When actor Michael Caine was asked what he thought about the health and state of the British film industry today, he replied coyly, but somehow also tellingly, “Oh it is very much alive and well, in Hollywood”.
It is very easy to be duped into accepting certain notions as, for example, the existence of thriving democratic structures, despite the bipolar party systems in place, big business funding of parties and election campaigns, the multi-billion euro lobbying power that influences and drives legislation, and the information assault to steer public opinion.
Likewise it is easy to labour under the mistaken belief that empires are something of the past, and no longer exist today.
Codswallop!
In reality the Anglo Saxon empire, that ruled the waves a century ago, and like all empires before it, worked relentlessly to maintain and prolong its existence, never died.
It just morphed. It moved its centre of operations from just one city, London, to four cities, London, New York, Washington and Tel Aviv.
Despite its split from its North American settlement colonies, two wars, in 1776 and 1812, and a plan to pounce once again at the outbreak of the 1861 civil war, the British Empire was bordering on bankruptcy in 1916, and heavily indebted to the US, which had been bankrolling Britain’s war effort.
This despite, I may add, US President Woodrow Wilson’s false promise to his people, which he shouted from the mountain tops right up to the 1916 elections, not to drag his fellow Americans into the insane European holocaust in the trenches. By war’s end there were two million of them there.
When the Tsar’s Russia, which ironically had kept the British at bay back in the 1861 outbreak of civil war, when it responded to President Lincoln’s call for assistance to counter the British threat of invasion, by sending the Russian fleets to protect Lincoln’s shores, was negotiating with the Germans to withdraw from the Great War, the US and bankers would have been left with a fortune in British bonds that would have been worthless, had the empire fallen to Germany, which in early 1917 was close to victory.
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say.
And so it was that British tacticians considered, albeit unwillingly, the passing of the mantle of empire to their Anglo Saxon cousins across the pond. They lured the US onto their side, after three years of declared US neutrality, by, inter alia, committing to the House of Rothschild, who had taken control of the Bankof England in a surreptitious takeover at the end of the other great European war in 1815, to set up a western enclave in the Middle East, by promising the Zionists control of a huge chunk of Palestine which fell under the Ottoman Empire.
And thus it was that the passing of the mantle of Anglo Saxon power began in 1917 and continued through 1944 at Bretton Woods, from colonial father to son, from the British to the American mainland.
The waves of global empire are still rolling, creating a strong current that is sweeping us all along unwittingly
If nothing else, the British geo-politicians are pragmatists. They chose to strengthen the Anglo alliance in the pursuit and maintenance of global hegemony, even it meant entering into a form of loose merger that left them the junior partner. They had huge debts to pay across the pond for both wars, so it may have been a Hobson’s choice.
The House of Rothschild had brokered the deal, the payment for which was none other than the famous Balfort Declaration promising Palestine to the Zionists. But it had also helped to engineer US finance to Britain for the war effort, through its front man in New York, the House of Morgan. Unbeknown to the Americans, these powerful Wall Street bankers had actually been funded by the Rothschilds.
So to borrow Michael Cain’s words, the Anglo/Rothshild empire remained alive and well, not just through London, but through New York, Washington and Tel Aviv.
This, indeed, is the basis of the so called UK-US special relationship, as well as the UK-US-Israel one. President Woodrow Wilson, nudged by geopolitical mastermind Edward Mandel House, effectively sold out the Republic, by jumping out of splendid isolation to seize the crown, to take on the mantle of Empire.
The Anglo policy of containment of other competing powers is still alive and kicking, as can be seen from the staggering 800 US and 16 British military bases dotting the planet, encircling other powers.
Over the last generation, power has also shifted dramatically from mainly territorial, military and manufacturing, to global finance, the centres remaining London and New York.
The emerging BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, each representing a continent or sub-continent, are well aware of this new form of containment, through financial mechanisms like the IMF, World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, the defunct Treaty at Breton Woods, and the Petrodollar.
The struggle for global hegemony persists to this day, but you will not see it in the form of surface waves, only in the build up of massive undercurrents beneath the surface, largely of a financial engineering nature. But do not kid yourselves, the waves of global empire are still rolling, creating a strong current that is sweeping us all along unwittingly.
So where does Europe fit in to this grand chess game? To be sure, it has no shortage of former empire builders. But the EU experiment has been one built upon promise, promise of a united block trying to divest itself of its colonial past, and its highly destructive wars from which mainland Europe and Eurasia have never benefitted. It is a block that has promised prosperity and equality for all, regardless of size and strength, despite the fact that stronger nations will always remain the first among equals.
But the EU economy has been faltering, and with it, its presence and influence on the world stage. It is still a very formidable economic block, there is no doubt. But has it ever broken free from encirclement?
Non-European military bases still operate on its soil. Its exports are largely dependent on the US market. It is still tied to the petrodollar. Conflicts in the Middle East and the Ukraine leave oil and gas pipelines to Europe either insecure or on the drawing board.
Its euro currency remains fragile and tied to powerful financial institutions outside its control. It tags along with sanctions, and when it does not, its corporations suffer American reprisals.
And last but not least, its elected leaders show an unwillingness or an incapacity to forge foreign policy free from Big Daddy across the Atlantic.
A Eurasian alliance has always been feared by the Anglo empire, for this would make the policy of containment impossible to implement. French President Charles de Gaulle was one of the very few statesmen who ever understood this, hence his refusal to work with the UK and the US within NATO, and his overtures to both Soviet Russia and Germany.
The irony is that Europe has everything to gain and nothing to lose if it forged a strong Eurasian alliance with its Eastern and Middle Eastern neighbours, an alliance that has been thwarted time and again in the past century.
There are those who stand to gain by this being thwarted once again. But it is certainly not Europe or it neighbours. The age-old Roman maxim “divide et impera” rings true no less today than it always did.
Despite the noble aspirations of the founders of the European Union, I fear that our leaders today lack the wherewithal or the political acumen, or both, to truly unite, break free from foreign and financial influences that do not serve Europe, and bring about a Eurasian alliance that would herald a period of newfound peace and prosperity for both Europe and its neighbours.
Will any of our leaders take on this Eurasian mantle?
Rodolfo Ragonesi is a lawyer and researcher in history and international affairs.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece