The British Queen passed away around 6 PM on September 8, 2022 after a reign of over 70 years. Quite naturally, she had become an institution, and many of her subjects could have been born, lived and died while she was monarch.
World leaders who had met her remarked on her graciousness, wit and wisdom — accumulated no doubt through her travels, meeting endless people, and above all her regular weekly audience with the British prime minister who apprised her of important events and government business. Over the years her experience must have also become valuable.
People who had met her also noted her genuine kindness and an ability to put people at ease in formal situations. No doubt her sense of humor came in handy.
During my stay in London, I saw her many times at various ceremonies and events. Trooping the color to celebrate the sovereign’s official birthday in June — her actual date of birth was in April — was one of them. She would ride down The Mall, sitting side-saddle on her horse, all the way to Horse Guards Parade where she would take the salute.
A friend and I, seeing an open space just by the fence, quickly seized the spot overlooked by others. We soon found out why. As the ceremony commenced, a troop of horse guards lined up at the fence. In front of me then was an enormous horse’s behind giving an extremely blinkered view of the occasion. The horse’s anatomy is etched in my memory as is the flicking of his tail too close to my face for comfort. To end it all, the horse coup de grace was an emptying of his bowels — a memory one would dearly wish to forget but remains unforgettable.
The Queen’s mother, also named Elizabeth, was the Chancellor of the University of London. In England that is an honorary position for the executive officer is the Vice-Chancellor, akin to a U.S. university president.
Well, the Queen Mother came to visit King’s College. She was welcomed by all the chief officers and proceeded to tour the classrooms and labs. We were instructed to address her as Ma’am (a long ‘a’ followed by a short one). We were in a room with wide tables where we could set up our engineering drawing boards and their T-squares . My place happened to be close to the aisle, and when the Queen Mother passed by she asked me what I was drawing. “It’s a roof TRUSS Ma’am”– it was a structural engineering class. She smiled and walked on. I was so nervous the words “It’s a roof” were barely audible although “TRUSS” was loud and clear, and I have often wondered what she thought.
Of course now there is a Truss in Britain’s future. Liz Truss as prime minister is leading it with a cabinet that for the first time does not have a white male heading a principal ministry.
European Union needs reflection on its strategic autonomy in a geopolitical sense
Has Europe actually faced socio-economic drought?
Dr. Arshad M. Khan is a former Professor based in the US. Educated at King's College London, OSU and The University of Chicago, he has a multidisciplinary background that has frequently informed his research. Thus he headed the analysis of an innovation survey of Norway, and his work on SMEs published in major journals has been widely cited. He has for several decades also written for the press: These articles and occasional comments have appeared in print media such as The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and others. On the internet, he has written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, Eurasia Review and Modern Diplomacy among many. His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in its Congressional Record.
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It is tough being a leader, especially a woman in a glass cage as was the recently demised Queen Elizabeth ll ;overseeing an immensely wealthy global empire. Particularly when such an incredibly remarkable woman is there leading not necessarily because she wants to but due to family tradition dating back hundreds of years .It was then Princess Elizabeth’s turn since there were no males left in the family lineup. Afterall, her uncle the King decided to abdicate for the sake of being in love leaving her father to become his reluctant successor . When her father died she served as she promised she would as her father did; that is , until her last breath no matter how long or how short it would be to come around.
It would be a 70 years journey we will never know very much about ; mostly , the public pomp and circumstance , the Queen’s gracious smiles and compassionate encouragements; her public decrees, and seemingly countless photo ops with the rich and famous and with conveniently posing commoners. And of course there is and will be the gossipy press and royal family biographers, as a lucrative cottage industry,making their matter of fact and sensational claims shooting in the dark most of the time since rarely do royal family members break the circling of secrecy wagons.
What she did as ultimate sacrifices as the supreme symbolic though profoundly influential State leader, the Queen, incarcerated in her crystal clear glass cage,was answering a family calling for public good service. To her, her family calling meant serving without partisan public opinion about anything or anyone .Her inclination was to say and do things hidden from public view to such an extent we are hard put to know how she really felt about major events and circumstances which came to define her era.
She inherited a family calling of leadership over an ancient rather archaic global and domestic patrimonial ,that is, ceremonial family State institution not made for the social media and otherwise digital era with its sense of lost of privacy and making family shortcomings and stumbles fodder for the tabloids ,prime time news, and reality shows. And neither did she allow herself to publicly blurt out her hurt about or defense of family members who went astray.
She is now transitioning to her grave with her lips sealed before she died for an eternity at least when it comes to the itching prying ears of the media driven public about her intimate family problems made so embarrassingly public .Never letting public outsiders know how much her favorite grandson Prince Harry hurt her so badly with his mother Princess Diana , her daughter-in-,law doing the same . And his father, now King Charles III, her eldest son,also deeply hurting her though finally reaching the throne by family tradition after her demise tarnished by an adulterous past the British and global public shall never forget as they look into his still guilt ridden eyes.She was a Mum afterall with family issues so common but just the same could not murmur a word and had to keep her tears in her heart because of the family calling making her wear that public stoic expression.
As the anti-colonial peanut gallery now is reminding us while coldly indifferent to decent space for a time of compassionate family and public mourning, her Majesty the Queen, accomplished her astounding family calling without once condemning publicly the sins which through the centuries the British Crown has done to millions in enslavement, genocide, stealing land, delegitimating indigenous cultures, and taking their natural wealth and material arts and declaring them as their own. Yet her’s was the kind of public leadership done in silence so you know what she believed not in what she said but what she did; by when she gets out of the way of things happening or by getting in the way. She could have allowed her son Prince Andrew to get away scot free of his alleged scandalous sexual behavior with a minor when instead he was by her authorization, ,stripped of most of his royal privileges with his settlement bill being paid for with or without public funds.She could have blocked now Princess Meghan from marrying Prince Harry but welcomed her into the fold and even gave her more than usual daughter in law privileges.
She could have refused to agree with Harold Wilson’s 1960 Winds of Change speech, one of her favorite Prime Ministers ,but did not. And certainly, she would not have bothered to visit the Crown’s first freed African country, Ghana the following year, let alone dance with President Kwane Nkrumah. Or why welcome President Nelson Mandela to Buckingham Palace over 30 years later?And she certainly could have denied her eldest son, now King Charles III ,permission to spend so much time focused on educational access to the disadvantaged and becoming an icon in the environmental justice movement. Actions speak louder than words and in fact ,are your words if due to policy or personal disposition you keep your views to yourself while just staying steady at the helm of your leadership job.
I am far from a royalist and am well versed enough in British colonial history to know how much over the centuries the Queen’s ancestors plundered to the highest degrees. Such grotesque crimes against humanity have allowed her and her family , both immediate and extended ,to live such splendid cloistered lives in the clutches indeed belly of such a sadistically cruel global and domestic sociopolitical and economic institution. It needs to be gotten rid of and as soon as possible. But it will take the sort of dedicated steady work ethic Queen Elizabeth ll possessed to do so. And it will demand much more than the 70 years she devoutely clocked in each day.
Do anti-monarchists and anti-colonialists in Britain and around the world have that level of stamina let alone stomach and backbone and more than that, the deepest depth of will to stand , speak , organize, and effectively act until the walls of empire come tumbling down in favor of genuine justice and peace for everyone? Or shall we merely look and comment after Queen Elizabeth ll is eulogized and buried next to her parents and sister and soon to be exhumed husband as much as we looked and commented before her demise to go spend eternity with her Jesus while doing nothing but barking criticisms, writing books, going to conferences, and making empty fancy sounding proclamations we know can’t really work?
Meanwhile as Queen Elizabeth ll enters into her well deserved eternal rest let us all no matter how we felt about her, give her credit where it is due in being such a remarkable lasting, steady leader tinkering with the system here and there. And those opposed to what she stood for, match and surpass her resilient decades of loyalty to her institution and change it to meet the calls for enduring justice and peace for all characterizing what this century is becoming all about. Even if it takes 70 plus more years to accomplish.
My deepest condolences and prayers to the family of Queen Elizabeth and to her subjects of Great Britain and those others around the world now in mourning. And may we be forever grateful for her remarkable steady, resilient leadership gifts and talents. We must more firmly employ what she taught us about what steady persistent discreet and not so discreet leadership is to bring about the needed changes to heal the wounds of injustice her beloved family institution has cruelly caused millions and bring them and their descendants the deserving enduring justice and peace only authentic wealth distributions and otherwise restorative justice long steps with reparations outcomes can render.
Although modern Europe had exercised profound impacts on all the corners of the globe during the past centuries (1495-1945), it is undeniable that it declined substantially in the wake of the Second World War which was followed by the scenario of the bipolar domination by the United States and Russia (then the Soviet Union). The former has inherited from Europe culturally and institutionally but never been a part of its geography; the latter is a part of Europe geographically yet never integrated into it culturally, socially and even psychologically. Moreover, after 1945, Europe became a “thorny” question which required the two superpower to secure its security and equilibrium.
Given this, there is no question that Europe itself was unable to make it equal to the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the world affairs. To redress this fatal reality, the British elite policy-makers proposed that “To keep Germany down and keep Russia out of Europe, it had no option but to keep the U.S. in.” Since then, it is the United States that has secured a long-peace in Europe which has evolved into a civilian power in the name of the European Union during the Cold War and afterwards. By the eve of the new 21st century, it is widely held that “the United States of Europa”, though still emerging internationally, would aim to end American supremacy. For sure, this is what Washington can’t accept for the sake of its elite’s obsession with the “unilateral world order” mandated by the special destiny.
There is no question that the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union did push the European Union to undergo a rapid expansion of the quantity and quality as well. It is an ancient wisdom that a strong European Union should be built on its coherence and integration rather than the sheer binding together which leads to a potential disunity and diversity in all policy issues. However, the EU has been driven to include all European countries potentially including Ukraine while excluding Russia and Turkey although Ankara has submitted its request to be granted a full-membership of the EU from the early 1960s. Now Europe wants to play major role in the world affairs rather than being treated as the playground only. The key remains how the responses are from London and Washington, that is, the Anglo-American axis in the new century.
Historically speaking, as American scholar Walter Mead put it, there have been only two global powers as what Europeans still sometimes refer to as “Anglo-American” powers: United Kingdom and the United States. The British Empire was, and the United States is, concerned not just with the balance of power in one particular corner of the world but also the evolution of what we today call “world order”. A worldwide system of trade and finance have made both Britain and America rich, those riches are what gave them the capabilities to project the military force and intellectual impacts based on the latest technology globally to ensure the stability of their-dominated international systems. Now with acting as the Anglo-American axis in anti-Russian coalition, Washington and London have worked in concert to achieve their core goals: “To keep Russia down during the Ukrainian war and keep the EU disunited as much as they could. In doing so, they must act in concert to be involved into the hybrid war against Russia until the last Ukrainian man fighting in the war.
Given some controversial memories of the past and the nature of geopolitics, Poland and the Baltic states have been the closest allies of the United States and Britain during the Ukrainian war and its aftermath. Yet, some countries including the back-borne of the EU community—France and Germany—have revealed their practical needs and diplomatic traits to end the conflict in Europe. But they have failed all the efforts thus far due to the reasons that the U.S. and Britain have committed to providing the fuel to the burning fire in Ukraine. For sure, the United States has every reasons from history and geopolitics to bolster the European Union but also prevent its drifting off into a geopolitical vacuum. If it is separated from Europe in politics, economics and defense, America would become geopolitically an island off the shore of Eurasia where the transcontinental mass stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic Ocean is under the jurisdiction of China, Russia and their friendly countries such as Iran and Afghanistan now. Accordingly, the United States has resented the looming challenge when they covet Eurasia as the pivot of the grand chessboard. As U.S. strategists like Kissinger, Brzezinski and etc. once argued that “no matter which power, either of Europe or Asia, dominates Eurasia, that danger is seen by Washington as a structural threat to its primacy in the world.”[1] Yet, China and Russia will certainly react by all means to how the U.S. would have treated them in the world affairs.
China, Russia and their partners have expected the European Union to play the major role in dealing with the volatile world situation. Accordingly, it is necessary for France and Germany to act in concert in managing the present EU distress and then directing EU development in the future. Historically and strategically, it is proper to say that the first key milestone for rapprochement between Germany and France is the Elysee Treaty of friendship and reconciliation that was signed in 1963. Under the agreement, Paris and Bonn pledged to consult each other, prior to any decision, on all questions of foreign policy with a view to reaching an analogous position. Equally important is the Aachen Treaty signed by Berlin and Paris in 2019, which aims to enhance EU cohesion and provide joint security externally. Now acting as the two powerful engines of the EU, the accord between France and Germany will justify that the future of Europe depends closely on the consensus between the two leading powers in all terms.
Yes, some political groups have voiced their concerns or even anger that France and Germany have fallen into the exclusive Franco-German axis, leaving the rest of the EU membership in second row. Due to this, they have come to question the bloc’s nature and development trend. Given this, the U.S. and Britain have openly driven their closest allies bordering Russia to become more and more aggressive and even cross the bottom line in the anti-Russian campaign economically, militarily and diplomatically in the name of the so-called shared-values. The designs of the Anglo-American axis has insured the rules-based global trade system and economic order which had been weakened since the Trump administration. Yet, a peaceful and prosperous Europe will be a reality only when France and Germany are forged into a real power center. It stands to reason that the two countries have common responsibilities, complemented economies and compatible military capacity. In addition, Germany has acted as the EU’s economic engine and security pivot due to its location at the very heart of Europe.
Still, there are two challenges facing the Franco-German accord. First is history. France and Germany need to learn lessons from each other’s previous bid for mastery in Europe and global hegemony. The price Germany paid was its own destruction and France was totally demoralized as well in 1945. Second is the issue of EU distress. As Joschka Fischer put it earlier, Europeans must not allow wishful thinking to obscure their important facts, as occurred when the European Monetary Union was formed in the 1990s. It argues that there were earlier conflicts between individual member states regarding national economic and fiscal policy, along with their political culture and divergent mentality. But willful ignorance prevailed over rational analysis. Third is the resolve of the EU. Now with the Ukrainian crisis dragging on, the EU can’t make the short-sighted decision again. As consensus will not come easily, a genuine accord between Germany and France is required to struggle for strategic autonomy. Yet, as long as the U.S.-led anti-Russian campaign continues, Washington and London will make all efforts to call on their allies and partners to underscore continued international support for Ukraine. Although not all allies were rustled up, the most radical governments of the NATO and the EU are present at the banner of the U.S.-led crusade: e.g. Secretary of State Blinken flew into Brussels recently where he talked up “unity” among the West while proclaiming that what was at stake with the Ukrainian war was not going to be cost-free. Yet, the reality is that Russian analysts have a devastating assessment of Europe’s economic future, reporting that the EU’s short-sighted policies have already pushed the region into a full-blown economic crisis. Even some Western analysts share this view that the EU is suffering from the ongoing sanctions pressure, rather than the consequences of the energy crisis. Europe has almost canceled its exports to Russia, primarily technology and equipment exports. Everybody understands that Europe invented these problems all by itself, by blocking almost the entire exports to Russia for political reasons, while expecting no retaliatory measures, for some reason.
In sum, Europe has deeply-rooted legacy of statecraft to end wars and to create peace. Now is the right time for France and Germany to stand up for struggling for power, profits and prestige for the EU family rather than acting as a coadjutant of the Anglo-American axis.
[1] Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 813; Also see Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (NY: Basic Books, 1997), p. 27.
This dry summer coupled with Russian gas cuts has put water resources in an alarming situation across Europe.
According to the European Drought Observatory, almost half of Europe is experiencing a severe drought. France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK are among the countries that have been exposed to the high levels of drought. It is predicted this critical situation may be worsening if the precipitation deficit continues until winter.
Recently, a map referring to “combined drought indicator in Europe within 3rd ten-day period of July” went viral and conveyed the message that the green continent has faced a severe climate-driven drought in the last 500 years.
The currently rainfall deficit is mostly attributed to a weakened jet stream bringing moisture from Atlantic to Europe, combined with frequent heatwaves hitting all around the planet and Europe. Findings of a study (2020), as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, indicate that drought in west of Europe has not shown a consistent trend regarding precipitation deficit over the years 1851-2018. In addition, the intensity of agricultural drought (soil moisture level) and the hydrological drought (runoff rate and groundwater level) have not changed. Besides, the precipitation rate has not decreased much compared to previous years. In general, countries located in eastern and central Europe have been less affected by drought; the IPCC reports even demonstrate that drought severity has been reduced in Northern and Eastern Europe. So why is the anthropogenic drought has been highlighted and received more news coverage, particularly in Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Norway? Why are major rivers from Rhine to Danube drying up, ship traffic banned along the rivers and the water level of the reservoirs fallen at lowest levels ever? Is the situation climate-driven or result of a socio-economic drought?
Most of water restrictions were generally applied in residential and not business or other economic or agricultural sectors. By looking at the bans, one can gauge the emergency of the condition. For example, in France, water consumption in residential and business sectors are being accurately monitored by authorities. In Spain, too, restrictions have been put on residential sector; and there is a possibility, tourism sector will be also affected if the drought continues. Nevertheless, people believe that almost 90 percent of water resources go to agriculture, therefore, the water resources management must have been focused on that. The UK, however, declared hosepipe ban last week although the business sector not being included. While the UK average precipitation were reported 34.7mm in June 2018- when Europe was seeing a severe drought- and 38.6mm in the 1976, it was 59.0 mm in June 2022. There are two options left to explain the situation since the green continent is naturally having high levels of water. Moreover, Europe is famous for better performance in terms of water resource management than other countries in the world. First, the occurrence of extreme events, explicitly heat waves causing the climatic change attracts more attention; and second, the water-energy-food nexus leading into a socio-economic drought due to the Russian gas cuts.
At the moment, the Europe is struggling with energy crisis, too. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global coal demand rose to 8 billion tons in 2022, matching the 2013 all-time high. Besides, the 14 percent jump in coal consumption over the last year, the European Union demand for coal climbed another 7 percent in 2022. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reports that “a typical coal-fired power plant employing a once-through cooling system withdraws 70?180 billion gallons of water every year and consumes 0.36-1.1 billion gallons of it”. Previously, the Guardian addressed the problem as well, identifying coal-fired power plants as one of the main causes of water loss, aside from being the main factor driving up global warming.
The economic-social drought, often interpreted as “water bankruptcy”, refers to a state in which water regime and human activities mutually affect one another. And even beyond that, climate patterns. This is why the water-energy-food nexus has been the centre of attention in policy-making debates to adopt the most suitable strategies.
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