For the European Union to finally succeed in joining the big game of global geopolitical reconfiguration, it is essential that we, ordinary Europeans (let’s not talk about leaders and the fragmented establishment for now), understand this game.
It’s not easy, because of the ultra-ideologization of communication about specific events (social Europe vs. „evil” capitalism), the manipulation of the relevance of these events, and the brutal personalization of geopolitical decisions (pro/anti-Trump, even though the US is also at a turning point) prevent us from seeing, as if on an X-ray, the great certainties that are shaping the new world order.
Below we present seven certainties whose relativization/“blurring” prevents us, ordinary Europeans (i.e., those of us who vote), from understanding not only what is happening to us, but also what awaits us on the horizon of a decade—things that our leaders avoid telling us bluntly.
Seven things that will define our place in the world and the type of society we live in—that is, our personal lives—in the coming decades:
1. World War III has begun, and its stake is the reconfiguration of the world after a 25-year hiatus following the end of the Cold War.
We are in the midst of a world war, with specific economic and military effects (including military threats, which are a form of military warfare).
This time, the war is somewhat hotter than the previous one, and our hope may be that the war will „cool down” once the spheres of influence become clearer.
Several events show us the outbreak of this war, in a situation that was prepared—just as it was prepared for WWI and WWII:
– Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014
– China’s formation of artificial islands to gain military control in South China Sea
– Russia’s relocation of a floating nuclear power plant to the Arctic
– China’s economic colonization of Europe and the US, as well as its economic conquest of half of Africa.
– The careful construction of the West’s economic dependence on rare earths processed by China.
– The completion of the Russia-China-Iran strategic alliance – the so-called „revisionist triangle” – whose stated goal is to dismantle the Western social system.
2. WW III begins with the US returning towards itself, given that it will be the „Western power”, in a strategic equation fundamentally different from that of the Cold War.
Given that the Cold War is over, and that in the 25 years since then the major powers have had the necessary time to reorganize internally and establish a strategy for future warfare, the US is returning to the situation that existed before WW II.
Let’s face it, the US only took care of Europe during the Cold War, it had a lot to invest in security here so as not to wake up with the USSR at the Atlantic – and now, when China is „taking over” economically, technologically and militarily, the US is returning to its old position towards Europe.
In WWI the US only entered the war towards the end, scared that European countries would not be able to pay their war debts if they lost the war, and in WWII, they only entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor and only after Germany declared war on them.
We, ordinary Europeans, must understand that, after 80 years, the defense of Europe is returning to the status of European affairs.
3. The world will not be multipolar, but still bi-polar: only the US and China are sufficiently advanced in the equation of economic power – military power – technological power – civilizational vocation so that it will be anything other than a one-on-one confrontation, possibly – as in medieval tournaments, each with their squires.
The US will have its allies/partners (please note that we are not saying dependents, but partners – and the EU is such an ally. Some Middle Eastern states are also allies/partners (see Saudi Arabia most recently).
– China will have its allies and partners (with North Korea joining Russia and Iran).
– The other major economic powers that emerged after the Cold War (India, Brazil, etc.) will remain neutral.
– This is precisely why the US is dismantling the regime in Iran.
– This is precisely why the high stakes in the US-Russia-Ukraine negotiations are, in fact, not Ukraine, but the shift of the fault line between the West and Russian-Chinese Asia further to the east: from Poland-Ukraine-Romania-Turkey-Greece to the new fault line Ukraine-Black Sea-Turkey-Caspian Sea area-Central Asia.
4. The US-EU relationship has slipped, in this WW III, into an area of chronic mutual distrust—legitimate on both sides
The US cannot count on the EU because there is no unified decision-making within the EU, and Russia and China are waging a veritable war of division between the 27 states (all having right to veto!) through specific agreements and investments.
We can give (just) a few examples to set the context:
– China and Russia having been declared „systemic adversaries,” the EU continues to make China a strategic trading partner, and with Russia – after breaking its energy dependence since the invasion of Ukraine – it is expected to resume ties in energy and resource trade.
– Germany has always had a special relationship with Russia – Angela Merkel built the Nord Stream II pipeline with Putin’s Russia in the midst of „negotiations” in the Minsk format for the territorial integrity of Ukraine; France, through the voice of Emmanuel Macron, saw „a Europe from Vladivostok to Lisbon.”
– True leaders, especially those of the major powers, look at things not in terms of an electoral cycle, but in terms of decades: the US talked yesterday with Merkel, today with Macron and Merz – but they will also have to talk with a Germany that could, at some point, be led by the AfD and Le Pen’s party: to what extent will the US be able to rely on the conglomerate of 27 states, where any Victor Orban could block or support crucial decisions?
On the other hand:
– To what extent will the EU be able to rely on the US, as long as the American policy in this WW III is barricaded in the Western hemisphere to ensure that it does not depend on the political unpredictability of Europe?
To what extent will the EU be able to rely economically on the US, given that it lags far behind the Americans in terms of technology, who can turn us into commercial vassals without us being able to respond with similar force?
– In their assault on the resources essential to new technologies—critical raw materials—to compensate for the advantage that China has carved out for itself in Africa in recent decades, the US will consider the EU a competitor, and Europe will always be kept as far away as possible from the negotiating table for such resources.
5. After 80 years, the US is returning to its own problems. The world has changed so much in the last 25 years, and looks so different from the European paradigm of understanding it, that the US has other priorities for entering the new world order.
From a security perspective, new hot spots have emerged on the world map, all targeting the position and status of the US in the coming decades. These sensitive points are:
– The Indo-Pacific (where China, Russia, and North Korea have their nuclear warheads pointed at it, and where China has created artificial islands to reconfigure the landmass in the South China Sea).
– Then South and Central America – with the Panama Canal full of Chinese investments. This is the area where both Russia and China have infiltrated the economies, becoming active (geo)political players.
– The Arctic – an area that also concerns Europe – strategically revalued by both Russia and China and already prepared as a battlefield to exert power across the Atlantic.
As for the economic aspect, the US is preparing to reduce its dependence on anyone:
– are taking measures to bring production back home.
– have to restore macroeconomic balances – from the current account deficit to the trade deficit.
– have to ensure measures to increase technological momentum where they have to maintain the lead, in the face of a China that is pursuing statist policies at home and dumping policies abroad.
Very importantly, things that matter a lot to us, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe:
– the US will NOT leave Europe: it is very important for them to be able to militarily control the vertical fault line between the West and the Asian axis of Russia-China-Iran.
What we need to understand is that the protection of this fault line will be reserved for us, Europeans – with two major military powers, Poland (up north – in the making) and Turkey, down south, towards the Middle East and the gateway to Central Asia.
The negotiations in recent months have not necessarily focused on the situation in Ukraine, but rather on shifting the geopolitical fault line from its current alignment—Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Greece—to one that is more advanced toward Asia: Ukraine—the Black Sea—the Caspian region—Turkey—Central Asia.
6. Global institutions are outdated and no longer function except formally.
From the UN to sectoral institutions, global institutions are anachronistic because they were conceived and created based on fundamentally different realities, and a few examples help us understand to what extent we can still rely on them as we did 30-50 years ago.
– The UN – created at a time when China simply did not exist economically and militarily – in fact, tens of millions of people were to die of starvation during Mao’s reforms. In addition, the geopolitical blocs were clear, the sides were known, and decisions were of global importance. Today, one UN state invades another UN state, a resolution is voted and no one pays attention to it, and then everyone rushes to the buffet and to the airport.
– The World Trade Organization (WTO): those who follow the rules are at a devastating disadvantage in the face of Chinese dumping.
In his report at the end of 2024, Draghi writes that when China first violated WTO rules 20 years ago, no one said anything: „back then, it was very comfortable to do business with China.” Today, all the major economies are looking for loopholes to break the rules—and the WTO has become a strictly formal institution.
Or the World Health Organization (WHO): when, three years ago, President Biden asked the WHO to go to China and check where the Covid virus came from, the Chinese simply did not give them access – so the WHO returned with the answer given publicly by China: „The Wuhan virus has nothing to do with the mega-virology lab in Wuhan, but with a bat that came from 2,000 km away.”
And when the WHO fails to investigate a real pandemic cataclysm, the institution is outdated and needs to be reformed, not funded and taken seriously. Or another one needs to be created.
… and many other global institutions, infiltrated either by ideological currents, social system approaches, or powers subservient to one global player or another: what is certain is that the technocracy of these institutions has fallen to last place in their functioning—they have crossed the red lines of geopolitical interference to the point of becoming useless, costly, and inefficient.
7. The European nations we live in and what we need to do
The tangible certainties and concrete events and decisions presented above create a certainty for us, ordinary Europeans (those who vote):
– If we do not find, in the next decade, solutions for a more profound integration of EU states, if we do not become a federation and speak and act with one voice, it will only be a matter of another decade before we are „annexed” economically and, ultimately, socially, by one of these great powers.
– And if we do not find, in the coming years, the virus that is holding us back and clouding our lucidity, trapping us in a lukewarm attitude and dependent on a great power (the US was for 80 years, but Russia also indulged in our dependence on its resources, China is already here and is teaching us from the middle of Europe how to interpret our own anti-dumping laws, and in 20 years India will be here too) – we will consolidate our status as a second-rate power.
The twilight of the European welfare state
We, ordinary Europeans, still live in the midst of the illusion – heavily promoted in the 1990s by the global left – that we have witnessed the end of history and that the world will settle on liberal market capitalism, a place where we will meet as if at a market, exchange products and then withdraw, then, over a beer, we would drink to mark the settlement.
False: we are in the midst of an illusion that is quite well maintained by our European leaders – but this theory is a diversion, an ideological gargle. Where have we ended up if, in the midst of WW III, we are governed by (literally!) anti-governmental principles? A huge NGO – a continent ruled by Greta Thumberg’s green visions, at a time when the biggest polluter, China, is destroying our industries and jobs by delivering tens and hundreds of millions of cars… green ones (because that’s what we wanted, right?).
Our big problem, however, is the day to day life, where we have moved away from the principles of liberal market capitalism (the autonomous, responsible individual who expects nothing for free and for whom the state/system is a competitor, not a provider) and have slipped towards the welfare state.
It remains to be seen how long we will be able to sustain it—against the backdrop of the need to increase defense budgets, with an aging population and a grossly inadequate pension system, and with economies where overregulation levels the playing field for companies with the potential to be major global players and keeps them captive in the European „small and medium” vision.
Of course, the European welfare state is perhaps the most beautiful model of state in the world (as the Vice-President of the European Commission, a socialist, Mr. Sejourne, told me last year in an interview for CDG). Perhaps, indeed, in a paradise of social systems, the European welfare state would be the most beautiful, radiant, cool… etc.
But this is not paradise, and until the Last Judgment, we may still have some suffering to deal with—especially since we, the satiated and capricious, are not happy with our good fortune once every few decades.
PS:
In the above equation, alongside the US, EU, China, Russia, India, etc., one character is missing: Artificial Intelligence. Despite appearances, even the two mega-players, the US and China, do not know how Artificial Intelligence will play. And that makes them even more belligerent.
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