We have become used to considering Europe as a
continent. What if the political and economic realities transform it from an
American dependency to an Asian peninsula?
1 - The
European Union of inequalities
In
advanced capitalism, with a neoliberal profile, borders are seen as obstacles
that can make it difficult for goods to be processed. And the internet has
exponentially facilitated contacts in general, capital operations and
speculative dementia in particular. As for human beings, things are somewhat
different; Citizen cards, passports, visas, residence permits and … in
progress, a certificate on the situation vis-à-vis covid-19 will be required.
The EU
intended to be a factor of homogeneity in terms of rights and usufructs in the
sense of facilitating exchanges between member countries, as a response to the
great rivalry that emerged from World War II, between the North Americans and
the Soviets. Initially, the political and economic differences between its
members were not many until the integration of Greece (1981) and the Iberian
countries (1986), with degrees of economic development clearly inferior to the
founders. Later, with the inclusion of the countries that left Comecon and the
bloody dismemberment of Yugoslavia, inequalities within the enlarged EU grew
substantially, presenting huge pockets of potential emigrants destined to work
in the richer countries, desertifying and aging their countries of origin,
taken as labor exporters. Like the Levels of training in these countries are
among the highest in Europe
(especially in the East) and, with this training being paid for by the families
of the countries of their origin, it is immediately seen that those who will
benefit from the qualification of these emigrant workers are the rich
countries, with enough money to pay salaries that are not practiced in the
countries of origin. As these inequalities are of interest to contractors (rich
countries) and contractors (workers from poor countries), to speak of social
and territorial cohesion within the EU is a lie consolidated over time.
The
godly goal of unification and solidarity has not been fulfilled. Countries or regions in the process of population
regression and those that attract population are perfectly visible ,
although in the EU there is not only migration between member states but also
of people from abroad. For example, Turks go to Germany, Moroccans to Spain,
Indians and Pakistanis to Great Britain, Brazilians to Portugal…
The
richest countries saw the poorest countries integrated in the EU as interesting
destinations for investments, taking advantage of low local wage levels and, in many cases, linked to high educational levels
(especially in the former Comecon countries); in these territories there were
people eager for consumption and well-being, ready to work and improve their
lives.[1] . On the other hand, the integration of these
countries would work as a model for the consolidation of centers and
peripheries, with these orbiting countries with greater economic, demographic
or financial strength; a model of spatial and economic reorganization,
generating inequalities that are of interest to be permanent, namely in the
chapter on labor prices. All, however, well camouflaged in a language of
egalitarianism that reality proves to be false; registering among the
peripheries cases of some success, such as total failure.
All
this architecture is well wrapped up in legal texts, extensive and detailed,
which clearly show the difficulties for countries that want to go back, leaving
the Union; notwithstanding the obvious disaster of an exit for any member state with lesser status, especially if included in the
euro area[2] . Great Britain managed to leave but took with it
problems that jeopardize the continuity of its peripheral parts – Scotland and
Ulster – leaving Greater London to royalty as a powerful financial center
linked to the numerous offshore points spread across the planet. The viability
of the exit of unstructured, poor countries, with trade largely carried out
within the EU and dependent on community support, is doubtful. The EU
replicates in its midst the inequalities typical of the federated states; in
the US the differences between Florida and West Virginia are stark; in Brazil,
the state of São Paulo has an income capitation three times higher than that of
Ceará; in Spain, income in the Community of Madrid is double that of the
poorest autonomy (Extremadura); and in Portugal, the North region presents an
income slightly above 2/3 of that registered in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo. In
short, the EU replicates the social and economic inequalities existing in all
nation-states and these will never disappear in a framework of capitalist
competition; the global management of the current pandemic reveals to the full
the differences that capitalism generates and sustains. Cooperation and mutual
help give better results than the insanity of accumulating capital to infinity.
If
initially, the CEE countries had approximate income levels and productive
structures, after the entry of Greece into the then CEE, things changed with
the inclusion of that poor country, with very different production structures
and incomes; and followed by the Iberian countries, etc. As is evident, the
political classes of the less developed countries, eager to become the link and
protagonists of a corrupt absorption of community funds, did not bother to
consult the populations on the acceptance or not of such a geopolitical change.
On the contrary, they made full use of what they could and some became “entrepreneurs”
benefiting from the good connections within the PS/PSD party-state, in the
Portuguese case. The so-called international investors know that they have to
pay a specific fee for any business with a country where corruption is
natural, and they try to hire authorized intermediaries – law firms.
Where a
political plan of territorial, political and well-being cohesion was affirmed,
in reality there was only a hierarchy of countries with different levels of
political, commercial and technological power, competing with each other to
take advantage of the community funds that would make it possible for
capitalists from the richest countries to invest in the less rich ones, with
the lowest salary levels, also giving scope for the application of these funds
in accordance with the interests of the party mafias, national or local
authorities. Europe of Regions, does anyone remember?
In
reality, the poorest countries remain at the bottom
of the hierarchy, with the EU remaining a union of unequals.
In this
context, there is a “specialization”. EU countries with more powerful economic
structures and productive specializations with greater technological content
tend to focus on trade relations with a wide range of countries, mainly on
exports – this is the obvious case for Germany. Countries with less advanced
specialization patterns tend to focus on the production of goods with lower
technological content, such as agricultural or tourist products, with the
richest countries in the Union as buyers. And, in the case of agricultural
export products, there is no shortage local mobsters for the integration of
non-community immigrants under substandard conditions and wages .
2 - The
EU at the global level
At the
end of World War II, Europe became a politically and militarily shared area. In
the western part, the presence of North American troops would be aimed at
defending against any Soviet advance; and, to this end, NATO was created in
1949, to which Greece and Turkey joined in 1952. In response, in 1955, the
Warsaw Pact emerged, covering the countries with a Soviet model, led by the
USSR. A segmented, bipartite Europe, forced to accept the end of centuries of
colonization, presented itself even more fragile before the two colossi of the
moment – USA and USSR.
With
the end of the so-called cold war, NATO maintained its existence, expanded its
geographic scope with the integration of the countries of the extinct Warsaw
Pact, with military interventions in the Balkans and, outside the European scope,
in Libya, the Sahel and in Afghanistan. The US military and political dominance
in the European scenario also represents the guarantee of a captive market for
the enormous North American weaponry production; It keeps the political
influence of the US west of the Russian border and, the Mediterranean; and, it
also intends to contain the penetration of China's commercial and political
influence in all corners of the planet (see map at the end of the text) .
The
combined military spending of the USA, France, Great Britain and Germany in
2020 was $942,700 million of which $778,000 million is for the US and, knowing
that the use of such resources is widespread across the planet and not just in
Europe. Russia's military spending was $61,700 million, certainly not just
centered on the European scene . And China, for its part, spent $ 252,000
million, concentered in the Far East.
Other
factors draw the European underage Euro failed to supplant the dollar as the global
currency, the renminbi Chinese also did not and, the pound is a shadow of its
past. It is not strange that Europe shows itself as an exporting power (despite
its glaring internal inequalities) but with a reduced capacity for intervention
in the global political chessboard. It remains, therefore, the situation of a
Europe as a US base for the strategic area of the North Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, counting even the US with the political and economic
disintegration of the space stretching from Lebanon to Mesopotamia and the sea
of Oman, encompassing there, obviously the Persian Gulf [3]; and, above all,
with the support of the faithful Zionist entity. In short, the US retains its
strategic control over Europe; and this highlights its political minority focusing on
bureaucratic minutiae, leaving the distance global leadership marked at Lepanto
(1571) and, consolidated in the second siege of Vienna (1683).
A major
change is underway coming from East Asia, after a first phase led by the
economic performance of Japan and South Korea, countries that have continued
since the end of World War II under the protectorate of the USA (as in Europe
with the presence of NATO ) although not dispensing with high military costs;
those two countries in 2020 spent with the armed forces a little less than $
50,000 M each.
This
militaristic fad that characterizes the US, with bases and fleets around the
world, with the involvement in wars and astonishing destruction, made the US
totally distanced from the creation, in 2014 of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
(AIIB); or, in 2020, the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership ( RCEP) which includes countries militarily protected by the
USA (South Korea and Japan) or, under its political influence (Australia and
New Zealand) and in which India did not want to participate… by while, during
the consulate of the Hindu fanatic, Modi. History records that trade,
exchanges, bring peoples together, promote cultural interactions and constitute
an enormous instrument of economic development, unlike militarism; as can be
seen in the following table.
Percentage of world GDP (in terms of purchasing power
parity )
|
|
1980
|
1990
|
2000
|
2010
|
2015
|
2020 (est)
|
|
EU
|
30.2
|
27.6
|
23.7
|
19.0
|
16.9
|
15.6
|
|
USA
|
21.9
|
22.1
|
20.7
|
16.8
|
15.8
|
14.7
|
|
China
|
2.3
|
4.1
|
7.5
|
13.9
|
17.3
|
19.0
|
Source:
IMF - Economic Outlook 2016
In 2020, the Chinese economic power meant that the EU
has become China as its biggest trading partner, sending the US for second
place; the way both countries faced the coronavirus outbreak reveals the decay
of the US and its replacement by China as the
world's main economy .
The
relationship that will be established in Euro-Asia involves several aspects.
One is the strengthening of Russia as a vital link between East Asia and
Europe; a link that could be practiced across the Arctic. Another is a
development of the Russian gas supply to Germany via the Baltic, in the face of
US bitterness.
A third
aspect is the establishment of several sections of the Silk Road, integrating
the countries of Central Asia and the Muslim countries of the Near and Middle
East, through high speed trains, an area
in which China has a high performance, as it reveals below. According to Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, in 2012, China inaugurated a high-speed rail line
that runs 2298 km between Beijing and Guangzou, with 35 stops in ten hours;
transposed to Europe, this infrastructure would make a London-Belgrade journey
in… eight hours. The above distance is equivalent to the distance between New
York and Key West, in South Florida; however, a current, slightly shorter rail
route (New York/Miami) is now completed in … 30 hours of travel. Such
developments in China as in Europe may offer diversified routes for
transactions between Europe and the East and include the countries of the
aforementioned ASEAN and the East coast of Africa.
Taking
into account the population of the “European Peninsula”, Eurasian integration
(for the time being, excluding India) goes beyond 2500 M people connected by a
continuous and diverse continental mass, culturally and in terms of living or
upbringing of wealth.
A war
in Europe with a global dimension is not to be expected. The US military
presence was justified for nearly half a century with the existence of the USSR
and the Warsaw Pact. The extinction of the latter would have been a good
opportunity for the burial of military alliances; however, NATO continues to
exist, happy to have encompassed the Balkan countries; and hoping, after the
inclusion of the countries of the extinct Comecon, to encircle the Russian
borders in Ukraine and the Caucasus .
After
the end of the Cold War, the US, with or without the NATO mask, waged wars in
the territory of the former Yugoslavia, invaded Libya and Afghanistan, armed
ISIS to destabilize Syria and Iraq, with the strengthening of the connection to
the monarchies Gulf to isolate Iran and, develop the Zionist cancer the exact
extent of the Palestinian people crushing. The US continues to be present in
Africa conflicts, keeping the seat of its Africom, located in Stuttgart (!), a showing
of their role as strange entity among the peoples of the continent; and
including, among other auxiliaries, also in Africa, Portuguese mercenaries.
The
militarized bet of the USA is a real dementia, especially when taking into
account the degree of poverty of a large part of its population and its
deficiencies in terms of infrastructure, as exemplified above. Its military
presence in Europe continues to use and reproduce the Cold War scenario, attributing
to Russia an economic and military power it does not have. Russia has only 150
million inhabitants and its military spending is more than twelve times less
than that of the USA.
. Where
there seems to be a lot of homogeneity among EU members is in strategic
subservience to NATO, with the acceptance of US leadership[4]. The
EU seems to want to keep the US with one foot in Europe, to avoid a total
immersion of the European Peninsula in the infrastructure of the Silk Road, the
implementation of which will keep the US fleets in the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific, which tend to be obsolete. from a strategic point of view, with the
increasing relevance of land routes in the connection between the East, Central
Asia and Europe. China's economic strength, combined with its demographic
strength (more than double that of the EU countries) promises to give Europe a
second place. This marginalization, in the past, was very evident in Bretton
Woods, with the segmentation of Europe into West and East, with the presence of
military bases of occupying powers and, with bloody decolonizations (Algeria,
Vietnam and Portuguese colonies).
What
role will Europe have in the medium or long term?
·
Regional economic power
without a relevant role in international politics inserted, without
protagonism, in the strategic confrontation China/USA?
·
As for China, Europe will
seek a relationship of mutual economic advantages by joining the planned
logistical corridors for whose construction most European countries
have joined (the AIIB mentioned
above);
·
Maintenance of current
and glaring regional inequalities within the EU susceptible to deviant
political positions, such as what the GB decided with its Brexit? And enhancers
of diversified cleavages, facilitated by the great diversity of cultures and
recent historical frameworks?
A preference as a subordinate ally of the USA whose
relative decay is evident, as observed in the management of the pandemic, in
the huge pockets of poverty, for the political and social problems resulting
from an ancestral importance given to “race”? A nation-state that spends as
much on armaments as all the others and that forces its allies to buy what they
need to maintain its huge and influential military-industrial complex?
This and other texts in:
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/documents
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[1] An exemplary case lived in Portugal is related to the
Volkswagen factory in Palmela, whose genesis is interesting to be known. In the
last years of the fascist regime (ended 1974), it was intended to place as the
centerpiece of industrial investment the port of Sines with petrochemical
facilities and as an interface for large oil tankers coming from the Middle
East via the Cape route, since the Suez was closed after the war of 1967
between Egypt and the Zionist entity occupant of Palestine; and, on the other
hand, to install large shipyards for shipbuilding/repair and an area of chemistry in the Setúbal Peninsula. As the Suez Canal
reopened in 1973, the entire project became meaningless and the facilities were
eventually nationalized in 1975, after the fall of the fascist regime. This
change came to be harshly reflected in that Peninsula, an area then marked by
the most radical activism in the country. Volkswagen ended up establishing a
factory in the region (1991), with community funds financing means of
communication, training for workers, a hospital, becoming one of the main
exporters in the country and an anchor for several supplier companies.
[2] On a supposed exit of Portugal from the euro zone,
see:
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2017/05/europa-periferias-e-desastres.html
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/06/centro-e-periferias-3-portugal-uma.html
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/06/centro-e-periferias-na-europa-2.html
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/06/centro-e-periferias-3-portugal-uma.html
[3] Not forgetting Afghanistan, where the US and its
allies have stood against the Taliban and in favor of the opium trade. It would
be unfair to forget the importance of Portuguese mercenaries guarding the
airport in Kabul. The big Bagram base
will see the US evacuation. Throughout this time, Chinese and Indians have
established businesses in the country.
[4] See the European commitment to the tension of relations
with Russia or Turkey, knowing that these countries are essential pieces in a
Eurasian integration that is at the door. The relevance given to Navalny or to
the Belarusian trapped in a plane diverted to Minsk is frankly overblown,
giving rise to sanctions that prove useless or ridiculous but satisfy the
interests of the USA in maintaining disagreements in the European space. On the
other hand, the EU offers troops to frame Africom's activity in the Sahel or
Afghanistan and keeps Assange imprisoned, under a curtain of silence because he
was the protagonist, years ago, in the dissemination of US war crimes. In
European politics, the case of the plane diverted to Minsk serves to make us
forget the occupation of Palestine and the most recent crimes of Zionism
against the Palestinian people. The political dwarves who run Europe can only
see in Africa and Asia refugees and immigrants arriving in Lesbos, Pantelleria
or Ceuta, ready for a total precariousness of life and pushing wage levels
down.
