Euroskeptics and far-right parties posted sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections, ended Sunday. What kind of Europe does the new European Parliament inherit and to what lengths does the US go to weaken and split its ally? Voice of Russia is discussing the issues with Alastair Crooke, British political analyst and the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and Jurgen Elsasser, German journalist and political analyst, Editor-in-Chief of the monthly Compactmagazine.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the far right victories as "remarkable and regrettable", whereas the UK Prime-minister David Cameron said the public was "disillusioned" with the EU.
However, there is little wonder Europeans are getting weary. Hardly had they started to recover from one of the worst economic and financial crises, when a new shock to EU economy has arrived, this time in a form of sanctions the US said it used to punish Russia over Ukraine. Little wonder the European voters would feel growing distrust for the EU authorities, unable to protect them from the US' hostile and essentially anti-European moves.
Jurgen Elsasser, German journalist and political analyst, Editor-in-Chief of the monthly Compact (highlights):
"...The locomotive of the EU economic growth - Germany - is weakened by the discussions about sanctions against Russia. Our exports to Russia and our trade were growing over the past several years, and now Americans are putting a break on this development that weakens Germany, and if Germany is becoming unstable, then weaker states, like Greece, Italy and Spain, will feel the negative impact, too.
...The Americans are pushing very hard for these sanctions, Germany is trying not to give in too fast, but Britons are helping them and also some other states, for example, the Baltic states, even though those little states are dependent much more than Germany on Russian energy imports. So, in the core of the union you have the same split as in 2003 during the Iraqi war – Washington and so-called new Europe were united in waging war and the so-called old Europe around Germany and France were against it. And this kind of constellation comes back now in the discussion about the sanctions against Russia.
...It has a double impact. The push of the Americans in the discussion about sanctions is on the surface directed against Russia. But in the distance, this policy will also weaken the Europeans and Europeans are regarded in the American view as the competitor, and you remember perhaps that strategic outline of Mr. Brzezinski who always advocated for splitting up Europe in different interest groups and states and that the first aim of the Americans is to prevent a united Europe, especially united Eurasia...
...The American economy is not based on the real economic processes, it is based mainly on the finance markets. So, they manipulate the dollar, they force other states and economies to take the dollar as their second currency and if somebody wants to lift the dollar, for example, as Saddam Hussein wanted to end the dollar as currency for his oil exports, this person or this country is declared as a rogue person, or a rogue state, and then the American military forces the hegemony of the dollar by bombing this rogue state."
Alastair Crooke, political analyst, the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and a former advisor to Javier Solana, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union:
"... I think that people are misreading the nature of the sanctions. I don’t think that we are talking about an old trade war: we will stop buying this product and you will suffer, we will turn off or at least restrict our purchases of Russian gas.
I think we are talking about what the Treasury has described as a neutron bomb, their ability to exclude any state with the support of Europe and other acquiescent nations from access to the global financial system, from access to the ability to settle payments and to make transfers through the global financial system. This is their bomb, which they have used to undermine and to put pressure on countries because they have a monopoly over the global financial system as it stands.
Even if banks do not have a direct connection with the US, European banks are so terrified of the US regulator, that they will not do business with them. So, they have the ability if they issue letters against any bank claiming it is involved in some form of terrorism or support, it is unacceptable to the UN - the so-called Scarlet letter - they have this ability at any time to cut off a state from the global financial order. And I think this is much what we are talking about if we move to another level of sanctions.
And the point is that I think that Europe is not in any condition to sustain this. I mean I cannot understand how Europe can believe that they can manage this satisfactorily and that they will not suffer from any consequences of a war that is pursued by a major economic power and the largest energy supplier to Europe by excluding it from the global financial system.
Russia does have a capacity to respond. I am sure the policy makers in Moscow are thinking very carefully about how to manage some responses that Russia has. We may even see a response today by a process of de-dollarization. And there are other elements that it is possible for Russia to use in retaliation from their exclusion or their marginalization out of the financial system. And I believe that there are those in Russia and elsewhere including China and in the BRICS states who believe it is overdue and it is time that Russia and other states took efforts to break this monopoly, to break this ability of one state to simply be able to impose these sorts of financial penalties on another state without any legal basis, without UN sanction, simply as a unilateral action, and to start an alternative financial system.
It is not going to be easy. I don’t know that we will end up going down this road, it may not happen. People may think more about the consequences of it but I think you are absolutely right in saying that Europe, which is teetering on the abyss of further recession and further economic crisis, this is the last thing that Europe will be able to sustain. I think it will be painful for Russia, it will affect America too, perhaps the dollar position, but the actor who will be most affected by those will be the chronically weak European Union and its present financial situation".
