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HOW OIL HAS DIVIDED EUROPE
-
Conference of world oil-consuming
nations, far left, held in Washington,
D.C. in February, highlighted the grow–
ing rift between France and her eight
Common Market partners over the
solution to common energy problems.
France, Britain, West Germany and
ltaly hove all made separate deals for
oil with Middle East nations.
well. It is a dreary catalog of trou–
bles ahead in every one of the Com–
mon Market capitals, and with it
there is an almost complete break–
down of will or Jeadership to pull
together in Brussels instead of hang–
ing separately in different capitals."
Unity by Design Won't
Come About
lt is clear that the carefully engi–
neered unity-by-degree-and-dead–
line progress in the European
Community has ground to a virtual
halt. Even if the French decide to
repeg the value of their currency
("in about six months," they said),
the goal of monetary union and
eventually one currency for the en–
tire Community has suffered almost
irreparable harm.
Besides, the world outside the
Community is so frightfully uncer–
tain. Will there be a world reces–
sion? A depression? A "defensive"
trade war among the world's indus–
trial powers to gain access to crucial
PLAIN TRUTH April 1974
energy sources and raw materials?
What will the oil-producing states
do with their rapidly mounting piJe
of oil revenues?
Dependent as they are upon out–
side energy sources, the Europeans,
much more so than the United
States and the Soviet Union, stand
to be buffeted greatly by all the
storms of international economics.
On top of it all, bad feelings, sus–
picions and accusations within the
Community itself are now the rule
rather than the exception. Every na–
tion, it seems, wants to create Eu–
rope in its own image. West
German Foreign Minister Walter
Scheel remarked ruefully: ''This ob–
jective [of a "European union" by
1980] will never be achieved if each
of the interested parties says:
'L'Europe c'est moi' [Europe, it is
1]."
What a difference the price of oil
makes! How weak has been the eco–
nomic glue which has cemented
together Western Europe's unprece–
dented post-war prosperity! How
close to the surface all along have
been national feelings and interests,
rather than the ideology of unity!
When " The Ten" W ill Come
Eventually, the time will come
when West Europeans will come to
see where the road of national self–
interest is taking them. When they
stand to lose all that they have pa–
tiently achieved through years of co–
operation as well as compromise,
there undoubtedly will be a call for
someone, sorne power, to come to
the rescue.
It will be in that day in the not
too distant future when ten national
leaders, in a time of prophesied
great intemational stress, will divest
themselves of their sovereign rights
and "give their power and author–
ity" (Revelation 17:12, Goodspeed
translation) to a single individual.
This man will make lightning–
quick decisions of enormous con–
sequences for the entire world (read
succeeding verses). He will not be a
"faceless" individual occupying a
position of limited authority, as is
the case with European leaders
today. That
is
for sure.
West Europe's current leádership
crisis was put in graphic terms -
perhaps exaggerated to prove a point
- by contemporary historian Laqueur:
"It is, in short, the fact that as the
Continent faces its hour of truth, its
key countries ... are ruled by a
group of small meo who, by their
. .. lack of foresight and imagina–
tion, are quite incapable of swift
and bold action to cope with a task
of historie magnitude .... Europe is
leaderless."
Watch for a startli.ng change
in
Europe just over the horizon.
o
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