Is Russia willing to sever ties with the EU if the EU introduces new sanctions?

Crucial statement by Foreign 

Minister Lavrov

https://thesaker.is/crucial-statement-by-foreign-minister-lavrov/

Foreign Minister Lavrov just made the following statement that Russia is willing to sever her ties with the EU if the EU introduces new sanctions.  He said:

“Мы исходим из того, что мы готовы [к разрыву с Евросоюзом]. Если мы еще раз увидим, как мы уже почувствовали не единожды, что в каких-то областях накладываются санкции, которые создают риски для нашей экономики, в том числе в самых чувствительных сферах, — да. Хочешь мира — готовься к войне”

“We proceed from the fact that we are ready [to break with the European Union]. If we once again see, as we have already felt more than once, that sanctions are imposed in some areas that create risks for our economy, including in the most sensitive areas, – yes. If you want peace, prepare for war“.

This is exactly what I have been advocating for and predicting.

Not a moment too soon.

The Saker

A few basic comments on the Navalnyi PSYOP

By The Saker

Vineyard of the Saker,

9 February, 2021

 The EU has a major problem: it is run by a comprador class which is entirely dependent on the United States. Okay, that by itself is not the problem I am referring to. The problem I am referring to is one we could call the problem of the decapitated chicken: a decapitated chicken can run without a head, but it sure does not know where it is running or why. This happens to all comprador classes when their beloved masters suddenly vanish. This is exactly what happened to the European ruling classes when Trump came to the White House: they “lost their head” and they began running all over the place, obviously achieving nothing. Now that the Neocons gave Trump the boot, the EU rulers are desperate to show the new US leaders that they only hated Trump, not the US, and what better way to show your complete submission than by barking at the Asiatic Mordor of the East known as “Russia”?

This latest PSYOP was apparently organized in the US last fall, while Trump was still in power, at least nominally. This makes sense, just like the huge “Patriot Act” was carefully prepared months, if not years before 9/11 happened. This time around, some US intelligence agency (probably the CIA) then passed the baby to the German BND which was supposed to act as an intermediary to give the US “plausible deniability”. The big problem is that the Germans apparently screwed things up, and the plan was a flop: the latest sacral victim failed to die (again!). As for Putin, he used his executive power to allow Navalnyi (who was on parole) to immediately fly to Germany for treatment as soon as the Russian medics stabilized him. From there on, everything went south and Navalnyi’s curators scrambled to save whatever could be saved.

They produced a movie about Putin’s palace in Crimea, only to have Russian reporters film the location and prove that this movie was a total fake. Then they sent Navalnyi back to Russia figuring that if the Russian authorities arrested him huge protests would follow or, alternatively, if the Russians did nothing, Navalnyi would be able to create chaos during an important election year in Russia. This resulted in another flop, not only were the crowds in Russia small, their behavior was deeply offensive and even frightening to most Russians who have seen enough Maidans and color revolutions to know how this stuff ends. As for Navalnyi, he was arrested immediately upon landing, and his parole was revoked.

Of course, all this was reported very differently in what I call Zone A, but while this made it possible for the authors of this PSYOP to conceal the magnitude of their failure, in the rest of the world and, especially, in Russia, it was pretty clear that this ridiculous buffoonery had failed. That outcome presented the EU headless chicken with a major problem: on one hand, we protest about “Putin murdering his own people with combat gasses” while on the other we are about to complete North Stream 2 (NS2), which we need to remain competitive; if we continue, we will lose NS2 and we will alienate Russia even further, but if we stop acting like an idiot on suicide watch, our overseas masters will make us pay. EU leaders obviously failed agree on a plan so, just like a headless chicken, they ran in all directions at the same time: they publicly protested, but also sent as top official, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission Josep Borrell, to try to appease the Russians. Borrell actually did a decent job trying to placate the Russians, but this time something went very wrong. Not only was Foreign Minister Lavrov very blunt in his public comments, the Russians also expelled 3 EU diplomats for participating in the demonstrations even while Borrell and Lavrov were talking. This is when the proverbial bovine excreta hit the fan, at least in EU whose “watchdog media” (here I use the term “watchdog” as meaning “immediately barking at anybody daring to stray from the official propaganda line”) went crazy and accused Borrell of caving in to the Russians. Some even demanded Borrell’s resignation. As for Borrell himself, he did what all western officials do after a visit to Moscow: he changed his tune as soon as he came back home. Finally, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, added that “The task [of Borrell] was to carry out a public flogging, which, I think, they planned very carefully, it was a cascade of topics: talks about rallies, talks about journalists, and making [Alexey] Navalny the main theme of the discussion”. According to Zakharova, this plan failed because Russia insisted on discussing the “real issues“.

Interestingly, the Russians did not expel any US diplomats (at least not yet) in spite of the fact that these officials all agreed that the origin of the PSYOP was from overseas and in spite of the quasi-certainty that US officials must have been present, at least in the Moscow and Saint Petersburg protests. To its credit, the US embassy in Moscow did recommend to all US citizens that they stay away from illegal demonstrations. This is an ongoing crisis and by the time this analysis is posted, things might have changed dramatically. My purpose today is not to look at the US or the EU, but at what I believe is a major shift in Russian policy.

At this point, we should not see the expulsions of the 3 EU diplomats as anything more than just a “shot across the bow”, a way to indicate that the winds have changed. But these expulsions are not big enough to qualify as a real, painful, retaliation. Why?

Because the real slap in the collective face of the EU was the press conference of Lavrov and Borrell in which Lavrov was truly uniquely direct and candid. For example, Lavrov bluntly said ” We are proceeding from the assumption that the EU is not a reliable partner, at least at the current stage. I hope that in future strategic attention will be given to the EU’s fundamental interest in its closest neighbours and that the talks we have held today will promote movement to a more constructive trajectory. We are ready for this“.

Translated from diplospeak into plain English, this means 1) we are fed up with you and 2) we don’t need you.

This blunt statement is what triggered all the subsequent hysterics in Brussels about Borrell being ill treated by the Russians and Borrell’s subsequent declaration that “Russia does not want a constructive dialog” and that the EU must now decide if it still wants to get closer to Russia or if it wants to distance itself from a country slipping into authoritarianism.

In western parlance the degree of “democratism” or “authoritarianism” is solely defined by the willingness of a country to be a satrapy of the Empire. Under this definition, all sovereign countries are “dictatorships” and all AngloZionist satrapies are paragons of democracy.

Has the Russian bear had enough?

Just two weeks ago I wrote that With “Biden” in the White House, the Kremlin Now Needs to Change Gear and I believe that this is exactly what we are seeing today. Here is my evidence:

• The tone of the Russian has changed and is much more direct and blunt
• The fact that the three EU diplomats were expelled while Borrell was in Moscow was a very deliberate slap in the EU’s collective face
• The tone of the Russian media has also changed, journalists and experts are all expressing their utter disgust with the EU and are calling for less words and more actions
• The NS2 lobby in Russia (who advocated a policy of total non-confrontation at least until NS2 was completed) is rather absent from the public discourse. This might mean that this lobby has thrown in the towel or, alternatively, that the block I call “Eurasian sovereignists” does not consider NS2 as vital for Russia (they are correct, by the way) and that putting the squeeze on the EU is much more important (again, I agree with them here too).
• The EU’s other anti-Russian vendetta, I am referring to the recent attempt at overthrowing Lukashenko, has also failed. However, this PSYOP was so rude and crude, and the EU acted with such arrogance that it really gave Russia no other option than to take action, not only by flying Tu-160s along the Belarussian border or by selling S-400s, but also by using highly symbolic diplomatic countermeasures.
• The Russian Aerospace Forces (2 Su-24M, 2 Su-27s and 2 Su-30SM) have conducted mock missile strikes against USN ships as soon as they entered the southern waters of the Black Sea. Note: the same day Chinese aircraft conducted a mock attack on a US carrier in the Pacific.
• Russia has now deployed both the Bal and even the formidable Bastion coastal missile defense systems. This, combined with the formidable capabilities of the Southern Military District and the Black Sea Fleet which turns the entire Black Sea into a shooting range and any hostile ship into an easy target for the Russians. Clearly, the Russians are fed up with the arrogance of the USN.
• Defense Minister Shoigu has just announced a major increase in the production of high-precision and hypersonic weapons.

These are just a few examples of a much longer list of changes which are taking place before our eyes.

So far, the EU did not get the message at all. At least officially. But witnessing the infighting taking place not only over Borrell’s trip, but also about what to do about vaccines (The Lancet has just posted a major article entitled “Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine candidate appears safe and effective” which basically said that all the western nonsense about Sputnik-V being BOTH 1) unsafe AND 2) ineffective were lies) I can clearly see that the EU rulers are seriously worried. Right now it sure looks like the EU is losing the “COVID propaganda war” and that all these russophobic states (except the hardcore nutcases of 3B+PU) will have to now ask Russia for her vaccines. So far the only official EU reaction was to expel 3 Russian diplomats and somewhat protest. But these are clearly the opening shots of a much longer confrontation between Russia and the EU.

The crucial factor to consider here is this: while the aggregate power of the US+NATO+EU+5EYES is bigger than Russia’s, the mental paralysis of the EU leaders makes the EU alone already much weaker than Russia. Of course, since Biden’s administration is a who’s who of the most hysterical russophobes imaginable, chances are that the US will interfere and attempt to back the anti-Russian factions in the EU. Considering the tone used by Russian officials over the latest USN provocations in the Black Sea and the Sea of Japan, I don’t doubt the Kremlin’s determination to act both in words and with actions.

And then there are the subtle threats which the general public is rarely exposed to. The latest example is a highly specialized article entitled “Rationale for the combat use of aviation to disrupt an integrated massive air strike during a multi-domain operation of the enemy” which explains how Russia could disrupt and defeat a NATO attack. I won’t go into all the (very interesting) details here, but I will just say that the authors declare that Russia can go from a policy of deterrence by nuclear forces to a policy of (conventional) deterrence by having the means to “inflict comprehensive defeat (upon NATO countries) using all types of weapons within the deterrence of inflicting an unacceptable complex defeat on it with all types of weapons within the framework of preventive actions under the conditions of the danger of local war threatening the Russian Federation“. In truth, this is not the only Russian specialized article discussing the future of warfare, and what makes this one truly unique is that RT, of all places, decided to post an article about it entitled “Russian Air Force experts publish plan to neutralize NATO forces in all-out war with bombing strikes“. This really looks like the Kremlin wanted to make absolutely sure that western politicians (as opposed to western military analysts who read that stuff on a daily basis anyway) would think long and hard about what US military plans for NATO really would mean for the EU.

Then there is the outcome of the Polish military command staff exercise Winter-20 which resulted in, I kid you not, Russia completely defeating the Polish military in 5 days only! (For details, see here, here or here). Again, there is nothing really new here, the US and/or NATO have conducted plenty of exercises which had the “Russian hordes” defeating the “forces of democracy and progress”. And, again, the real difference was in the Russian coverage of this news: for the first time the Russians openly made fun of NATO and of the (always paranoid and insanely russophobic) Poles. In truth, the Russians always knew that the Polish military is as good on pompous ceremonies and parades as it is inept on the battlefield, but that kind of open contempt is something new, at least from the state supported media.

So far, the EU clearly is not coming to terms with this new reality. The latest (breathtakingly stupid) EU plan to try to scare “Putin” (here “Putin” is the collective Kremlin boogeyman, not necessarily VVP): Svetlana Tikhanovskaia has appealed to the wife of Navalnyi, Iulia, to become the “she president of Russia”. Yes, seriously. Iulia Navalnaia as President of Russia!

As for Navalnyi’s supporters in the EU, they have decided to create a Russian government in exile. Again, this is not a joke. By the way, the “Minister of Foreign Affairs” of this “Russian Government in Exile”, Leonid Volkov, initially declared that the illegal riots should be halted, only to be told otherwise by his handlers. He immediately made a required 180 and declared that protests will resume. This is how Maria Zakharova bluntly, and very officially, reacted on Facebook to his “change of mind”: (minimally fixed machine translation)

NATO doubles down

On February 4, 2021, Volkov declared that the protests in Russia were canceled and will resume in the spring and summer. “We will not hold a rally next weekend…The wave of protest must end at a high point. Because if we continue to decline, it will be terribly demotivating and frustrating for everyone… We will prepare well and hold something big both in the spring and in the summer. We will never give up our demands.” Then, on February 9, 2021, Volkov changed his mind and announced that the campaign will continue in February. “We’ll make it much trickier” he added. What happened between February 4 and 9 and forced the “opposition” to radically change tactics? Everything is quite simple – on February 8, 2021, an online meeting with Volkov and Ashurkov took place at the Permanent Mission of Poland to the EU in Brussels, in which EU countries, the United States, and Britain took part. And in fact-this was a meeting of the NATO countries. The NATO members instructed the “opposition”, and in fact their agents of influence, how to continue “more cunning” to conduct subversive work. Too much money and resources have already been invested by the West in this story to wait until spring. They clearly understand: in the spring, the information campaign pumped up by Westerners will be blown away. They can no longer juggle the topic of “chemical weapons” without presenting the facts – they are pinned to the wall. So they double down.

As for Navalnyi and his supporters, Zakarova was even more direct, saying “stop calling them opposition, they are NATO agents!”.

As I have explained many times, western politicians double down not when they feel strong, they double down when they feel weak and when they place their hopes in the willingness of the other side not to seriously further escalate.

And, just to make sure that the Empire can win the battle for the “hearts and minds” of the Russian people, the Brits are now counting (again) on Pussy Riot to release a song in support of protests. Again, while this does sound like a joke, it is not.

Now comes the best part: there are a lot of signs that the EU will, again under the pious pretext of “solidarity” follow the 3B+PU politicians and, if not recognize such a government in exile, at least treat its members as real officials. That is also supposed to also terrify the Kremlin, I guess. But if that is the best the EU can come up with, VVP and the people of Russia, can sleep in peace.

So where do we go from here?

Making predictions is a tricky thing when dealing with both 1) countries with limited agency/sovereignty and 2) countries led by incompetent/delusional politicians. The many theories of deterrence out there all assume what is called a “rational actor” and a truly sovereign state. What is certain is that the Empire and its EU protectorates will only increase what I call “petty harassment measures” to try to offend and humiliate Russia (stuff like this crap). In response to such “ankle biting” Russia will do two things: drop any pretense of diplomacy and denounce these “ankle bites” for what they are (provocations) and further turn to Zone B (aka “reliable partners”) for partnerships. Russia will also bluntly spell out to the Europeans the risks they are taking with their ill-conceived sabre rattling along the Russian border. Sadly, this probably means that, just as the Chinese Navy recently, the Russian Aerospace Forces and Navies will have order to engage any aircraft or vessel threatening Russia (so far these are only rumors, but they are persistent and seem to have strong backing in the Duma). This is a very dangerous development as western politicians, being primarily ideological (and, therefore, delusional) creatures will always prefer to play a game of (headless) chicken hoping that the other guy will back down. The fact that the “other guy” (both Russian and Chinese) in the past did, indeed, back down and show restraint only further encourages western politicians to double down forever no matter what. For these reasons I would call the probability of an actual military clash between US/NATO and/or Russia/China as “likely in 2021”. As for the future of NS2, I always assumed that EU politicians can count their Euros and realize that the EU needs that project way more than Russia. Frankly, I am not so sure now: counting on the mental abilities of a headless chicken is probably not a good idea! Neither is counting on the courage of the type of politicians whom Boris Johnson once called “supine invertebrate protoplasmic jellies“.

It appears that Russia and the EU are on a direct collision course. Frankly, I welcome it, in spite of the obvious dangers. Why? Because nothing except a real confrontation can bring EU politicians down to the real world back from the La-La land they currently live in. The Russian bear needs to smack down the headless chicken. Hard.

EU/Germany parting of the ways?

https://thesaker.is/eu-germany-parting-of-the-ways/

By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog

From its inception the European Union was an ambitious strategy to build an economic bloc which would serve as a counter-weight to the US’s global economic dominance. (1) One of the primary conditions of this overall construction involved the creation of a single strong currency, the euro, that could become the rival to the US$. This was not just a political question, it also involved financial, economic and possibly even geopolitical dimensions. The Germans in particular were involved in the EU blueprint ever since the initial Treaty of Rome or EEC Treaty, as it was called, brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (the EEC). The treaty was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and (West) Germany, and it came into force on 1 January 1958. At the outset Germany was on board the launch and prepared to give up her much beloved Deutschmark (DM) in order to eventually adopt the euro. A European super-state was envisioned complete with its own currency and act as a counterweight to the US Leviathan.

EXORBITANT PRIVILEGE

Since the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 the US dollar had become the global currency – a pure fiat currency without any gold backing – and had been used widely and routinely by other states as international reserves; as monies circulating in the dollarized countries; and as a means of payment in international trade. Ever since the US had allowed its currency to float freely the US trade balance has been negative. Surplus European countries, but which also included Japan, had earned US dollars which at one time had only been redeemable in gold payments by the US. But this arrangement ended when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in August 1971. From this time on the surplus countries could only swap their dollars for US Treasury Bills, that is to say, American debt.

In this way the US has appropriated real goods and services from the surplus countries and exported debt back to those same countries.

In the trade this is called seigniorage.

‘’This term was used to describe the right of the medieval lord, or seigneur, to coin money and keep for himself some of the precious metals from which it was made. About $500 billion of US currency circulated outside of the United States, for which foreigners have had to provide the United States with $500 billion for real goods and services.’’ (2) This was an exchange of real value as embodied in goods and services, for fictitious value contained in little green paper substitutes. Nice little racket. Who says you can’t get something for nothing! This didn’t go down at all well in the European mainland and was described by the French politician Valery Giscard D’Estaing as being an ‘exorbitant privilege’. Monsieur D’Estaing certainly had a point.

The evolution of the euro has emerged as the only real challenger to the US$’s seigniorage. The preconditions to any such challenge rested on a dual criteria: The euro had to represent a real currency on the same scale as that of the United States, and, in addition, it had to be a strong currency, it needed to be strong even at its design stage. The birth-pangs of the euro underwent a long pregnancy, and it was not until 1999 that the EU monetary authorities announced the birth of the new currency. It should be pointed out that not every country in the European Union was/is a member of this currency union; some countries kept their own national currencies – e.g. the UK, Sweden, Denmark, and most of Eastern Europe, and that remains the case even today.

Germany was of course the key player in this process. The euro was to be a hard Teutonic currency which mirrored Germany’s powerful position as a globally competitive manufacturing base. It was envisioned that the euro currency would be extended to other parts of the eurozone. (3) However, the euro was unwisely broadened to include peripheral countries which were far from the levels of productivity – and thus of international competitiveness – needed to contribute to making the euro a strong currency. This was particularly the case in Europe’s southern periphery. These nations simply could not compete with Germany since their unit costs were too high and productivity levels were lower than Germany’s (and for the rest of the northern European bloc). Moreover, the get-out-of-jail ‘solution’ by Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and the Baltics, of a currency devaluation was closed since these states were all members of the Eurozone who had abandoned their old currencies and now used the euro.

In passing it could be argued that devaluation is not necessarily an optimal economic policy. Certainly, devaluation makes exports cheaper, and provides a breathing space for indebted states; but the obverse side of this practise is that it also makes imports more expensive. Imports which include strategic commodities such as oil, foodstuffs, drinks and tobacco, motor vehicles, chemicals, machinery and transport equipment, mineral fuels, and lubricants. The rise in prices in these imported goods and services may well lead to imported cost-push inflation.

Thus Europe’s southern periphery attempted to skirt around the devaluation problem with what became known as a policy of internal devaluation. This involved engineered austerity, whereby a country seeks to regain competitiveness through lowering wage costs and increasing productivity and not reducing the external value of the exchange rate. This enforced policy has resulted in what can only be described as a disaster as country after country in the southern bloc clocked up larger and larger trade deficits whilst the North European bloc including both members and non-members of the euro, e.g., Sweden and Denmark, clocked up big trade surpluses with the Eurozone in the southern periphery. In any case Germany had pre-empted this internal depreciation by its own earlier competitive devaluation as contained in the Hartz reforms.(4)

TRANSITION STATES

Things were not much better on the Eastern periphery. Present current growth figures for Czech Republic 0% Poland -0.1% Croatia N/A Hungary 0-1% Bulgaria -1.6% and Romania -4.4% all struggle with trade deficits.

At some stage during the 1990s, it became common to refer to these Eastern European countries as “transition states” or the ‘New Europe’ an interesting description by Donald Rumsfeld (See below).This implied an optimistic future, a linear progression, a transformation from a failed communist past to a stable western European future. Surely one of the most obvious lessons from the financial crisis and recession of recent years, however, is that the idea of such a transition is misplaced. If the societies of central-eastern Europe are indeed in transition, the mode of transit is that of the covered trailer, haphazardly attached to a juggernaut, driven by remote political and economic forces. And it is very unclear what the destination will be, given the continued economic upheavals and displacement across the whole of Europe.

The result of the transition so far seems to have been the creation of a low-wage hinterland, a border economy on the fringes of the highly developed European core, and this has had wider political and social ramifications for the entire European project – in effect shifting the goalposts of what it means to be European.

It is worth pointing out that, as is always the case, not everyone lost out. Shock therapy had its domestic supporters, people entranced by the ideas of neoclassical and Hayekian economics. Sometimes this was based on genuine intellectual engagement, as neoliberal western economists gained fervent followers in the universities and colleges of Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest, and Budapest. More often, however, the new disciples of neoliberalism were cynical converts from communism, the prospectors of a new capitalist order. Through incorporation into western institutions, such as NATO/EU, some of the new capitalists hoped to entrench their situations as the primary political arbitrators, a new elite of western-influenced reformers. All very reminiscent of the Yeltsin years. (5)

THE US INTERVENTION

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘New Europe’ involved a geopolitical incorporation whereby the ex-soviet republics, and Warsaw Bloc allies were enrolled into the EU and more importantly were brought into NATO. Membership of the NATO was mandatory for all new EU entrants. Rumsfeld opined that “You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s ‘old Europe … If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the East. And there are a lot of new members. And if you just take the list of all the members of NATO and all of those who have been invited in recently — what is it, 26, something like that? [But] you’re right. Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem.”

If this was not a blatant intrusion into European affairs I stand to be corrected. This was the creation of a geopolitical beach-head militarily primed and ready to go; its purpose was to prevent any modus vivendi crystallising between Europe as a whole, and, in particular Russia. Central to this strategy …

‘’There was an overarching strategic concept of sorts in the double enlargement – strategic and economic – it was a strategy for Americanising the social structures of Europe within the NATO security perimeter whilst Americanising the hinterland beyond the perimeter. Firstly the Central European and Eastern Countries (CEECs) have become and will continue to be a significant middle-class market for western multinationals grabbing market share there at will, using the Single Market Rules embodied in the European Agreements to legitimise their market domination. Secondly, the CEECs will offer a limitless supply of cheap labour for western multinationals to use for the labour-intensive parts of the production circuits. Thirdly these attractions will be used by big capital in Western Europe to threaten to exit eastwards unless Western Europe Americanises its labour markets and turns the welfare state into minimal safety nets and allows British and American levels of social inequality, poverty, urban decay, and prison populations. Western Europe will then be distinguishable from the USA only by the virulence of its internal racist, neo-fascist, and xenophobic movements. (6)

WITHER GERMANY?

At the present time and at the beginning of a new and even bigger crisis in the global economy the future of the EU depends on the interests of the different factions of the German ruling elite. This is nowhere better instanced than in the Nordstream-2 episode. One faction, German big business, which has extensive investment in Russia together with other financially strong countries wants to reorientate its long-term strategies seeking an expansion of Germany toward China and Russia. There are several reasons for this;

‘’Firstly Both Russia and China have immense resources and reserves of raw materials. Secondly, the level of China’s economic growth and the size of its market are way above those of the EU. Thirdly, Germany’s technological superiority is the ideal condition for intra-trade appropriation of Chinese surplus value. Fourthly, if bi-lateral trade relations were to continue at the current pace Beijing will become Germany’s main trading partner by 2021. Fifthly, for China, Germany is the European state with the most optimal investment opportunities; China is the second largest non-European investor in Germany after the United States. Finally, China’s ultimately likely goal is to lessen US influence in Europe by forging its own close ties to the EU – and Germany is China’s strategic foothold in Europe. These are ideal conditions for German expansionism to scale down its interests in Europe and redirecting its attention to the East.’’(7)

The other faction in Germany are the geriatric Atlanticists, political, security (BND) and military elites, with the Greens in tow of course, who are apparently still fixedly stuck in an Americo-centric NATO bloc not knowing which way the wind is blowing and on which side their bread is buttered. The Nordstream-2 issue is crystallising these fault-lines among the German ruling elites with Frau Merkel being pulled hither and yon between Germany’s reactionaries and its more forward-looking business class which is enamoured of the pro-China-Russia siren songs. Moreover, given the centrifugal drift within the Eurozone there seems sufficient reason to believe that a new bloc of northern European states, grouped around Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, and possibly including the Tax Havens of Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein, could coalesce around the establishment of a new Northern Euro. This delinking from the ‘weak’ euro by the Northern bloc could well be the strategy that Germany, that is to say, its business elite, pushes – or at least does not oppose – the default of the weaker countries in the south and the east so that they leave the Eurozone.

At the present time this is conjecture, but the slow but inexorable economic and geopolitical underground shifts make change inevitable.

NOTES

(1) It should be noted in passing that this was never intended to take on the contours of a European geopolitical alternative to the American continental hegemon. That came later. At the time there was a school of thought that held the creation of a European alliance to act as a third force based upon social-democratic and unaligned neutrality which would act as a buffer between US imperialism and Russian communism, and as an alternative to the two heavily armed super-states. Alas that was not to be. The collapse of the Soviet Union was regarded in Anglo-American right-wing circles and their euro proxies – the UK, Poland, and the Baltics – as a wonderful opportunity to punish and over-run the prostrate and weakened Russian state. It almost succeeded as an enlarged NATO gobbled up ex-soviet republics pushing right up to Russia’s western borders.

(2) Barry Eichengreen – Exorbitant Privilege 2018 – pps3/4

(3) The Eurozone is composed of 19 out of 27 European States. The following use the euro as their currency: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain

(4) The Hartz Reforms. These reforms involved the restructuring of Germany’s internal labour markets involving a lowering of labour costs and introducing ‘mini’ jobs wage and welfare cuts. So the reduced share of unemployed in the German work-force was achieved at the expense of the real incomes as those in work. Fear of low benefits if you became unemployed, along with the threat of moving businesses abroad into the rest of the Eurozone or Eastern Europe, combined to force German workers to accept exceptionally low wage increases whilst capitalists reaped an excessively big profit expansion. Real wages in Germany have fallen during the Eurozone era and are now below the level of 1999. This whilst real GDP per capita has risen nearly 30%.

(5) The accession states of Eastern Europe are simply an entrenched euro version of a US/Mexico periphery grouping on the border of the US southern states. These maquiladoras have certain tax advantages which make them attractive to US businesses. These US businesses can capitalize on a cheaper labor force in Mexico and also receive the benefits of doing business in the U.S. The presence of maquiladoras contributed significantly to the industrialization of the Mexican-American border.

(6) Peter Gowan – The Global Gamble – p.317.

(7) Guglielmo Carchadi – From Crisis of Surplus Value to Crisis of the Euro – A Global Analysis of Marx’s Law of Profitability. – p.419

EU - Russia Conflict Deepens

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/02/lavrov-russia-is-ready-to-end-relations-with-the-european-union.html#more

Last week. during a visit by the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slapped down the EU's sanctimonious interference in Russia's internal policies.

Back in Brussels, Borrell, who was criticized by some EU hardliners for not directly rebuffing Lavrov's talk, set down to write a blog post in which again attacked Russia over the latest Navalny stunt:

I have just returned from a very complicated visit to Moscow, on which I had embarked to discuss the fraught state of EU-Russia relations. They have been low for a number of years, and deteriorated even further after recent developments linked to the poisoning, arrest, and sentencing of Alexei Navalny as well as the related mass arrests of thousands of demonstrators. The purpose of this mission was to express directly the EU’s strong condemnation of these events and to address, through principled diplomacy, the process of a rapid worsening of our relationship with Russia, and to help prepare the forthcoming European Council discussions on EU-Russia relations.

Borrell is delusional. Hardly anyone in Russia believes the nonsensical poisoning story for which the 'west' could provide exactly zero evidence:

Brett Harris @BrettHar123 - 18:41 UTC · Feb 7, 2021

Only 15% in Russia believe the Navalny poisoning was the Govt trying to eliminate an opponent, and the 15% based this opinion from Telegram and the Internet and were mostly 18-24. The rest think it was staged, a Western false flag, personal or opposition: https://levada.ru/2020/12/24/...

The whole Navalny poisoning was obviously some secret service operation to bash Russia. His lavish living in in a 5 bed room luxurious apartment in Germany after he was released from hospital was paid by the libertarian oligarch Evgeny Chichvarkin. Chichvarkin, who lives in London, is probably an MI6 cutout. It is still not known who paid the multimillion production costs for the fake 'Putin palace' video. The studio renting for the video was requested by a company in Los Angeles. Some U.S. involvement is thereby assured.

Poland and other NATO countries are now openly pressing Navalny and other traitors like him to continue their regime change attempts:

Poland in the EU @PLPermRepEU - 12:26 UTC · Feb 8, 2021

The recent developments in 🇪🇺 - 🇷🇺 relations require action from the #EU Member States.
This is why 🇵🇱 is hosting a virtual meeting with A.@Navalny's closest associates @LeonidVolkov & @VAshurkov.
The EU27 PermReps alongside 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 Ambassadors are now discussing the next steps.

Ashurkov is the guy who, in this 2012 video, can be seen meeting with a British agent and asking for money and political dirt from abroad to run smear attacks on Russian businessmen and politicians.

Volkov is another crazy dude. He has now declared himself to be the Foreign Minister of the Russian government in exile (machine translation):

Navalny's headquarters coordinator Volkov said from abroad that he was gathering the Russian government in exile and had already named himself acting foreign minister. And to get Navalny out of prison, according to him, he will primarily use foreign policy methods, that is, sanctions. The plot is shown on the air of the "60 minutes" program.

Working for foreign secret services seems to pay well.

Elena Evdokimova @elenaevdokimov7 - 21:59 UTC · Feb 9, 2021

A house in Luxenburg's city Mamer that belongs to the head of Navalny's FBK Leonid Volkov. Bought in 2014 for 720,000 euro. It shows that FBK, accusing Russian government people in having villas & property abroad, have villas & property abroad themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6KEhZk1nwQ

Navalny, Ashurkov and Volkov are traitors and should be handled as such.

Besides again bashing Russia over issues that are not the EU's business Borrell also issued a new thread:

We are at a crossroads. The strategic choices we make now will determine international power dynamics in the 21st century, and notably whether we will advance towards more cooperative or more polarised models, based on closed or on freer societies. The European Union can influence these developments, which requires a clear vision and objectives, accompanied by intense diplomatic engagement, supported by our many means of external action and projection of influence.

We will discuss these issues with my fellow EU foreign ministers. As ever, it will be for member states to decide the next steps, and yes, these could include sanctions. And we also have another tool in this respect, thanks to the recently approved EU human’s rights sanctions regime.

Does the idiot really think he can impress Russia with such sanctions talk?

Today, in an interview with a Russian TV station, Lavrov gave his response (machine translated).  The headline was sensational: Lavrov said Russia is ready to break off relations with the EU.

Russia is ready to break off relations with the European Union, but would not want to isolate itself from world life. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the air of the "Soloviev Live" program.

When asked by Vladimir Solovyov whether Moscow is heading for a break with Brussels, Lavrov replied: "We proceed from the fact that we are ready." The minister stressed that sanctions create risks for our economy, including in the most sensitive areas. "We do not want to isolate ourselves from world life, but we must be ready for this," the minister said.

The Kremlin later said that some media misrepresented Lavrov's remarks but essentially confirmed his stand:

Russia should be ready for hostile acts from the European Union but would not want to sever ties with Brussels, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday, commenting on the remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said that Moscow is ready cut ties with the EU if Brussels chooses to impose sanctions that endanger sensitive sectors of the Russian economy.
...
"The point is that we don’t want this [to sever ties with the EU] but seek to develop relations with the European Union. However, if the EU chooses to go down this path [of imposing sanctions that entail risk for the Russian economy], then yes, we will be ready because you need to be ready for the worst," he explained.
...
According to Peskov, Lavrov’s comments do not require "any confirmation." "Of course, if we face the most destructive policy that causes damage to our infrastructure and our interests, then Russia should be ready in advance for these hostile steps," Peskov stressed.

Borrell and other EU folks fail to understand that Russia has given up on a 'greater Europe'. It no longer cares what the EU thinks:

The West’s mistake with Russia was expecting it to Westernize without any prospect of integration into Western institutions. NATO and the EU wanted a say in Moscow’s affairs while denying it a voice in broader European issues.

This was both wrong and unsustainable and now has brought us to a situation where, after 300 years, Russia has ended its Western-centric foreign policy. The EU has not yet recognized the truly historic shift that has occurred. In the early 18th century, Peter the Great sought to return Russia to Europe. But now, after a brief revival in the 1990s and 2000s, the dream of a Greater Europe has been recognized to be just that, a dream.

Western support for the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine drove the final nail into the coffin. But in Brussels and Washington, they are still living in a delusion and have failed to recognize how strongly Moscow feels about what happened.

Russia has turned to greater Eurasia of which western Europe is just a tiny peninsula. A U.S. proxy that has no independent voice and can no longer be taken serious. It will now be ignored.

Today Navalny was back in court for publicly insulting a World War II veteran. The EU will certainly make remarks about that. But only a few days ago police in Scotland arrested someone because he typed a mean tweet about a British veteran of that war. Brussels will certainly have nothing to say about that.

And that is at the core of the whole issue. Brussels has become used to tell others 'Do as we say, not as we do.'

That no longer works. Certainly not with Russia.