It seems Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has taken the United Kingdom into a disturbing form of isolation, with his veto of proposed fiscal reform of the European Union’s governing treaty.
Mr Cameron was the only one of the 27 EU leaders to exercise his veto over a reform considered essential to the recent fiscal measures taken to deal with the EU’s debt crisis.
It takes me back 46 years, to when, at our embassy in Paris, I observed the formation of the European Commission - from the previous three European Executives. Britain then had strong reservations about joining the move to European integration. It led to accusations from then French president Charles de Gaulle that the British were not quite Europeans.
Most French leaders seemed convinced British loyalties lay with the Americans and to a lesser degree with the Commonwealth, therefore, they did not qualify to be part of an integrated Europe.
In the end, the English warmed to the Commission and eventually became part of it. The French and Germans, however, as the central pillars of the EU retained their reservations, and with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy as the leaders of the present rescue mission, Mr Cameron’s stand will widen the gulf promoted by Britain’s vocal EU-sceptics.
It is rather sad for Australians, for while the United States has come to be seen as our saviour, and (I have to say reluctantly, our dominant ally) it is in the areas of economic reform and human rights protection that the nations of our European forebears have taken the lead.
While the Americans try to dominate the United Nations, the Europeans devote more attention to its essential peace-keeping and humanitarian protection roles.
In a very real sense the EU is a vital test of the underlying aims of global co-operation set out in the UN Charter. Its founders envisaged a series of inter-arching regional integrations, with their inhabitants sharing political and humanitarian standards and, of course, peace.
The international order is far from such a goal, but the EU has made great progress, and it would be tragic if it were to collapse. It would be a great pity if the British were to disengage from this historic civilising process.
Meantime, the belated Dutch apology to Indonesia for killings carried out some six decades ago was welcome.
The methods the Dutch resorted to, in a vain attempt to crush the Indonesian independence struggle, were harsh, attracting at the time Australian support for the new nation.
The Dutch move may have been long overdue, but it is never too late. Hopefully it might inspire Indonesians to admit to atrocities committed by their own forces.
In 1965-66, hundreds of thousands were killed, many of them women and children when Indonesian forces attacked Communists and others. More recently, it was East Timorese who suffered such atrocities.
In the first three of Indonesia’s 24 years of occupation in East Timor more than 150,000, mostly non-combatants, were killed, while 1500 people were the victims of organised killings, and other abuses, in 1999, the last year of occupation.
Not surprisingly a deep sadness still lingers over a large part of the population, which formal admissions of guilt and regret, however late, would help to ease.
It is also important that Indonesia’s robust democratic forces confront this past military culture, which still seems to influence their operations in West Papua, against independence supporters.
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