Gefira 90: Alarm bells are ringing louder and louder

The Donald Trump effect may spread to Europe, to the European Union. Already the patriotic parties in Germany and Austria, in France and Sweden, are on the rise. Resistance against resettlement of people from outside the continent is growing, just as it is growing in the United States. Elon Musk, one of Donald Trump’s right-hand men, is actively supporting the patriotic movement in Europe and openly making assaults on European leaders. Is he acting on his own? Not really.

The war in the Middle East and in Ukraine seem to have entered their end stage. The United States has had its interests in both regions, if for other reasons in either case. As usual, Washington has been backing Tel Aviv – the highest echelons of American political class are filled with either Zionists or Christian Zionists. Trump is no exception in this respect. As for Ukraine, the same political class that acted under President Biden did all there was in their power to weaken Russia and draw Ukraine firmly into the American zone of influence. Did they succeed? Not really.

But then they my have succeeded. The plan may have been other than drawing Ukraine into the American zone: the plan may have been to cut Europe off from Russia, off from Russian cheap energetic resources. The plan may have been to make the Old Continent dependent on the United States. If that was the aim, as Czech political scientist and historian Michal Svatoš believes, then the United States has succeeded 100%. Europe has been made dependent on the Big Brother across the Pond: American natural gas is being transported to the European countries while all the pipelines connecting the EU with Russia have been closed or damaged, as was the case with NordStream.

The new president – the new expectations. How much will change? What will the political course of the American administration be? Will President Trump undo all, most, or merely a little of what President Biden has done? Some people tend to think that Donald Trump is initiating a revolution in American domestic and international policies. More sober observers are trying to dampen this unbridled enthusiasm, to confound these over-high expectations. It is not without reason that some analysts had coined the term Uniparty to denote the Republicans and the Democrats taken together. What do they mean by this term? Yes, they mean that whoever holds the reins of power, Washington’s policy does not change significantly in any important issue. America is ruled now by the Democrats, now by the Republicans simply because Americans must be fed the illusion that America’s fate is laid in their hands, to be precise, in their ballot papers. The same acute political observers say that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would have stayed in power till this day if only its leaders had once come upon this brilliant idea of splitting their party in two. The Soviet people would have been given a “choice” every now and again, while the same people would have controlled their lives.

Be it as it may, we are facing at least a kind of breakthrough in the policies of the United States. Not so in the European Union. Here, the same commissioners and the same leaders cling to power as much as they can. They dream of strengthening their authority at the cost of member-states. Mario Draghi, the erstwhile top manager of the ECB, drafted a report about the economic position of the Union. As much as his analysis is sound, the solutions he proposes boil down to saying: more of the same! More of centralization, more of Europe in particular member-states, more of sanctions, more of regulations, more of obligations and prohibitions, more of the green deal, and so on, and so forth. More? Precisely these measures have bought about the negative results in Europe’s economy and he – and the commissioners – want more of the same?

Mario Draghi and the other politicians of his ilk seem not to have noticed that the global political centres are slowly moving away from Europe (and the United States) to Asia and South America. Even a NATO member Turkey is playing with the idea of joining BRICS! This foolish policy on the part of the European Union and on the part of NATO has benefited China, and India, and Brazil. The European Union has failed the Europeans in terms of economics through the Covid policies and the sanctions imposed on Russia, while NATO has failed Europeans in terms of defence: rather than being a guarantor of security, the alliance has been unleashing wars and is without a shadow of a doubt responsible for the eruption of the hostilities in Ukraine. The European Union resembles the Soviet Union… in its last stage before the breakup.

It is Donald Trump in the United States, it is Ursula von der Leyen in the European Union. On either side of the Atlantic, the mechanisms are the same. Oligarchs, powerful men who no one elects and barely anyone knows select presidents and ministers (or secretaries of states, as the case may be), and these in turn perform the tasks set by those oligarchs. Neither Trump nor von der Leyen are capable of resisting the pressure from behind. The moment they decide to do so, the powers that be will immediately play the trump card and hold the two to account: both have run foul of the law, have they not?