John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NATALIE NOUGAYREDE IN THE GUARDIAN
“It’s far too easy to blame the east for all of Europe’s woes
“In western Europe, we conveniently ignore our own faults – and show little compassion for our neighbours’ troubled pasts”
I think the article completely ignores the big elephant conspicuously standing in the room.
It would help immensely if the United States didn't keep its own interests front and center in Europe, tromping around with its muddy combat boots into everyone's living rooms.
And the immense, artificial demands that it makes create immense stresses. Just imagine telling Germany from whom it may buy natural gas? That’s what dictators do.
Or telling Germany and France and Britain that they'll suffer if they hold to the binding Iran Agreement they all signed and the US impetuously tore up, surely an act resembling that of an enraged drunk.
America imposes a completely artificial hostility towards Russia that not only hurts Europe economically but encourages the truly extreme voices of Eastern Europe, as those in Poland or the Baltics. Europe is missing tremendous opportunities that come with that marriage made in heaven, Russian resources and German industry and other European know-how. All over some flabby, outdated ideology, imposed by a flabby, outdated leader who listens to no one.
And the U.S. encouraged, wrongly, expansion of both the EU and NATO into some of these Eastern countries, leaving Europe with new messes with which to deal. They are weak economies and not at all modern. Potential burdens, not help, besides having bad, out-of-date attitudes.
I think Europeans, left to themselves, could work out all of their problems.
But they are not allowed to do that.
And if the leaders of Europe ever get up the fortitude to be seriously more independent of the world's Great Bully, they'll likely face lots of terrible financial troubles and other pressures.
Just look at what the Bully has done at the UN and will continue doing.
That is the way the Great Bully works, all the time, everywhere, pushing people around behind the scenes while smiling for the cameras.
