We may well be witnessing the demise of world dominance by the white race. The rest of the world may not be as anxious about this as we are. To the contrary.
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
The white man’s burden
Photo: Robert D. Ward and as a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain in the United States.
It is becoming ever clearer, the losers of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine will be Ukraine, but the rest of Europe as well. We need not have any illusions about Ukraine. Before the invasion the nation was a political and economic disaster. A handful of oligarchs who hold political control have been plundering the land for decades. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 until 2017 Ukraine’s economic development was the worst in Europe. In fact, it was the fifth-worst in the entire world. Now, after having parts of its infrastructure pulverised by the Russian invasion, as we have already seen in similar wars waged by the USA and NATO in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, recovery does not happen. As any neo-liberal would explain, after the war the raw materials that have been cut off will flow again. Money speaks and that is the mother tongue of Ukrainian oligarchs, not Ukrainian or Russian. With regard to the loss of cheap Ukrainian labour for the EU, if necessary it can just as well be moved to other Eastern European nations along with the machines they work with.
As for the EU, Britain, and much of the rest of Europe this war is already causing major problems that will magnify with time. In fact, Europe will pay for this war in the end.. If you look at the international press, the war in Ukraine is already being portrayed as a conflict between Russia and the USA, personified by Putin and Biden. While in the West the war is being sold as a struggle between good and evil, and our mainstream media gives us the impression that the whole world is incensed, for much of the rest of the world, this is Whitey’s war. It is the imperialist powers again in confrontation via a proxy, but this time not in Africa, Asia, or South America, but on Whitey’s own turf with blonde haired, blue eyed, Christian refugees. In their world, where military intervention by Whitey is a Damocles sword incessantly hanging over their heads, it must even provide a sense – even be it temporary – of relief.
In most nations outside of white ones, no one appears really to care about the war, although they are extremely worried about the financial and economic blowback, which will be massive. Even the corrupt oil sheikhs are not willing to help out the US and Europe by increasing their oil and gas production. The authoritarian leaders in developing nations the West has helped install and supported to insure their markets, rose on a platform of nationalism. It is common sense nationalism that tells them not to become involved in Whitey’s War. In fact, many seem to even favour the rising China-Russia alliance, which may well have been reinforced by Whitey’s refusing to share his Covid vaccine with these same nations, preferring to make massive profits. These countries, even their corrupt elites, know that the West is synonymous with injustice and exploitation. Even their ill gotten billions, which Whitey had enabled or paid, are no longer safe. Whitey has started stealing these. Since the conclusion of the Cold War these elites did not have an alternative. Now one appears to be on the horizon.
The next conflict is in the pipeline: China, which is why the US is forcing Europe to increase its military budgets to buy weaponry integrated in the US armaments system. Australia had read the writing on the wall when it dumped its purchase of French nuclear submarines, instead buying them from the US. Is anyone still talking about the French, German, Spanish “Future Combat Air System” based around a new European fighter jet?
Like Russia, the Chinese conflict has been long in the making. Donald Trump had already initiated a trade war and was trying to get Putin on board as an ally – an effort that was blocked by US Neo-Cons. This conflict has steadily escalated. China is not stupid. Should Russia fall into the US sphere of influence, then just like Russia before them, they will find NATO troops encroaching on their borders, not only from the sea, but from the North. For Europe, a conflict with China would be even more of an economic calamity than the one already developing due to the current altercation with Russia.
The role of the EU and Britain in the Ukranian conflict has been calamitous, because they do not have one except as a loyal vassal of US interests. Erdogan, who we were supposed not to take seriously, has managed to appear a statesman in this war in comparison to his European counterparts. As some analysts are pointing out, the EU does not determine its foreign policy any more. It has given this role to NATO and it is synonymous with the USA. All that is left for European foreign ministers to do is to declare their trans-atlanticist fealty and do a lot of moral posturing. In addition EU nations are being pressured by the US to buy American commodities and weapons systems at very high prices. And this is just the beginning.
Europe is now paying the price of docilely assenting to the hegemony of German mercantilism and following the ill-fated diktat of Merkel’s Germany. The Germans sabotaged renewable energy in the EU while investing in making itself the gatekeeper of Russian gas. Nordstream 2 and declaring gas a “green” fuel for EU taxonomy, not to mention supporting current massive investments by the EU in gas infrastructure, were important elements in this plan. Russia was the key to this fossil fuel strategy. Even as the war was visible with all its horrors, Germany and the EU successfully circumvented sanctions on Russian fossil fuels with carve outs, but this has only highlighted Germany’s and EU’s geo-economic strategy failure and ethical hypocrisy. EU citizens are now paying the price for German hegemony with high inflation and fuel costs with more to come.
This economic meltdown could well be repeated in the near future with China, which has transitioned from being an extended workbench of German industry to becoming one of its major trading partners as well. It is Germany’s leading provider of imports, and second largest market for exports. China already accounts for a third of the sales of the German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. In a recent article the Financial Times pointed out that “beneath the hood, in terms of revenues and profits, Volkswagen is more Chinese than German”. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy around seven percent of Germany’s total foreign direct investment was recently made in China, equivalent to around 89 billion euros. It is no coincidence that the same is true for much of the EU. EU president von der Leyen’s insistence that China is dependent on the EU market is reminiscent of similar claims concerning Russia. We are witnessing how that is playing out.
Domestically the EU political elite clasps to a political straw, trying to give the impression that everything is normal and will remain so. There are few if any attempts to make immediate changes on the demand side, instead trying to prop up the supply side. Germany still refuses to introduce a speed limit on its motorway, as is the case in every other EU nation, to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The demand side is being regulated in best neo-liberal tradition surreptitiously by the market, where we are seeing the social injustice of a de facto carbon tax as many poor are being forced by the sky-rocketing price of energy to decide between food and heating. Corporations and EU neo-liberals, never ones to waste a good crisis, are rolling back EU measures against climate change, something corporations would not have even dreamed of a few months ago.
The problem is that the German approach of kicking every crisis-can down the road just increases the toxicity. What no one ever considered is what to do when the road ends, and we may well be there. While corporate media in true Panglossian spirit is trying to assure Europeans that they have the best of all possible leaders, it doesn’t. The sooner European citizens realise this and try to change it, the better chance they have of reducing the impact of the adversity their leaders are steering them towards.
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