Opinion – Nelson Barbosa: Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?

Ukraine is an unavoidable subject, and there is everything in the debate between “anti-social network experts”: US imperialism versus Soviet nostalgia, neo-Nazism versus neo-Stalinism and dreams of European integration.

I am rooting for European integration and I venture my economist’s view: putting a military alliance ahead of economic integration created the pretext for Putin to invade Ukraine.

Explaining better, economic and cultural relations tend to bring Eastern Europe and Russia itself closer to the EU (European Union). The problem is that EU fiscalism, US intervention in Eastern Europe and Putin’s authoritarianism delay the process.

The current crisis dates back to 2013-14, when the West demanded a strong fiscal squeeze for Ukraine to join the EU and receive IMF aid, and in parallel, the US openly supported a far-right coup against the pro-Russian Ukrainian government. On this subject, I recommend the documentary “Ukraine on Fire” by Oliver Stone.

In the following years, Europe remained trapped in fiscal labyrinths, and the US once again encouraged Ukraine to join NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Now, Russian nationalism has responded with gunfire.

Putin is wrong and has already lost the war in politics and economics. Ukraine and Russia will integrate with Europe throughout this century. The military invasion now is a desperate act to delay the process, causing death and destruction in Ukraine and economic chaos in Russia.

On the other hand, if the US pro-NATO movement had been replaced by rapid Ukraine integration into the EU, without a fiscal squeeze that would destroy the well-being of the Ukrainian population, it would have been more difficult for Putin to invade his neighbor.

The pro-EU solution is still possible, but in order to do so, European governments have to thwart their spreadsheet fiscalists (as Helmut Kohl did by “paying whatever” to absorb East Germany in 1989) as well as bar neoconservatives. of the US in NATO (the same ones that fabricated the invasion of Iraq in 2003).

European hesitation recalls that phrase by Henry Kissinger (former US Secretary of State): “Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?” The United Kingdom remains subservient to Washington, France tries to take the lead, but can’t do anything without Germany, which is at the beginning of a new government.

Going back in time, like the Soviet Union, NATO is also a relic of the 20th century, created to “keep the Soviets out, the Americans in and the Germans down” (quote by Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary, well remembered by Dilma Rousseff last week).

The “problem” today is that Europe is not (thankfully) the same as it was in the 1950s. The West won the Cold War, and it is necessary to bring Ukraine and Russia itself peacefully into Europe, through democratic means, the that takes time.

And, more than NATO, it was the Marshall Plan that allowed the construction of the democratic and developed Western Europe that we see today. The same principle of economic aid can be applied to the integration of the former Soviet republics into the Western world, but, recalling Eisenhower’s warning, the US military-industrial complex lives on conflict.

While common sense does not prevail, the almost centenary Kissinger suggested a way out: the US gives up Ukraine in NATO, Russia accepts Ukraine in the European Union and the people of Ukraine choose, by vote, their destiny. But each day of conflict makes the diplomatic solution more difficult.