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.