked up
the hostages and took them to San José, the capital of Guaviare.

The operation was called "Jaque" or check as in chess: a good name for a good military operation. Was FARC in a check situation though? Are they in a check situation now without those 15 hostages, because with operations like this their overall hostages may gradually decrease thus weakening their influence in the region. Those are hard questions although most people believe that this is the beginning of the end of this marxist-leninist guerilla.

No matter how professional that military operation was, I still cannot imagine it as one similar to those in most of the American action films. It's not that what is happening very often in those films can never happen in reality and it's not that I question the professionals' brilliant skills. It's just that I can hardly imagine a long-time famous guerilla being fooled that easily. Believe it or not I read several times the Defense Minister's words and I was more than amazed at FARC's stupidity.

My doubts increased after I read the next day what the French newspaper, Libération, wrote about Ingrid Bentacourt's liberation. First of all, I think that the French people's extreme pride of what they have done to rescue a compatriot are rather exaggerated. I see it more like part of their nostalgia toward those years when France was one of the greatest powers in the world. In my opinion, this is one of the things President Nicolas Sarkozy will be remembered with in the future - having such type of foreign policy. After all, Ingrid Bentacourt is 100% Colombian. There is nothing French in her origin.

Libération cited a Swiss radio, Radio Suisse Romande, that mentioned something that will probably remain unknown by most of the people, just because the mainstream media did not pay enough attention to it. The radio stated that Ingrid Bentacourt and the other 14 hostages had actually been freed for money in exchange. RSR is talking about around 20 million dollars, most of them having been paid by the United States. One of the reason is, the three freed U.S. citizens were actually FBI agents, according to the radio that even mentioned FARC whose members confessed to that.

If what the RSR said were true, I would not assume that it is the beginning of the end of FARC. 20 million dollars is a lot of money, especially for a guerilla. What is going to happen with FARC in the next few years is probably the biggest mystery. I am having certain doubts that the members of FARC were losers in this particular situation but I hope I am wrong.

Nevertheless, even if we assume that RSR is telling the truth, good thing that this truth is not known by everybody because in my opinion, certain military operations should be kept in secret. At the end of the day, it is better for certain things to be kept in secret.