Vive le nationalisme?? Wake up Europe!

I am stunned how nationalists overestimate the strength and glory of their own country, time after time. I don’t even have to mention examples of nationalistic overestimation in European history, just pick one you want.

After the war in Ukraine, we will be facing this massive China-Russia block. Have you seen the size of it on the map? Have you seen its dominance in energy and products?

They are a fierce competitor against the West, not only economically and militarily, but also politically as they feel threatened by the values of freedom that we advocate.

So, any form of separatism or disintegration within the EU-USA alliance or within NATO gives them a massive advantage against us! 

Nationalist trends as propagated by politicians like Trump, Farage, and Le Pen, are therefore crucial for them. Because face it, if you were Russia or China:

- Wouldn’t you be very happy about Brexit?

- Wouldn’t you be extremely happy if La Pen won the elections and France got out of the NATO?

- Wouldn’t you be happy if internal disagreement about migration, weakened Europe’s togetherness?

- And wouldn’t you be cheering with happiness if NATO disintegrated, thus disconnecting the USA from Europe?

Any single country within the EU is no more than a little ant as seen through the eyes of China with a population of over 1 Billion people. And a country like France can never be strong if the rest of Europe weakens through internal disagreement.

After Gorbachev’s perestroika, we got relaxed and dozy, and Western money started flowing, turning a poor China into an economic world power and a fallen Soviet Union into a dominant Energy imperium. We liked being good friends and made ourselves entirely dependent on them.

After the Ukraine war, we will be facing a new world!

I don’t think that our democratic values get in the way of readjusting our policy to the new world situation, provided we do it wisely, pragmatically, by being tough where we need to, and by sticking together!!

This also means that we as citizens should vote for pro-European parties in our country and we need to be willing to compromise on topics of disagreement so that every member state feels itself part of the European family.