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the EU is caught between an old rock and full independence...

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The Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his United States counterpart Antony Blinken are scheduled to hold a meeting next week at an as yet undisclosed European location. It is difficult to see what the two men have to talk about. Lavrov has recently held meetings in Moscow with his British counterpart Elizabeth Truss. To call that meeting a complete waste of Lavrov’s time would not be an exaggeration. That woman’s ignorance was at an appalling level, apparently unable to distinguish between the Black and Baltic Seas, and naming two Russian cities as part of Ukraine.

It is to be hoped that Blinken’s grasp of geography is better than Truss. It is expected that Ukraine will be on Blinken’s agenda. He presumably shares the bizarre beliefs of his boss, United States president Joe Biden, that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. The United States is desperate to blame Russia for whatever is happening in that country, not least because it intends to use the” Russian invasion” as an excuse to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany and other points to the west.

The United States has its own selfish motives for ending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as it sees the European market as an alternative for its own gas supplies. That this is a pipedream does not seem to enter the United States consciousness. It does not have the capacity to replace the 40% of European electricity that is supplied by the Russians. Its product is also significantly more expensive for the Europeans to buy.

This does not seem to enter into the United States consciousness. They are motivated by the desire to destroy Russia’s European market. This goal is uppermost in their mind, irrespective of the European view. This was never more apparent than during the recent visit to the United States by Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz who was gravely embarrassed by Biden’s blatant announcement that Nord Stream 2 would be cancelled if Russia invaded Ukraine.

Such was the arrogance of the United States position that is apparently never occurred to Biden that the decision to import Russian gas was a European decision and had nothing to do with the Americans. In that, Biden’s announcement was very revealing. It portrayed the Europeans in general and Germany in particular as mere pawns of the game the United States wished to play.

The loss of the German market would undoubtably cause Russia financial loss. But the economic strain on Russia would not be as great as many people imagine, in particular the Americans who see it as causing economic hardship to Russia. In fact, Russia already has an alternative market ready, willing and able. And that is China. Work has already commenced on building the pipeline to convey the gas originally designed for the European market to China. It is expected to be completed in 2 to 3 years.

The damage to Europe in general, and Germany in particular, from the loss of Russian gas will be vastly greater. That does not appear to have entered the American equation, or if it has, they show no signs of concern about the potentially devastating effects the loss of Russian gas will have on the German market. Serious commentators have suggested that it could literally spell the death- knell of German industry, let alone the physical comfort of its population forced to endure a cold winter unalleviated by the warmth provided by Russian gas.

It is the realisation that Germany will be the one to actually suffer from a United States engineered cancellation of Nord Stream 2 that probably accounts for the marked reluctance of the German chancellor to embrace the blatantly anti Russian views of the United States. It is an open question as to how far the Germans are prepared to go to defy the patent wish of the United States to see North Stream 2 cancelled.

The history in this regard is not promising. Although World War II ended 77 years ago, the Germans are still an occupied country, with more than 40,000 United States troops in occupation. Germany has risen from the rubble of World War II to become the strongest economy in Europe. It is manifestly obvious however, that their political independence does not match their economic strength.

The incongruity of being an economic heavy weight but a political pygmy is precisely why the Germans find themselves in this current position. Manifestly, it is in their interest to receive energy supplies from Russia. It is blatantly obvious that such a wish does not accord with the United States view. In many respects, the German decision on Nord Stream 2 will be a true test of how politically independent it truly is, or wishes to be.

There are some small signs that Germany is seeking to assert its independence. One sign of this is its readiness to do business with China. Again, this is a trend that is anathema to the Americans who strongly oppose the ever-increasing willingness of European nations, not just the Germans, to establish mutually beneficial economic relationships with the Chinese.

One clear symptom of this European independence is the willingness of an ever-increasing number of European countries to sign up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. At last count 18 countries of the European Union had signed up, which is two thirds of the membership. That is expected to grow. Those countries include the European Union heavyweights of France, Germany and Italy.

This is a sign of the future, as European countries free themselves from the American bondage and make decisions that equate to their own national interest. It is symptomatic of a broader sequence occurring in the world, as more and more countries sign up to the BRI. The total membership now stands at more than 140 countries. This is notwithstanding a fierce anti-BRI program being advanced by the Americans who see their worldwide influence steadily declining.

The trend is unmistakable. Germany is part of that trend. For that reason, I believe that the Germans will resist the pressure from the Americans and sign up to the Nord Stream 2 project. The Germans are an intelligent and educated people. They are capable of reading the direction the world is going. That reading will tell them that Eurasia is where the future of the world lies. They will want to be part of that world. Finally discarding United States protection is part of that, and this is something that they will do in the vital interests of their own country.

 

 

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/02/21/under-united-states-pressure-on-germany-faces-a-moment-of-choice/

 

 

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raw-skin saucisson...

 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rubbished suggestions Russia is sending in “peacekeeping” troops to eastern Ukraine, saying Moscow has “moved in on Ukrainian sovereign territory”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his defence ministry to despatch Russian troops to “maintain peace” in eastern Ukraine’s two breakaway regions, in a significant escalation of the Kremlin-driven crisis over Ukraine.

 

 

Hey, Saucisson dear, tell your mate in Washington to get out of Syria pronto... One difference though... The two region, Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic are full of ethnic Russians who have been denied the right to speak their lingo — and the places where the US linger like a bad smell in Syria only speak arabic or local dialects...

 

Mr Morrison on Tuesday warned the move could result in an “absolutely violent confrontation with terrible human consequences”.

He said Ukraine had seen “Russian troops enter their own sovereign territory - that has already occurred now”.

  

“Some suggestion that they’re peacekeeping is nonsense. They have moved in on Ukrainian sovereign territory. And I hope for the best in terms of the diplomatic efforts that are being pursued,” he told reporters in Tasmania.

“We cannot have threats of violence being used to seek to advantage nations’ positions over others - that is not a peaceful world order. I can assure that the moment that other countries put in place strong and severe sanctions on Russia, we will be in lock step with them.”

 

 

Hey Saucisson dear, There WON'T BE ANY BLOODSHED — nor any "absolutely violent confrontation with terrible human consequences". None of that AS THE RUSSIAN ARMY IS ONLY PROTECTING RUSSIANS. End of story. Go away, Saucisson... It's time for the Western nations to stop the NATO charade... Should NATO place its dirty nose there, then there could be bloodshed... NATO bloodshed... Stop the NATO charade! Had the West respected the Minsk agreements and/or listen to Russia for five minutes — NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. Biden is an IDIOT. YOU, SCOMO, IS AN IDIOT... I know the Western media are going to go bezerk, but then what to expect of IDIOTS? take a cold shower.

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FRANCE/RUSSIA: EMMANUEL MACRON'S FIVE-YEAR FOR NOTHING

By Eric Juillot

03/15/2022

Politics

1

It should be remembered that the integration into NATO of the Baltic States, formerly Soviet, in 1999, did not constitute a casus belli for Moscow.

Five meetings and eight telephone conversations: for five years, the French and Russian presidents have seen each other a lot and talked a lot. If today we had to take stock of Emmanuel Macron's diplomacy, we would have to note that the dialogue between the two Heads of State did nothing to strengthen the link between France and Russia and did not to move forward, if only marginally, in dealing with crises in which the two States are to varying degrees involved.

This failure is essentially explained by the lack of audacity and courage of the French President, who never managed, despite a clearly formulated initial intention, to take the few steps that would have enabled our country to once again become an essential international player in the minds of the Russian government, capable of bringing the latter to significant concessions in difficult negotiations.

Several forms of blocks have paralyzed the action of the French president.

 

 

A mental block

The first of these blocks is due to a representation of the world specific to Emmanuel Macron and which he in no way thought, in all likelihood, to question. Throughout his five years in office, he referred to "Europe" hundreds of times as a mythical entity from which France must await salvation in the 21st century, and he applied this chimera to the EU to cover up the bleak reality. In doing so, he has always mentally excluded Russia from real Europe, which is nevertheless a component of it.

Therefore, dealing with "European" issues - and first and foremost the Ukrainian crisis - by considering internally that Russia, although a first-rate interlocutor, is fundamentally outside, foreign to the civilizational perimeter concerned, comes down to considering its aspirations less legitimate than those of all other states.

There is, in this way of seeing, a latent psychological element whose effect is not negligible on the perception of the conflict and on the means of overcoming it. Admittedly, the Russians, following their president, are not Europeans like the others, but this is also the case for the French, whatever the current president thinks.

 

To understand Russia's belonging to Europe, and the importance of the Franco-Russian link, the French president could have cultivated the memory of the great alliance forged between the two States in 1892, an alliance welcomed at the era with transport in our country, because it put an end to a quarter-century-old diplomatic isolation in which Bismarck had very cleverly locked up France after the War of 1870-1871.

 

The politically unnatural character of this alliance – between a democratic and liberal republic and an authoritarian and unequal absolute monarchy – did not prevent the conclusion of the alliance, as geostrategic views then prevailed over considerations of “values”.

 

Emmanuel Macron could also have recalled the essential nature of this alliance in 1914, when the mobilization of the Russians - much faster than Berlin had expected - and the offensive launched by them in the middle of August forced the German generals, to counter it, to divert from the French front a substantial part of their force - two army corps - for our greatest benefit. Would the victory of the Marne have been possible without the Russian alliance?

 

The French president could have finally remembered the immensity of the sacrifice made by the Soviets to rid Europe - the real one - of Nazism: 29 million dead, including 11 million soldiers of a Red Army which single-handedly destroyed 80% of the German army between 1941 and 1945. If nothing, within this past, gives easy access to the means of resolving present conflicts, the memory of these events should make it possible, by their simple reminder, to lay the foundations of an agreement with a country whose thirst for recognition is as legitimate as it is obvious.

 

It is clear, however, that the French president prefers to rely lazily on all the derogatory clichés that have shaped the imagination of the West about Russia for centuries, updated today by that of the "Master of the Kremlin", evil figure to be contained as far as possible in the direction of the East.

 

A political deadlock

 

To this mental lock, the result of a distorted conception of European history and geography, is added a political blockage. The demonization of the Russian regime – with the caricatural assimilation of its leader to a quasi-tyrant – is so strongly anchored in a certain public spirit that it weighs heavily on the relationship between the two heads of state, further complicating, if necessary was, working out compromises. Wouldn't these be anything other than betrayals, since they come under the agreement with the camp of Evil?

 

It turns out, however, whatever one thinks, that the Russian Federation is a democracy even if, in its Russian version, this regime presents itself in a significantly different light from ours. Today's Russia has found the formula that suits it in a Caesarean democracy, where the head of state, the main if not the exclusive holder of power, draws his legitimacy from a direct link with the people, regularly steeped in high plebiscite elections.

 

The primacy granted to a strong power, however, has an obvious cost in terms of rights and freedoms: Russia occupies the 150th place out of 180 in the world ranking of press freedom for the year 2021; its judicial system is also undermined by arbitrariness, with little concern for the rights of the defendants. But the political longevity of Vladimir Putin, his numerous re-elections, his popularity without common measure with all that can be observed in France, demonstrate if necessary that his practice of power is that which a majority of Russian citizens wish for their country.

 

Because of its history, France should perceive the democratic dimension of this plebiscite Caesarism despite everything, since it practiced it twice in the 19th century and since, even after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, Bonapartism remained , an important political current in our country for several decades. The Fifth Republic, moreover, conferred on the Head of State powers beyond measure with those enjoyed by his counterparts in other liberal democracies.

 

But President Macron, the incarnation of triumphant neoliberalism, has made the post-modern conception of democracy his own (the one that reduces this regime to individual rights alone) and tramples on its collective dimension by neutralizing popular sovereignty through law and justice. market within the framework of European construction. Reduced to "values" and a "rule of law" brandished with each speech, neoliberal democracy is neither more nor less democratic than its Caesarean version, but it claims a moral superiority which alters the discernment of its supporters when these consider Russia (while forgetting the violence of the state in the police and judicial repression of the Yellow Vests in 2018-2019).

 

The trap of a diplomacy draped in "values" then closes on those who claim to practice it, since it widens a little more the gap which separates us from Russia, even beyond our occasionally divergent interests, and complicates greatly diplomatic negotiations.

 

 

A double institutional trap 

Against all evidence, French leaders regularly maintain that their country is sovereign, when everything indicates that in terms of foreign policy, the essentials are decided under the strong constraint of our country's membership of NATO and the EU. Apparently compatible with maintaining our sovereignty, this membership leads in practice to an almost systematic alignment with the positions defended by our allies or partners, in the name of the solidarity and credibility of these groups and, in the case of the EU , of what the French leaders invest in it ideologically.

 

The full and complete return to NATO in 2008, the active and unconditional participation in European construction mechanically imprinted their mark on France's foreign policy and modified, in the sense of a weakening, the perception that one can have of our country elsewhere in the world.

 

Thus, since 2008, France has acted like a good little NATO soldier, regularly deploying troops in the Baltic countries in air policing missions or during land maneuvers, canceling the sale to Russia of two warships in 2014, regularly sending French aircraft on intelligence missions to the Black Sea - while being offended that in return Russian planes regularly skim over French airspace -, finally theorizing the need for France to further engage its forces in the Baltic Sea "in the name of the growing intertwining of the interests of European states".

 

Recently, in strict continuity with this policy, the French president announced that he intended to order the deployment of French troops in Romania, within the framework of the policy of strengthening the eastern flank of NATO.

 

Within the EU, France has at the same time voted unreservedly for all the sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014, sanctions renewed several times a year, without any French reluctance ever being officially expressed on this subject. Regarding the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, the French president even thought he was authorized to outbid by openly criticizing the conditions for its implementation, which he said were too favorable to Russia.

 

For their part, finally, the negotiations in the “Normandy” format between Russians, Ukrainians, French and Germans, never led to anything tangible. This interesting French attempt at an authentically European diplomacy ended up sinking due to its sterility.

 

Under these conditions, how could France, which for the Russians have become a NATO nation like the others, seriously play its traditional role as a balancing power? To act in this way, you have to be able to distance yourself from the camp to which you belong, regularly demonstrate your uniqueness by accepting official disagreements with your allies: the very opposite of what the France for fifteen years, under the successive mandates of Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron.

 

Contrary to this gregarious and conformist France, that of de Gaulle could claim this role; speaking to everyone, concerned and capable of stopping the rise to extremes by the sole fact of a singular positioning that has been demonstrated many times (recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1964, open criticism of the American commitment in Vietnam, Arab policy, triumphal tour in Latin America, trip to the USSR in 1966), she saw her influence in international relations reach a peak.

 

But, what de Gaulle did at the time, his epigones, by their disastrous choices, are no longer able to do it, even though what is being played out today is only a watered down version of War old cold. In this area as in many others, the presidency of Emmanuel Macron is a sham, as demonstrated by the latest diplomatic sequence.

 

A very illusory catch-up session

 

A new meeting between the two heads of state therefore took place on Monday, February 7. Granted to Emmanuel Macron by Vladimir Poutine, it is probably the last of the five-year term. This meeting takes place in the context of a clear aggravation of tensions for several months, born of a large-scale Russian military deployment near the Ukrainian border and of demands formulated by the Kremlin regarding NATO and its extension, Moscow wishing first and foremost to permanently prevent kyiv from integrating the Western alliance..

 

 

Read more:

https://elucid.media/politique/france-russie-diplomatie-bilan-geopolitique-emmanuel-macron-quinquennat-pour-rien/?mc_ts=crises 

 

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