Does The World Need A European Superpower

[Editor: The first sentence after the subhead “Friends Needed” should read: “While Britain and Australia remain America’s staunchest allies, its most immediate neighbor, Canada, though giving early and continuing support to the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, has refused to support the war in Iraq.”]

The general view of the United States, foisted off on a largely ignorant public, is that America is an imperialist power, bent on seizing control of Middle Eastern oil assets and extending its hegemony globally, unfettered by any other global entity of opposing strength to balance its perceived unrestrained power.

That the U.S. is technically broke; that its military power—though massive—is currently stretched beyond its capacity to cope with its largely voluntary global policing role; that its internal politics increasingly riven by division; that its population is in rapid moral decline—ethnic and racial tensions roiling below the surface—is a vision to which its own population remains largely blinded. Yet other powers, perceiving these realities, are moving to take advantage of them.

Behind the scenes, certain leaders within the European Union, which has till recently been seen as an ally of the U.S., are becoming aggressive in the push to take advantage of America’s growing internal weakness. The EU is maneuvering to restrain American power, seeking its own superpower status. The question is, will such a move be to the benefit of world peace or to its detriment?

Imbalance of Power

Relations between nations are largely governed by perceived balances of power between them.

For a little over 40 years following World War ii, the global balance of power was held by the U.S. and the ussr. Each was perceived to have equal and opposite military, economic and political power such that one balanced out the other, thus effecting a status quo that held relations among all other nations in check and gave reasonable stability to the world during the era known as the Cold War.

The seminal event that changed the Cold War global balance of power was the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. Within two years of the fall of that ugly edifice that had divided east from west in Europe’s heartland, the ussr ceased to exist. A sea change of continental proportions then swept nations previously part of the Soviet Union into the welcoming arms of mother Europa in her modern guise as the European Union. The post-war global balance of power was shattered.

Only a decade after the U.S. attack in Iraq on Jan. 16, 1991, the most astute observers of the international scene were decrying the fact that the world had entered a new era of global disorder. With the old power balance gone, the U.S. found it increasingly difficult to garner the support it needed to maintain its role as global policeman. That it had seemingly slunk away from confrontation in Lebanon, Rwanda and Somalia, and had not possessed the political will to finish the job it started by initiating aggression against Iraq, only served to enhance the developing world view of the U.S. as a geopolitical blowhard. It strengthened the increasingly popular view that America was intent on pursuing its own national interests at the expense of others. Dramatic video clips of U.S. soldiers in flight from Somalia gave the impression that the U.S. would turn tail and run rather than use its might to help solve other international crises of no direct interest to the glutted American public. This view of America only accelerated under the weak administration of the self-serving Clinton era.

Despite the inherent weakness of U.S. political will, the ascent of George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency has temporarily led Islamic leaders to recognize that the president is intractable in his opposition to their efforts to seize control of the Middle East and parts beyond. They now see that he is determined to pursue extremist Islamic terrorists. They are adjusting to a “waiting it out” approach toward their policies of perpetual resistance to America. Islamic leaders realize that they now need to await the coming of the next president to office before they can resume effective confrontation against the U.S. by incursion from within and attack from without.

In Europe, the Bush administration is constantly denigrated by a barrage of imagery portraying the president as a bumbling, shoot-from-the-hip cowboy. This has produced a rapid rise in negative European public opinion of the United States as a whole.

Wanted: Another Superpower?

In the meantime, within the U.S., most of the media and press spin machines grind out their often treasonous anti-Bush, anti-America, anti-reality formulas of repetitive “news,” seemingly doing all in their power to influence public opinion against the current U.S. administration. In the process, these purveyors of deceit, in some cases unwittingly, in others quite deliberately, supply massive help to those intent on America’s demise both as a cohesive nation and as a global power.

Given all of the above, whether the U.S. by its overwhelming military strength poses a threat to the world, or by its fundamental weaknesses is rendered incapable of creating equilibrium among the nations of the world, the question remains: Does the world need another superpower to either balance the power of the U.S., or to shore it up so as to effect a reasonable stability in international relations? More importantly, should that power be a European combine?

The current U.S. administration breathed a sigh of relief when Angela Merkel took over the German chancellorship from Gerhard Schröder. In tandem with French President Jacques Chirac, Schröder had been a thorn in the side of the Bush administration. The two had proven implacable in their resistance to the Iraq War, refusing to supply troops or any other overt assistance to the U.S.-led alliance against terror. Merkel appeared to be supportive of the U.S. in her foreign policies. Very early in her chancellorship, she visited the U.S. president with the apparent motive of shoring up the alliance between the U.S. and Germany that had suffered under Schröder. She also made it clear that she was happy to pursue a foreign policy independent of France if necessary. Indications were that Germany would become a supporter of U.S. policy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Such a turnaround in German foreign policy not only refreshed the U.S. government, it galvanized some clearer-thinking Europeans who felt increasingly besieged from within by the rise of Islam on the European continent.

Following a decade of seeming indifference to Islam’s incursion northward right up to the doorsteps of Rome, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and as far north as Scandinavia, recent crises have provoked Europe to begin developing legislation to curb the flow of Muslim immigrants. The Madrid train bombings caused a change of government in Spain. Islamic youth rioting in France last autumn and again this spring is resulting in increasing calls for the government to move to limit Islamic incursion on the French way of life. In Germany, recent ructions in the school system blamed on Islamic youth sparked an uproar in that country. Many Europeans are finally seeing the need to speak with a united voice against the impact of extremist Islamic fundamentalism on their way of life, even posing a threat to the continuance of the grand European vision of unification.

This common Islamic threat to European culture, religion and way of life is increasingly becoming the catalyst to weld the 25 fractious nation-states that comprise the greatest single trading bloc in the world into a singular, cohesive and cooperative political entity that can speak with one voice in forums such as the United Nations. A European superpower could be just the stopper to dam the flood of Islam into Europe and hasten Europe’s return to its cultural roots.

An Ally for Israel

Another reason that a European superpower would be beneficial to the drive for world peace, so the argument goes, is to balance the situation in the Middle East, especially in relation to Israel.

In January, Pope Benedict xvi, in his “state of the world” address to diplomats representing 174 nations gathered in the Vatican State, declared that the Holy Land is the “nerve point” of international relations. In making this declaration, the pope was focusing attention on the Middle East peace process.

It was no mean gesture by the newly formed government in Israel that led former Prime Minister Shimon Peres to visit the pope within days of the recent Israeli elections. Israel needs a friend. It particularly needs a friend in Europe, where anti-Jewish rhetoric has been heard increasingly, even in some nations’ parliaments, and anti-Zionist sentiment and behavior is increasing across that continent. The papacy, under John Paul ii, sought public forgiveness from the Jews for its historic persecution of those peoples and sought reconciliation with Jewry through much diplomatic action over the past quarter-century.

Ties between the Vatican and Israel have never been closer. Influential voices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv see the pope as benefactor and as a friend who could influence European opinion in their favor. An Israeli nation with a united European superpower on its side would provide powerful resistance to those who seek to wipe Israel off the map, so the argument goes.

Within the EU, Germany in particular has sought to muscle in on the Middle East peace process. Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer assumed a personal mandate to effect continual diplomacy between the Israelis and the Palestinians in efforts to gain an outcome acceptable to all parties involved. The EU remains strongly committed to maintaining a lead role in the peace process. Superpower status, should it be assumed by the EU, would be seen to greatly magnify the voice of the EU in Middle Eastern affairs, in particular on the burning issue of the peace process.

All the above arguments are entirely consistent with current U.S. foreign policy. America increasingly lacks friends in the international arena where global politics are played out.

Friends Needed

While Britain and Australia remain America’s staunchest allies, its most immediate neighbor, Canada, has refused to support the war on terror. And at America’s backdoor, a whole continent has suddenly turned sour on the U.S.

China still maintains that the U.S. is its number-one enemy as it continues to buy up its bonds and send massive container loads of Chinese manufactured goods into U.S. ports to meet the unquenchable appetite of the American consumer. Some are finally starting to see that this massive trading deficit with China is but part of its long-term strategy to get America onto the ropes so that it can ultimately deal a powerful knockout blow to a future besieged American economy.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom President Bush once called “a man I can trust,” has increasingly turned his back on the American president, pursuing policies often quite at odds with those of the U.S. and even in direct opposition to them.

It seems that wherever the U.S. turns these days it is met by jeering accusations and deep suspicion, its diplomatic representatives attacked verbally, if not physically, within host countries to the point that, far from being seen as a broker of peace among nations as it once was, it is viewed now as a warmongering imperialist power of the most voracious kind.

In reaction to all this, certain foreign-policy exponents within the U.S. insist that unless the European Union adds military muscle to its already incredible economic power and comes to speak with a singular influential voice in global affairs, the world will suffer for it. Not only will the U.S. lack support in its efforts for world peace, but the danger will grow that other powers—China, the rapidly developing Indo-Asian powers, pan-Islam, or even Russia—will fill the gap and tip the balance of power against the West, risking the loss of all that this ancient civilization has contributed to the benefit of mankind over the centuries.

Given this scenario, the U.S. would dearly love to cultivate a powerful European ally with which to join in its mission to spread the gospel of U.S.-style democracy globally, roll back the tide of extremist Islamic terror, and trade on happily with the rest of the world forever into the midnight sun.

Dream on!

The Grand Illusion

The plain fact is, such a scenario is a diabolical illusion! Far from a united Europe ever becoming a positive influence for maintaining global peace and order, least of all in tandem with the U.S., the European Union is destined to become the greatest threat to world peace in the entirety of man’s history!

Few will believe that statement. Most will remain blind to this prospect until it becomes a reality that slams into their ongoing daydream and rips their world apart! The plain truth of the matter is, that threat is building rapidly now, even as you read the words on this page!

Students of history know that whenever the German nation dominated Europe in tandem with the Vatican, the results were devastating to all who opposed their combined authority. Following Charlemagne’s rise to power in the eighth century a.d., his reign became the first of a series of continuing resurrections of combined Roman and Germanic imperial initiatives that repeatedly exerted their iron will over Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and northern Africa clear on down to the 20th century. The last such resurrection consummated in the 1930s under the powers of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

A reading of our free booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire will prove this history to you. This publication clearly demonstrates that what is occurring within the heartland of Europe today is yet one more in the continuing series of resurrections of this so-called Holy Roman Empire of the German nation that has dominated world history on and off for in excess of the past 1,200 years!

The present volatile politics within Germany and Italy are but a forerunner to the rise of two powerful leaders, one political, the other spiritual, who will lead this European Union into the status of a global superpower of devastating proportions!

Herbert W. Armstrong warned repeatedly of this grave danger to world peace over the 52 years that he published his widely read Plain Truth magazine. Gerald Flurry has continued that same warning, with even greater immediacy, over the past 16 years of this magazine’s life. The message has been clear and totally consistent, despite all opposition to it. A united European power—under the combined political, economic and military leadership of Germany and spiritual leadership of the Vatican—will rise quickly to dominate the globe for a short period of time. Its period of global domination will be sufficient to enable it to wreak great havoc on the English-speaking peoples, their brother Judahites, and their brethren who hail from the Scandinavian nations, the low countries of Europe, and the western French. These peoples, as multiple proofs provide overwhelming evidence, are the latter-day offspring of the 12 tribes of Israel.

An observer of the current world state could not begin to appreciate where it is all heading without a deep historical perspective. A true understanding of the reasons for the present global disorder, of the state of America, of the tiny nation of Israel, of the European Union, of Russia, China, India, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, and of where the present global scene is heading, is impossible without an understanding of the biblical identity of the nations as they appear today in their modern form.

Biblical Perspective

The Bible, while not of itself a history text, does contain the keys that unlock true history. That true history is a far cry, in many instances, from the history of the world as foisted off onto students since the age of German rationalism impacted our schools and colleges. It is a history which gives form, order and reason to its being. But if we are to make sense of the flow of the history of mankind in relation to current world events, and in particular be able to extrapolate where this world is heading, we need another vital key.

Just as the Bible supplies (as many archaeologists admit), the key to understanding true history, so it supplies the key to opening up our understanding of history and current events in relation to the future. It contains the key to our making correct predictions as to the future outcome of major world events!

In the past, the Trumpet has repeatedly shown our readers where current events are heading. We have made confident predictions about the outcome of world events, even pinpointing particular personalities to watch in respect of the impact that they will have on future world events. We have enough evidence in print for you to check out the consistency with which our predictions have come to pass, to date. That often-pinpoint accuracy of prediction is not of our own doing. Without the decades of labor of Herbert Armstrong, working to restore the true foundation of all knowledge, and the Trumpet building on that foundation, we would just be another news source. But we are demonstrably not!

If you are a doubter, go check the archive of articles on our website. Better still, request our special collectors’ edition of the Trumpet, its cover titled “He Was Right!”, and you will be startled at the accuracy of Mr. Armstrong’s predictions about the many world events that have fulfilled Bible prophecies declared during his lifetime and fulfilled subsequent to his death. And the earliest, most consistent of those predictions? That a united Germany would rise up to lead a great European superpower that would dominate the globe, under the spiritual influence of an ancient, pervasive religion—to wreak its havoc on the nations of Israel in their modern form, actually enslaving them, and literally ruling the world for a prophetic hour of time!

Check the facts for yourself. Write now for your own free copy of the book that will lead you to the key that unlocks the identity of nations, The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Then read that special edition of the Trumpet, and begin following current events and see if your ability to predict the outcome of worrisome world events is not enhanced many-fold. It could mean the difference between being caught by surprise in the very near future, and being well prepared for the drama of current events climaxing at the literal “end of history.” Forewarned is forearmed. Our task is to issue the warning. The rest is up to you!