To borrow on international markets huge sums of cash will be a suicide pill for the EU in the longer term.
At the end of June, Italian MPs staged a protest inside the parliament against funding Ukraine with military aid and against the war in general. Days later, Dutch farmers take to the streets to protest against new belt tightening measures by the government which will harm their businesses leading to panic. And just in the last few days, we have seen increasingly desperate measures by the EU itself which is acting like an old man who has fallen off a bike and can’t get back on.
Wounded by the credibility blow of not getting support for its all-out sanction plan to ban all oil and gas from Russia, the EU is in an unmistakable state of panic, fretting that voters have seen just how ineffective this wannabee superpower is when push comes to shove. Blinded by its own dogma, the EU now is talking about actually paying money to big companies to reduce their production – so as to reduce their electricity consumption – so as there are no power threats to millions of citizens in the 27-nation bloc. Remarkably, the EU feels as though it has cash to burn to throw onto a fire simply to survive the cold which is coming in the next European elections in 2024 where far-right parties might even take – for the first time ever – a majority bloc in the European parliament. Actually, offering companies cash to produce less goods is pure insanity but in the Disneyworld sphere of Brussels with little or no accountability, this could actually get approved.
The move shows just how tone-deaf EU leaders are to the needs of their own citizens and an alarming contempt for any democratic process. To borrow on international markets huge sums of cash – which we must assume is the plan, as it was with the colossal rescue blueprint for COVID which also didn’t get backing from member states – will be a suicide pill for the EU in the longer term. It will, inevitably, be forced to ask member states for more money to pay for the borrowing and this will create more resentment and scrutiny and produce more Brexit countries who want to go their own way rather than fund the madness of Brussels and a crazy war which the West cannot win.
Yet it cannot win this war as its logic is flawed. The West believes it can play the long game and drain Putin’s resources. Firstly, this is hardly going to happen once winter sets in and people in EU countries start feeling the cold and more homeless people die, food bank queues get longer and longer and people reach breaking point with the Biden response to it all “it’s Putin’s fault” answer.
People aren’t buying that now so it’s hard to imagine at around Christmas time when our own abysmal poverty starts to show right across EU countries and a tipping point is reached. Yet there are other reasons why the West’s rational is skewered at best. It isn’t just that the economies of the EU and the U.S. won’t be able to cope with the pressures, both politically and economically, but also that the longer the war is dragged out – and the higher the casualties on the Russian side mount – the more and more Putin will need simply as a peace settlement.
It’s this point which is overlooked entirely by western media who refuse to look at the nuances and ‘what if’ scenarios from the perspective of the other side. The total lack of value to Ukrainian lives when the calculation of losses is made. Ukrainians won’t count. In fact, they already don’t count in the minds of western leaders who want them to fight to the last man.
Russian lives however will count. Putin has already had huge losses and taken full control of the Russian-speaking regions. But he can’t stop there as he has to seek payback for the losses that he has incurred by the men who died and the financial strain on the economy. At some point the West will have to negotiate a truce with him as even Zelensky said recently to G7 leaders that the war must end by October. If the mindset by the Ukrainian leader is that he will lose support for his war by western leaders by winter, then the real conflict is between him and western leaders who don’t see what Zelensky sees.
There is a clash of ideas and objectives as the West is stuck in an echo chamber of its own making, where the message ‘fight to the last man no matter how long it takes’ is repeated over and over again like the torture scene in the Ipcress File. Western leaders have basically brain washed themselves into thinking there is only one route to follow without seeing the consequences of prolonging the war, which will just cost the West more and more, in the end. For the EU itself, the Ukraine war may well be the fire which the moth flies into as the level of rank stupidity led mainly by Ursula von der Leyen, is breathtaking. Soon there will be revolt on the streets in many EU countries and again, like lunatics repeating the same mantra that their doctors have forced them to repeat while under sedation, EU and EU leaders will keep on blaming Putin. In the coming weeks African countries’ governments will start to beg for wheat from European Union countries and the EU itself. Watch how the EU sidesteps away from this story and how journalists in the Belgian capital fail to report on it and how their requests have been denied. As the Russian rouble continues to climb and our economies in the West continue to tumble, don’t expect western media to frame the story in the sobering light of plain truth and harsh realities. The culpability from newsrooms and their call centre journalists is staggering also although soon, very soon, we will see the first EU member state to break away from the pack and say ‘no more…negotiate or else’. But who will it be? And what will be the harsh payback which a petulant EU will fire back?
