EU vs USA, Luxembourg Hungary, or War for values

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday urged the EU to seize the opportunity “to combine the defence capabilities of the EU countries in constant structural form”, that is to create a pan-European military bloc. Motivation — to be independent in matters of defense against the one power.

From the context it is clear that this “one power” is the United States.

In principle, the idea is not new: in the early 90’s, the EU was about to move the center of gravity of its military efforts with NATO Western European Union (WEU). WEU safely rested, but the idea is to free themselves from the tutelage of States in military Affairs is not dead.

It is clear that independent military policy will require an increase in military spending (especially from the leading EU countries).

However, Juncker argues that the opposite is true, and the strengthening of defense cooperation will allow the EU to save from 20 to 100 million euros per year.

The amount is so minuscule on the scale of the EU, which is somehow even indecent to talk about it, if one only Greece has already cost the European Union’s 350 billion Euro, and it is clear that the preservation of Athens in the EU and in the Euro area will have to pay in the future. Moreover, it is unclear how you can save on the defense, having refused services of the United States.

Until now Washington has accused its European allies that they are not willing to share the costs equally, and spend too little on its armed forces, shifting the problem of protecting Western values exclusively in the United States.

Well Western accounting is not the first nor the last time surprised unconventional approach to the rules of addition and subtraction. More interesting is the issue of values.

So far we have dealt with a relatively sound concept of the unity of the West, in whatever form it may overflow. Both Washington and Brussels were informed us that the “free world” that is United by common values, among which democracy was the first but not the only one. In General, the West really acted as a United front not only in military but also in economic, ideological, cultural and other issues.

In recent months we are faced with a slightly different interpretation of this problem. At first the EU opposed the signing of the Transatlantic free trade area, saying that the agreement provides for unilateral advantages for the United States. In fact we are talking about that did not match the European and American economic values.

Now it turns out that to protect its values, the EU needs its own military unit. But any military unit is objectively directed against any state, this unit is not made. Any collective defence provides protection from everyone in the team defending is not included.

Since the West several decades stated that all of its military-political activity aimed solely at protecting and promoting the single for “the free world” values, then the initiative cadets that these values have ceased to be United, and the EU is now ready to protect your certain values, including from the US?

The question may seem idle. In the world full of conspiracy theorists who “know” that Washington has everything figured out for five hundred years, and anywhere from Europe, America is not going anywhere.

Amazingly, just four years before the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and five years before the collapse of the USSR in the Soviet Union, the vast majority also believed that nowhere in Eastern Europe from the us is not going anywhere. By the way, then the Soviet Union also declared the policy values. But it was socialist values.

If the internal politics of the West and the Soviet Union value differences are viewed relatively easily, in foreign policy it all comes down to one word. The West struggled for “democratic values” and the Soviet Union — the “socialist values”.

While Western assertion that “democracies don’t fight each other” was as false as the statement of the USSR that is not a war between countries made the socialist choice.” Not only fought Ethiopia with Somalia. In 1969 and 1972, a large-scale military clashes occurred on the Sino-Soviet border, and in February-March 1979 occurred a full-scale Sino-Vietnamese war.

Once declared values are in contradiction with real politics, the latter gets the advantage. Just because someone who continues to stubbornly defend high value to the detriment of sordid reality, is clearly inferior.

In this regard, another interesting point. From 1995 to 2013, Jean-Claude Juncker worked the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Since 2004, the Minister for foreign Affairs in his office was Jean Asselborn, occupying this post until now.

And here a day before Juncker proposed the creation of the actual European military bloc, Asselborn said that cost would be excluded from the EU Hungary. Because Budapest doesn’t fit in European policy values.

Criticizing statements made Asselborn Hungary and Austria. The Commission, headed by Juncker, from comments have evaded.

But foreign Ministers do not make spontaneous statements. And here for the first time, we are not talking about voluntary withdrawal of a state from the EU, but its the exception. Before the contradictions between the EU occurred mainly on financial-economic issues — first we are talking about the fact that a member of the EU does not correspond to European values. And it is strange that the vast majority of the foreign ministries of EU countries kept silent.

Hungary filed a complaint about her refusal to allow into its territory of the Afro-Asian refugees. But the same claims can be presented to Poland, the Baltic States, almost all Balkan countries. The Romanians problems with the Gypsies, who happily throw in more prosperous EU countries, and France (in which most Romanian Gypsies seek) clamoring to take them back. In Catholic Poland, the problem of deviations from European values in matters of abortion and gay marriage. In General, setting a precedent, you can then eliminate half of the EU.

But if we consider the “military bloc” Juncker and the idea of the exclusion of Hungary in the complex, it turns out that the European elite, the mouth of the Luxembourg politicians (namely Luxembourg is a financial and banking centres of Europe and can count on the strengthening of its role after the release of London from the EU) proposed to dissociate themselves from the US and Eastern Europeans to rein in the threat of exclusion.

In fact we are talking about the final design Franco-German (with the complicity of the Benelux as a Junior partner) dominance in Europe. And, tellingly, for the first time since the mid 90-ies raised the question of the military-political design of this dominance.

Is it a coincidence it happened after failures of American politics values in North Africa, in Ukraine and in the middle East? Is it a coincidence these statements made on the eve of the presidential election in France (spring 2017) and Parliament in Germany (autumn 2017) that conducting a Pro-American policy of Hollande and Merkel really can lose? Is it a coincidence this happens against the background of the largest in recent decades, the political crisis in the United States, in which the split in the ranks of the American elite became apparent?

Maybe by chance it’s coincidental. But it is unlikely.

Whether rational elites of “old Europe” to win this fight? It is not yet clear. After all, in their rhetoric, they still declare their commitment to the policy values. That is, if they succeed, then sooner or later they will have to explain what the Franco-German values differ from the Anglo-Saxon, as well as Eastern European.

Does not the fact that the peoples of Europe, without further justification, will want to return to the world between the two world wars, when every part of the West defended its own values. That’s because I remember what it led to. No better way to start a war than to begin to pursue a policy of values. Values are so elevated, that justify any crime.

That is why Russia is already a year offering West, not deviating from the values (each on their own), and not figuring out whose values are more valuable to guide policy banal pragmatism, including economic benefits. In the end, Western values have not suffered from the fact that all iPhones and 90% of tablets currently produced in China.

Rostislav Ishchenko