The circus (an extraordinarily dangerous one) that the EU has become can be seen in the recent moves by Denmark and Germany in relation to the current geopolitical moment. The European Commission puts the icing on the cake.
And then there’s the real world. On Tuesday (25 November) US Vice President JD Vance warned that the US would take military control of Greenland with or without Copenhagen’s consent, and that he would even travel to the territory as early as Friday to ‘visit the Space Force guards stationed there and check on Greenland’s security’.
So we have an insignificant Scandinavian kingdom whining about Russian confabulations for the next decade while its Atlantic allies take over its territory without asking permission. Has anyone seen or heard European politicians talking about this? And where is the collective anti-Trump hysteria of recent months? As President Putin said after the US election: You’ll see in a minute that they’re all around Trump again. Any doubts?
Following the bizarre Danish announcement, German intelligence said shortly afterwards that Berlin is already working to prepare the country for a confrontation with Russia by 2030. The return of conscription will be the first step. The second is public spending on rearmament and infrastructure (for military purposes, if you read between the lines) to the tune of 400 billion euros, and a further 100 billion for the ‘climate emergency’, the formula with which Merz, head of BlackRock Deustchland, has decided to buy the vote and do business with the Greens.
‘Deutschland ist zurück!’ (Germany is back!), exclaimed the new chancellor euphorically, a rant that sends shivers down the spine of any good German whenever a ‘leader’ points his guns eastwards.
The new German government’s public spending promises to revive the country’s stagnant economy, but in reality it is based on issuing debt, with all the dangers that entails. It’s only a matter of time before the locomotive grinds to a halt again.
The European Commission, led by another Teuton of the same stock, didn’t want to be left behind, and although Europeans are still paying the heavy bill for the infamous 750 billion euro ‘bazooka’ of the Kovid era, a debt to which Brussels added the Ukrainian adventure, it is now proposing to find another 800 billion (!) for what it has decided to call an ’emergency’. Von der Leyen said that ‘Readiness 2030’ means ‘rearming and developing the capabilities to have a credible deterrent’ and ‘an industrial base that is a strategic advantage’. But there will be no European military ‘industrial base’, only a US one. Yes, the industrial base is that of the evil Trump!
Why the former German Defence minister, who was sacked in 2019 after a scandal broke out involving her in corruption cases worth hundreds of millions of euros, calls the current situation ‘urgent’ for the first time in three years, when Russia and the US are finally negotiating peace, is another question that remains in the air.
Back in Berlin, the new chancellor made it clear that his new government’s geopolitical allegiance will be to Ukraine and Israel. Not a word about the genocide in Gaza, perpetrated with German weapons. Those responsible for foreign and security policy in the CDU/CSU-SPD grand coalition also made a point of explicitly stating that ‘relations with the US remain of the utmost importance’. A subtle way of rejecting Macron’s invitation to make France’s nuclear capacity the European missile defence shield and remain under US control. It remains to be seen at what price Trump wants to negotiate this chapter.
Merz’s late-Keynesian move, which was deliberately approved illegally during the previous government’s term of office and effectively changed the constitution without the Karlsruhe court preventing it, also involves changing the rules and the economic consensus at the European level. The possible political consequences of these economic moves in Germany for the future of Europe and the eurozone, because they are so far-reaching, will be the subject of a future report.
Ricardo Nuno Costa ‒ geopolitical expert, writer, columnist, and editor-in-chief of geopol.pt
