The other main known critic of the EU is Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a member of the EU with a reputation for swimming against the tide. Picture: Debbie Hill/EPA
THE EU, the cornerstone of Western hegemony, will cease to exist in 10 years unless the bloc undertakes fundamental change to how it relates with the Global South.
The Slovak Republic, a member of the EU and one of the key dissenters from the bloc’s imperial stance in geopolitics, has become one of the loudest critics of some of the EU’s major foreign policy.
The other main known critic of the EU is Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a member of the EU with a reputation for swimming against the tide.
“Unless the EU changes its self-harming policy course, it won’t exist in 10 years’ time, the Slovak Republic’s Deputy Speaker of the National Council said in an interview with the Russian news outlet Sputnik this week. He explained the genesis of his theory as follows: “EU’s sanctions on Russian energy have generated a terrible situation.”
He said leaders such as the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “were only driving the bloc’s economy on the ground”.
The EU’s demise as a global pole of power is seldom forecast, for it is intrinsically intertwined—as well as an extension—of the US foreign policy that has dominated international relations over the past seventy years.
If the US is the heart and soul of geopolitical status quo, it has been enabled by a willing backer in the EU, whose economy is totally interwoven with Washington’s.
For International Relations 101, in fact, the EU’s foreign policy since its formal establishment in November 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 has been premised on the notion of “monkey-see, monkey-do”.
There have been huge benefits for the EU’s close proximity to the US, characterised by favourable trade arrangements and insurmountable diplomatic protection.
However, the “marriage” has been fraught with simmering upheavals that have continued to be underplayed through strong public relations and communication networks that include the West’s embedded mainstream media.
The EU prides itself on being a beacon of democracy in the league of the status of the US as a haven of the so-called Free World. The relative economic development and reduced state of poverty and hunger in an atmosphere of a secular society have been a major ticket for less checks and balances on the political elite.
However, the outbreak of the Ukrainian war has lifted the lid on the EU’s frequently boiling pot of major foreign policy differences. Thus far, it has been what can only be described as a job well done.
But as science dictates, once the blaze dwindles under the boiling pot, the truth begins to emerge, as the Slovaks, Hungarians, Turks, and other EU member states begin to feel duty-bound to speak out openly about the bloc’s veering off its original mission.
Joining Washington’s imposition of economic sanctions against Russia, marked by a ban on Moscow’s cheap oil and gas, was an act of “self-harm” as the Slovak Deputy Speaker argues.
Geographically, the EU is literally an arm’s length distance from Russia, whose borders are flanked by the EU’s all over.
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline that delivered gas to Europe via the bloc’s largest economy, Germany, was stopped on the orders of the Biden administration. And the newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was built to increase supply capacity to Germany and reduce overall commodity costs was bombed by the Ukrainian operatives at the beginning of the war.
As President Joe Biden re-directed the EU to purchase American oil and gas as a substitute for Russia’s restricted supplies, the prices inevitably went up due to the heavy load on logistics and distance, among other hidden costs.
But the EU seemingly thought, as did Washington, that Russia was only bluffing when the Kremlin decried NATO’s expansion to its doorstep, posing an existential threat to Russia’s security.
The Ukraine war was an occasion the West incorrectly diagnosed as a brief occurrence. Two years later, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky continued to buy into the West’s misdiagnosis, vowing to fight until the last soldier. Well, the sad reality about such a strategy is that in the inevitable end of Russia coming out victorious, there could be no one to negotiate the way forward with in Kiev.
Among the EU’s litany of the disordered faults of progress, in my humble opinion, is the desperation to isolate, harm, and humiliate Russia by freezing Russian Central Bank assets in Europe. The assets, totalling some 200 billion US dollars, are held by Euroclear, a leading global provider of financial market infrastructure services.
International financial law experts believe that the decision to seize Russia’s foreign assets is tantamount to the EU setting a legal booby-trap for Euroclear, which is being dragged into geopolitical wars. In addition, such a move could, in law, amount to “theft”, and lead to legal action.
In fact, the CEO of Euroclear, Valerie Urbain, recently said that “if the EU decides to confiscate Russia’s money, Euroclear should be exempt from any liabilities”.
The EU, in a move the outgoing Biden administration thrashed out with the support of the warmongers in the EU, has laid the so-called “Trump-proof” plans for the continued support of Ukraine. In the likely event that US President-elect Donald Trump puts a stop to the bottomless pit of financial support for Ukraine, Biden and the EU want to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine with seized Russian assets.
However, Euroclear has warned that confiscating Russian assets undermines the Euro currency and the broader stability of Europe’s finances. Additionally, Euroclear could face legal challenges from Moscow to any moves to confiscate its foreign-held funds.
Among Moscow's immediate acts of retaliation is the highly likely likelihood that Russia would seize the entire US$35 billion (about R625.3bn) of Euroclear money that is held in Russia. Furthermore, Russia would take legal action to sequester Euroclear assets in Hong Kong and Dubai.
The Russian conundrum will be resolved a lot easier in Washington, it seems, than in Europe. Trump has already activated his foreign policy team to trigger a path towards a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. The Trump administration will not put a dime more than what the Biden administration has already dispatched to Ukraine. It is a certain end to the Ukraine war that many in Europe dreaded.
It also happens amid the changes of great significance in international affairs. Reforms to the UN Security Council are irreversible. The rise of BRICS, which is growing at the fastest rate as countries queue to join the Global South bloc, is adding to the rapid reconfiguration of the world order in which the EU is becoming a weaker pole of power.
The US is now on “Making America Great Again”, and the MAGA revolution and events elsewhere are taking a lot less attention.
The EU’s great error of judgement seems to have abandoned its independence of thought a long while ago. Washing sees the EU is nothing but its extension, and the EU appears totally powerless to assert its independent voice in the greater scheme of global affairs.
As the Slovaks and many others believe, unless the EU undertakes a rapid change of policy, the end is nigh. In 10 years, the reconfiguration of the world order will most probably unveil a Europe that is ideologically and geographically separated.
*Abbey Makoe is Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network. The views expressed here are his own.