The European elections are approaching and the outgoing leadership of
the European Commission is finalizing its future program, dictating thethemes of the electoral campaign. The accentuation of Ursula von der
Leyen's war-mongering line and her endurance constitutes a worrying, but
in some ways obligatory, turning point in the politics of the European
Union, which must face the cul-de-sac into which it has entered and
untie the knot of incompatibility between the implementation of a green
policy, the creation of a new neo-Kurtense economy and the absence of
the capital necessary for the realization of the project due to the
growing military expenses and the rearmament required by the war in Ukraine.
When the last European elections took place in 2019, the mandate
received from the Commission was clear: the resources should have been
aimed at fighting climate change to create a new economy generically
defined as green but which is more appropriate to identify with the term
neo-curtense . By reversing the trend towards ever greater
globalisation, the aim was to pursue relative self-sufficiency and the
return of a series of production chains within the territory of the
Union, to combat production delocalisation, with a reduction in
logistics costs and greater attention to the internal market,
undoubtedly one of the richest in the world. For the project to be
successful, it was essential to maintain the starting conditions,
consisting of the availability of low-cost energy which would have
allowed the persistence and development of manufacturing activities and
ensured the competitiveness of goods produced in Europe compared to
those coming from from the markets of emerging countries, characterized
by the use of fossil energy, by a fairly low cost of raw materials and
relatively low labor costs, factors certainly more available to
non-European countries than they were to Europe.
Except that first the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine absorbed
enormous resources and required investments in vaccines to counter the
spread of the infection, which also led to a reduction in production
volumes, even if temporary, due to the lockdowns, to be then followed,
before recovery could take place, by the outbreak of war which absorbed
increasing financial resources and investments.
Europe has tried to remedy this new situation by resorting to common
debt, making notable progress in the field of economic integration and
has thus managed to lead, albeit amidst many uncertainties, the common
purchase of vaccines, has relaunched productivity by making PNRR capital
available, from which the countries of the Union have drawn to varying
degrees, bringing into play for the first time the ability of the
European system to contract common debt.
However, when the costs of war and those of managing the enormous flow
of refugees from Ukraine took over, the costs necessary to maintain a
failed state like the Ukrainian one (for which today it is the European
Union that pays the costs of pensions, the health system, the
administrative apparatus and so on), to meet the current financial
needs, at first the Union scraped the bottom of the barrel, looking for
resources in the folds of the community budget, but then, with the
continuation of the war and the growth of Ukrainian demands, in the face
of a progressive decline in the United States' commitment, the
Commission has chosen to clumsily get its hands on what constitutes the
majority share of the community budget, i.e. the resources for the
agriculture, to drain from this budget item the capital necessary to
finance the war.
What is happening on the battlefield, with the progressive withdrawal of
Ukrainian troops in the field, demonstrates that what has been done so
far is not enough, also because, in response to the Ukrainian crisis,
Russia has progressively converted its economy into a war economy, not
neglecting a progressive increase in the production of consumer goods as
well, as a result of a complex phenomenon consisting of the intertwining
of the effect of sanctions, the arrival of some goods on the internal
market, and the increased capacity of the internal production system to
meet needs.
The combination of this set of factors was the 4.5% increase in Russian
GDP in 2023, compared to the fall in the GDP of the countries belonging
to the European Union which certainly had lower if not negative increases.
War economy
Now, the outgoing Commission, in outlining the political program for the
next legislature, finds nothing better than to aim for the reconversion
of the Union's economy into a war economy, declaring that the problems
of defence, or if you prefer, of offence, have priority over any other.
To do this he must shamelessly lie about when it is happening in Ukraine
and about the whole affair consisting of NATO's intervention in favor of
that country.
If there was intellectual honesty in Brussels politicians, in outlining
their program, they should start from an objective analysis of the
factors that led to the Ukrainian conflict and draw the consequences. It
would be necessary to tell all the citizens of the Union, who are not
convinced - rightly so - about providing unconditional support to
Ukraine, what are the interests and reasons that lie at the origins of
the conflict, highlighting the conflicting interests of the various
international actors. We should then begin by saying that the European
Union has fallen into the trap of Great Britain, which, pursuing its
policy of dividing the continent, has done everything to ensure that the
conflict in Ukraine is not resolved through negotiations and has done
everything way, once the war broke out, for the conflict to continue.
Having reiterated that Moscow's attack on Ukraine constitutes aggression
by one sovereign state against another, it would be necessary to add
that the ongoing conflict concerns the interests of a group of Russian
oligarchs who aspire to gain control of the Ukrainian economy and of its
territory, in contrast with another set of Ukrainian oligarchs, whose
interests are connected both to multinationals dealing with agriculture
and to those that favor investments in raw materials, which aspire to do
the same.
These two interest groups are clashing for control of Ukrainian
territory and its resources, regardless of the massacre of the Ukrainian
people and the Russian people. Freedom, democracy, the free institutions
of the Ukrainian people have nothing to do with it, proof of which is
that under the cover of the martial law enacted in Ukraine all freedom
has been cancelled: eleven opposition parties are outlawed; religious
freedom has disappeared, leaving space and offering the support of the
institutions to the persecution of a gang of criminals made up of
priests and monks against other priests and monks, who are fighting a
war with no holds barred, in the name of an autocephalous Church that
aspires to wrest from a group of competing monks and priests control of
ecclesiastical assets and places of worship of ancient and accredited
prestige, as well as of great and recognized economic value. They take
advantage of the war and the contrast between the different economic and
social components of society, exploiting contrasts relating to
geostrategic interests, they take advantage of it to settle accounts
that have roots in a distorted reading of tradition and religious history.
The interests of the Union and its peoples
Faced with this complex situation, one wonders what interest there is
for the peoples who are part of the European Union to get involved in
this butchery operation which sees two peoples as victims and two
oligarchs clashing: Putin who aspires to be the new tsar and the great
almoner, and Zelensky, a Ukrainian oligarch, only apparently the
expression of a democratic regime, but in reality a follower of the
tenant of the Kremlin.
By examining the situation on the ground objectively and regardless of
ideological prejudices, the European Union should recognize that it is
not in the economic and political interests of the citizens of the
states of the union for Ukraine's entry into the EU for a variety of
reasons which we will to list.
The country's entry into the Union would entail an upheaval of the
common agricultural policy, channeling most of the financial resources
towards Ukrainian territory and creating phenomena of unfair competition
towards community productions since they would find themselves faced
with the sale of Ukrainian products on the European internal market,
cultivated without respecting community rules and with costs that are
certainly lower and more competitive than those of European farmers who
have attacked and dispersed Ukrainian agricultural goods and commodities
unduly sold on the internal European market by taking advantage of the
opening of the so-called solidarity corridors, attacking them and
dispersing them.
The exploitation of Ukrainian mineral and industrial resources is
problematic due to the pollution of the soil due to the war, the
presence of endless minefields which prevent the usability of the soil,
the destruction of the industrial and extractive apparatus, the use of
depleted uranium bullets that have polluted aquifers and territory, last
but not least, the problems of accessing these territories due to the
Russian military presence. Full exploitation of these resources would
require Russia's total, unconditional withdrawal from Ukrainian
territory, a goal that seems neither reasonable nor achievable in practice.
The war has desertified the Ukrainian territory, reducing its population
well beyond the effects of what was already a very serious demographic
crisis, so the reconstruction of the Ukrainian territory appears more
difficult than ever, while it does not appear conceivable that the
populations who have having taken the path of the diaspora, are
available to return to the territories they have abandoned and which
today appear damaged and unlivable due to the war.
A remedy worse than the disease
To at least partially overcome the problems we have mentioned and obtain
the necessary capital, a proposal is making its way among members of the
leadership of the outgoing Commission to draw on the seized capital and
assets belonging to the Russian government or to oligarchs who belong to
the dictator's circle Putin... At the Russian Central Bank, 400 billion
in foreign currency reserves have been frozen and, in the EU alone, the
assets seized from oligarchs friends of the Kremlin amount to 228
billion dollars. In essence, the set of rules that allow the seizure of
mafia or drug trafficking capital to dedicate it to civilian use or
weapons would apply to the Russian government; This is the most
immediate consequence of considering the Russian one as a criminal state.
This choice, in our opinion, would have an undoubted media effect, but
would have disastrous consequences, to say the least, in terms of
relations with global markets, since this would mean denying any
protection and guarantee to capital deposits in banks other than those
directly controlled by the own country, would mean placing a serious
limit and
insurmountable for the circulation of capital with imaginable
consequences for the economy to the full advantage of the BRICS.
More realistically, however, we can expect a policy of rearmament and
relaunching the activity of the war industry, with the consequence that
once the reconversion of an economy towards war production has begun it
is extremely difficult to go back; not only that, but once the weapons
are produced the market that requires them becomes saturated, if steps
are not taken at the same time to dispose of them and use them through
further conflicts. This means that the opportunities. the possibility of
wars will proliferate disproportionately, that the available resources
will be directed towards the arms market and taken away from uses
relating to health, education, welfare, world hunger, peace initiatives,
civil and social well-being, to increase the opportunities for death, of
violence. of oppression, of inequality.
The Editorial Team
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/03/17/guerrafondai/
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A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
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