Nato conducts a military drill in Norway with over 50,000 soldiers and 10,000 between military vehicles, aircrafts and ships.
Russia launches the operation Vostok-2018: about 300,000 soldiers, nearly 40,000 between military vehicles, aircrafts, ships, helicopters and drones. China contributes with 3,500 troops.
The American administration is questioning at the highest level the role of USA within NATO (Trump), all while supporting anti-European populist parties (Bannon).
All of this happened in the last few months alone. There’s enough to start considering whether we should concern ourselves with what the future may bring.
Between Ukraine, Iran and Syria there’s a lot more going on if we were just to dig one or two more years in the past, but in the past 6 months we assisted to an acceleration of the process. Plus while we don’t yet have any confirmed evidence, there are many investigations undergoing regarding financial links between far right populist parties in Europe, and -again- Russia.
The drawing seems clear: proposing one scheme that in past proved successful in keeping the global power steadily in the hands of two superpowers alone for half a century. That is: Cold War.
The Middle East never really stopped being divided, with Iran and Saudi Arabia being respectively linked to Russia and USA, and splitting the region in two areas of influence.
What is really playing a key role at the moment is the European Union: malcontent against it has been constantly growing for at least 10 years now, and the scarce receptiveness from the administrative organs during the same period allowed external forces to try to exploit what was already not working in it, in a reproposal of the old divide et impera strategy.
Europe is often perceived by its detractors as a bureaucratic, lobby-controlled and scarcely democratic Union of states. Its democratically elected parliament does not in fact have right of initiative, meaning it cannot propose a new law, but only review what was decided in the European Commission.
The 28 Members of the European Commission are elected by a Council made of Ministers from each Country (delegation of 1st level).
Typically the Minister was elected by the country’s Parliament (delegation of 2nd level).
The Country’s Parliament was -finally- democratically elected by the population (delegation of 3rd level).
It is hard to argue with someone who complains about excessive bureaucracy or a democratic-gap, in light of what I just described as a mere example.
To make things worse, a large number of unpopular dispositions were driven by the EU in those same years, and the democratic-gap stands as a question mark against the authoritativeness of those dispositions.
The divide between Russia and USA is all playing around Europe at the moment, and while 5 or 10 years ago euro-skepticism could have a place, things have changed fast enough that the cohesion of the EU is now vital for the wellbeing of european citizens.
Without the EU in fact there’s little to nothing keeping the European countries from splitting in two areas of influence similar as to what happened during the last century.
Neoliberalism created and grew new pockets of poverty and those who took the hit so far turned mostly to their right for solutions. Right winged solutions speak of nationalism and sovranism, two concepts that don’t go well with the distributed nature of the EU.
EU elections are due in May 2019, at the moment it is hard to see how the population could become supportive of a Union that did little to meet and overcome criticism.
The extraordinary effort required in the next few months to turn enough voters away from euro-skepticism cannot be understated.
For Europe, failing to deliver will probably mark the path to disgregation.
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