Suicide of Europe: a triumph for the empire of Lloyd Blakfein
Greece is on the verge of revolt or revolution, at least if its government will continue to refuse an early election everybody in Greece is asking now. The markets seem ready to launch an even bigger attack against Italy. There is military tension in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, increasing the probability of a military conflict involving two members of the EU, a candidate member and Israel. As for Berlin, it is repeating, in the way it is handling the European crisis, the same pattern of strategic mistakes which contributed to its military defeats in World War I and II, the only difference being that in the 20th century we were engaged in military wars while now we are facing a financial total war.
Germany has a rare opportunity in history to re-establish itself as a normal power, to transform itself into the political and economic leader of all Europe against the “Markets”, a Good and Democratic “hegemon” of the continent, investing its ambitions into a radically reformed European project of world significance. Instead, its policies undermine the European project and they are fuelling intra-european debt and political wars. Germany becomes, one more time in its history, a hostage in an extremely narrow, provincial sense of nationalism, the same primitive form of nationalism that destroyed in the past the German Volk. By doing that, Germans risk a “third Waterloo” in two centuries, a defeat more heavy than the one they suffered in 1945. There is no much time left before the historic defeat of the European Idea, a collapse of the EU and a global economic crisis worse than the one of 1929, which will have catastrophic consequences for Europe, the world and Germany itself.
Using a more systemic approach, we can easily discern in the ways the crisis is developing in the European Union and the world economic architecture, some of the characteristics that led to the rapid self-demise of the soviet system and the self-destruction of the Soviet Union, a system very different but as “closed”, as the current monetarist and neoliberal European and global economic system. The way European leaders are handling the European crisis, brings strong memories to the way Gorbachev was behaving, by destabilizing vital functions of his system and structure, without having any clear idea with what to replace them. Unlike the Chinese CP, Gorbachev borrowed massively and legitimized western values, to use them in his internal political struggles, thus destroying the “image of the enemy” which was the heart of his political system. The same we bear witness in Europe right now. Our “regime” is based on the “freedom, prosperity and democracy” promise. The “regime” will simply not survive because it is trying to ensure more and more profits for the banks and it is destroying whole communities, in order to repay the mountain of debt it has accumulated.
In this paper we try to see how different financial, political, ideological, national and geopolitical factors are contributing to the current crisis of the EU. We propose a synthesis of two seemingly opposed interpretations, one that is favoring the chaotic nature of the financial crisis and another one which is attempting to see in every stage of the crisis the advansing project of an “Empire of Finance”, shaping Europe and the world according to its interests and its world vision. We focus on German policy, because now Germany is the only remaining nation of Europe trying to produce a policy for Europe. The only other real actor in Europe is Greece, because it became the experimentation field for the new economic and social order in Europe. But also because the Greek government, under the direct control of centers in the international financial capital, behaves as a real “agent of chaos” in European affairs.
By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
We are at a defining moment in European and, in particular, German history. The same malevolent mechanisms we have witnessed in Europe before World War I and II, are again in action, in financial, not in military terms this time (at least for now), but with the same, potentially catastrophic, consequences. European prosperity, democracy and civilization, everything we were able to achieve since 1945, are now at stake. As a result of the way German leadership is handling the European crisis, Germany runs the very real risk of experiencing at the end, an economic, political, geopolitical, moral and strategic defeat, comparable to the military defeat it has suffered in 1945.
Our minds cannot really and fully grasp the new situation. Our way of thinking is still based on the realities and certainties of the world as it was between 1945 and 2008; a good analogy is how the Europeans were completely taken aback by the eruption of World War I in 1914, thinking still in terms of the Belle Epoque, while crossing well into the new era of Wars and Revolutions which characterized the first half of 20th century. “We won’t pay for the Greeks” say the Germans, very much like the French said in a not so different occasion, “we will not die for Dantsig”. But the “assasination” of Greece risks having the same consequences with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, in 1914.
The debt crisis is rapidly destroying the political foundations not only of the existing EU, but of any kind of European integration. A media war has been launched against Greece and other countries of the European periphery, the so called PIIGS, which reminds us of the psychological campaigns against “hostile”, “rogue” states like Iraq or Serbia. Such campaigns preceded in fact the military attacks against these countries, much in the same way they preceded the speculative attacks against Greece, transforming rapidly, in fact, a country-member of the eurozone, into the financial equivalent of Iraq.
Two years later the EU summits remind us now more and more of boxing matches and they are more and more ineffective. Germany, France, Britain and Italy have the worse relations they ever had. The “European” Central Bank tries to include, in the “restructuring” deal of Greek debt, the exclusion of the debt it bought at very low price in the secondary market – that is, it is speculating against and making money of a member country of the EU in a situation of distress! Common people in Germany say they don’t want to pay out of their hard work Greek crooks’ debt, unaware that Greeks work much more than Germans and, anyway, German “help for Greece” money does not go to Greece but to the international megabanks, which are the real crooks. The Bulgarian Prime Minister says he is happy because Greek society is destroyed, much as the Bulgarian society was destroyed at the fall of communism. Greeks themselves are more and more accusing the Germans of behaving in exactly the same way as in World War II, that is destroying and looting their country. They talk, in increasing numbers, about a 4th Reich and they tend to remember more and more of their EAM, the legendary National Liberation Front, the more important resistance movement in all of Europe, active between 1941 and 1944. What does this all mean? It means that less than two years after the eruption of the European sovereign debt crisis, the financial, political and ideological prerequisites for a destruction of the whole European project are now in place. World forces, especially the new “Empire of Finance”, having an interest in dominating or destroying Europe, have new and important tools to achieve their goals. Every European nation is blaming the other member states for crisis; a crisis which the world banks and the complete unregulated world finance and economy are mainly to blame!
The German dilemma
For the first time in eighty years, Germany is keeping now, in its hands, the key to the fate of Europe, its democracy and civilization. But it will not keep it for long and does not seem to know what to do with it. Germans have used the “markets” against Greece as a kind of “Maastricht police”, to “punish” Greeks and “discipline” other Europeans, without realizing the terrible price they will pay, as Faust did, for their alliance with the devil. They torn apart Greece economically, just like Stalin and Hitler did with Poland in 1939. Germany is overestimating itself and it’s relying too much to its economic power, the same way it overestimated and relied too much on its military power, during the 20th century. Berlin thinks it can play with the Markets, as Dalladier, Chamberlain or Stalin thought they could play with and use Hitler.
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