Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-03-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20020703.5.3-175"2
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"Mr President, the hostility of the United States towards the International Criminal Court should not surprise us in the least, for we have long been well aware that, in its international relations, the United States will not contemplate the mere idea of partnership and is no less averse to an Atlantic partnership, whatever pathetic illusions may be harboured by the Europeanists and other ideologists of the great fusion of nations. The US Government remains intransigent; in these circumstances, to disarm our Member States means disarming Europe.
The most astonishing thing about this whole business is that we constantly prove blind to the ways of this so-called partner. The fact is that the United States is not a partner in any area of activity. Its unilateralism prevails both in its foreign policy and in its anti-environmentalist stance – on the subject of climate change, for example – not to mention, of course, its strong-arm tactics in the main areas of trade policy. The Americans are encouraging European countries to disarm but are themselves engaged in a vast programme of unilateral rearmament. They want to extend NATO as far eastward as possible without changing its command structures. They advocate universal interference in the government of nations and refuse to listen to any opinion as soon as it challenges their own views. Only the imperialist mind thinks in this way. In actual fact, Europeans would have to be very weak or even – dare I say it – cowardly to overlook this evidence. The United States does not want partners. It will only accept acolytes. It is, quite simply, an empire.
By extolling a ludicrous system that seeks to subject all human activities across the globe to the law of profitability alone, in other words the law of the jungle, where might is right, this master of the world has been responsible for much of the poverty on our planet. From that point of view, Europe has but one political option, namely to pursue a policy of redressing the balance, because otherwise we shall truly become America’s poodle. To pursue such a policy is the courageous, the honourable course, which we owe not only to the nations of Europe but to Europe itself and, ultimately, to that venerable ideal of a free world."@en1
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