Though Brussels Journal seems to be a far-right wing site devoted equally to particularly reactionary brands of Flemish nationalism and the fight against Eurabia, on its front page is a
link to an interesting article in
Le Figaro,
Alexandre Adler's
"La Belgique va-t-elle demander le divorce ?" ("Will Belgium ask for a divorce?"). In this article, Adler argues that Belgium is doomed to split up and thaqt it would be to France's benefit to support the split.
La réalité, c'est que la société flamande, cette petite Bavière maritime, est en proie à un dynamisme économique et social remarquable, ayant réussi sa mutation linguistique, et dispose d'une population exactement équivalente à celles du Danemark ou de la Norvège. Méfiante à l'égard de la Hollande voisine, la Flandre indépendante serait en fait, assez vite, le plus francophile et le plus latin des États germaniques de l'Europe du Nord. Le dogme de la diplomatie française consistant à tout faire pour maintenir la Flandre en Belgique doit donc être révisé d'autant plus vite et radicalement qu'en prenant en main la revendication nationale, les chrétiens sociaux et leurs alliés libéraux et socialistes ont fait reculer l'extrême droite locale aussi efficacement que Sarkozy, en France.
The reality is that the society of Flanders, this small maritime Bavaria, enjoys a remarkable economic and social dynamism, having succeeded with its language issue, and has a population just as large as those of Denmark or Norway. Being wary with regard to neighbouring Holland, the independent Flanders would in fact rather quickly become the most francophile and Latin of the Germanic states of northern Europe. The dogma of French diplomacy that Flanders must be kept in Belgium thus should be revised, all the more quickly and radically since by creating an independent Flanders, the by taking in hand the national claim, the Christian Democrats and their liberal and socialist allies would push back the extreme right just as effectively as Sarkozy in France.
More, Adler--described on his Wikipedia as someone quite close to American neoconservatives, for whatever it's worth--argues that France should take advantage of Belgium's dissolution to embrace the ideology of
rattachisme and to annex Wallonia, making that province France's 23rd region and adding presumably another four or five departments to the republic. Again, my translation follows Adler's original French.
Mais voilà, les Wallons et les Bruxellois n'auront aucune envie de former un État croupion symétrique. Comme chacun devrait le savoir, c'est le 14 Juillet que l'on fête à Liège, c'est à Paris que l'on a sacré Michaux, Marguerite Yourcenar, Simenon et même le prix Nobel de littérature belge, Maurice Maeterlinck, qui jugeait sa langue natale flamande impropre à la littérature. En se choisissant une non-capitale à Namur, en intitulant sa représentation à Paris « communauté française » et non « communauté francophone », nos compatriotes d'outre-Quiévrain nous ont déjà tout dit. Comme Helmut Kohl en 1990, Nicolas Sarkozy a donc toutes les chances de devoir gouverner une France plus grande, un peu appauvrie par la crise industrielle chronique de ses nouvelles régions irrédentistes, et un Parti socialiste certes écrêté de ses élites les plus parisiennes, mais recentré sur la vieille base populaire du Borinage et de la vallée de la Meuse, pour ne pas parler des bobos bruxellois qui valent bien les nôtres.
But the Walloons and the Bruxellois will not want to form a symmetrical rump state tail. As everyone should know, July 14th is the holiday of Liège, and it is in Paris that literature crowned Michaux, Marguerite Yourcenar, Simenon and even the Nobel Prize-winner of Belgian literature, Maurice Maeterlinck, who considered his native Flemish language unsuitable for literature. By choosing a not-capital with Namur, by entitling its representation in Paris "French community" and not "French-speaking community", our compatriots on the other side of the Quiévrain said it all. Like Helmut Kohl in 1990, Nicolas Sarkozy has every chance to control a larger France, a bit impoverished by the chronic industrial crisis of his new redeemed areas, while a Socialist Party that has recently chopped off its Parisian elites could recenter on the old popular base of coal-mining and the valley of the Meuse, not to mention the sores of Brussels which are ours as well.
Now, it's quite true that Wallonia is a region heavily influenced by France--I wrote back in September 2005 about the
grim fate of Walloon, the local speech marginalized by a decidedly Francophone state--and that an annexation of Wallonia might seem plausible, and might even be welcomed by the French public at large--certainly
De Gaulle favoured Wallonia's annexation, the comments by French readers
of this blog seem generally supportive, and I know that at least some people have imagined Wallonia's annexation to be partial compensation for German reunification. Similarly, it's worth noting the
results of a recent poll which suggest that two-thirds of the Dutch support would support unification with Flanders, creating a sort of
Greater Netherlands.
That said, these plans for expansion all require the consent of the populations of Flanders and Wallonia and Brussels. In Wallonia, the pro-annexation
Rassemblement Wallonie France received barely more than 1% of the votes in the just-completed 2007 elections, even though the RWF is a direct descendant of a major Walloon regionalist party. In Flanders, the nationalist Vlaams Belang that might yet break up Flanders
favours "cooperat[ing] as closely as possible with the Netherlands and with Southern Flanders (the Dutch-speaking municipalities in the North of France)", not annexation into the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and I'm not aware of any Flemish political party that favours Flanders' annexation. Belgium might not survive, I don't know, but I think it's best for France and Netherlands might just have to accept that they aren't at all likely to have a common frontier in
Brabant. It's not that France and the Netherlands aren't nice countries, it's just that the Flemish and Walloons and Bruxellois don't want to become French or Dutch.
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