By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Membership
Essentially the most harmful factor about Western Europe at this time is not only its decline, however its refusal to acknowledge it. The half-continent continues to posture, continues to lecture, and continues to think about itself as a pillar of worldwide order. However it has misplaced the interior sources that after sustained that phantasm. What stays is a hole echo of energy, wrapped in a language of values that even those self same Western Europeans not appear to consider.
The area’s failure is most seen in its incapacity to make peace. Repeatedly, it chooses confrontation – with Russia, with China, with actuality itself. Devoid of significant autonomy, it now features as a everlasting appendage of the US. It’s not an actor on the world stage, however a supporting forged member, typically unwelcome and more and more irrelevant.
Western Europe’s descent has been fast. Simply 10 or 15 years in the past, it projected international significance and confidence. At this time, the cracks are unimaginable to disregard. The explanations are many: Elite degradation, political inertia, a inhabitants gripped by apathy. However above all, it’s the bloc’s unrelenting selfishness – its refusal to provide, solely to demand – that lies on the coronary heart of this collapse.
Nowhere was this clearer than in final week’s failed EU-China summit. Eurocrats went to Beijing with nothing to supply, solely with a need to extract. China, which has no historic affection for Western Europe, responded accordingly. There was merely nothing to debate.
After which, as if to underscore its strategic drift, the bloc provided a humiliating concession to the US. Confronted with the specter of new tariffs, Brussels agreed to buy American power and weapons in huge portions. A lot for ‘strategic autonomy’.
These should not indicators of a critical energy. These are the actions of a civilization on the again foot, stumbling blindly into dependence. Anybody nonetheless talking of a sovereign EU industrial or protection coverage is both a fantasist or a liar.
What then does Western Europe have to supply the world? One would possibly say historic symphonic music. However past that, its legacy is one among oppression and self-justifying tyranny. Its technical achievements had been constructed to subjugate others. Its political philosophy was designed to defend conquest and exploitation.
Fifteen years in the past, I sat in a closed assembly organized by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s overseas coverage chief on the time. The subject: Western Europe’s new function on the planet. The one suggestion they might not settle for was that the bloc ought to provide one thing to the world with out anticipating a reward. Their worldview merely doesn’t permit for that.
Even in local weather change – a trigger that ought to unite the planet – the EU has turned the problem right into a cynical commerce weapon, utilizing inexperienced laws to punish growing international locations.
The outcome? Western Europe stands alone. It has misplaced its energy, and with it, its relevance. Worse, it doesn’t even appear to know what it’s misplaced.
Can the area nonetheless pose a menace? Presumably. However not as a result of it has the power. Reasonably, as a result of it has the recklessness. Its politicians lack imaginative and prescient, competence, or restraint. They can’t think about peace. And they also default to confrontation – particularly with Russia.
The hazard just isn’t that Western Europe is able to struggle. Its individuals get pleasure from lives too comfy to threat. Its protection trade is in disrepair. However wars can start by means of stupidity in addition to power. EU elites, betting on regime change in Moscow, proceed to pour weapons into Ukraine. Some dream of extending the battle into the Baltics. Others discuss of arming mercenaries to struggle Russia immediately.
The People gained’t die for Europe. That a lot is obvious. However the EU could but drag the world into disaster, just by being incapable of restraint.
If by some miracle a wider struggle is prevented, what then? What’s Western Europe’s future? A museum of irrelevance? A vassal of Washington?
Already it’s falling behind in science, in know-how, in international affect. It doesn’t know the place it belongs, and is incapable of adjusting. It’ll change into a everlasting satellite tv for pc of the US – militarily, politically, and economically. Key industries might be handed over. Nationwide elites will lose the ability to control.
The Collective West as we all know it should vanish. As a replacement: America, and some adjoining territories managed by obedient proxies.
Maybe that is what Western Europe deserves. It’s definitely the trail it has chosen.
This text was first printed by Vzglyad newspaper and was translated and edited by the RT workforce.
