A-Infos (en) Italy, UCDI #183 - WARMONGERS! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The European elections are approaching and the outgoing leadership of 
the European Commission is finalizing its future program, dictating the 
themes of the electoral campaign. The accentuation of Ursula von der 
Leyen's war-mongering line and her endurance constitutes a worrying, but 
in some ways obligatory, turning point in the politics of the European 
Union, which must face the cul-de-sac into which it has entered and 
untie the knot of incompatibility between the implementation of a green 
policy, the creation of a new neo-Kurtense economy and the absence of 
the capital necessary for the realization of the project due to the 
growing military expenses and the rearmament required by the war in Ukraine.
When the last European elections took place in 2019, the mandate 
received from the Commission was clear: the resources should have been 
aimed at fighting climate change to create a new economy generically 
defined as green but which is more appropriate to identify with the term 
neo-curtense . By reversing the trend towards ever greater 
globalisation, the aim was to pursue relative self-sufficiency and the 
return of a series of production chains within the territory of the 
Union, to combat production delocalisation, with a reduction in 
logistics costs and greater attention to the internal market, 
undoubtedly one of the richest in the world. For the project to be 
successful, it was essential to maintain the starting conditions, 
consisting of the availability of low-cost energy which would have 
allowed the persistence and development of manufacturing activities and 
ensured the competitiveness of goods produced in Europe compared to 
those coming from from the markets of emerging countries, characterized 
by the use of fossil energy, by a fairly low cost of raw materials and 
relatively low labor costs, factors certainly more available to 
non-European countries than they were to Europe.
Except that first the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine absorbed 
enormous resources and required investments in vaccines to counter the 
spread of the infection, which also led to a reduction in production 
volumes, even if temporary, due to the lockdowns, to be then followed, 
before recovery could take place, by the outbreak of war which absorbed 
increasing financial resources and investments.
Europe has tried to remedy this new situation by resorting to common 
debt, making notable progress in the field of economic integration and 
has thus managed to lead, albeit amidst many uncertainties, the common 
purchase of vaccines, has relaunched productivity by making PNRR capital 
available, from which the countries of the Union have drawn to varying 
degrees, bringing into play for the first time the ability of the 
European system to contract common debt.
However, when the costs of war and those of managing the enormous flow 
of refugees from Ukraine took over, the costs necessary to maintain a 
failed state like the Ukrainian one (for which today it is the European 
Union that pays the costs of pensions, the health system, the 
administrative apparatus and so on), to meet the current financial 
needs, at first the Union scraped the bottom of the barrel, looking for 
resources in the folds of the community budget, but then, with the 
continuation of the war and the growth of Ukrainian demands, in the face 
of a progressive decline in the United States' commitment, the 
Commission has chosen to clumsily get its hands on what constitutes the 
majority share of the community budget, i.e. the resources for the 
agriculture, to drain from this budget item the capital necessary to 
finance the war.
What is happening on the battlefield, with the progressive withdrawal of 
Ukrainian troops in the field, demonstrates that what has been done so 
far is not enough, also because, in response to the Ukrainian crisis, 
Russia has progressively converted its economy into a war economy, not 
neglecting a progressive increase in the production of consumer goods as 
well, as a result of a complex phenomenon consisting of the intertwining 
of the effect of sanctions, the arrival of some goods on the internal 
market, and the increased capacity of the internal production system to 
meet needs.
The combination of this set of factors was the 4.5% increase in Russian 
GDP in 2023, compared to the fall in the GDP of the countries belonging 
to the European Union which certainly had lower if not negative increases.

War economy

Now, the outgoing Commission, in outlining the political program for the 
next legislature, finds nothing better than to aim for the reconversion 
of the Union's economy into a war economy, declaring that the problems 
of defence, or if you prefer, of offence, have priority over any other. 
To do this he must shamelessly lie about when it is happening in Ukraine 
and about the whole affair consisting of NATO's intervention in favor of 
that country.
If there was intellectual honesty in Brussels politicians, in outlining 
their program, they should start from an objective analysis of the 
factors that led to the Ukrainian conflict and draw the consequences. It 
would be necessary to tell all the citizens of the Union, who are not 
convinced - rightly so - about providing unconditional support to 
Ukraine, what are the interests and reasons that lie at the origins of 
the conflict, highlighting the conflicting interests of the various 
international actors. We should then begin by saying that the European 
Union has fallen into the trap of Great Britain, which, pursuing its 
policy of dividing the continent, has done everything to ensure that the 
conflict in Ukraine is not resolved through negotiations and has done 
everything way, once the war broke out, for the conflict to continue.
Having reiterated that Moscow's attack on Ukraine constitutes aggression 
by one sovereign state against another, it would be necessary to add 
that the ongoing conflict concerns the interests of a group of Russian 
oligarchs who aspire to gain control of the Ukrainian economy and of its 
territory, in contrast with another set of Ukrainian oligarchs, whose 
interests are connected both to multinationals dealing with agriculture 
and to those that favor investments in raw materials, which aspire to do 
the same.
These two interest groups are clashing for control of Ukrainian 
territory and its resources, regardless of the massacre of the Ukrainian 
people and the Russian people. Freedom, democracy, the free institutions 
of the Ukrainian people have nothing to do with it, proof of which is 
that under the cover of the martial law enacted in Ukraine all freedom 
has been cancelled: eleven opposition parties are outlawed; religious 
freedom has disappeared, leaving space and offering the support of the 
institutions to the persecution of a gang of criminals made up of 
priests and monks against other priests and monks, who are fighting a 
war with no holds barred, in the name of an autocephalous Church that 
aspires to wrest from a group of competing monks and priests control of 
ecclesiastical assets and places of worship of ancient and accredited 
prestige, as well as of great and recognized economic value. They take 
advantage of the war and the contrast between the different economic and 
social components of society, exploiting contrasts relating to 
geostrategic interests, they take advantage of it to settle accounts 
that have roots in a distorted reading of tradition and religious history.

The interests of the Union and its peoples

Faced with this complex situation, one wonders what interest there is 
for the peoples who are part of the European Union to get involved in 
this butchery operation which sees two peoples as victims and two 
oligarchs clashing: Putin who aspires to be the new tsar and the great 
almoner, and Zelensky, a Ukrainian oligarch, only apparently the 
expression of a democratic regime, but in reality a follower of the 
tenant of the Kremlin.
By examining the situation on the ground objectively and regardless of 
ideological prejudices, the European Union should recognize that it is 
not in the economic and political interests of the citizens of the 
states of the union for Ukraine's entry into the EU for a variety of 
reasons which we will to list.
The country's entry into the Union would entail an upheaval of the 
common agricultural policy, channeling most of the financial resources 
towards Ukrainian territory and creating phenomena of unfair competition 
towards community productions since they would find themselves faced 
with the sale of Ukrainian products on the European internal market, 
cultivated without respecting community rules and with costs that are 
certainly lower and more competitive than those of European farmers who 
have attacked and dispersed Ukrainian agricultural goods and commodities 
unduly sold on the internal European market by taking advantage of the 
opening of the so-called solidarity corridors, attacking them and 
dispersing them.
The exploitation of Ukrainian mineral and industrial resources is 
problematic due to the pollution of the soil due to the war, the 
presence of endless minefields which prevent the usability of the soil, 
the destruction of the industrial and extractive apparatus, the use of 
depleted uranium bullets that have polluted aquifers and territory, last 
but not least, the problems of accessing these territories due to the 
Russian military presence. Full exploitation of these resources would 
require Russia's total, unconditional withdrawal from Ukrainian 
territory, a goal that seems neither reasonable nor achievable in practice.
The war has desertified the Ukrainian territory, reducing its population 
well beyond the effects of what was already a very serious demographic 
crisis, so the reconstruction of the Ukrainian territory appears more 
difficult than ever, while it does not appear conceivable that the 
populations who have having taken the path of the diaspora, are 
available to return to the territories they have abandoned and which 
today appear damaged and unlivable due to the war.
A remedy worse than the disease

To at least partially overcome the problems we have mentioned and obtain 
the necessary capital, a proposal is making its way among members of the 
leadership of the outgoing Commission to draw on the seized capital and 
assets belonging to the Russian government or to oligarchs who belong to 
the dictator's circle Putin... At the Russian Central Bank, 400 billion 
in foreign currency reserves have been frozen and, in the EU alone, the 
assets seized from oligarchs friends of the Kremlin amount to 228 
billion dollars. In essence, the set of rules that allow the seizure of 
mafia or drug trafficking capital to dedicate it to civilian use or 
weapons would apply to the Russian government; This is the most 
immediate consequence of considering the Russian one as a criminal state.
This choice, in our opinion, would have an undoubted media effect, but 
would have disastrous consequences, to say the least, in terms of 
relations with global markets, since this would mean denying any 
protection and guarantee to capital deposits in banks other than those 
directly controlled by the own country, would mean placing a serious 
limit and
insurmountable for the circulation of capital with imaginable 
consequences for the economy to the full advantage of the BRICS.
More realistically, however, we can expect a policy of rearmament and 
relaunching the activity of the war industry, with the consequence that 
once the reconversion of an economy towards war production has begun it 
is extremely difficult to go back; not only that, but once the weapons 
are produced the market that requires them becomes saturated, if steps 
are not taken at the same time to dispose of them and use them through 
further conflicts. This means that the opportunities. the possibility of 
wars will proliferate disproportionately, that the available resources 
will be directed towards the arms market and taken away from uses 
relating to health, education, welfare, world hunger, peace initiatives, 
civil and social well-being, to increase the opportunities for death, of 
violence. of oppression, of inequality.

The Editorial Team

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/03/17/guerrafondai/
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A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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