THE EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING!
Future of Europe's Nations
Is with the New Silk Road
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
May 30—The Earth-shattering successes of opponents of the European Union in the European Parliamentary elections on May 22-25 (in France, Great Britain, Greece, and Ireland), and the considerable success of anti-EU parties in Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Austria, and Poland, signify a turning point: the beginning of the end of the EU empire. Voters held the EU bureaucracy in Brussels accountable for the failed experiment of the European Monetary Union, for the violation of human rights by the Troika's austerity policies in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and for the French government's Brussels-inspired austerity program. The subsequent haggling over who will be president of the EU Commission is a sign of the illness that afflicts the EU: the virus of discord is spreading.
In many world capitals, speculation is rife about what the EU's future holds and what effect this revolt will have on the strategic situation overall. And here opinions are divided. For those both inside and outside the EU who believed the Brussels propaganda—that the EU is the guarantor of peace both internally and externally, that it defends Europe's interests against other power blocs, and that therefore it benefits everyone—this election was a cold shower, which will hopefully lead them to a better recognition of reality.
The election was a very positive development, however, for those who have seen the EU, ever since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, as a continually expanding empire; along with the eastern expansion of NATO, it has been part of the strategic encirclement of Russia, and has become more and more a monster, representing only the interests of the banks at the expense of the common good, while the gap between rich and poor becomes intolerably wide.
The Strategic Danger
No thinking person can now doubt that there are parallels to the outbreak of World War I, one hundred years ago, in 1914. But because of the thermonuclear arsenals today that could wipe out the human race a dozen times over, and, given the consequences that a civil war in Ukraine could have, the world situation now is much more dangerous. After all, in a third world war, mankind could cease to exist.
Despite the so-called "narratives" being circulated by political think-tanks and the mass media, the danger of war does not emanate from Russian President Vladimir Putin, nor from China. It is exclusively the result of both deliberate decisions and errors on the part of the West:
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the refusal to include Russia in new alliances after the collapse of the Soviet Union;
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the broken promises to Russia after the disbanding of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand toward Russia's borders;
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the ultimatum included in the EU Association Agreement for Ukraine, which would have made Russia indefensible and would force Ukraine to split in two, because of the country's internal composition;
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the policy of regime change at any price, which, along with the long-term Western financing of 2,200 NGOs in Ukraine, unleashed a well-known Nazi Frankenstein monster; and then,
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the unbelievable audacity of covering up who was actually responsible for the atrocities in Odessa, for example, while preaching democracy and human rights.
The fact is, the people in the nations of Europe do not believe these "narratives." The last time there was a comparable discrepancy between the official party/media line, and what the people actually thought, was in October 1989 in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]. The people of Europe experienced world war twice on their territory in the 20th Century, and even if they don't know all the facts and historical background, they recognize the demonization of Putin as war-mongering, and voted against the parties that are promoting it.
A Bankers' Dictatorship
The second main reason for the election result was, of course, what the EU has become, from the Maastricht Treaty to the Lisbon Treaty (2009): a supranational dictatorship in the interest of the banks and speculators. Instead of taking up the historic opportunity presented by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989—which could have been one of humanity's most shining moments, to establish an order of peace for the 21st Century—the same old geopolitics went into effect which had led to the First World War. Germany was forced, as the price for reunification, to give up its sovereignty over its own currency, the deutschemark; to vote (against its better judgment) for the European Monetary Union; and to allow itself to be squeezed into the corset of the EU's Maastricht Treaty. With the introduction of the euro, the Eurozone and implicitly the entire EU became the regional representation of "globalization"—which was nothing but a synonym for a world empire based on the Anglo-American special relationship.
The EU of the Lisbon Treaty, which the oligarchical circles want to replace as soon as possible with a European Super-State, is nothing more than a new version of the empires that ruled Europe for millennia: the Greek Empire described by Thucydides, which destroyed ancient Greece; the Roman Empire; the Venetian Empire; the Dutch-English Empire; and finally the British Empire, which has by no means disappeared, but continues to exist in the form of globalization.
There is a deeper truth in the legend that Zeus, the human-hating god of Olympus, turned into a bull in order to seduce Europa. If we look at the main conflict of in European history of the last 3,000 years from the standpoint of Greek mythology, we see the clash between the oligarchical system of Zeus and the progressive system of Prometheus, who brought mankind fire and thus scientific and technological progress; or from the point of view of Christianity, the equivalent is the contrast between Satan and the goodness of God. The Europe of the EU today has undoubtedly succumbed to the blandishments of Zeus. And how could the system of globalization be described, if it accepts the death of millions of people? Certainly not as Christian.
The fact is that the EU is a European Empire, and that there is no such thing as a single European people. At least some of the 28 nations that have been brought together under the yoke of the Brussels dictatorship have expressed this. And because the trans-Atlantic financial system is hopelessly bankrupt, and the Troika has nothing to offer except lethal formulas in the interest of the banks and speculators, this oligarchical construct will come to an end in an extremely short time. If Europe's nations are to survive, the imperial character of Europe must be overcome as soon as possible!
The New Silk Road
Fortunately, an alternative is coming together: a grouping of nations that are instead committed to the Promethean principle of development of their populations and cooperation among sovereign republics. China has made its program of a New Silk Road between Asia and Europe a priority, while the May 20 Shanghai agreement between Russia and China, for strategic cooperation and 46 individual accords for fundamental collaboration, including in high-technology areas, has created a new pole, which is also oriented toward India and most other Asian states. Everything will now depend on a group of Eurasian nations coming together as fast as possible in an alliance of sovereign republics, which renounces once and for all the idea of war as a means of conflict resolution, and works together for the common aims of mankind.
The New Silk Road—i.e., the launch of many infrastructure projects on the highest technical level, which is the prerequisite for the development of land-locked regions of the Eurasian continent, but also of Africa—has now been placed on the agenda because of this new alliance between China and Russia. This begins to make a new economic geometry become a reality: long-term development of the real economy and the common good, replacing the old geometry of "let the select few get rich quick."
Even if supposedly practical politicians have still not fully understood it, the vote in the European elections signifies the end of an era. Humanity has the prospect of a future again.
Translated from German by Susan Welsh
