Online Reporter
Tarik Cyril Amar
Western Europe remains wilfully blind to its own mistakes of the past two decades, choosing to escalate crises and blame others.
In reality, the meeting has never had much to do with increasing anyone’s security. Otherwise, its Western participants would, for instance, not have laughed at the warning Russian President Vladimir Putin issued there as far back as 2007; taking it seriously could have spared the world – and Ukraine – the current de facto war between the West and Russia via Ukraine.
Almost two decades ago now, while Russia was resurging from its post-Soviet time of troubles, the movers and shakers of the West chose to haughtily dismiss Moscow’s objections to the Western project of establishing a “unipolar world.” That was sheer hubris: such a world was never to be, but the obstinate Western attempt to impose it has proven highly destructive.
Which brings us to the present. This year, the MSC has taken place under the odd motto “Under Destruction.” The phrase is both clumsy – the kind of sad things that happen when Germans try to sound original in English – and intriguingly pessimistic.
Yet it could have had the advantage of signalling a growing willingness to face reality, in particular that of the West’s own mistakes over the last – roughly – third of a century. After the end of the original Cold War, the world has never been the West’s to remake, but the West did have a unique chance to improve it by practicing wise foresight (how hard was it to predict Russia would come back?), fairness (don’t kick a great power already down), and, last but not least, good faith (serial lying rots diplomacy from within).
But greed, incompetence, and arrogance prevailed from Washington to London and Brussels. Post-Soviet Russia was systematically, demonstratively, even gleefully treated without either elementary reason or minimal respect, and now we are where we are: “under destruction.” Tell ordinary Ukrainians about it: they know what it feels like. But that was not the way that the motto was meant at this year’s MSC, of course.
The West does not do remorse. Instead, the vibe at Munich was “blame the others.”
More specifically, from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s much noted speech to the usual platitudes of the likes of Kaja Kallas and the conference’s chief organiser Wolfgang Ischinger – to name only a few – virtually everyone who is anyone (except China, obviously) agreed to pretend that the crisis of the old post-Cold War international disorder is fundamentally due to Russia. And please don’t mention that genocide that the West has been helping Israel commit or the fact that kidnapping heads of state is now considered an ordinary means of policy.
There also are, it is true, ongoing tensions between the US under President Donald Trump and the NATO-EU Europeans. Some of the latter have found enough of a spine to hint and sometimes even openly say out loud that Washington has made it harder for the West to pretend to be united.
Especially Merz has received much exaggerated praise for stating the obvious and adding his own pessimistic twist to the “under destruction” theme: For the dour, rather self-important German leader the cozy Western-dominated order is not merely “under destruction” but already gone.
His answer: make Europe more militaristic again, with a fierce Germany in the lead. Yes, that approach has worked so well before. Not.
Merz also believes – no one knows why – that the relationship with the US can be rebalanced. Reminding Washington that it, too, needs allies and friends, Merz seems to believe the Americans could be interested in a relationship between – fundamentally – equals. Yet that, historically, speaking is what the US never does. If it sees you as client or vassal material, that’s the treatment you will get.
If it sees you as a potential equal, it will respect you more while also treating you as an opponent to be contained, besieged, subverted, and, ultimately, brought down. Merz should be very careful about what he is wishing for.
But then, history has never been the forte of this privileged party careerist and former BlackRock provincial sinecure holder.
There would, of course, be a way of balancing the rapacious US, namely not repairing “trust” across the Atlantic – what a bizarre, shlocky, even childish notion; as if that has ever made the difference among serious people – but building normal relationships with both China and Russia.
Yet one thing that this MSC seems to have shown is that the NATO-EU Europeans are not yet done with their delusions. –rt.com
