The failure of the EU in a single graph

After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the West was faced with two alternatives:

• encourage a rapid agreement between the parties, especially when the direct attack on Kiev failed and the situation at the front stabilized;
• intervene massively and without direct limits, without escalation policy, in the conflict.

The first solution would have saved a few hundred thousand deaths between the two sides and could have been presented and executed, not as a surrender, but as a bit of realpolitik which, in the end, would have saved what could be saved. The second solution, more dangerous, but less hypocritical, would have made it clear that the use of force would not have been tolerated in Europe and, perhaps with the advance supply of aircraft and armored vehicles (something that the various European countries in the past they did in favor of countries with a much more uncertain democratic quality, such as Apartheid South Africa, which used Mirage F1s, or Gaddafi's Libya, the first two that come to mind, but the list could go on for a long time ), would have brought it to a conclusion last autumn.

In the end it was a question of applying a phrase from the Gospel: "Let your speech be yes, yes, no, no, everything else comes from the devil." In fact, the devil had his hand in it and, with his ways, slightly less long and convoluted than those of the Holy Spirit, he advised giving a bit of military aid, but gradually, with the escalation technique which it gave Vietnam's military success (a hard-earned success, but for the Vietnamese) and the extraordinary idea of ​​economic sanctions, a measure that is almost a century old and which in this period has practically never been successful. From memory the cases of pre-war Italy, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia come to mind. Sanctions have NEVER worked. Yet everyone has invoked them as the definitive, bloodless, perfect weapon. here are some videos, to remind you:

Letta, then secretary of the PD

Draghi, then Prime Minister

Borrell announcing yet another package of sanctions:

Von Der Leyen Claiming She Could Break the Machine Funding Putin's "War Machine"

Now more than a year has passed since those moments. What were the effects of Western choices on Russia and the conflict?

• For the Russian economy, the graph by Robin Brooke, certainly not a Putinian, helps us, showing the trend of the GDP of Russia and Ukraine in recent months
• Let's also compare it with that of the sanctioners, i.e. the GDP of the euro area, which we certainly do not see growing successfully in the last 10 years
• the sanctions did not shorten the war by a day, they did not weaken Russia, they did not save a life on either side;
• the sanctions did not even prevent a military escalation, because in the end the Western countries supplied the same weapons that they refused to supply in February 2022, i.e. MBTs (now there are Leopard 2s, Abrams etc), planes (the Ukrainians train on the F 16 for a few months), long-range weapons. In the end everything was done, with the only limitation of the budget, on the US side, and of total production inability, on the European side (do we want to talk about the 155 mm projectile scandal?)
• now, almost officially, it is confessed that the second largest exporter of petroleum products in the EU remains Russia .

Of all the choices that could have been made, the worst possible one was made. An almost obvious thing, when we talk about "Politics" and the "West", as it is almost obvious that, although this policy has been a complete failure, from whatever point of view you look at it, those who expressed and supported it are still at the highest levels. No one admitted their mistake, nor did they consider an alternative approach.

As I wrote on other occasions, the evil of the West is one of decadent intellect: there is always a plan B missing.

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The article The failure of the EU in a single graph comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-falllimento-della-ue-in-un-solo-grafico/ on Sun, 26 Nov 2023 09:17:49 +0000.