By HUGO DIONÍSIO*
The European Union, so often confused with “Europe” by those who do not understand what “Europe” is, is terrified of the definitive loss of its centrality.
The European Union is absolutely devastated. It remains to be seen why this is happening. Some say it is because the US is abandoning it, exchanging the attention it used to give it for greater attention to the Pacific and, in particular, to China. Some say that its fear is related to the European Union's inability to defend itself against its threats, that is, from the arch-enemy of the nations of central Europe, specifically the Russian Federation. Some also say that the despair is caused by the loss of leadership, which is ridiculous: so much talk about freedom and, at the same time, seeming to be afraid of being free. Europe is afraid of freeing itself from the US and, faced with that possibility, feels abandoned.
Whatever it may be, they all stem from one thing: the loss of its centrality. The European Union, so often confused with “Europe” by those who do not understand what “Europe” is, is terrified of the definitive loss of its centrality. Nicknamed the “old continent”, Western Europe has, for centuries, become accustomed to being the seat and cradle of the most advanced ideas of civilization and a receptacle for the plundering and siphoning of the world’s resources. European “civilization” will have represented, in terms of importance and in that period, what the so-called civilizations of antiquity represented.
From ancient Greece to republican and imperial Rome, from Enlightenment France to liberal England, and finally to socialist Russia, Europe was the birthplace of some of the most transformative ideas in human history, which, with the contradictions inherent to all things human, took the world further. Europe also produced the greatest misfortunes of our time, from the Inquisition to despotism, from the slave trade to slavery, from savage capitalism to fascism and Nazism. Always proving that, in every moment of action, dream and adventure, there was always a response, a nightmare and a dystopia.
Europe would not be what it was, what it is, without the two sides of the coin, as no civilization, in fact, can be. It is part of the human condition. We cannot forget that the hegemonic and imperial USA and the super-industrial socialist China are also concrete results of European influence and its central ideas of civilization. As if each corresponded to an opposite pole of the ideological dispute that occurred in Europe itself.
But this Europe, especially Western Europe, already in this decadent phase, has nevertheless become accustomed to being the centre of attention, the centre of the world, the disputed world. If China was known as the Middle Empire, in another historical period, Western Europe also wanted to be one. During the Cold War, it was in Western Europe that the ideas of convergence of systems were sold, combining Anglo-American private liberalism with Soviet scientific socialism, resulting in a mixture of utopian socialism and capitalism, which we called “social democracy”, simply because it did not deny the main political rights to the rich, allowing them to create parties and take power through the use of their greater economic power.
Today, we have in plain sight what this democracy has resulted in, totally anchored in parties that represent the richest, financed by them and many with “businessmen” as representatives. When Jeff Bezos assumes that in Washington Post only your opinion on “freedom and free market” and no other will be published, we realize that the sublimation of liberal democracy consists in the revelation of its own democratic limitations.
Western Europe tried, and in some ways managed, for some time, to sum up the contradiction between a neoliberal, openly individualistic and minarchist USA and a collectivised, socialist and highly centralised USSR. Between an individualistic vision of “every man for himself”, of “winner and loser” and the collectivist vision of “no one can be left behind”. This was the time of reformist social democracy, an ideology that aimed to prevent the transition to socialism across the European continent. In addition to continuing to do so, the European Union is currently locked in centrist and situationist fanaticism, as if ideologically immobilised. It is a Europe clinging to accessories, in order not to change on the core issues.
In short, the loss of European centrality is reflected in the historical obsolescence of Europe with a “social market economy”, a concept that has become redundant, given the emergence of a China that manages to combine a socialist leadership with an ultra-dynamic market and with broad freedoms of initiative, not just confined to the traditional “private initiative”. The loss of geographical centrality is paralleled by the loss of ideological centrality.
When we hear Von Der Leyen state that Europe has a “social market economy”, what we are witnessing is the passing of a certificate of unrealizable idealism, not in keeping with her intentions, nor with the intentions of the forces that support her, and even less in keeping with the current needs of the European people, who have been robbed of their dream, the idea of permanent progress and development, and replaced by a fallacy called the “end of history”, which celebrates “free markets” and the freedom of the super-rich to live off the production of millions of poor people.
It is ridiculous that, to a large extent, Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”, eagerly bought by the European elites, ended up representing “the end of this chapter of European history”. Without realizing it, the celebration of the end of history, with the fall of the Soviet bloc, also represented the end of Europe’s ideological centrality, the end of its virtue, the end of the central relevance of its ideas.
In this new world, Europe has nothing to offer that is not already offered by many others, and in a more effective way. Europe, the European Union, has not only lost its centrality, it has lost its relevance. Europe has ceased to be the synthesis of two opposites. By succumbing to the neoliberalism of the Washington consensus, the European Union has transformed the central pole it represented, between two opposing poles, into a world of only two poles. With two poles, centrality ceases to exist, it becomes physically impossible.
The loss of ideological relevance ended up leading to the loss of geographical relevance. Situated between the rural, backward, feudal Tsarist Russia, the socialist, collectivized USSR, and the Russian Federation with its reconstituted capitalism, but a vehement defender of its sovereignty, a source of mineral resources, energy and food, a civilization that, in its various reincarnations, was more focused on its Western, Europeanist side, seeking to be accepted into the elite of the world nations that made up Western Europe, this Europe had, to the west, a USA, very focused on its relationship with the USSR, first, and, later, still living in cold war mode, overvaluing the Russian “threat” and its military capabilities. A USA that had not yet finished the task it had set itself when it collapsed the USSR. The task was to fragment that entire territory.
This Europe, which on one hand had a friend who said “don’t join Russia, they are a threat”, and for this reason fed and fed itself with the idea of a permanent need for a military race, looking at the European continent as a vehicle and battlefield for the conquest of all that wealth in natural resources, and on the other hand had a “threat” that repeatedly tried to convince it that it was an equal nation, a European nation, as if trying to say “don’t see me as an enemy, I want to be your friend”, was, as a result of this, a Europe that represented the center of attention of two of the greatest world powers, around which a large part of the world orbited.
If, in the USA, Europe was drawing on its neoliberal ideas, foreign direct investment and capital, and reaching the largest consumer market in the world, in the USSR, in the Russian Federation, Europe had the cheap energy and resources it needed to fuel a globally competitive industry. These resources on one side and the market on the other side of the Atlantic, combined with trillions of capital accumulated through plundering during the colonial and neocolonial era, allowed the European Union to finance its enlargement and extend its centrality for some time yet.
The focus on two opposing poles allowed the continuation of its synthetic version, its mediating version, the connection between two opposing worlds. The fact that the US still saw Russia as a version of the USSR contributed to this centrality. This position, of a certain independence – let us look at the position of Schroeder and Chirac in the Iraq war – gave Europe a few more years of life as the center of world attention.
But there were dark clouds looming over the European sky. It wasn't just a matter of not protecting ourselves from these clouds, of anticipating their arrival and taking the necessary precautions. It was more serious than that. The European Union decided to pretend not to see them, at first, and as they approached, already caught in the heavy rain, it decided to say that it was sunny, when the storm was already freezing our bones. From there to cancelling anyone who appeared wet in front of it was just a short step.
We can discuss at length the reasons why this ultra-bureaucratized European Union, this omnipresent and omnipotent European Commission, was incapable of seeing, analyzing and dealing with the approaching storm. The answer, I believe, can be found in a book about the USSR, called “Socialism Betrayed”, which deals objectively and clearly with the causes that led to the fall of the Soviet bloc and which are rooted in the co-optation of its elites by antagonistic interests in the service of the enemy.
European elites were also largely co-opted and the resistance we had seen during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq no longer occurred. Huge investments in Fullbright courses, leadership programs and a lot of USAID in the media mainstream, resulted in an Americanized European elite, without any trace of independence, but with all the traces of subordination. We gradually witnessed the decline of European GDP in relation to that of the USA (in the 80s and 90s, the USA's GDP was lower than that of Germany, England, France, Spain and Italy) and the North American dominance of capital structures in Europe. With economic power in place, the conditions were created for the definitive seizure of political power, as had been foreseen since the Marshall Plan and the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community.
The intention not to dissolve NATO in 1991 was one of the first dark clouds that the European Union did not want to face. This inability to welcome the “new” Russian Federation into its fold translated into European action the White House’s intentions to help that country as little as possible. Not content with maintaining security tensions within the European continent, on its own borders, successive European administrations and their respective states first witnessed the expansion of NATO towards the borders of the European country that constituted one of its economic support points, and, later, the instrumentalization of the European Union as an extension of NATO itself. If it does not join NATO, it will first join the European Union and then its path will be open (“fast track” as the “American” von der Leyen says). The initial European resistance to the entry of new ex-Soviet states was removed over time.
Not content with this, the European Union embarked on the Orange Revolution, the Euromaidan and the persecution of the Russian-speaking peoples of Ukraine. It was a Europe that was incapable of preventing the US from manoeuvring in its territory, incapable of preventing support for neo-Nazi, fascist and xenophobic groups. This Europe allowed Russophobia to become its main agenda and, under the guise of this, it cancelled many of its own citizens, ostracised others, censored, cut off relations, cutting off one of its economic fulcrums, the one on which the weight of its need for cheap and plentiful energy and minerals was based.
Instead of pushing the US aside and saying “in Europe we are the ones who solve things”, it allowed itself to be conditioned and instrumentalized, watching impassively as its own infrastructure was sabotaged. Ukraine became the purpose of the European Union.
It was clear to see what would happen if Europe were to become hostile to the Russian Federation. Not only would it lose all the advantages of having nearby what it now has to go and get far away, of having easily what is now very expensive to buy, and of having cheap what is now very expensive. But it did even worse, allowing the Russian Federation to move away and turn eastward. Not wanting to buy Russian gas, lubricants, paper, cereals, gold or aluminium, the government headed by Vladimir Putin did what was expected of it: it turned to China, in a move that was both natural and contradictory in relation to Russia's history over the last 30 years.
Even the USSR always lived in doubt about its orientalism or Europeanism. Russia's turn towards China not only strengthened the Asian superpower, it allowed the Russian Federation to achieve a resounding victory in the Ukrainian issue, and also removed Europe's centrality. Europe would no longer be important to Russia, to the world. Over time, it would also cease to be so to its leader, the USA.
Since only what is the object of attention and focus is central, one less bloc wanting to converge on Europe would be a negative result in itself. However, the strategic union between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China had another effect: this reality forced the US to decide definitively what to do in relation to Asia. Faced with a lack of resources for a two-sided fight, the US was forced to “hand over” the defence of Europe to the European Union itself and divert resources to the Pacific. Donald Trump only accelerated a process that would have come to pass, even under Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. The US is not a nation to wait for others; it would always end up making its own decisions.
The strategic strengthening of the Chinese economy, which was represented by the agreement with Russia, forced the US to shift its attention to the East. When the Russian Federation launched the “special military operation”, the Russian authorities stated that this action aimed to “dismantle the hegemony of the US and the West”. The first step was to eliminate the European Union from the framework of competition with Russia, a step also desired by the US. NATO, which aimed to “keep Germany down, Russia out” and “the others in”, achieved the objective of eliminating Europe, instrumentalizing it as a competitor of the US.
Today, when we see Donald Trump negotiating cooperation with the Russian Federation in the area of mineral resources and appropriating Ukrainian resources in a neocolonial manner, we not only confirm the suspicion that Ukraine was a US colony, but also that, in the end, Europe is replaced by the US as the preferred destination for Russia’s vast mineral resources. But the US has also guaranteed something else: that it receives them and Europe does not. This fanatical, Russophobic Europe is incapable of taking advantage of the advantages it has on its own continent, allowing competitors to enter, appropriate them and prevent it from using them. A perfect job, therefore.
The European Union, divorced from the Russian Federation, gave the US more peace of mind with the possibility of the two blocs uniting, which could then turn towards Asia. Suddenly, the two most important views on Europe, which gave it the centrality it still had, both converged towards Asia. Two centuries later, the People's Republic of China returned to being the middle empire, a centrality also achieved at the expense of Europe, which was also unable to be satisfied with it. Suddenly, the US, wanting to avoid Chinese centrality, ended up giving it to them on a silver platter. Either because, first, they forced Europe to force the Russian Federation to diverge towards the East, or because, as a result of this action, they forced themselves to turn towards the East.
If the US and the European Union both seem to be at the mercy of events, chasing losses and acting in a reactionary manner in relation to the actions of others, the truth is that, of the two, only one, the US, acts in accordance with its own designs, which is always an advantage. In fact, of the three competitors in the conflict, of which Europe was the center of the dispute, only the latter has been overtaken by events, not acting to counter them, but, on the contrary, acting to aggravate them. The Russian Federation and the US, it is true that as a result of the contingencies, chose to go where they went. The European Union has not yet decided anything, nor does it seem to be on its way to doing so.
The People's Republic of China suddenly finds itself playing the role of center, of synthesis. And this is where the European civilizational relevance begins to fade. Once again, China is rejuvenated as an innovation powerhouse. If Europe had previously achieved this position by being at the forefront of technology, ideas, culture and the economy, today it is China and Asia that occupy this space. China is a perfect synthesis of mercantile capitalism and socialist leadership based on strategic sectors.
In modern China, freedom of enterprise coexists with freedom of public, cooperative and social property, all coexisting and competing for more and better. All this, with a capacity for decentralized long-term planning that makes the entire surrounding universe more stable. China provides harmony, stability and predictability. The European Union has come to represent the opposite: wandering, indecision, reaction and inaction.
While in the West, in Europe, the European Commission and the White House are forcing privatization, in China freedom of initiative is promoted through new and more diverse forms of ownership, with each individual having the choice of how to do it. The result is a technological – and consequently ideological – revolution that will correspond to what the industrial revolution in 18th century Europe was for the world.
If in the past foreigners came to Europe to study the economic system, today it is in China that they learn how to build the future. Everyone increasingly wants to know how to emulate China's success.
By interfering, unlike Europe and the United States, in imposing and proposing to others what to do, the People's Republic of China allows the absorption of the teachings that its model brings, without restrictions or conditions, allowing its use in connection with other models, fostering the emergence of new proposals and models of public and private management. Without the Western rigidity of the past, the superiority of the Chinese model will give the world the economic democratization without which social democratization is impossible.
The Europe of “values” is losing because it chose to build “values” from the rooftops, from bureaucracy and not from matter, science or economics. Instead, it ended up destroying the economic dimensions that gave it the golden years of modern and social democratic Europe, which were based on a symbiotic and more virtuous relationship between different forms of property. Democratic forms of property (collectives, cooperatives, associations, public companies) coexisted with each other, generating diverse and innovative production relations, as well as strong social movements, from which democracy emanated.
The Europe of “values” allowed all of this to be destroyed, to the point that today it can no longer teach it to anyone. Everything has been reduced to the minarchist state, to the private sector and to “public-private” partnerships that guarantee private companies a rentier income from essential public services. The European Union has become confused with the USA.
The most interesting thing about this loss of centrality, by countries, by nations, is that the European Union itself will break up if it does not find a strategic direction that effectively resolves the problems of its peoples, and there is still no war between them. Not yet! Europe, the EU member states, must build a defence to defend their sovereignty and not to impose on third parties what to do, considering all those who are not like them to be threats. If they do not do this, we will see European nations also flocking to Asia.
As a result of the “special military operation”, Turkey itself will become an important economic, industrial, energy and security hub. Due to its Eurasian position, like the Russian Federation, it will serve as a transit point from East to West. The Mediterranean nations will have to turn their attention to this. Here we see how alone France, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and the Baltic countries feel. Suddenly they will have to learn to live with their neighbours, because their godfather has turned elsewhere and the Democratic Party, when it comes, will be unable to do anything. This “new” Europe is at that stage in life when one is an adult in age, but a child in behaviour. Which is offensive to children, since they are capable of getting along with their neighbours.
The fear of abandonment that the US suffers from and that led it to manipulate Europe and the EU, was realized on the European continent itself. Because it did not understand that the discussion was between itself and the US, and the question of which of the two would be forgotten in this turn to the East, by doing so first, it is the US that leaves Europe abandoned and alone. This Europe, incapable of embracing the Eurasian project, divorced from itself and its own, inactive and immobile, as if frozen in time, allowed the end of the US's history to become its own end of history. Had Europe embraced the Eurasian project, uniting with Asia and Africa in a single mass of development, cooperation, sharing and competition, it would have been the US that was left abandoned. This is the level of betrayal that we have been subjected to by “our rulers”.
Instead, the Europe of Von Der Leyen, Costa and Kallas decided to abandon itself and, with that abandonment, be abandoned by those who thought they were protecting it. One day they will be judged for such gross and inconsequential errors. For now, we will all become a little more insignificant, until, one day, our minds are able to reinvent themselves and embrace the future. This will only happen when the European people realize that the times of greatness and centrality are gone, abandon their arrogance and pedantry and, with humility, behave as the challenges imposed demand.
The recovery of any type of centrality will only be possible through a sovereign, fair policy that promotes freedom and diversity, respecting the national identity of each people, of each nation state, taking advantage of this multiplicity as a driving force for reinvention, instead of restricting or conditioning it by resorting to closed and outdated models such as liberal and neoliberal ones.
On this path, all that remains for us is isolation and depression.
*Hugo Dionísio is a lawyer, geopolitical analyst, researcher at the Studies Office of the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP-IN).
Originally published on the portal Strategic Culture Foundation.
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