EU moves to the periphery of the world – by choice!

by Ivan Hoffman,* Czech Republic

(13 June 2023) (Edit. Globalbridge.ch) Well-known Czech publicist Ivan Hoffman – dissident under socialism, after 1989 working for “Radio Free Europe” for several years, then journalist, editor and presenter on Czech state radio – has written a short commentary on the current EU policy. Ivan Hoffman hits the mark with it, and his commentary should therefore also be read in German-speaking Europe. (cm)

* * *

The world is on the move. It always has been and always will be, but sometimes the movement is associated with hope and sometimes with fear. We are now on a sine wave (with swings up and down, ed.); good things have happened, but they will not happen in the near future. Hold on to your hats (in the storm), things are going downhill.

The cause of a society’s decline is usually not a poor assessment of coming developments, but the feeling that the development is triumphantly completed, that the future is secured and ours, so that it is pointless to predict the future. The longer a society vegetates in this self-deception and lives in meaninglessness, the longer it will take to get back on its feet. This applies not only to the resurrection of the real economy, but also to the resurrection of the spirit.

Had we not been too lazy in the past to recognise the trends that heralded our current decline, we might not be living in a decline now. Geopolitically, the main players on the political chessboard are predictable, and their actions are logically based as much on power and economic ambition as on historical memory and experience.

China will not forget the century of humiliation by the West. Russia will not forget the interventions of the collective West led by Napoleon and Hitler. And the Americans are unshakably convinced that they are chosen by God to rule the world.

China

The predictable thing about China is that it is the oldest continuous civilisation in the world that does not act without any reference to its past. China is conservative, homogeneous and inward-looking. That is why it has always built walls around itself. Physical walls, like the Great Wall of China, cultural walls, financial walls, or other walls, like recently when it comes to the internet, artificial intelligence, and viruses. China is not aggressive, but it knows that it has to be able to ‘dance with wolves’.

Russia

Russia is a predictable superpower that knows it must be prepared to defend its existence. Capitalist Russia, like former socialist Russia, realistically sees a war ahead that it cannot afford to lose. There is a social consensus on this, visible through the support of the army and the president. Russia knows that the West only respects strength. It is convinced that the West cannot be trusted and is not a serious trading partner for them.

USA

The USA is also geopolitically predictable. Its national interest is to benefit from world domination. The Americans have no fixed allies, only fixed interests. Anyone they cannot control is an enemy or a potential rival. The American tradition is one of war. Americans have waged wars continuously for practically their entire existence. The American doctrine in Europe is to prevent the combination of German technology and Russian raw materials, and in world politics to prevent the strategic alliance between Russia and China.

EU

On such a clearly defined playing field, the fate of the EU was also quite predictable. The EU was never able to find sovereign geopolitics to counterbalance the antagonism of the great powers. The EU has allowed itself to be pushed out of global business by the Chinese, has allowed itself to be dragged into the war in Ukraine by the Americans and has slammed the door on cheap raw materials and a lucrative market in Russia. The EU is now a mere spectator of a geopolitical game in which US rivalry with Russia and China is changing the political map of the world.

Global South

In contrast, new perspectives are opening for Asia, Africa, the Arab world, and South America. In this changing world, Europe is destined only for the periphery. The embarrassing thing is that the EU was not banished to the periphery by the great powers. It has done so by choice! It is not entirely clear why. Simply out of stupidity?

As for the Czech Republic itself, the Czech Ivan Hoffman says:

By the way, we are a periphery in the EU periphery, and we were not banished there by Brussels. This path was chosen by the Fiala government.¹ And it is not entirely clear why...

Source: https://globalbridge.ch/so-bewegt-sich-die-eu-an-die-peripherie-der-welt-freiwillig , 23 May 2023 (Reprinted with kind permission of the editor)

(Original in Czech. German translation by Anna Wetlinska and Christian Müller. English translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 Petr Fiala’s government has been in office in the Czech Republic since 17 December 2021. It replaced the second cabinet of Andrej Babiš.