World issues

---

• (September 2004) Changing the history of Europe. When I was a kid, in the 1960s, the Italian politicians routinely delivered pompous speeches describing how Italy joined the Allies and liberated itself from fascism. The Italian people knew this was all fantasy and simply laughed it out. We knew we had lost the war, not won it, and we knew that Hitler and Mussolini had been defeated by the Allies, not by the partisans. The partisans were heroes precisely because they fought against an overwhelmingly stronger enemy, an enemy that they alone could have never defeated. Italians had never been fanatic patriots, and made no mystery among themselves that the politicians were just exaggerating the role of the Italian people in liberating Italy.
  What a difference 40 years make. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the birth of the European Union and, above all, the fact that the WWII generation is dying are dramatically changing the perception of what happened in 1943. More and more of younger Europeans truly believe that the Allies didn't do much: it was the Italian partisans and the French partisans who won the war against Mussolini and Hitler.
  The political speeches that used to be derived by the people are now being taken very seriously by the younger generations. In a sense, the brainwashing (meant to create a new civil conscience) really worked.
  Creating an alternative history that never happened may have an undesired effect: that Europeans may one day forget the lessons of the history that truly happened. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (May 2004) A permanent seat for Germany?. Gerard Schroeder is asking the United Nations to grant Germany a permanent seat (read: veto power) at the United Nations council. The main reason is that Germany contributes a lot of money to the United Nations budget. In other words, Schroeder wants to "buy" a permanent seat.
  This idea comes at the worst possible time. The United Nations is a joke (see What is wrong with the United Nations) and the way to fix it is certainly not to emphasize its paradoxes. India deserves a permanent seat because it represents one billion people. Maybe Japan deserves a permanent seat because it represents the second largest economy in the world. But one wonders why in heaven a small declining continent like Europe should have a fourth permanent seat (Britain, Russia, France, Germany) when Africa has none (not even Nigeria, whose population is greater than Germany and France combined) and Asia (more than half of the human race) has only one (China). This would be an even more "colonial" council: the western powers would have more control than ever on world affairs.
  Schroeder is proving that the United Nations is only a joke, not to be taken to represent the world. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (May 2004) The East-West divide in the new European Union.
  Western and Eastern European countries do not share a common vision for Europe. It is not only that their recent and ancient histories have been so different. They hold differing views of the alliance with the USA, of the relationship with Russia, and of the "appropriate" role of the members themselves.
  Western Europeans think that they invented capitalism, democracy and consumerism (i.e., the American model) and they spread it to Eastern Europe. Technically speaking, they are right on both counts: democracy and capitalism were born in Europe (well, Britain, close enough) and the reconstruction of Eastern Europe is being paid by the European Union. But Eastern Europeans see it from a different perspective: the modern versions of capitalism, democracy and consumerism were invented in the USA, and Western Europeans were lucky to be "Americanized" first. They see a wave that started on the other side of the Atlantic, reached Normandy and Sicily in 1944, and finally reach the Baltic regions and Central Europe in 1991. Western Europeans expect gratitute from Eastern Europeans, but Eastern Europeans don't see Western Europeans as liberators orf evangelists: they see them as mere implementors of the American model, as a by-product of the USA. Eastern Europeans see no reason to be grateful to Western Europeans (especially since these days Western Europeans do not show much gratitude towards the USA).
  France, obsessed with the ambition of becoming the "counterweight" to the USA (Chirac's expression, not mine), dreams of an expansion of the European Union further east: Russia. France and most Euronationalists dream of the day that the European Union will stretch from Portugal to Siberia to Kamchatka. That is the last thing that the Eastern European countries want to see, after centuries of fierce wars with Russia and millions of dead people. They are joining the European Union precisely because they want to separate themselves, their future and their destiny, from Russia, their traditional enemy.
  Internally, one member's ambition is rarely shared by other members. The most notable example is, again, France, particularly if compared with Poland. Poland lost WWII in a honorable manner: they fought against Hitler and Stalin at the same time, and millions died. Stalin had to order the extermination of all the officers of the Polish army, in one of the war's most famous cases of genocide. At the end of the war, Poland was completely destroyed. France, on the other hand, surrendered to Hitler almost right away. The Germans caused very little damage to France. Hitler took a holiday in Paris, and enjoyed being photographed in front of the most famous French monuments. The French just did not fight the Germans. Worse: the French (the Vichy republic) joined the Germans, and sent troops to fight on the eastern front. Those troops were eventually defeated. Thus France lost the war twice: first against Hitler, and then against the Allies. The Polish are very aware that the heroism of their army was not matched by the mass surrender (and aboutface) of the French army. At the end of the war, Poland was punished for its herosim with 46 years of communism and Russian occupation, while France was rewarded for its cowardice with democracy, nuclear weapons and veto power at the United Nations. The paradox is even too obvious to the Polish. No wonder that now they expect a more balanced role in the European Union. They might be a poor country (due to the injustice that they suffered) but the European Union may owe quite a bit to the millions of Polish victims of Hitler and Stalin. If Poland had behaved like France and simply surrendered and allied with the invader, history would have been so different that today there might be no European Union at all.
  There is another fundamental difference between western and eastern European societies: the east is largely homogeneous (e.g., Christian, and, in most cases, Slavic), while the west has become a melting pot. The melting pot worked in the USA, but western Europeans do not seem enthusiastic at all about it. Their leaders routinely attack the very concept of immigration, which is hold sacred in the USA (See, for example, this New York Times article). Europeans are much less open to cultural exchanges than they proclaim: the west sees immigration as a problem (unlike the USA that sees it as a solution), the east preempts the "problem" from happening by minimizing immigration.
  So it is one Europe, but with many heads and no unifying vision.
  Going forward, it is fairly obvious that the European centuries are over, and Europe will have to content itself with a smaller and smaller share of the world's output. The European age basically lasted from 1492 (beginning of western European colonialization of the world) till 1945 (USA invasion of western Europe). Europe's rapid decline on the international scene is being paralleled by the even more rapid rise of Asia: China, Japan, ASEAN and soon India are all becoming economic giants. As Europe shrinks in importance and power, it will feel the pressure of Russia and of the Arab world. The Arab invasion is already underway, with about ten million Arabs already living in the European Union (and multiplying much faster than the native population). Europe has virtually no oil, a fact which will make it more and more dependent on the Arab world. Eventually, Europe will have to admit the simple truth that its wealth depends on the good will of the Arabs; and the fastest growing segment of its population is Arab. At the same time, Russia is likely to become the economic giant that never was. After all, it does have the largest natural resources on Earth. History may, after all, repeat itself. Traditionally, Russia loses territories when it is weak (e.g., after the revolution and after the Soviet collapse) but regains them as soon as it gets strong again. Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine know all about it. In 2004, western Europe took advantage of Russia's current weakness to "annex" its eastern territories (the former communist countries of Eastern Europe). If Russia becomes an economic giant, it may want to rediscuss the issue. Or, quite simply, economic factors will pull Eastern Europe back into the Russian sphere of influence.
  (Witness how German chancellor Schroeder has been courting Putin and forgiving him both Russia's human rights abuses in Chechnya and Russia's support for the undemocratic elections in Ukraine of november 2004).
  In the future, thus, the European Union will be torn in three different directions: the south (led by Spain, France and Italy) will be pulled towards the Arabs; the east (and possibly even Scandinavia and Germany) will be pulled towards Russia, and Britain will be pulled towards the USA. The USA might be willing to "rescue" a few close allies (Italy, Germany, Poland) from Russian or Arab influence. The challenge for the European Union in the future will not be so much how to expand, albeit how to survive under three different kinds of pressure. Not to mention France, which has been the staunchest defender of the European Union for as long as the European Union represented a mere extension of French policy, but is likely to feel uneasy as it loses control over the enlarged European Union, a consequence that both the French government and the French people did not fully anticipate before it happened. (In a sense, this is a repeat of the Middle Ages, when Europe, also in the grips of an economic and cultural crisis, was pressured by Islam from the south and by the Mongols from the east, and France, once again, will be the key battlefield against Islam).
  The different attitudes towards the Union reflect a rudimentary awareness of this "near future". TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (May 2004) Europe's theory of the USA is very simple: every action by the USA can easily be explained based on economic interest. As one travels around (western) Europe, this "theory" is evident. Both political analysts and ordinary folks discuss USA policies in the world starting from an economic interest (usually, oil).
  This argument is sometimes presented in grotesquely comic overtones. During the Kosovo war, rumours spread that oil had been found in Kosovo. Even if Kosovo remains one of the most desolate and poor regions of the world (and no oil has been found), millions of Europeans are still willing to swear that the USA bombed Serbia and remove Milosevic from power only because of their economic interests. If you ask them to be more specific, they can only come up with very obscure theories of how Kosovo benefits the USA economy (even the most ignorant of Europeans is aware that Kosovo is less than 0.01% of the USA's economy).
  Ditto for Afghanistan: millions of Europeans are convinced that the USA removed the Taliban from power because of hidden reserves of oil under the soil of Afghanistan, or because of a strategic pipeline that will bring Central Asian oil to the sea (this is true: a pipeline is indeed being built, although the Afghan pipeline is only one of the many that will connect Central Asia to the ocean). To million of Europeans, september 11 and Osama are only an excuse for the USA to do something that the USA would have done anyway out of economic interests. Never mind that Afghanistan remains extremely poor and that (alas) no major USA company has invested in Afghanistan.
  The American soldiers that protect South Korea from North Korea's communist regime? Of course, they are there only to defend USA's economic interests. Again, if you ask these Europeans which economic interests, they can't quite pinpoint them. It should be fairly obvious that South Korea has nothing that the USA needs: no oil, no gold, no uranium, no major resources. On the other hand, the USA helped South Korea become one of the richest countries in the world. Several South Korean companies have, incidentally, become competitors of USA companies, and the USA imports from South Korean a lot more than South Korean imports from the USA. But those are details: millions of Europeans are convinced that the USA benefit economically from South Korea.
  Millions of Europeans are even willing to swear that the USA helped liberate Western Europe itself merely out of economic interests. They are convinced that the USA fought Hitler and Mussolini (and saved France twice) simply because Americans wanted to create a huge market for USA goods.
  It is easy to prove that neither the first nor the second world war brought significant economic improvements to the USA. The USA's share of world output has decreased, not increased. Adjusted to inflation, the average American is slighly poorer than her ancestor of the 1950s, whereas the average European is much richer than her ancestor of the 1950s. Italy did not have paved roads, public lighting and appliances: today it has the same roads, lighting and appliances of the USA. Europe has largely closed the gap that 50 years ago made it the poor cousin of the USA. Again, one could make the case that countries such as Germany and France (not to mention Japan) have become the strongest competitors of the USA on the international markets. The USA, basically, first helped western European countries become rich, and then even become competitors of the USA. It should be self-evident that Europe has benefited more than the USA from the USA's invasion of Europe. Instead, millions of Europeans are willing to swear that the USA helped liberate Europe only out of economic interest.
  The Cold War itself was a massive investment whose dividents are mainly cashed by the former communist countries: the USA has not gained much from the liberation of Eastern Europe, while Eastern Europeans are rapidly becoming rich and modern countries, and may soon join the ranks of countries that compete internationally with the USA.
  No matter how overwhelming the evidence to the contrary, millions of Europeans are convinced that the USA only acts out of economic interests. One wonders what the USA could do to prove the opposite: absolutely nothing. Whatever the USA does in the future, these Europeans will always find "oil" or some other reason to explain that action. This is a dangerous attitude that creates a dangerous level of chronic distrust towards anything the USA says and does. It would make sense if it came from the Arab world. It is weird that it comes from Europe because Europe has been (so far) a net beneficiary of American actions. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (May 2004) Do not celebrate 1500 years of wars. In all the speeches celebrating the expansion of the European Union to 25 countries one notable protagonist was missing: the USA. We heard speeches praising Europe for building peace out of dictatorship and war. We heard speeches in which Europeans took credit for ending 1500 years of bloodshed. We did not hear any speech telling Europeans who liberated them, who enforced democracy in their countries, who caused the Soviet Union to collapse, who nurtured and helped the European Union from the beginning: the USA.
  This is bad history. Europe did not pacify itself: it was pacified by a much bigger power that emerged out of the ruins of WWII. Europe was a battleground for 1500 years. Europeans enjoyed killing each other and the rest of the world for 1500 years, pretty much every single year of every single century. Untill 1945. What happened in 1945 that had not happened in any of the years before, since the fall of the Roman Empire? The "pax americana". In 1945, at last, one power overwhelmingly dwarfed all the European countries and imposed its will on them. It was so strong that it even convinced Europeans that democracy is good and that capitalism is good (both concepts were widely despised before 1945). The occupation was so effective that today young Europeans repeat concepts derived from the USA as if they were native European concepts. Fascism, nazism and communism are rarely mentioned, as if they were the creation of some non-European evil, when in fact they were very much the product of 1500 years of European folly.
  Today's European Union is simply the product of two American victories: the USA's victory in World War II (against Germany and Japan) and the USA's victory in the Cold War (against the Soviet Union).
  Indirectly, all the politicians who omitted the USA from their speeches celebrating 60 years of peace in Europe are carrying out a form of brainwashing. They are trying to convince the younger generations that Europe (politically speaking) is something to be proud of, and not something to be ashamed of (politically speaking). This may be understandable, but it may lead to a new form of nationalism, "Euro-nationalism". Hopefully, the European leaders have not forgotten that nationalism was the very cause of two world wars. It would be more educational and more honest to tell young European what really happened: the small European countries caused millions of deaths all around the world in 1500 years of wars, until the USA invaded Europe in 1945. After 1945, there have been no wars in USA-occupied Europe, and there has been a continuous process of integration that has led to the European Union. In 1991, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the other half of Europe (the half that was invaded by the Soviet Union) was also won over by the USA and also adopted the USA model and also joined the European Union. The USA is not just a footnote in this story: it is the main protagonist. Omitting the protagonist from a story is not a good way to understand the meaning of the story and to learn from it for the future.
  Instead, one result of this impressive wave of Euro-nationalism is that Europeans are becoming increasingly anti-American, despite the fact that Europeans are obviously getting more and more Americanized (from food to clothes to movies to rock stars), while Americans are clearly not getting "European-ized" at all (Asian, African-American and Hispano-American cultures are far more influential on the American lifestyle than anything European).
  (See also Why I think there is a real danger of Euro-nazism).
  There is another reason for the sudden peace in Europe. Quite simply, Europe is becoming more and more irrelevant. Small countries like Holland and Portugal used to matter more than the entire subcontinents of India and China. Now the opposite is happening: the small European countries are hardly known outside their immediate neighbors, and even the "big" European "powers" (Germany, Britain, France, Italy) are less and less "powerful" compared with China and India, but even to Brazil or South Korea. Economically, countless countries are growing faster than the European "powers". As the European continent becomes less and less relevant, it makes sense that its many small countries get more and more united. It's the only way to remain relevant.
  Projecting into the future, though, it is hard to see how Europe can live up to its ambitions. It is inevitable that Russia (which has more natural resources than anyone else, on top of a thousand nuclear weapons) will eventually obscure the European Union. (See, for example, this IEA report on Europe's increased dependence on Russian gas). The consequences of a powerful and rich Russia bordering on a weak and less rich European Union are unpredictable. When they get more powerful, Russians will certainly remember that the European Union took advantage in 2004 of Russia's weakness and "annexed" a big chunk of its sphere of influence. What will Russians do when the roles are inverted?
  The Arab countries are also likely to become more relevant, especially if the USA's plan to democratize the area succeed. In a sense, Chirac is right in opposing democracy in the Middle East: it could result in a united Arab world, both democratic and wealthy, just like the European Union is the result of the USA's democratization of Europe. A democratic and capitalistic "Arab Union" would likely obscure the European Union, simply because they have the oil and Europe doesn't (the demographics is also in their favor, and 20 million immigrants already living in Europe are also in their favor).
  The problems are compounded by the inevitable change in USA priorities. Europe is no longer the war front, and it is just a matter of time before a USA president realizes it: the USA does not need Europe anymore. It might as well decide that its main allies are in South America (if isolationism prevails), in Russia (if pragmatism prevails), in India (if similarities prevail), or in Southeast Asia (if economics prevails). Inevitably, a weaker USA commitment to Europe will result in increased European vulnerability.
  One wonders if, in two or three generations, Europe won't simply become a battleground between Russia and the Arabs, with Russia becoming the last bastion of Christianity.
  The European Union is a great achievement for the rest of the world, that can stop fearing the massacres that small European countries have carried out for centuries against the rest of the world and among themselves. But it may not be such a good omen for the Europeans themselves. It may simply be the sign of an inevitable and rapid decline into irrelevance.
  European politicians should give fewer speeches on how Europe became such a grand concept and more speeches on how the USA created this concept and on how this American concept (the European Union) can now remain relevant.
  (Read What is worrisome about Western Europe) for more details on the rise of nationalism and antisemitism). TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (May 2004) Chaos in the European Union The reason the European Union cannot come up with a common policy in world affairs is very simple: the word "European Union" means different things to different countries. The most obvious cases are the two former colonial superpowers: France and Britain. The only thing they share is the ambition to remain world powers. (Unfortunately these two small countries still enjoy veto power at the United Nations, an anachronistic privilege that only contributes to feed their ambitions).
  France views the European Union as a surrogate for the lost French empire, and as a tool for France to "counterbalance" the USA (a Chirac expression). France often refers to its own policy as the policy of Europe (Chirac routinely says "Europe believes that...", thus attributing his own opinions to the entire European people). For France, the European Union is more or less a French territory. This attitude has worsened under Chirac (his imperial attitude harks back to DeGaulle), but was already there from the beginning. The original six-member European Community was conceived as France's political power plus Germany's industrial power (and four minor countries). French president after French president have reaffirmed that France and Germany constitute the "engine" of Europe (and each French president has been very careful to make sure Germany is left without an army and thus cannot become a political rival).
  Britain views the European Union as an alien place but an inevitable destiny, sort of an unwanted but unescapable close relative. Blair has reinvented Britain's mission as the bridge between Europe and the USA, but it is obvious that Britain is closer to the USA (and the other Anglosaxon countries) than to France or Germany. Unlike France, which desires a common European policy (run by France, of course), Britain does not welcome such an idea at all. Britain views itself as detached from Europe. Britain views its power and its uniqueness precisely in "not" being part of Europe. (One could say that France's view of itself is much more realistic than Britain's: Britain is fundamentally victim of an identity crisis, while France knows its identity very well).
  Italy, Spain and now Poland are slowly waking up to the fact that they command quite a bit of power in a democratic Europe. They have been relegated to second tier for a long time, due to the fact that military power determined the tier. Now that population, not military power, determines the importance of a country, Italy finds itself equal to France (thus ending a century-old inferiority complex towards their trans-Alpine cousins). Italy is a true believer in the European Union. After all, Italy is an abstraction, born itself out of the federation of smaller states. Florence or Milan or Venice have never truly become "Italian". They were city-states for centuries. So for them the transition to being "European" is painless. In fact, it is welcomed. The Italian city-states are probably the only ones to see the obvious benefit of being "European" rather than just "Italian". On top of it, those city-states spent centuries caring only for the economic (not imperial) aspect of things: the European market is far more appealing than the Italian market. It is not a coincidence that Italians consistently rank as the biggest fans of European integration.
  Germans are close seconds, and, again, it is not a coincidence: Germany too was created relatively recently by uniting a number of independent states. In fact, not all of the German people have been united in today's Germany (Austria and most of Switzerland are German people who are still outside the German Union). So, again, the European Union is a concept easier to understand for the Germans than, say, for the French. The fact that the German economy is likely to dominate the European Union helps accept it, of course.
  Spain and Poland are fighting for a constitution that would grant them the same rights as France, Britain and Italy. These middle-tier countries (Spain, Poland) view the European Union as the real thing. Their disconnect with France and Britain is that they see it as mostly an inter-European affair, not as a worldwide affair. Midsize countries such as Spain and Poland are only interested in internal European affairs, not in world affairs.
  The very small countries, whether old imperial powers such as Holland and Portugal or recent inventions such as Latvia and Slovenia, see the European Union as the lesser evil. They have no strong national identity, no historical independence to defend, and no political/economic interests that they risk losing. Becoming a region of a big powerful country sounds better than being simply an isolated small powerless banana-republic.
  Needless to say, several of the smaller countries benefited greatly from joining, and for them the European Union remains mainly a cow to milk. But, just like France, Germany and Italy are forgetting where their wealth came from (the USA), so will Ireland and Portugal forget that they were shephard and fishermen communities before they joined the European Union. The day will come that they will believe they themselves (not the European Union) created their own wealth, just like modern Germans and Italians now believe that they (not the USA) created their own democracy and economy.
  Bottom line: there is only one European Union, but there are several different definitions of what it is.
  When Finnish ambassador Pertti Salolainen declared "The EU... has no vision, no leadership", he was merely stating a fact, not an opinion. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (April 2004) Cyprus: Another farce at the European Union. The European Union accepted countries such as Latvia and Slovakia, and already approved the future membership of Romania and Bulgaria, but rejected the application of Turkey, on the basis of racial and religious intolerance worthy of the Middle Ages. The ultimate farce is that even Cyprus (an island which technically still has a civil war going on) was accepted. The European Union quickly set up a referendum to unify the island, but after telling the Greek part of the island that they would be welcomed anyway in the Union, no matter how they voted. The Turkish half of the island, instead, would be admitted only if the whole of the island voted in favor of reunification. It didn't take a genius to predict that Turkish Cyprus had a strong motivation to vote yes, and Greek Cyprus had no motivation to vote yes. That is what happened, and only the extremely dumb bureaucrats of the European Union (a unique collection of idiots) was surprised. The ultimate irony is, of course, that the side that rejected the plan (the Greek side) will get the reward of becoming an EU member.
  First of all, the whole world wonders why in heaven is it so important that Cyprus gets unified. Why can't the Greeks live with Greece and the Turks live with Turkey? Secondly, people around the world are scratching their heads trying to understand the logic that rewards the side that disobeys the will of the EU. Last but not least, all the Turkish people in the world (whether they live in Turkey, Cyprus or Germany) are wondering how many more slaps in the face they have to endure. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (January 2004) The Europacifists just don't get it. On january 24, the Guardian (one of the most anti-American newspapers in the world), published an article by a Naomi Klein which is quite emblematic of the persistent hypocrisy of Europacifists.
  Throughout the Iraqi crisis, the Guardian consistently defended Saddam Hussein's right to remain in power, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein never allowed any Iraqi citizen any free opinion (and certainly no free election). If it were for the Guardian, Saddam Hussein would still be in power right now, dissidents would still be shot by the thousands, and Saddam would probably remain in power till the end of his life, to be eventually replaced by his even more murderous son. Now that the USA got rid of Saddam's dictatorship and that Iraqis are free to express their opinion, the Guardian is suddenly concerned about the will of the Iraqi people. The article "Of course the White House fears free elections in Iraq" sides with the cleric who wants the new Iraqi government elected by the people, not appointed by the USA. The concern for the rights of ordinary Iraqis is welcome, especially coming from people who never cared for the rights of the ordinary Iraqis. One would hope that it signals a true change of heart, and that, next time we confront a tyrant, these anti-American fundamentalists would vote for deposing the tyrant and not to keep him in power.
  Unfortunately, the article reveals the usual fascist bias of the Europacifists by counting only the people who marched in the streets (in the usual Mussolinian misunderstanding of what democracy is about, the author of the article focuses on the "100,000 Iraqis" who marched in the streets, but seems totally indifferent to the will of the 20 million Iraqis who stayed home, whose will may or may not be the same as the will of the 0.5% who marched).
  "I'm not an election expert" the author of the article claims, but then goes on to express very strong opinions on how elections should be and should not be organized in a country that has never had free elections (never in five thousand years). So much for not being an expert, I guess.
  In concluding, it doesn't take a genius to understand what this is all about. It is not about democracy for the Iraqi people, but just the opposite: it is about sabotaging the transition to democracy so that the Baath party can get back to power. These anti-American fundamentalists will not give up. In fact, they get angrier and angrier as the overthrow of Saddam becomes more and more irreversible, and as they see a transition towards a much more humane regime, and a much more democratic regime. (The Guardian article, of course, completely omits the news that hundreds of free elections have already taken place all over Iraq to elect municipal and regional leaders, something that no Arab country has ever experienced in the entire history of Arab civilization).
  The article calls for "boycotts" against the USA companies that are engaged in rebuilding Iraq. That, again, is more of the same: the Guardian never called for boycotting the thousands of European and American companies that worked for Saddam Hussein. In fact, over the last week I haven't seen a single call for boycott against any of the companies that work with any of the world's dictatorships. These Europacifists just don't get it: it is so obvious that they are asking to boycott only companies engaged in helping a country get rid of a tyrant, that their mission is to defend fascist dictators and sabotage any democratic movement. It doesn't take any thinking: just read what they publish.
  Even when they pretend to be pro-democracy, the Europacifists cannot hide their fundamental pro-fascist nature.

  (Incidentally, I too think that the cleric and those 100,000 Iraqis are right, as I have written months ago in Why the ayatollah is right and Bush is wrong, but 1. I don't claim that this represents the opinion of 20 million Iraqis, but rather simply the opinion of those 100,000 Iraqis and mine, all 100,001 being very incompetent in the matter of organizing elections, and 2. I was in favor of removing Saddam Hussein and those 100,000 Iraqis can march in the street because people like me helped remove Saddam Hussein).

  TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (January 2004) How the USA saved Western Europe. Europacifists are not only misguided in their fundamentalist criticism of anything the USA does around the world, and in Iraq in particular: they are also ungrateful. A simple analysis of the effects of the Iraqi war shows that the real beneficiaries were the Europeans, not the Americans. The USA has its own oil, and mainly imports from Canada and Mexico, and will soon receive oil also from Central Asia via the brand new Afghani pipeline; but Europeans depend ever more on Arab oil and Arab purchases of European technology. The USA is not threatened by the Arab minority, which remains one of the smallest in the country, but European countries such as France and Italy are confronted with a fast-growing Arab minority. The USA does not border on Arab countries with booming populations, but the entire Mediterranean world is faced with the booming populations of Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. The Usa had little to fear from Libya's, Syria's and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Europe's status as a military power, if not the physical safety of its citizens, were at stake: France looked less and less powerful as Libya and Iraq were about to acquire the same kind of weapons that make a country a world power.
  It is Western Europe, not the USA, that is threatened by the democraphic, economic and military growth of the Arab world.
  The Iraqi war and especially its post-war have greatly humbled the potentialities and the ambitions of the Arab dictators. Their economies are more dependent on the USA than ever. Their military power has been ridiculed (the USA has shown that it can annihilate a country the size of Iraq in less than a month). Their population will keep growing, but democracy and progress in Iraq may lead all Arab countries towards a more self-sufficient future, and thus less emigration towards Europe. In fact, it may even lead to a reversal of fortunes that may send millions of Arabs back home.
  The main beneficiary of the Iraqi war has been Europe. Europacifists who think the USA screwed up the Middle East literally don't know what they are talking about: it was France and Britain that screwed up the Middle East, and the USA is now trying to fix the problem. Whatever the real reasons that led Bush to invade Iraq, the Europacifists should be celebrating, not complaining. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (December 2003) The European Union may become as irrelevant as the United Nations. Recent events have proven how dangerous it is to become irrelevant: if you have become irrelevant, you have to expect that eventually someone will start treating you accordingly. It happened to the United Nations that, incapable of providing peace to Timor or Kosovo, and incapable of saving the lives of 900,000 Rwandans, has been ignored by the USA, the power that created the United Nations. Now the European Union is on the verge of becoming another bloated and irrelevant institution.
  The European Union is run by an impressive combination of incompetent politicians (Prodi, Giscard, Dehaene, Duisenberg, etc) through a gigantic bureaucracy. The very structure of power in the European Union is grotesque and, ultimately, anti-democratic: the European Parliament (elected by the people) has no real power, while two executive bodies (the council and the commission) share the real power, mostly on the basis of national interests.
  Despite the amount of bureaucracy, the European Union is incapable of enforcing European laws: France and Germany just violated the Maastricht treaty but they were not even fined, let alone expelled. Chirac (the self-proclaimed emperor of Europe and Oversea Territories) threatened the European countries that dared side with the USA on the Iraqi issue, thus splitting Europe in two (France and its colonies against Britain, Spain, Italy, the new democracies of Eastern Europe). And now Chirac has told the rest of Europe that the new constitution (drafted, what a coincidence, by a Frenchman, Giscard) has to be approved as it is: "take it or leave it", says the heir to Napoleon. Needless to say, the others decided to "leave it". Is it a coincidence that the two countries strongly in favor of the constitution were France and Germany, the same two countries that violated the Maastricht treaty, the same two countries that supported Saddam Hussein? Is it a coincidence the constitution mainly hurts Spain and Poland, the two countries that more closely allied with the USA on the Iraqi issue?
  In foreign policy, it is fairly obvious that Britain is a closer ally of the USA than any other country in the world, while France is a stronger opponent of the USA than Russia or China. Thus one finds within the European Union the two extremes of diligent (almost passive) pro-USA policy and passionate (almost fanatic) anti-USA policy.
  The European Union has become a "union" only in words, not in facts. It is only a matter of time before someone (the equivalent of George W Bush) stands up and says what is relatively obvious: the European Union is becoming irrelevant. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (November 2003) Why I think there is a real danger of Euro-nazism. A recent article that I wrote ( What is worrisome about Western Europe) caused many European readers to reply that I was out of my mind. I will try to explain that mine is more than anti-European paranoia (I am a European after all).
  When right-wing parties win more and more votes, and anti-Americans march in the streets by the millions, it is hard for me not to relate to stories my father told me about the 1930s. (Is it a coincidence that the larger marches took place in the former fastist countries Germany, Italy, Spain and France?)
  
  Rome stadium, 2005
  My argument uses a little bit of history and a little bit of logic to draw a parallel between what happened in Germany in the 1930s and what is happening in Europe today.
  The big evil of 19th century and 20th century Europe was nationalism, which had been born in the 18th century: it led each European people to believe that their nation was somehow special, and eventually to believe that they were a superior race (it wasn't only the Germans who thought they were a superior race). Nationalism led to national wars, and eventually to world wars (more than two because they already started in 1756 with the Seven Years' war). Europeans massacred each other decade after decade after decade in the name of their nationality.
  At the same time, socialism became more and more pervasive. It had an obvious appeal on the lower classes (traditionally forgotten by the ruling elite). Unfortunately, it also stated the primacy of the state over the citizen, which indirectly convinced people that the state had to be more (not less) powerful. Nationalism plus socialism makes "nazism" (it is just an abbreviation of the two).
  At the time when nationalism met socialism, Germany was in the middle of a severe economic crisis. This did not fit the ideal of a superior race: if we are a superior race, why are we decaying? Hitler was the perfect solution to the dilemma: a man who planned to restore Germany's superior race to its grandeur. It turns out it could have happened anywhere in Europe, because nationalism and socialism were pervasive. Germany was the place where they happened to meet first. Germany was also the homeland of socialism, and the last of the big nations to unite. So, in my view, Germany was already nazist, and Hitler was simply the product of German nazism. He found a name (a clever one) for a phenomenon that had already happened. Mussolini had done the same in Italy, but couldn't find the right name. Others were doing the same in other parts of Europe (Stalin, Franco, Salazar). Different names but same concept: my nation is a great nation (nationalism) and the state will make sure its grandeur is realized (socialism).
  Fast forward to today's Europe. My worries begin with the historical revisionism that is pervasive among the new generations of Europeans. That revisionism has at least two causes: 1. The eyewitnesses who knew what really happened are dying, and their children (who cannot doubt their parents' stories) will all be dead in a couple of generations. 2. The European soul has not really changed, despite the American colonization and the forced democratization of their societies. Just check the history textbooks that each and every child studies in Europe: Julius Caesar and Napoleon are still described as heroes, not mass murderers; the only philosophers and scientists worth discussing are the European ones; the book invariably ends with the European Union, depicted as the greatest achievement of human civilization. No wonder that Europeans are rapidly forgetting the 100 million people that Europeans killed in the 20th century, and 1600 years of continuous European wars. This historical revisionism is rapidly changing the perception of what happened before WW II: these Europeans think that Europe was already living in peace and democracy, and the USA had nothing to do with liberating Europe from nazifascism and certainly nothing to do with creating the current wealthy, democratic and peaceful Europe. In fact, more and more Europeans think that the USA is the problem not the solution. There are more and more Europeans willing to believe that Hitler did not exterminate Jews (again, the eyewitnesses are dying and their children will soon start dying). There are more and more Europeans willing to believe that Europeans did not cause WW II. One more generation and Europeans will openly debate whether Hitler was good or bad: wasn't he just trying to create a better world? Didn't the USA stop Hitler from creating a better world? Wasn't Hitler trying to do what Caesar and Napoleon had tried to do, spread the highest civilization? Even if it never reaches these extremes, the historical revisionism has already created a strong European nationalism. The new Europeans strongly believe that Europe was the homeland of democracy and peace. They see themselves as a somewhat superior race, that achieve things that other civilizations did not achieve. These new Euronationalists (mostly born after WW II) think they "know" the truth. The rest of the world has to learn the truth from Europe. So the national nationalisms are being replaced by a continental nationalism.
  At the same time, socialism is more pervasive than ever. Europeans are capitalists only by convenience. But many have strong socialist beliefs. Where Americans despise the state, Europeans tend to look up to the state to solve all sorts of problems. Where Americans are strongly individualistic, Europeans despise individualism (and individual achievements) and tend to prefer mediocrity guaranteed by the state.
  In one of his most celebrated speeches (Berlin, 10 december 1940), Adolf Hitler told the crowd that his war was a war against rampant capitalism, against the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, against mass poverty (all of this represented by Britain and their friend the USA), and towards a socialist state that would be more just and humane. Isn't this precisely the view that today millions of modern Europeans (and their political leaders) have of the Anglosaxon countries?
  European nationalism plus socialism makes Euro-nazism (same abbreviation).
  Alas, history is being cruel on the Euronazists (European nationalists and socialists): Europe is rapidly declining compared with the USA and will soon be passed even by China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc etc. The day that South Korea is more relevant than France is not very far. By the end of the 21st century, no European country will rank among the top 10 economic powers of the world. The European Union as a whole will be only fifth or sixth (USA, China, India, ASEAN will be bigger economies with probably much larger populations, and most likely a union of Latin American countries will also have passed the European Union). This rapid decline does not fit the nationalistic model: if the Europeans are a superior race, why isn't Europe the leading country of the world? This is the same paradox that German nationalists faced in the 1920s. The logical conclusion could be (and I hope that I am wrong) that Europe needs a new kind of leader, and Euronazism will have found its new Hitler.
  The same way that German national socialism coupled with Germany's crisis led to Hitler, I fear the new European national socialism coupled with Europe's crisis could lead to a new Hitler.
  Science fiction? I hope so.
  Maybe it is just a coincidence that the huge marches in the streets of western Europe coincided with the growth of the right-wing parties in Italy (15% of the votes), Austria (Hader), Holland (20% of the votes), France (a final round between Adolf Chirac, right-wing, and Lepen, estreme right-wing).
  Maybe it is just my paranoia that I see Europeans (led by anti-American fanatics such as Theodorakis, Pinter and Grass) sympathyzing with dictators all over the world, from Qaddafi to Mugabe to Castro.
  Maybe it is just a coincidence that, out of hundreds of crimes against mankind committed in the 20th century, a court in Belgium (in february 2003) decided to prosecute the Israeli prime minister, Sharon, of a massacre committed some 20 years ago. (Sharon is certainly not a saint, but why pick on a Jewish leader when so many leaders from Belgium and France supported the maddest African dictators? and why not pick one of the many Arab dictators with much bloodier hands?) Maybe it is a coincidence that in november 2003 a public opinion poll commissioned by the European Union showed that 59% of western Europeans ranked Israel as the greatest threat to peace in the world. In Sweden in january 2004 a second-rate artist (Dror Feiler) presented an "artwork" glorifying a Palestinian suicide bomber Maybe it is a coincidence that the Internet is flooded with messages widely circulated among Europeans about the international Jewish conspiracy, an old nazist refrain, which today's Europeans simply update to the age of the USA (see, for example, this message that has been circulating in Italy).
  Or maybe there is a general fascination in Europe for totalitarian regimes, a mood that has always been there and was temporarily suffocated by the USA invasion, a mood that is beginning to surface again in the form of right-wing parties and leftist marches in the streets. A mood that is exactly the mood of 1922 and 1933, just much more spread out ideologically.
  There are, as usual, dramatic responsibilities by the Left. In my opinion, there are three reasons for the growth of the right wing in Europe: 1. Immigration; 2. September 11; and, last but not least 3. The lies of the Left. The masses may be ignorant, but they are not dumb, and they realize that liberal intellectuals tend to spin bigger lies than corrupt conservatives. So the masses, which are ignorant but not dumb, prefer to vote for the corrupt politicians of the Right than for the liberal intellectuals of the Left. This has been happening at least since 1945, when the intellectuals were depicting the Soviet Union as a paradise. In a sense, every time a liberal intellectual screams that the USA invaded Iraq for the oil, they are providing votes to the right-wing parties (it takes five minutes to prove that buying oil from Saddam Hussein would have been much more convenient than the very expensive invasion of Iraq) (then they change their theory and say it's because of the euro-dollar, but it takes another five minutes to prove that Bush wants a weak dollar, not a strong one)(then they change their theory again... and again and again and again... and their credibility gets lower and lower and lower...).
  The masses are sincerely "pacifist" but they easily perceive that the Left is only being pacifist for opportunistic reasons. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (October 2003) How environmentalists caused Osama. As more and more countries in the West phase out or oppose nuclear reactors, what is happening is very simple: the West becomes more and more dependent on Arab oil. Luckily, the Arab sheiks and assorted dictators have not realized yet that they will soon control (de facto) the economies of western Europe and the Far East. But, in the meantime, the growing western dependency on oil (thanks to an increasing demand for electricity and a growing opposition to nuclear power) has created massive western intereference in Islamic affairs. Remember that for the likes of Osama even a mere visit by a non-Muslim business man (an infidel) to Saudi Arabia is reason enough to kill. As Germany phases out its nuclear program, it will have to send a lot more managers, engineers, workers, boats and planes to Saudi Arabia. Every time a western government signs a deal with an Muslim country, it is increasing the chances that terrorism strikes back at home.
  Worse: in a grotesque comedy of errors, any such deal also provides money for the terrorists, because part of the price for oil goes to Osama sympathyzers.
  Every time an environmentalist marches in the streets of Rome or Berlin to protest against nuclear power, s/he is helping Osama acquire the reasons and the means to blow her/him up. As Lenin used to say, "capitalists will sell us even the rope to hang them". Rephrase it as "the infidels will give us even the money to blow them up". TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
  Back to the world news | Top of this page

  ---

• (September 2003) What is worrisome about Western Europe.
  Something very worrisome is happening in Western Europe, and the rest of the world may be making a big mistake in ignoring it.
  First of all, a history lesson. The 19th century was the century of "nationalism". Europeans developed a keen sense of "nation", of belonging to an ethnic, linguistic and sometimes religious group. Kingdoms such as France and Spain became more than just "the territories ruled by such and such a king/queen": they became nations. Germany and Italy were born by unifying independent states that had in common ethnic and linguistic traits. Nationalism quickly escalated out of control and led to two world wars. Nationalism was the great topic of the 19th century, but also the great curse of the 20th. In the meantime, the European powers caused all sorts of devastation around the world: the slave trade and colonization are the best known. Europeans invented fascism, nazism and communism, the three scourges of the 20th century. In other words: Europe is responsible (historically speaking) for many of the evils of the modern world.
  Nationalism was the trigger for many of the worst catastrophes caused by the Europeans. Throughout the 20th century, the world has paid a very high price whenever European masses took to the streets (San Petersburg 1917, Roma 1922, Berlin 1933, Paris 1968).
  Fast forward to 2003. Europeans (at least in the continent) have developed a strong sense of European nationalism. They convinced themselves that they are not really guilty of the massacres of the past. On the contrary, they are the most educated and civilized people in the world. They march in the streets by the millions (which is of course a bad omen per se) and, on top of the undemocratic essence of marching in the streets (you are basically pressuring the government to listen to the people who march in the streets, which are only a minority of the population), they never march in the streets to protest against a dictatorship, they only march in the streets to defend a dictatorship. Have you ever heard of a mass demonstration in Europe against China? Cuba? Saudi Arabia? Syria? Libya? Burma? Never. Not once. But try to remove one of those dictators, and millions of people march in the street to oppose the "war" (if a dictator kills one million of his own people, like Saddam did, that is not a "war", whereas when someone tries to depose Saddam that is a "war"). It is even more disturbing that most Europeans don't realize this simple fact (it is not an opinion, it is a fact). Ask any of the "marchers" and they will deny that they only defend dictators. But that's what they do: they only march when a dictator is in danger, they never march when the dictator is left alone to oppress and massacre his subjects. It also comes to them as an automatic reflex: if someone threatens a dictator, they feel impelled to take the side of the dictator.
  If that were not disturbing enough, there is also a growing level of ignorance about the European public. Yes, the very same public that prides itself in being very informed the rest of the world. The truth is much more somber: Europeans are as ignorant as Americans, but Americans are at least aware that they are ignorant, whereas Europeans are convinced that they are very knowledgeable. The truth is that they know even less than Americans (the European media devote even less room to foreign policy than American media), and, on top of that, they are bombarded with dis-information. European media (mainstream media, not tabloid) are flooded by all sorts of information that is quickly proven to be false. But millions of people read it, and many remain with the convinction that it was true. For example, you keep hearing Europeans claim that Saddam's sons are not dead (even after Saddam himself mourned their death). A combination of poor education and poor media has created a generation of highly ignorant Europeans who are convinced of being highly knowledgeable: an explosive combination.
  As always, ignorance begets racism and, in particular, Europe's oldest form of racism: anti-semitism. There is a resurgence of anti-semitism, as more and more Europeans (the ones who don't know anyone who was at Auschwitz) doubt that Hitler really killed six millions Jews (a popular theory in Europe is that there were fewer than six million Jews in Europe before the war) or they blame the Jews for causing their own persecution. There is widespread hostility against Israel and sympathy for the Palestinian terrorists. More and more Europeans side with Islamic extremists in claiming that the USA is controlled by a conspiracy of evil Jews, an old nazist refrain (see, for example, this message that has been circulating in Italy). They pick on low-level bureaucrats of the USA government, turning them into giants (Perle, then Wolfowitz, then who knows who), and ignoring the other thousands of much more influential politicians from all other ethnic groups, in order to create the impression that there is a "Jewish domination" of the USA. (That was precisely Hitler's invention. Hitler did not invent antisemitism: that was invented by the Popes. Hitler invented the idea that the USA and Britain were his enemies only because there was a "world Jewish domination". Exactly what millions of today's Europeans are beginning to repeat again).
  It is not surprising that "conspiracy theories" are so popular in western Europe: they don't require any knowledge of the events, and they are easy to understand and relay. They are almost always based on a gross simplification of the events, but that's precisely what ignorant people like. Europeans (just like Arabs) are deeply influenced by Hollywood movies. For example, most of them know only the historical characters that have been at the center of a Hollywood movie. Hollywood movies specialize in conspiracy theories, and Europeans have become addicted to them without realizing that they are... movies.
  The growing ignorance of the European masses combined with the influence of Hollywood has led to an exponential increase in conspiracy theories: anti-Americans are ready to believe in anything, as long as it proves that the USA are evil; and it doesn't matter that some of the conspiracy theories contradict each other: the same people can defend several conflicting theories at the same time. For example, here is a brief summary of conspiracy theories spun by anti-American propaganda in Europe: "the USA invaded Iraq to steal the Iraqi oil"; once it became clear that the USA has no intention of stealing the oil (and in fact does not need the Iraqi oil because it already controls most of the oil reserves in the world), "the USA has invaded Iraq to hide the fact that an American citizen was accidentally killed by Israel in the occupied territories"; once it became clear that this theory did not hold water (was and peace in Iraq are slightly too expensive just for hiding the death of one unknown American), "the USA invaded Iraq because Iraq had decided to trade in euros not dollars; once this was showed to be false (Iraq sold oil to the United Nations in dollars, and in any case Bush has done everything in his power to lower the value of the dollar), "well... no official anti-American explanation available yet, but one coming soon!"
  The fate of conspiracy theories is amusing: they change as they are proven false, and the anti-Americans who believed them don't even remember them a few weeks later, as there is a new one, often a conflicting one, to recite like a mantra.
  Underlying all of these phenomena is a resurgence of nationalism, albeit of a different sort. Europeans, especially younger Europeans, have convinced themselves that they are not responsible for any major crime, and are actually the heirs to a luminous cultural tradition (not to centuries of massacres, racism and injustice). Many Europeans have convinced themselves that they, Western Europe, are the most civilized place in the world (no matter how many million people have been killed in five continents by the folly of their forefathers). So they convinced themselves that they are entitled to an opinion (50 years ago they would have been more careful) and that their opinion is not only relevant, but it is the "only" one that is relevant. Worse: many Europeans have convinced themselves that they don't owe anything to the USA and Britain. More and more Europeans behave as if they freed themselves of Hitler and Mussolini without any help from the Americans (see for example It is not only that these Europeans are misled about America's true intensions (America is fighting for Europe too, and not for oil or for the dollar, but simply for geopolitical strategy and ultimately for the spread of democracy). They end up siding (de facto) with the enemy: with Osama, with Saddam, and with whichever crazy dictator will be targeted by the USA next. Instead of siding with the liberator, they end up siding with the oppressor. Many Italians in the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s were well intentioned, but badly misled by their own nationalistic ideals. These Europeans are following dangerous examples.
  The attitude of so many Europeans towards the USA, the world, totaliratian regimes, their own history is worrisome. It is as worrisome as it should have been a century ago, when it was largely neglected until people started dying by the millions from France to Indochina.
  See also
• Iraq: a farce of lies.
• The losers: France, Germany and Russia
• This time, Europacifist should do the right thing
• A history lesson
• The defeat of Europacifism
• Censorship in Europe and in the Arab world
• The real problem is Chirac, not Saddam
• Europeans march for peace
• The Iraqi crisis is reshaping the world alliances