by Claudiu Secara
In an RT article today, Fyodor Lukyanov makes some hyper-optimistic assertions.
“In many ways, Vance’s critique of the Europeans echoed the same accusations that the settlers of the New World leveled at the Old Continent centuries ago: tyranny, hypocrisy, and parasitism. The rejection of European political traditions laid the ideological foundation for the American state three hundred years ago. Now that dispute over what constitutes real democracy has evolved from an internal American debate into a transatlantic one – and its outcome will shape the future.
Yet the most crucial element of Vance’s speech goes beyond personalities or ideological rifts. It reflects a fundamental shift in global politics. The key question today is whether the Cold War should finally end within the framework of the 20th century or whether it should continue indefinitely. Western Europe insists on the latter – not because of any grand strategy, but because it has failed to integrate its former adversaries peacefully. The US, on the other hand, appears ready to move on.”
Is he naive or plain stupid, or more likely double hypocritical?
There was a time when the new nation of the US had a point. It was all of that, a revolutionary young nation rejecting European feudal tyranny, hypocrisy, and parasitism. The aspiring empire of Russia could have said the same about the feudal Europe. As the upstarts, they both hated and envied European snobbery, arrogance and superiority. And then we had two Wars, not so much World Wars as anti-European wars. Both the US and Russia were drooling at seeing Europe cut down to size, devastated and reduced to a supplicant role.
After WWII, the immensity of the Soviet empire dwarfed not only the leading European countries but even the whole continent. Germany was divided, and at 60 million, the western part was diminished to a quarter of the size of Soviet Union. Looting of German assets by both sides, the Americans and the Soviets, was rampant but hidden from the public. The conscience of the world was even spared knowledge of the rape of some 2 million German women by the occupying American forces. Add to that the Soviets’ free hand over the easten lands.
Now, here we go again. It is the hypocrisy of the same allies that claim Europe is at a dead end, as they try once more to settle their overreached interests at the expense of the battered Europeans.
But a strange thing has happened. Once a divided, quarreling gaggle of small nations, Europe has changed little by little, almost imperceptibly, into the European Union, a union of some 450 million people which suddenly dwarfs the two superpowers, even when combined. Europe is now a superpower on its own.
Has anybody noticed that? Both the US and Russia talk about Europe from a nineteenth-century mindset, like a little dog to be kicked around. They lecture the Europeans as to why they are not up to their own standards and their interests. Both the US and Russia take this superior position, talking about their armies as if all we have to compare is how many tanks or nukes one has. But their economies are in shambles – and that is not what worries them?
It is interesting to note that the Cold War and the post-Cold War economic self-mutilation inflicted by the US and Russia on each other resulted in the emergence of two incontestable winners, outside of their plan. China is the top winner, followed by the European Union. Little considered as a viable entity, the EU is an economic and demographic contender vastly better positioned vis-a-vis both the US and Russia.
This comes as such a surprise to the former adversaries that they are now in a frenzy to close ranks and talk about friendship against their very close former friends. They just discovered how much damage they inflicted on themselves and how far they have fallen behind both China and the EU.
Can they, in a nefarious new alliance, succeed in stabbing the Europeans in the back for the third time?
My money is on Europe this time. The new gambit is just not quite possible. Too late. A third time game of a European war is not going to work. Europe doesn’t need to go to actual hot war. All it needs to do is to keep the two superpowers at a distance in terms of economic separation. Divorce. Neither one of them has the human resources to compete economically, with China, definitely, but neither with old Europe. Europe doesn’t even need the energy resources from either one of the rivals. The eastern Mediterranean is full of gas and oil, and so is the nearby north Africa, never mind the Middle East.
All that the EU needs is to stand up to the hypocrisy of both former superpowers. For Russia, any claim to sovereignty by another small neighbor, like Moldova or Georgia, is labeled “Nazi”. But their own sovereignty is sacrosant, just because they are Mother Russia. Same goes for the US. One day it’s about Woke ideology, another day about democracy. But in fact, they both are lusting imperial bloodsuckers.
Enough. Let’s have a new, revived Europe at one pole and ancient China at the other. Ultimately, it is not about Ukraine. It is about the overreach by two empires, at times naked and at times surreptitious, over other peoples’ lives and lands.
