Politicians and experts have been discussing the presence of a deep crisis within North Atlantic Alliance for many decades.

It may seem purely symbolic, however France has pointed out the existence of a crisis on multiple occasions: first in 1966, when Charles de Gaulle decided to withdraw France from the military integrated structures of NATO, and then when the alliance’s headquarters were transferred from Paris to Brussels. Now the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has given his objective assessment of NATO’s “brain-death” in both an interview with the Economist in November 2019, and then recently in a joint press conference with his Tunisian counterpart, Kais Saied, after a dangerous incident involving war ships of two NATO members (France and Turkey) off the Libyan coast. According to Macron, Europe today finds itself “on the precipice”, as members of the Alliance have clearly not been coordinated in their recent actions and the United States is increasingly turning away from the Old World. All of this means that the time has come for Europe to wake up, to start building up its own strength, and to think of itself as an independent geopolitical pole of power, otherwise it “will not control its own fate.” The French leader has realized that, under the United States’ leadership, the NATO bloc is not able to protect Europe’s interests in the era of China’s ascent and the West’s strained relations with Russia and Turkey. The French President has therefore expressed his frustration on Europe’s dependence on Washington’s whims, at a time where the American President is “turning his back on Europe” and does not “subscribe to the European idea”. As an example of this, he pointed to Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw some of his troops from the North-Eastern region of Syria, leaving his Kurdish allies to fend for themselves, without consulting his NATO partners first. In this context, Macron believes that NATO can only survive if the United States agrees to maintain its status as the Alliance’s main bastion of security. However, how long Washington can play this role for is unclear.

On November 15, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, whilst addressing the Baker Institute in Houston, commented on Macron’s assessment of NATO’s “brain-death”, noting that there have never been perfect relations within the Alliance. “We ought not to think the moment is new or fresh. The nations that comprise NATO have different interests. We saw what Turkey did these past few weeks,” said Pompeo.

Today, a crisis is brewing between the United States and Germany, which Donald Trump is continuing to stoke, whether with automobile duties, sanctions for cooperating with Russia (in particular for “Nord Stream 2”), or the withdrawal of NATO troops, as the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reports.

“The United States President’s decision to withdraw part of the American military contingent from Germany is evidence of the wider issues within NATO,” announced retired General Ben Hodges the other day, who previously served as commander of the US military contingent in Europe. It is interesting to note that America had originally explained that their presence in Germany was not due to the North Atlantic partnership, but to “protect [Germany] against Russia”. This announcement led to ironic ridicule in German society.

“Trump is saying that he is protecting Germany’s safety. But from what? Germany has become both a target and a hostage in any military conflict,” announced Waldemar Herdt, a member of the Bundestag. “I welcome Trump’s decision to start the demilitarization of Germany, because he is using NATO to provide for the economic needs of the United States against the interests of other Alliance members. In light of this, the German elites must learn to start thinking as a sovereign state, rather than as a vassal state of the United States,” emphasized Herdt.

A representative of the “Green” party in Germany and a member of the foreign affairs committee, Jürgen Trittin, has also recently discussed the idea that NATO is undergoing an existential crisis and is only a shadow of an alliance. In Der Spiegel, he called for a sober evaluation of the situation and to recognize that NATO has become threadbare. The politician has called on Europe to solve the current issues independently and to resolve disputes within NATO, especially regarding its relationship with Russia and the Iranian nuclear deal, which the United States recently scrapped unilaterally without prior agreement with its partners. Trittin is convinced that Europe should stop feeling nostalgic for NATO and start consolidating its own strengths, backing the horse of sustainable sovereignty.

Many politicians and experts have already spoken about a crisis within NATO. Washington-lead operations in Afghanistan and Libya, which are outside the formal area of the Alliance’s responsibility, have been going on for many years without great success, despite bold statements from Washington and Brussels. As NATO is still a bloc in which the United States dominates militarily and imposes its policies on other member states, many European NATO countries are now raising their concerns about the possibility of the United States switching its attention to the Pacific region, and hence there being further unwarranted expansion of the Alliance’s operation zones.

As we can see, NATO is ill-equipped in the combat against terrorism. It is difficult to implement the decision about the increase of defense spending by member states: in 2014 it was agreed that each state should increase defense contributions to at least 2% of GDP by 2024. However, according to NATO’s statistical data, only two countries reached the 2% threshold in 2019, Poland and Latvia, while Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Great Britain and Greece all already spend slightly more than 2%. Only two countries allocate more than 3% of GDP on defense spending – the United States and Bulgaria. There is not a great deal of time before the deadline, and there is no certainty that 20 of the 29 member states will “boost” their spending.

In many European countries, more than 50% of defense spending goes on staff. Small European armies now live in comfort and do not want to fight. There is also no European country which could simultaneously be part of NATO and a potential European army.

Last December, the NATO summit was held in London, and it was perhaps the most scandalous and controversial in the Alliance’s 70-year history, which is why the West’s military and political observers and experts were united in saying that the Alliance is experiencing the most serious crisis in its existence.

The American President, Donald Trump, has already spoken about the “uselessness of NATO” and the fact that “Europe should look after itself” in fairly harsh terms, and indeed Trump simply walked out of the final press conference in London. The American editor of Defense One has said that “NATO’s biggest threat is not from external enemies, but from within.”

Following Washington’s directives, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is using NATO to clamp down on the “threat policy”, at times pointing to the growing threat from Russia, or now looking at China, who “want to use the current coronavirus pandemic to strengthen their confrontation with NATO.” The formation of four NATO battalion groups has only recently been completed, strengthening grouping in the Baltic and Black seas. The Alliance’s infrastructure is continuing to be developed, and almost every day there are reports that Eastern European countries are starting or completing the construction of some facility or another. Recently, particular attention has been paid to strengthening the southern flank: American and British forces have sprung up in Romania, and multinational brigades are being formed there. Today, European security has taken a turn for the worse: for the first time in many years the security of the region is again being defined not by measures of restraint, not by efforts to ensure security without resorting to military force, but by maintaining a sort of “balance of threats”. This is leading to an even greater military concentration and confrontation in Europe. In doing this, and blinkered by his Russophobic prejudice, Jens Stoltenberg is not even listening to the Supreme Commander of NATO in Europe, Tod Wolters, who officially announced in a March 20, 2020 briefing that “Russia won’t be using the current international crisis for the advancing of its interests.”

Linked with this, it is worth recalling what the previous German Minister of foreign affairs, Joschka Fischer, said, underlining the fact that, “NATO’s future is more uncertain now than at any time in its history… Europeans should not harbor any illusions about what defense autonomy will require. For the European Union, which has only ever seen itself as an economic rather than a military power, it implies a deep rupture with the status quo. To be sure, NATO still exists, and there are still US troops deployed in Europe. But the operative word is “still”. Now that traditional institutions and transatlantic security and commitments have been cast into doubt, the alliance’s unravelling has become less a matter of “if” than “when”.”

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

In recent decades, the concept of racism has become a painful topic in many countries of the world, and which many now perceive to be, in large part, oppression by white people of members of other races. Anglo-Saxons annihilated Indians, the French and Spanish – Africans, and the Dutch – inhabitants of Africa and Indonesia. And, toward the end of the 19th century, all of them together tried to bring China to its knees.

For several weeks now the US has undergone protests against racism and police brutality, which quite swiftly spread to Great Britain. That is not at all surprising. People have forgotten the impression that grew about contemporary Europe being founded through empires, which created colonies all over the world via the slave trade and exploitation of labor.  Indeed, it was Europe that over centuries seized lands for colonization, and oppressed other races.

And so members of the #BlackLivesMatter movement have been protesting against systemic racism. Destructive riots have broken out in London and throughout the country. Attacks have been inflicted on statues of political figures, who are associated with the slave trade, racism, and the politics of empire. Many statues have sustained damage, including those of Winston Churchill, where remnants of scrawls “racist” can still be seen. The word “murderer” appeared on the base of the monument to Britain’s Queen Victoria. In Bristol, tearing down the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston also became a vivid symbol of protests against racism in the United Kingdom. Removal of statues of “racists” has found public support among Labourites and a former Home Secretary, Pakistani on his father’s side.

According to Home Secretary Priti Patel, in just the first week of June, more than 135 thousand Britons took part in protest demonstrations, and 135 were arrested.

Boris Johnson’s administration is trying to placate the demonstrators, but his efforts are having the opposite effect. In recent days, tens of thousands of new protestors poured out onto streets of British cities. They were led by such celebrities as John Boyega (“Star Wars”), or former soccer player for Manchester United, Rio Ferdinand. On June 15, Boris Johnson announced the creation in the UK of a Cross-Government Commission on Racism and Discrimination of ethnic minorities.

Yes, today, perhaps for the first time since the breakup of the socialist camp, it’s possible to observe a truly massive popular campaign to destroy historical objects. Only now monuments to socialism are not on the receiving end, but statues to heroes of America’s and England’s past.

But has it really only today become clear that racism was for several centuries the foundation of British and American society?

It is the same Great Britain that instilled among people the belief that Germany was birthplace of Nazism and racial intolerance. In 1863, however, almost 100 years before the idea broke out in Germany, an English scientist, Dr. James Hunt, began to promote ideas of racial superiority. Having presented a sensational report at a Royal scientific society in Newcastle, he declared that, “he succeeded in distinguishing a distinct animal species of an interim stage between humans and apes, and they are called negroes.” Additionally, he mentioned that, among white-skinned people, there are “evolutionary dead-ends,” who, if they can be called people, are second rate. These ideas of race spread very quickly throughout the UK, and were echoed at that time by many other British scientists, who placed English people at the apex of the racial pyramid.

It was on the British isles where the so called science of “eugenics” originated, which explained how to conduct selective breeding on humans to achieve the ideal race. Its leader was Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics.” He intended to make it “part of the national consciousness, like a new religion”.

To develop this theory further, in 1912, British “intellectual”, biologist, and mathematician, Karl Pearson, dedicated his book Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics. In 1932, to solve the problem of “worthless races”, the British Union of Fascists was created. The British aristocrat, Sir Oswald Mosley, became its leader. By the way, having become the most far-reaching fascist organization during the interwar period, this English fascist party obtained recognition a year before the German Social Democrats won its elections.

After the Second World War, those in academic circles began to view eugenics as the theoretical foundation for Nazism’s crimes, racial politics, and destruction of “undesirable” ethnic and social groups.

To prevent the rehabilitation of Nazism and racism, various international institutes have previously proposed the passage of universal regulatory documents for that purpose. For example, in 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that condemned Nazism’s rehabilitation. However, to the surprise of many, voting in support of this resolution was not unanimous. 54 (!) countries abstained, including all European Union countries. Moreover, the US voted completely against the resolution, justifying its action by explaining that the “resolution against defacement of memorials to antifascists limits the rights of citizens to express their personal opinion.”

In July of 2019, the Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions of the Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) rejected the resolution proposed by the Russian Federation’s delegation, “Regarding the struggle against xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, and related intolerance.” According to the draft of the rejected resolution, the OSCE PA was required to express deep concern over the “spread of the theory of racial superiority based on race, national origin, religion, or culture, including within the OSCE region,” and also recognize that neo-Nazism is a “dangerous occurrence of today,” against which policy makers must show resistance. However, a number of delegations spoke out with criticism of the document, in particular, Lithuania, Ukraine and also – Great Britain!

Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Lying about world history is one of the main weapons of the Western imperialists, through which they are managing to maintain their control of the world.

European and North American countries are inventing and spreading a twisted narrative about almost all essential historic events, be they colonialism, crusades, or genocides committed by the Western expansionism in all corners of the globe.

One of the vilest fabrications has been those which were unleashed against the young Soviet Union, a country that emerged from the ruins of the civil war fueled by the European, North American, and Japanese imperialist interests. Foreign armies and local violent gangs were destroying countless cities and villages, robbing, raping, and murdering local people. But determined acts to restore order and elevate the Soviet Union from its knees, dramatically improving lives of tens of millions, was termed in a derogatory way as “Stalinism”. The label of brutality was soon skillfully attached to it.

Next came the Great Patriotic War (for the Soviets), or what is also known as the Second World War.

The West miscalculated, hoping that Nazi Germany would easily destroy the Soviet Union, and with it, the most determined Communist revolution on earth.

But Germany had, obviously, much bigger goals. While brutalizing Soviet lands, it also began committing crimes against humanity all over Europe, doing precisely what it used to do in its African colonies, decades earlier, which was, basically, exterminating entire nations and races.

While the United States first hesitated to intervene (some of its most powerful individuals like Henry Ford were openly cooperating with the German Nazis), the European nations basically collapsed like the houses of cards.

Then, unthinkable took place: indignant, injured but powerful, enormous the Soviet Union stood up, raised, literally from ashes. Kursk and Stalingrad fought as no cities ever fought before, and neither did Leningrad, withstanding 900 days of blockade. There, surrender was not an option: people preferred to eat glue and plywood, fighting hunger, as long as fascist boots were not allowed to step on the pavement of their stunningly beautiful city.

In Leningrad, most men were dead before the siege was lifted. Women went to the front, including my grandmother, and they, almost with bare hands repelled the mightiest army on earth.

They did it for their city. And for the entire world. They fought for humanity, as Russia did so many times in the past, and they won, at a tremendous cost of more than 25 million soldiers, civilians, men, women, and children.

Then, Soviet divisions rolled Eastwards, liberating Auschwitz, Prague, planting the red Soviet flag on top of Reichstag in Berlin.

The world was saved, liberated. By Soviet people and Soviet steel.

The end of a monstrous war! Entire Soviet cities in ruins. Villages burned to ashes.

But new war, a Cold War, a true war against colonialism, for the liberation of Africa and Asia was already beginning! And the internationalist war against racism and slavery.

No, such narrative could never be allowed to circulate in the West, in its colonies and client states! Stalin, Soviet Union, anti-colonialist struggle – all had to be smeared, dragged through the dirt!

***

That smearing campaign first against the Soviet Union and then against Russia was conducted all over Europe, and it gained tremendous proportions.

Mass media has been spreading lies, and so were schools and universities.

The foulest manipulations were those belittling decisive role of the USSR in the victory against Nazi Germany. But Western propaganda outlets also skillfully and harmfully re-wrote the entire history of the Soviet Union, portraying it in the most nihilist and depressing ways, totally omitting tremendous successes of the first Communist country, as well as its heroic role in the fight against the global Western colonialism and imperialism.

***

Since the end of WWII, Italy has been in the center of the ideological battle, at least when it comes to Europe.

With its powerful Communist Party, almost all great Italian thinkers and artists were either members or at least closely affiliated with the Left. Partisans who used to fight fascism were clearly part of the Left.

Would it not be for the brutal interference in Italy’s domestic politics by the US and UK, the Italian Communist Party would have easily won the elections, democratically, right during the post-war period.

Relations between the Italian and Soviet/Russian people were always excellent: both nations inspired and influenced each other, greatly, particularly when it comes to arts and ideology.

However, like in the rest of Europe, the mainstream media, the propaganda injected by the Anglo-Saxon polemicists and their local counterparts, had a huge impact and eventually damaged great ties and understanding between two nations.

Especially after destructions of the Soviet Union, Italian Left began experiencing a long period of profound crises and confusion.

Anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda started finding fertile ground even in such historical bastions of the Italian Left like Bologna.

***

With the arrival of the 5 Star Movement and the radical, traditional Left-wing fractions concealed inside it, the millions of Italian citizens began waking up from their ideological lethargy.

I witnessed it when speaking at the legendary Sapienza University in Rome, shoulder to shoulder with professor Luciano Vasapollo, a great thinker and former political prisoner.

I was impressed by young Italian filmmakers, returning to Rome from Donbas, arranging countless political happenings in support of Russia.

Rome was boiling. People forgotten by history were resurfacing, while the young generation was joining them. My friend Alessandro Bianchi and his increasingly powerful magazine, L’Antidiplomatico, were bravely standing by Venezuela and Cuba, but also by Russia and China.

Still, Mr. Bianchi kept repeating:

“These days, very few Italians understand what happened during WWII. It is a tragedy, real tragedy…”

And then, recently, L’Antidiplomatico informed me that it will be publishing, in order to celebrate the April 25 and May 9 anniversaries, an essential book put together by the Soviet Information Bureau, by the academics, with notes and inside information by Joseph Stalin. It was fired right after the end of WWII: “Falsifiers of History. Historic Information.” (In Russian: “Fal’sifikatory istorii. Istoriceskaja spravka.”)

Now in Italian, the book will be called “Contro la falsificazione della storia ieri e oggi” (Fabrizio Poggi: “Against the Falsification of History Yesterday and Today”).

The powerful editorial work of Mr. Poggi is unveiling the truth, and counter-attacking the Western Anti-Soviet propaganda.

Throughout this work, “The Anglo-American claims about the alleged Berlin-Moscow union against the ‘western democracies’ and a “secret pact between the USSR and Hitler to divide all of Eastern Europe” were clearly dismantled. The falsity of the rhetoric which is repeatedly used today in virtually all Western countries is exposed here, step by step.

Ale Bianchi, the publisher, explains:

“The translation presented here is preceded by an introduction, edited by Poggi himself, which mentions the main issues of the period before the Second World War: Polish-German relations, the role of France and Great Britain and their relations with the USSR, Munich Conference, etc., all used by Western propagandists to advance the theory of “equal responsibility” of Nazi Germany and the USSR for the outbreak of the Second World War.”

I asked Mr. Bianchi about the main purpose of launching the book in Italy, and he answered without hesitation:

“To defeat the anti-Soviet propaganda and also propaganda related to the Second World War.”

***

In many ways, Fabrizio Poggi’s “Against the Falsification of History Yesterday and Today”), is not just a book. It is a movement, which will consist of discussions, lectures, interviews.

Top Italian intellectuals will, no doubt, participate. Many essential topics will be revisited. The truth will be revealed.

This could be a new chapter in cooperation between the Italian and Russian thinkers and progressive leaders, in their common struggle for a better world!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

As the most powerful Empire the world has ever known descends into fascism, all eyes are on Europe to uphold the torch of democracy. Alas, the twenty-eight countries of the European Union are still behaving as they always have since the first Eurasian tribes reached the Atlantic tip of the peninsula: quarreling over everything. While it is customary to analyze their bickering in political terms, it may have been dictated from the start by geography: The rivers of the Eurasian steppe from which the tribes drove westward are hundreds of miles apart, creating a largely barren wilderness, while the peninsula is a well-watered paradise. How would they not fight over the best real estate?

Back in the 9th century, Charlemagne united most of western and central Europe, however his grandsons carved out three nations that have dominated European history ever since: France, Germany and Italy. (Plus ca change…) During the long millennium that followed Charlemagne’s reign, the tip of Eurasia that since the Enlightenment, has been known pompously as ‘Europe’, has proved too exiguous to peacefully contain thirty tribes as diverse as Italians and Dutch, not to mention Gauls and Germans.

For centuries, they fought each other at every turn until they gave themselves a straight-jacket. However, one look at the Eurasian peninsula that, since the Enlightenment, has been known pompously as ‘Europe’, makes clear that it is far too exiguous to peacefully contain thirty tribes as diverse as Italians and Dutch, not to mention Gauls, and Germans.

The latter were first conquered by the Romans, but they have been clashing with the Franks ever since. Italy was largely protected by the Alps, Europe’s heart of stone, which partly separates the three nations from each other, after long being at the mercy of the Spanish and the Dutch, provoking French and German intervention. The boot, as it has been known didn’t modernize until after World War II, and even now, Italy’s status as an ideal vacation spot with an irresistible cuisine prevents it from being taken seriously politically. And yet, thanks to its long Communist tradition, immortalized starting in the nineteen-fifties with the films of Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti, Italy is the only European nation to have maintained normal relations with Russia since the defeat of fascism — on a flight to Moscow, I sat next to a young woman who was going to ride horseback on the steppe. The rest of Europe failed to resist inroads by Washington’s Trojan Horse from across the English Channel, known since the Middle Ages as ‘perfidious Albion’.

The first steps toward what became, in 2000, the European Union were also taken in the nineteen-fifties. Unfortunately, they were based on a fatal decision to reject a federal system such as the US, leaving a political void around Brussels’ rules and regulations, a complex architecture that has satisfied no one.

The top EU job is that of Commission President, and when the term of Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker was scheduled to end in November 2019, it took months of negotiations for his successor to be named. Although few European male politicians could compete with Ursula van der Leyen’s CV, this former German Defense Minister is the first women to hold the post. Her background in public health may partly explain the fact that Angela Merkel’s Germany has had the most effective response to the Covid 19 pandemic. However, Europe as a whole is reverting to its past: decades after creating a free travel area, known as the Schengen zone, for its citizens, in 2015 it tried to bar African and Middle-Eastern refugees. Finally, when the pandemic hit, neighbors began to close their borders to each other. And when Merkel and Macron, Europe’s bicephal leadership, called for massive loans that would have mainly benefited the south, they were opposed by several well-off northern governments. A situation that not even Charlemagne would have been likely to overcome suggests that as America loses its role as ‘indispensable nation’, Europe’s ‘moment’ has irrevocably passed, leaving the steppe from which it came in charge of the future.

Deena Stryker is a US-born international expert, author and journalist that lived in Eastern and Western Europe and has been writing about the big picture for 50 years. Over the years she penned a number of books, including Russia’s Americans. Her essays can also be found at Otherjones. Especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Given the way the US-European alliance is falling apart rapidly, there is little to no denying that some tectonic changes of global level are likely to take place, paving the way for a kind of multipolar world order to emerge where the US ability to influence the world will decrease massively. A decreasing US influence on Europe and an equally increasing European assertiveness vis-à-vis the US unilateralism shows that Europe would not simply become a junior partner of a new super power i.e., China. Europe, as it seems, will become one major ‘polar’ in the new multipolar world. Accordingly, Europe is most likely to use China as a means to diversify its reliance on the US and use it as a leverage. China, on the contrary, is setting itself up already to fill the void US policies are creating and redefining its relationship with Europe. This, however, is unlikely to be a smooth process. Europe, as an emerging polar itself, would surely want to write terms of this new relationship in a way that allows it considerable leverage vis-à-vis the new global power in the post COVID-19 international system.

The recently held 10th annual Strategic Dialogue between China and the EU symbolises the broader contours of ‘big power diplomacy’ looking to redefine the world political, economic and financial system in the post COVID-19 world. This dialogue has also set the stage for EU-China summit to be held at a later date. The importance of these events can be gauged from the fact that these will take place on the ruins of the recently cancelled G7 summit due to the prevailing disagreements between the US and its allies—Europe and Canada.

With both the US and Europe devasted by the impact of COVID-19 and with China having already recovered a lot, the latter becomes a natural option for Europe to look towards to fill the deep economic wounds and help pave the long road to recovery. In the absence of US, Chinese investments in Europe might thus become the key element of Europe’s post COVID-19 life.

Europe is aware of this necessity and that is why its top diplomats can be seen increasingly emphasising the need to redefine their erstwhile uneasy relations with China. For them, China is ‘not a military threat’ for Europe. Josep Borrel, who was part of the China-EU strategic dialogue event, said that China is not a ‘threat’ to world peace. “They committed once again that they want to be present in the world and to play a global role but they don’t have military ambitions and they don’t want to use the force to participate in military conflicts,” he added.

This line of thinking is markedly different from the US national security strategy that defines China as a ‘revisionist power’ bent upon bringing ‘disorder’ to the US dominated world. Josep’s views put him at odds not just with the US but Japan and India and a hots of other countries in Asia as well, which are increasingly worried about China’s increasing military strength in the Himalayas and South China Sea.

For Europe, however, it was China that came to Italy’s aid when the latter was being devasted by the pandemic. The US, otherwise an ally, did not only not come to Europe’s aid, but chose to erect its own walls to, unsuccessfully though, insulate itself.

Unlike the US, Chinese leadership has been busy keeping itself deeply engaged with Europe. China’s Xi has already telephoned German chancellor four times in this year alone. As far as France is concerned, Xi and Macron have already spoken five times since the beginning of this year, indicating the extent and the depth to which China is cultivating its relations with Europe. The impact this ‘extent and depth’ is leaving is evident from Borrell’s remarks, whereby “China is without doubt one of the key global players. This is a fact, and China will increase its global role. We have to engage with China to achieve our global objectives, based on our interests and values.”

Moving increasingly towards an accommodationist mindset, the EU leaders are looking to downplay the significance of what some US leaders have called an ‘authoritarian’ Chinese political system. For Borrel, “It is clear that we do not have the same political system. It is clear that China defends its political system as we do with ours. It is clear that China has a global ambition. But, at the same time, I do not think that China is playing a role that can threaten world peace.”

At the same time, EU, being an emerging global player no longer subservient to the US, would aim for a relationship with China where it has a level playing field. It would be too early to say that China and EU have already found a magic formula to accommodate each other. While it is a fact that both EU and China have come closer in the wake of an aggressive US approach to both of them, a single ‘US factor’ is unlikely to integrate both entities in a long-term strategic partnership.

While certainly, EU-China relations are no longer ‘confrontational’ and are increasingly being grounded in realism, irritants—particularly those in the form of US resistance to Chinese influence in Europe—will continue to appear as in the case of Huawei and 5G technology. Europe, including Britain, has thus far successfully resisted US attempts at derailing Chinese projects, implying thereby that Europe will deal with China in its own way, following its own approach. What this approach looks like is already becoming sufficiently clear.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

For those wondering what will come after the COVID-19 pandemic has successfully all but shut down the entire world economy, spreading the worst depression since the 1930s, the leaders of the premier globalization NGO, Davos World Economic Forum, have just unveiled the outlines of what we can expect next. These people have decided to use this crisis as an opportunity.

On June 3 via their website, the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) unveiled the outlines of their upcoming January 2021 forum. They call it “The Great Reset.” It entails taking advantage of the staggering impact of the coronavirus to advance a very specific agenda. Notably enough, that agenda dovetails perfectly with another specific agenda, namely the 2015 UN Agenda 2030. The irony of the world’s leading big business forum, the one that has advanced the corporate globalization agenda since the 1990s, now embracing what they call sustainable development ,is huge. That gives us a hint that this agenda is not quite about what WEF and partners claim.

The Great Reset

On June 3 WEF chairman Klaus Schwab released a video announcing the annual theme for 2021, The Great Reset. It seems to be nothing less than promoting a global agenda of restructuring the world economy along very specific lines, not surprisingly much like that advocated by the IPCC, by Greta from Sweden and her corporate friends such as Al Gore or Blackwater’s Larry Fink.

Interesting is that WEF spokespeople frame the “reset” of the world economy in the context of the coronavirus and the ensuing collapse of the world industrial economy. The WEF website states, “There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19.” So the Great Reset of the global economy flows from covid19 and the “opportunity” it presents.

In announcing the 2021 theme, WEF founder Schwab then said, cleverly shifting the agenda: “We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind.” The implication is that climate change is the underlying reason for the coronavirus pandemic catastrophe.

To underscore their green “sustainable” agenda, WEF then has an appearance by the would-be King of England, Prince Charles. Referring to the global covid19 catastrophe, the Prince of Wales says, “If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time.” On board with Schwab and the Prince is the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. He states, “We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.” Note his talk of “sustainable economies and societies”—more on that later. The new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, also endorsed The Great Reset. Other WEF resetters included Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft.

Make no mistake, the Great Reset is no spur-of-the moment idea of Schwab and friends. The WEF website states, “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.” The WEF sponsors have big plans:”…the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.” This is big stuff.

Radical changes

Schwab reveals more of the coming agenda: “…one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.” These are supposed to be silver linings?

He suggests that those radical changes be extended: “The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination… and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy…” It would include “changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.”

The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that, “investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Here the WEF head states that the recent huge economic stimulus budgets from the EU, USA, China and elsewhere be used to create a new economy, “more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”

Finally the third leg of this Great Reset will be implementing one of Schwab’s pet projects, the Fourth Industrial Revolution: “The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution includes gene-editing biotech, 5G telecommunications, Artificial Intelligence and the like.

UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset

If we compare the details of the 2015 UN Agenda 2030 with the WEF Great Reset we find both dovetail very neatly. The theme of Agenda2030 is a “sustainable world” which is defined as one with income equality, gender equality, vaccines for all under the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) which was launched in 2017 by the WEF along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2015 the UN issued a document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The Obama Administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification knowing it would fail. Yet it is being advanced globally. It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, extending an earlier Agenda21. The 17 include “to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions… to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change…“ It calls for sustainable economic growth, sustainable agriculture (GMO), sustainable and modern energy (wind, solar), sustainable cities, sustainable industrialization… The word sustainable is the key word. If we dig deeper it is clear it is code-word for a reorganization of world wealth via means such as punitive carbon taxes that will dramatically reduce air and vehicle travel. The less-developed world will not rise to the developed, rather the other way, the advanced civilizations must go down in their living standards to become “sustainable.”

Maurice Strong

To understand the double-speak use of sustainable, we need to go back to Maurice Strong, a billionaire Canadian oilman and close friend of David Rockefeller, the man who played a central role back in the 1970s for the idea that man-made CO2 emissions were making the world unsustainable. Strong created the UN Environment Program, and in 1988, the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to exclusively study manmade CO2.

In 1992 Strong stated, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” At the Rio Earth Summit Strong that same year he added, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”

The decision to demonize CO2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, human and plant, is not random. As Prof. Richard Lindzen an MIT atmospheric physicist puts it, “CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.”

Lest we forget, the curiously well-timed New York pandemic exercise, Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was co-sponsored by the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation. It was based on the idea that, ”it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.” The Event201 Scenario posited, “outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”

The declaration by the World Economic Forum to make a Great Reset is to all indications a thinly-veiled attempt to advance the Agenda 2030 “sustainable” dystopian model, a global “Green New Deal” in the wake of the covid19 pandemic measures. Their close ties with Gates Foundation projects, with the WHO, and with the UN suggest we may soon face a far more sinister world after the covid19 pandemic fades.

Some recent events have captured the attention of the mainstream media to such an extent that other events of arguably greater importance have not received the attention they deserve. The events getting extraordinary prominence are the riots in the United States and the coronavirus outbreaks. Neither will be given more than a brief discussion because at the same time there are other events occurring of arguably greater importance that have received little or no attention, and such attention they did receive was inaccurately reported.

The first of these mainstream events, the worldwide pandemic generally referred to as the coronavirus is really notable for two main features. The first is that the actual toll of dead or disabled persons is a tiny fraction of the total populations of the countries affected. The United States for example, with the largest actual number of fatalities, currently just over 200,000, has lost 0.62% of its population. The annual influenza figures by comparison, according to the Centre for Disease Control, vary between nine and forty-five million, with deaths also varying widely, with 61,000 for example in 2017/18.

The pandemic has led however, to nearly 40,000,000 people being rendered unemployed, a phenomenon never seen in the annual influenza outbreaks. The real reasons for this extraordinary reaction remain unclear. Certainly Trump has used it as a weapon to beat the heads of the Chinese in his ongoing economic and political war against that country. The more evidence that emerges however, the more fragile that line of attack becomes.

It now seems highly more probable that the origin of the virus was the United States’ own Fort Dietrich research facility, closed in mid 2019 for unexplained reasons for several months. The first United States cases of the pandemic now appear to have occurred not far from that facility.

Trumps use of the pandemic as a stick to try and beat the Chinese with is better seen as another weapon in his ongoing political and economic war against China. His recent proposal to expand the invitees to the annual meeting of the G7 nations to include Russia (a member until 2014 when it was the G8) South Korea, Australia and India, was a thinly disguised manoeuvre against China.

If the G7 was indeed a collection of the worlds major economic powers, the exclusion of China, the worlds greatest economic power by a substantial margin, would make no sense. India rates number 5 of the world economic powers and its exclusion hitherto also makes no economic sense. Australia similarly is well down the world economic power list at number 14, but as a loyal acolyte of the United States, and indulging in political manoeuvres against China that are frankly economic suicide.

Those manoeuvres are explicable only in terms of its subservient role to the United States. That subservience has manifested itself in multiple ways over the past decades, but none of those ill-adventures threatened its economic well-being to the degree that joining Trump’s anti-China crusade is likely to.

It is significant that Germany’s Chancellor Merkel declined the invitation to attend the G7 meeting Trump was proposing for Washington in June. She cited the demands of the Covid virus battle in Germany, but that excuse fooled no-one.

Germany, along with several other European Union member states, sees China as having a bigger role in its economic future than the economically frail and declining (in relative terms) United States. It may be too much to hope for that after 75 years of US occupation Germany is finally asserting a political independence commensurate with its economic power. Germany, along with a number of European Union countries, clearly sees a better economic future for itself by having good relationships, economically and politically, with China and the eastern powers in general than with the United States.

To further emphasise the point, Merkel gave an address to the Konrad Adenauer Shiftung Institute on 27^th May. In that speech she made it very clear that China would be a top priority for her government when Germany takes over the EU presidency in July this year.

In her speech Merkel further stressed that Germany plans greater cooperation with China. It hardly needs stressing that German plans for its politico-economic future lies to the East, and hardly wants or needs to be part of a United States led anti-China alliance.

Trumps political war against China will cause some economic damage, but it will not alter the broad path of China’s economic and political development. This year for example, the ASEAN nations became China’s largest trading group, replacing the European Union. Its rapidly growing economic and political relationship with Russia is a further incentive to decouple itself from the United States.

The United States also announced restrictions on the rights of Chinese students to study for advanced degrees in United States universities. The real pain of that move will be felt by the universities themselves. A similar phenomenon will occur in Australia. Although the Australian government has made no announcement restricting Chinese students (the largest foreign student group by a large margin) China’s ambassador to Australia has already made statements clearly hinting that in the light of anti-China sentiment expressed by the Australian government, Chinese students may well choose to study elsewhere. That mild suggestion, which invoked apoplexy among Australian university administrators, may be taken as more than a hint.

Similar restrictions on some Australian exports to China (which accounts for 36% of all Australian exports) may similarly be viewed as a strong hint that the Chinese have tired of Australia’s anti-China subservience to American wishes and, after ample hence suggesting that a modification of the rhetoric would not go astray, is now taking action. The message couldn’t be clearer: China has more alternatives than Australia and there is a price to pay for relentless anti-China rhetoric from government and mainstream media alike.

The Australian State of Victoria recently signed a memorandum of understanding with China over Victoria joining China’s huge Belt and Road Initiative. The Australian Federal government has, as expected, conformed to the United States’ anti-BRI rhetoric. It publicly expressed dismay at Victoria’s decision, joined by political commentators in the mainstream media, and editorials, sounding alarm and concern, literally sprinkled with outright falsehoods about the dangers such a move displayed. United States Secretary of State Pompeo even weighed in, offering dark threats about the jeopardy such a move posed to Australia’s accession to United States military secrets.

No such threats were made to the United States’ other five eyes alliance partner, New Zealand, when the latter signed up to the BRI in May 2019. It was typical Pompeo bluster. Not a single Australian commentator referred to the absence of retaliation against New Zealand, let alone raised the rather obvious question that perhaps Australia’s real national interests would be better served by not being tied to the United States. The American engineered coup d’état of November 1975 has insured that such heresy is not publicly urged by either politicians (of both major parties) or the media.

Schools and businesses will slowly return to normal after the pandemic subsides. The damage caused by the anti-China rhetoric will however, be greater in its effect and more long lasting in the damage it has caused. Germany has shown that there are viable alternatives to the American grasp, and together with many of its EU partners is making economic and political moves consistent with the changing realities of the 21^st century geo- political and economic landscape. It is a lesson that others would be well advised to learn from.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Western Europe (we’ll define as France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, and Austria) shows how regions of the world with existing socioeconomic problems have seen Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) simply amplify them while in other regions where fundamentals have been stronger (China and ASEAN), have simply been temporarily setback.

Even within nations, this is also the case, where sectors and industries performing well have merely been set back while others already struggling long before COVID-19 showed up have been dealt a severe blow.

Health Impact 

Just looking at the reported number of cases and the reported number of deaths tells us that even deep in the heart of the European Union there is some disparity, whether it is via how testing is done, statistics are gathered and reported, the state of healthcare in each respective nation or some sort of demographic factor being responsible.

Germany and France, for example, had nearly the same number of reported COVID-19 cases, yet France had many, many more reported deaths.

France: 182,942 cases, 28,432 deaths

Germany: 180,789 cases, 8,428 deaths

Spain: 282,480 cases, 26,837 deaths

Belgium: 57,342 cases, 9,312 deaths

Portugal: 30,788 cases, 1,330 deaths

Austria: 16,539 cases, 641 deaths

Fears of overburdened healthcare infrastructure stemmed from predictions and models of a pathogen that would spread faster and have a greater impact on public health than COVID-19 actually did.

As testing continues to expand, the number of infected appears to have been vastly larger than previously reported meaning that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is thus much lower.

Measures

Western Europe quickly enacted restrictions on movement both within their borders and beyond them. Non-essential activity was restricted, public venues closed including sporting events and schools, regulations regarding the use of masks when out in public put into place and even local elections becoming a subject of debate on whether they’d move forward or not.

In France, municipal elections were held despite the outbreak. They were completed just before widespread public restrictions were put into place.

Much like the rest of the world, the damage done in Western Europe stems from the measures put in place, grinding business to a halt, and the socioeconomic impact it had rather than on any damage caused by the pathogen itself upon the public.

Socioeconomic Impact 

The European Union has already seen its fair share of socioeconomic chaos brought on by the 2008-2009 economic crisis it was just barely recovering from before COVID-19 hit, and a series of other events marking Western Europe’s decline upon the global stage.

With restrictions grinding to a halt what economic activity was taking place across Europe, nations now face recessions.

Germany, according to the Guardian, is now in recession, marked by two consecutive quarters of losses on economic growth. Interestingly enough however, is that the first quarter of downturn occured before the impact of COVID-19. Thus the pathogen and the region’s response to it only helped compound economic troubles.

France is suffering from similar economic woes, both before and now certainly after COVID-19.

France24 in an article titled, “Covid-19: French economic activity down 33 percent, Insee says,” would note:

Economic activity in France picked up slightly over the last two weeks as the country prepares to emerge from a coronavirus lockdown, but it remains a third below normal levels, the INSEE official statistics agency said on Thursday.

The article also noted the impact on unemployment and measures the French government has attempted to take in order to address it:

The government has rolled out a 110 billion euro ($118.9 billion) package of crisis measures to see companies through the lockdown and heavily subsidise furloughs for more than one out of two private sector workers to avoid a wave of permanent layoffs.

Even with massive use of the furlough scheme, the French economy shed 453,800 workers in the first quarter as companies did not renew temporary workers contracts en masse, INSEE said on Thursday.

It is a scenario playing out all across Europe.

Nations already suffering because of weak economic fundamentals are going to find it exceptionally difficult to recover from the impact of measures put in place during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Nations like France engaged in military adventurism overseas in aid of US hegemony, will find themselves needing to explain to the public now more than ever why money can still be found to fund aggression overseas but not on building up the nation at home.

Other nations in Western Europe still paying into NATO and its growing militaristic posture versus Russia will have to explain why the funding to do so isn’t being redirected toward more essential, domestic concerns.

Governments tempted to favor expensive shale oil from the United States over cheaper gas from Russia will have to explain why political motivations are winning out over socioeconomic reconstruction post-COVID-19.

While the Western media likes to talk about the “new normal” that will emerge in the wake of COVID-19 it appears there are few rays of hope for Western Europe. What this “new normal” will most likely mean is that in the future (perhaps for COVID-20 or COVID-21) any street protests or growing discontent that develops as Western Europe continues to sink economically can be swept off the streets with “lockdowns” and “quarantines” while many Europeans will find themselves more dependent on government programs, as independent employment becomes more difficult to find.

Some Western European leaders may be tempted to follow America’s lead in scapegoating COVID-19 to explain national and regional ills, or even shift the blame to China, but the truth is Western Europe was already suffering before COVID-19, suffered more during COVID-19 and will continue suffering until Western Europe’s economic fundamentals themselves are addressed rather than covered up or explained away.

Gunnar Ulson, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Even before this latest crisis began, there had been a distinct trend of people in democracies losing faith in their political systems. When this wave of disillusionment happened back in the 1920s and 30s, as the problems of the era overwhelmed liberal democratic structures, fascism or communism were seen as being the answer. Many countries ended up with governments which had one or the other slant, or preferred one of those sides over the other when pressured to do so.

Now the trend is towards populist movements, such as En Marche or Five Star. Each of these bases their appeal on the same message as the fascists and communists – those politicians are only out for themselves, and are incapable of addressing the real issues affecting people’s lives. They do not want to change the system from within, but to do away with it altogether and give power to the people directly, whatever that actually means.

During a time of crisis people rally round a government because it is their only security. The government is responsible for dealing with the crisis, so even if you disagree with it and want other people in power, throwing it out will only hinder practical efforts to resolve the crisis.

But if the government doesn’t do a good job resolving the crisis, or is seen as having contributed to it, it can come crashing down very quickly as soon as people think it is safe to remove it. Germany overthrew its monarchy after losing World War One, and the map of Europe was radically redrawn afterwards, not through conquest but because people no longer believed in the political structures they had lived under during the war period they wished to forget.

We can therefore expect something similar to happen after this virus has gone away. But where are people going to go? They have tried mainstream politics and populism, and both have failed. The likes of Trump and Johnson, populists who have hijacked mainstream parties through centralist tactics, won’t be able to blame the politicians when they have been responsible for what they used to blame politicians for.

There is another option, not currently being considered but credible. People don’t really want to run everything themselves, as they don’t have the time or the inclination. They want someone with authority to sort everything out for them by redefining their country and its glories. Though the window of opportunity may be small, it is possible that rediscovering that most out of date of systems, monarchy, might give the post-Covid world what it is looking for.

Representing What’s Wrong

Most countries are now republics. Monarchies are considered relics of the past, even in progressive countries such a Sweden, which still has a king but has placed him firmly within a narrow constitutional role. It is interesting that some countries completely abolished their monarchies while others just gradually limited the power of the monarchy

An elected president or PMs are seen as more representative of the popular will, and therefore of the people. This is fine in theory, but when was the last time it happened? Presidents who are purely heads of state rather than heads of government are subject to considerable personal scrutiny.

If they are not taking sides or playing partisan roles, the public wants to know how they behave and what they think on a given topic. And if people approve, they think the president is theirs, but on the basis of their personal qualities. If they don’t, they think the president does not represent their country, even though they do, and there is no one above them to take on that role.

When the president is also head of government, they fail to live up to their billing from the first day. Some people agree with their policies, some don’t. They end up representing the divisions within people rather than the people themselves, and even if they are generally approved, and gain international respect, they are again seen more as transient people, often out of touch with daily realities, rather than embodiments of what their countries aspire to be.

Furthermore, most presidents have very little effective power, which is why some gain a reputation as autocrats for trying to gain more control. In practice they can easily be bought and sold by more important players, whether they are bigger countries or business, or even criminal, interests. If not, they can be removed by those same interests in favour of someone more pliable, as we saw in Ukraine, and see all over Africa and South America on a distressingly regular basis.

Restoring monarchs won’t solve those problems overnight. But the present crisis is highlighting what monarchy is about. Kings and queens don’t have constituents and paymasters to satisfy. No matter what is going on around them, it is their duty to serve the country, not a sectional interest, and treat all their subjects as equal, without fear or favour.

Emperors With Clothes

This concept still exists at a subliminal level. For example, when Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was made the first Commissioner of Baseball after the 1919 “Black Sox Scandal”, he insisted on a lifetime contract so that he would not be dependent on favourites who could keep him in the job, and disdain those who would not vote for him anyway.

Consequently Landis was considered impartial, and successful in cleaning up baseball. Neither impression is more than partly correct, but by taking on the form of a monarch he was thought to represent something higher than the conflicts of the men below him.

Similarly, the term “tsar” is returning to common usage in a way unthinkable to those who got rid of Nicholas II. When a problem gets really bad, there is talk (leaked by governments usually) of appointing a “tsar” to clean it up – a “drugs tsar”, or a “regulatory tsar”. These individuals often had predecessors who were not called tsars, but were given the title when they assumed or demanded wider powers than politicians could theoretically give them, in order to do the right thing without being hindered by political realities.

In countries which remain monarchies, the general public often has little idea what the monarch actually does. Successive British Prime Ministers have thought on being appointed that their weekly audience with the Queen would be like an afternoon off, discussing this and that over tea, until they discover that the Queen wants to know every detail of policy, and why it has been adopted rather than an alternative.

Royal families are also patrons of huge numbers of charities. This is not because they are sharing their wealth, but because the concept that they represent their country, however nebulous the notion of their country is, gives others the impression that the charity has positive values.

This was thrown into sharp relief by the decision of hundreds of charities to drop Prince Andrew as their patron after his association with Jeffrey Epstein, and various unproven allegations, were made public. A royal just shouldn’t do those sort of things, so he no longer fulfilled his function, even though he held the same title and had the same connections as before. It wasn’t about him personally, as it would have been if he had been a politician, but what he stood for, as something higher and more valuable than a mere politician.

Furthermore, deposed royals often still act as if their monarchies still exist, because it is who they are and what they do. The pretender to the non-existent Portuguese throne, Duarte Pio, is not recognised as the rightful heir by many Portuguese monarchists, who have different conceptions of how the king should be appointed based on different historical precedents.

But he is still invited to represent Portugal, though unofficially, at international events in preference to the country’s political leaders. Most notably, he was invited to Syria by Assad in 2011 on what Assad termed a “state visit”, although Duarte Pio is merely a private citizen. He is also active in many cultural organisations, seen as more representative of his country than a politician, as culture is shared amongst all people and political views are not.

Reality is Progress

So where might monarchies make a comeback as an alternative to failed politics? The big problem is that in most of the world a presidential system is considered more “modern”. But it only takes one hereditary ruler to change that perception, and some are trying.

King Simeon of Bulgaria was exiled in 1946 when the communists abolished his throne. He returned in 1996 and was elected Prime Minister in 2001. He couldn’t work miracles, and ruined his political party by going into alliance with the former communists in 2005. But the former king is still a widely respected figure for who he is, rather than his political errors.

If Bulgarians feel their system has failed them, which is why they objected to his “Grand Coalition” with the old guard, restoring the monarchy is the progressive and realistic alternative. Rather than going back to a past few remember, King Simeon and his heirs offer a stable future instead of a continuing present they know only too well.

In 2009 Georgia celebrated a royal wedding, as the two branches of the Bagrationi dynasty were united two hundred years after it had ceased to rule the country. Prince David and Princess Ana have subsequently divorced, but do have an infant son, who is the unchallenged heir to the rival claims of both Bagrationi branches.

This marriage had been promoted by the Patriarch of Georgia, Ilia II, as a means of potentially restoring the monarchy to resolve the country’s never-ending political crisis. He had a valid point: whether people agreed with monarchy or not, everyone recognised its historic legitimacy, whereas significant numbers of Georgians have routinely declared each government illegitimate and unrepresentative, regardless of its deeds, since independence.

Statehood is still an issue in Georgia, as the politicians and population cannot agree on what sort of country it should be, regardless of its deep and enduring cultural traditions recognised by all communities. Restoration of the monarchy would enable them to have those arguments whilst retaining national and international integrity, as it is those traditions, which are more respected than the modern state or its politics, which a monarch would be representing.

The Middle East still has a number of monarchies. Even in Iran, one of the few examples of a monarchy being removed by a genuinely popular revolution, there is nostalgia for what the shah represents, though less for the deeds of Shah Reza Pahlavi or his dubious dynasty.

Burma, or Myanmar or whatever you want to call it, has had constant inter-ethnic conflict since it regained independence in 1947. Much of this is not attributable to historic conflicts but the behaviour of the British who conquered it in 1885: the traditional British “divide and rule” tactics, and subsequent broken promises to those groups they had deprived to begin with, created the seeds of the conflict which continues today.

Burma used to have a monarchy, whose expansionist policies had created this multiethnic state. The last king, Thibaw, was deposed by the British in 1885, on the grounds that he was drunk and incapable, although he didn’t actually drink at all. Since then his descendants have been airbrushed out of history, though most are still living in modern Myanmar as private citizens.

Military government of a particularly nasty character lasted a long time in Myanmar because it was the lowest common denominator which the population, and the rest of the world, could accept. With the democratic government elected with so much hope having gravely disappointed due to the ethnic conflicts, restoration of the Burmese monarchy would again be a progressive option in a country which has seen all other ways out turn into dead ends.

Unlimited Sovereignty

Monarchies went out of fashion for many reasons. But a common complaint in democracies is that no matter who you vote for, nothing changes.

What the people want isn’t delivered by those they think are expressions of their will. Monarchs represent something people are, not something they have, and in a time when people are losing their jobs and homes, but are still the same people, this idea is beginning to resonate.

Of course you can’t kick a king out if you don’t like him. But that is where constitutional monarchy comes in. Politicians have set terms, even in countries with a recall option. If you don’t like your elected leaders, who you personally may not have elected, you are stuck with them too unless you can persuade enough people to reverse the damage when the next election is due, with no guarantee you will.

People everywhere remain fundamentally monarchist–and that democracy has not delivered as hoped. When recovering from a crisis, they instinctively want to be rid of their politicians and get someone in who will transcend their petty arguments. Restoring monarchies, rather than creating presidents for life, could be the most acceptable international option for giving people what they want, whilst retaining the accountability constitutional systems provide.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Like much of Asia, Eastern Europe appears to have weathered the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) crisis relatively well, at least in terms of overcoming a health crisis.

Total reported infections and deaths have been much lower across these nations, and the Western media has taken turns wondering just how this is possible.

Health Impact

Statistics indicate that Covid-19 has impacted Eastern European nations in about the same manner as the annual flu or common cold. Nations like Belarus have in fact been hit harder by the annual flu than by the recent Covid-19 outbreak.

While headlines claimed nations would be scrambling for critical medical equipment including ventilators, Eastern Europe has since had no widespread or widely reported shortages nor reports of overcrowded or overwhelmed healthcare facilities.

The table below gives a quick look at the impact of Covid-19 nearly half a year into the supposed “pandemic” and is easily comparable to annual flu burden in each respective nation.

Belarus: 27,730 infections, 156 deaths

Bulgaria: 2,174 infections, 105 deaths

Czechia: 8,406 infections, 295 deaths

Hungary: 3,473 infections, 448 deaths

Poland: 18,016 infections, 907 deaths

Moldova: 5,745 infections, 202 deaths

Romania: 16,437 infections, 1,070 deaths

Russia: 262,843 infections, 2,418 deaths

Slovakia: 1,480  infections, 27 deaths

Ukraine: 17,858 infections, 497 deaths

The health impact has been minimal with Eastern European nations imposing measures that ranged from the extreme to, in Belarus’ case, very minimum in the face of global panic over the virus.

Measures 

Eastern European nations did indeed put measures in place including the closure of public venues, issuing guidelines regarding social distancing and the use of facemasks. Poland had closed public venues and businesses, restricted public activities including gatherings and instituted the use of face masks, but has since begun easing such measures.

In other instances, measures have been so lax that it incurred complaints from neighboring nations.

Belarus, for example, has been accused by Lithuania of hiding the impact of Covid-19 on its population and responding inadequately.

US State Department propaganda Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an article titled, “COVID-19: WHO Urges Belarus To Implement Distancing Measures; Georgia To Extend State Of Emergency,” would complain about Belarus’ insistence on not caving in to what Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka called “mass psychosis.”

Western media is condemning several Eastern European nations for not being “serious” enough about Covid-19. What measures have been put in place are in turn targeted by the same Western media as “abuse of power,” indicating that Western concern is rooted more in political motivation than out of any genuine concern for the health of Eastern Europeans.

Questioning the measures put in place by some Eastern European nations and their gathering of Covid-19 related statistics has also become a political tool used to place pressure on governments unpopular with the West long before Covid-19 appeared on the horizon.

Ultimately it seems President Lukashenka was right for not paralyzing his nation socioeconomically for a pathogen apparently no more dangerous than the annual flu. While ordinary flu cases coupled with Covid-19 cases could present extra burden to national healthcare infrastructure, it is still not a crisis big enough to justify the self-inflicted socioeconomic calamity Western nations have subjected themselves to and are now mired in.

Socioeconomic Impact 

Despite the minimum health impact and in many cases, a minimum response in terms of measures, nations like Belarus are still applying for loans from international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Many Eastern European nations depend on international trade, especially with Western Europe. If Western Europe has shuttered their economies, the impact on Eastern Europe will be felt regardless of how it itself overcame Covid-19.

Just as is the case for much of Asia, Eastern European businesses will face a choice between waiting for the West to recover and reopen, or expand into markets Eastward. Either way, it will be difficult and Eastern European governments find themselves nonetheless implementing a raft of policies in response to reduced business or even unemployment associated with Covid-19.

Eastern Europe represents another example of how Covid-19 the pathogen failed to live up to chaos Covid-19 the panic triggered. The damage being done is socioeconomic and political rather than health-related and should give Eastern European governments pause for thought about how they move forward safely into a future where another “Covid-19 pandemic” may unfold and threaten their individual and collective socioeconomic stability.

The creation of policies, infrastructure and economic relations with other like-minded nations who agree upon a common structure for responding to and overcoming future outbreaks will be necessary to ensure there is not another repeat of the Covid-19 crisis. Only time will tell if Eastern Europe, along with other regions like Asia, are able to do so.

Gunnar Ulson, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.