Will the EU of the future be Russian-Chinese or American?
The European Union, after realizing that it is not militarily autonomous, will have to choose whether it prefers the democracy of the United States or the Russian-Chinese dictatorship. Francis Walsingham's speech
Dear Director,
I am writing to you with great concern.
Since Russia has militarily invaded Ukraine to bring it back under its control, it seems clearer what the ongoing global confrontation is: on the one hand the democracies, on the other those who fear democracy.
I look at these two maps in sequence. Generalizing a little, it seems to me that democracies condemn the Russian invasion and stand up in defense of Ukraine, while dictatorships approve Russian aggression – or at least not condemn it, as in the case of China.
It seems to me that Putin and Xi Jinping are asking the world to consider alternative models to the Western ones, such as the Russo-Chinese model, which basically aims to abolish the rule of law.
The two leaders wrote it in black and white in the joint declaration before the war in Ukraine began and continue to ask for it through the daily violation of human rights.
The US and UK oppose this illiberal worldview and offer full help to Ukraine, while Germany, France and Italy seem a little hesitant. The reason does not seem to be only the energy dependence on Moscow, but also the many business started in the last twenty years with Russia, both in the public and in the private sector. The consistent European public opinion of anti-American tradition also weighs heavily in view of the elections.
The result is a divided West in the face of Putin's war.
RUSSIAN-CHINESE OR AMERICAN EU?
Parliamentarians, MEPs, opinion leaders, journalists, directors of important newspapers and magazines, university professors and researchers, Italian and European, continue to blame NATO for having "provoked" Russia.
They ask Zelensky to surrender and give Putin some piece of Ukraine, hoping it will be enough to stop the war.
They ask the EU to be "equidistant" between Washington and Moscow; they ask Italy to "disengage from mother America", accusing the United States of being like Russia, citing the wars from Vietnam to Iraq.
Those who ask for these things, however, are unaware that the EU is not autonomous, because its security depends entirely on NATO and the US nuclear arsenal.
So, in essence, these people are asking for our safety to be endangered.
Rather than speaking ill of the United States, perhaps, it would be more appropriate to hope that the Americans continue to want to defend us, even if we are ignorant and ungrateful. Although the United States is not without sin.
Those who blame the West for the war against Russia and China could change their perspective for a moment and try to blame Russia and China for the war against the West.
BECAUSE BORN IS A PRECIOUS GOOD
For the United States, NATO has symbolized since 1949 an essential necessity in order to defend its national borders, a question of security: the security of the United States itself depends on what happens outside its borders; in particular, the critical area is Europe itself.
For Europeans, NATO is historically an alliance that has meant engaging American military power in the defense of their security, with the dual purpose of containing the Soviet Union and controlling the resurgence of Germany.
Therefore, the starting point of any analysis should be that, without the United States, the European Union has not been (and is not yet) able to defend itself. It is not autonomous. This is why NATO is a precious asset.
WHY CURSE NATO MAKES THE GAME OF PUTIN
Today, in essence, the meaning of NATO does not seem to change, except for the fact that Putin's Russia is replacing the Soviet Union.
In 1949 the American intuition, deriving from the experience of two world wars, was very acute, as the US conception understood that "wars from then on would be global in nature and the United States would inevitably be involved" (D . Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe, Longman Publisher, London 1991, p. 104).
NATO was therefore "an essential avenue for the defense of democratic nations against any kind of aggression" (R. Steel, The End of Alliance, The Viking Press, New York 1962, p. 25).
The possibility that Europe could fall under Soviet control placed the United States in the position of having to use all the means at its disposal in order to avoid a new attempt at aggression.
“In today's world, the North Atlantic no longer represents a vast barrier separating two continents, but the inland sea of a closely linked community. Its waterways and adjacent waters serve a group of nations that have been nurtured in common traditions and who share a common respect for the rule of law ”(NATO Information Service, The NATO Handbook, London 1952).
Weakening the Alliance from within is just what Putin wants to wipe out democracy, first in Ukraine then in the rest of Europe.
HOW MUCH FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY COST
As Professor Vittorio Emanuele Parsi recalled, “Democracies also live in the international system, but not only democracies, and in order for democracies to survive there is a cost that must be paid. Since we are in an ecological transition phase, we also try to have a political ecology that makes us understand that nothing is free, neither the environment in which we live nor equality, nor freedom and not even a safe environment for democracies. This is what is jeopardizing Putin's war ”.
"What hurts – explained Parsi – is to see people, governments and entire populations, who let themselves be duped by the Russian and Chinese proposal, in which they finally see a settling of scores with that West that has a colonial past, and this becomes a kind of settling of scores against them. All true. But to take revenge with the grudge of the past, they too cheat the future, because a future as the Russians and Chinese imagine it is a globalization with the exploitation of the weakest without even bothering the sense of guilt, without even the cost or the 'nuisance of freedom ”.
This is what Russia and China seem to fear most: the demand for freedom and rights by civil society, in a word: democracy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/unione-europea-stati-uniti-cina-russia/ on Wed, 29 Jun 2022 05:15:04 +0000.