Troops massing on borders. Threats. Sanctions. In other words sabre rattling. And whoops there we are. Back where we started from (and perhaps never really left.)

The EU is being destroyed by an obsession with what are called “technocratic” solutions. That is, it is being pounded into our empty little heads that This Is The Rational Way!!! That (remember?) There Is No Alternative!!! That The Economy is given, written in stone. And that there is no way you can do anything else and that therefore democracy is redundant because There Is Only ONE Way of doing things and so on.

And in the midst of such supposed rationalism and the dogma that the Economy HAS to be what is good for the bankers and nothing else and whoever objects has to be ridiculed and snuffed out, all these wise leaders lapse into arrant nonsense on their own terms! (They can’t even be consistent in their own dogmatism).

We will impose sanctions on Russia!!!! They declare. Those who invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya because they were “right” to do so now turn on Russia who has done nothing worse than they. Those who condone the continued presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus (who invaded to protect the Turkish Cypriots), those who avidly support Israel’s right to defend itself and so on, deny exactly the same to Russia. Why?

We have relapsed quite simply into the “our son of a bitch” theory. But worse, all these Economic whiz kid technocrats are now pressing for economic sanctions against Russia in this globalised economy. You would think it would be the last thing they would be pressing for. Russia is not a piddly tin pot economy that can be painlessly squashed. For starters it provides Germany with some 30% of its energy needs. There are Multinationals based in Russia. Apart from significant exports they also have significant imports from the west and so on.

This whole nonsense handling of the Ukraine crisis, apart from being incredibly short sighted could lead to a terrible humanitarian catastrophe and collapse of the whole globalised economy.

Unfortunately it has already become quite obvious that the German Europe we are no living under is nothing if not utterly short sighted.

Merkel is a short hand for German policy, since it is not confined to The Frau who is only one of the cogs. The problem, it would appear, is a great lack of imagination in the German mind set, an addiction to following the rules come what may (without ever questioning these rules, who made them and why), and a total and utter conviction that they are the ones who are always right, and that if we could do it, so should everyone else in the same way.

It has by now been extremely well analysed why the German austerity appears to have worked, what the circumstances were and how none of this bears any relation to the economies of the European periphery and the nature of their economies for one.

I do not intend to go into all that again here. But the trouble is that owing to this rigid and narrow mentality not only Europe but the global economy as a whole has got itself into a godawful mess, one Germany not only has no idea how to get out of, but insists on more of the same toxic medicine instead of trying to see what the real problems are and how to go about solving them.

Why? Well the answer is simple really and can be attributed to what I perhaps ungenerously describe as a total lack of imagination. German policy makers mostly cannot see beyond their immediate narrow interest. Which in the end may turn out not to be in their interest at all, but they do not appear able to see beyond their immediate shot term interests, and the repercussions their policies (imposed on others) will have.

They cannot cope with something different, with opposing attitudes or analyses or even with trying to imagine all worse case scenarios. No. There is only one way and that way is their way, and everybody should behave like little Germanies. We need not go any further in debunking this rigid dogma than by innocently pointing out that if every single country in the EU must achieve a budget surplus every year, then where is this surplus  going to come from without corresponding deficits?

In his column in the Financial Times Martin Wolf states and I quote:

“The eurozone crisis is not over. Despite the emergence of a degree of stability, the situation remains very fragile. The ECB might in fact be able to do very little about this. That is partly because the measures it would need to take are controversial. It is also partly because of the view held by some that its job is to stabilise not the eurozone but the German economy. That is not a European currency union. It is something quite different.”

And that is the fundamental problem which constitutes a time bomb ticking dangerously close to the explosion. The whole EZ mechanism is geared to serving Germany’s interests and Germany’s interests alone. The tragedy is that this will lead, is leading, directly to an explosion that will most certainly not be in Germany’s interests at all. But by the time they can wrap their mind round that one it will be too late.

Obama is being criticised for mishandling and failing on foreign policy issues such as Syria and now the Ukraine debacle. However, how do we define failure? Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq can be called great unqualified successes by any criteria at all.

For Obama it appears as though it has been Russia to get her way while the US has fumbled and lost. And yet, outright war through international intervention in Syria was avoided even though the brink had been reached. Is that a failure in itself? And was it not quite a feat of sleight of hand if you like for Obama to wriggle out of his “red line” over the use of chemical weapons?

Now again in the Ukraine. For all the posturing and propaganda taking place it appears again that war will be avoided. Even though here Obama has been using strong language and threats against Russia, the threats have been confined to economic sanctions (which would probably be just as bad for Europe as for Russia). Also NATO will convene to discuss situation, but no military action even hinted at. Is that a failure?

It does appear that Obama wants to avoid war and foreign interventions, of the kind that have destroyed American prestige and made a mess of the American economy. However, he does have to contend with the “looney right” (to paraphrase the old “looney left” designation).

A lot of the rhetoric is quite appalling in that how can you defend Israel’s right to defend itself, or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus to protect Turkish Cypriots and yet condemn Russian intervention to protect Russian citizens in the Crimea? Another untenable aspect is that here we do have a coup d’etat, against an elected President where the new government (usurpers?) verge on the extreme right even Nazi disposition and kick off with banning Russian, where a very large part of the population is Russian.

Can Obama be that whacky? G.W. Bush was indeed that whacky and worse. But not Obama. I believe his main goal is to reverse the whole gung ho let’s intervene policy of the US and to do this he is doing the reverse of “Speak softly and Carry a big stick”, in order to achieve this goal. He has to carry or pander to the “looney right” while at the same time take action totally different from that expected or even demanded by a large section of public opinion. It is not easy and he will be criticised, but if he manages to turn this around and avoid war, it will have been a great success, though perhaps one not as obvious as the benefits will undoubtedly be.

Afternote: Let us not forget Colin Powell’s excellent retort to Madeleine Albright’s criticism. This was when Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Albright Foreign Secretary. She upbraided him saying, what is the use of having the biggest and best army in the world if you are not going to use it? And he answered, wisely, So you don’t have to use it.

What happened thereafter in American foreign policy has proved how wise and prescient he was.

Well now, what would you expect it to be in the age we are living in?

Oh my God, not another war!!! No.

Oh dear what will happen to all the innocent the people caught up in the conflict? No.

My God! What if the Russians suddenly go mad and start nuking? No.

Could this explode into a more generalised war and suck in the whole of Europe? No.

No, no, no. Nothing like that. The reaction is:-

Oh my God!!! The markets are falling!!!

And what on earth could be worse than that, eh?

Guardian headline today: “Russian and Ukranian troops in tense stand off”.

Ring a bell? Say, summer of 1914 something like : “Russian and German troops engage in a tense stand off, as Russia mobilises in support of its ally Serbia and Germany mobiises in support of Austro-Hungary.”

The only thing we learn from history, it has been said, is that we do not learn from history.