In 1794, President George Washington set off for Pennsylvania with thousands of troops to quell a whisky taxation rebellion which was threatening the existence of the nascent American republic. As a president democratically elected by one people, one country and one nation, Washington was charged with enforcing the tax collection laws passed by Congress and his legitimacy in suppressing the rebellion was never in doubt. Fast forward to the euro zone debt crisis of 2011 and witness German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempt to bring the modern day European whisky rebels into line – the PIGS states of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.
The German solution to the European debt crisis is for more budgetary oversight power to be wielded by the EU over recalcitrant southern European countries in the guise of closer fiscal integration. Yet this attempt to solve the debt crisis is doomed because it is actually not so much about integration as control. Unlike George Washington’s attempt to pacify the whisky rebels - a domestic difficulty, the German plan is really an attempt by one group of powerful European countries to dominate a weaker dependent group of states. By trying to rescue the euro in this way, European leaders may end up, as London Mayor Boris Johnson fears, “saving the cancer, not the patient.”
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Posted on January 4, 2012
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