Consquences of French NO

Bill Rice over at Dawn’s Early Light, as usual, has some good analysis on what the French vote means (Part I here). It’s short, insightful and to the point. Here are some bite-sized bits of wisdom:

The result of the French vote will cause at minimum a 5- to 10-year period of deep European introspection. While this introspection will likely be a healthy period for a stronger, more democratic European movement, it nevertheless removes a unified “European voice” from the international stage. Fence sitting Eurosceptical countries such as the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to play a more active role in leading Europe…

It will be a healthy period and will also determine whether further integration of Europe is even possible. Economic integration is one thing but political integration is a huge leap. For Americans, just imagine if NAFTA created a supra-government, began equalizing laws, education and such in Canada, the US and Mexico and started dictating our domestic policies! What kind of chances would you give that? Although most Europeans are used to more government involvement in their life and tend to want more structure than Americans do, most aren’t going to roll over for Brussels. Even most people who aren’t particularly political become warier by the day as the EU grows.

Countries like China, hoping for a strong Europe to counterbalance the US, will find little comfort in the French vote. Rising Asian powers will focus their energies on reciprocating American gestures towards building better alliances, expanding trade, and cooperating on mutual security concerns.

Indeed Bill, indeed. The US ought to be using this opportunity to forge new ties with individual European states now before they can regroup. As noted in this previous post, that chance may be at hand for Germany. We also need to give eastern Europe more carrots and continue to show them that playing for our side has far more benefits than donning a beret and complaining as loudly as possible. Poland has been particularly sour for not receiving as many reconstruction contracts as led to believe for example. We need to offset that with perhaps more military technology, trade benefits, lowering visa restrictions or other such things, especially those which would make a tangible difference to the average person like the visa restrictions as Poland is not yet a member of the Visa Waiver Program.

Italy right now is teetering between the so-called Old and New Europe and the US needs to do a better job reaching the Italians themselves as Berlusconi’s days always seem to look numbered. The latest incident with the shooting of an Italian intelligence officer was hanlded very poorly and contributed to more anti-US feelings there. But all in all, the clouds are starting to part for transatlantic relations.