It would seem that a funny thing happened. More sanctions and sanctions. Having failed to stop the “Nord Stream-2” project itself, the United States started to screw the topic of sanctions literally to anything it can, and so it reached its own military budget.
The other day, the US Congress passed an amendment to the draft law on the US defence budget for 2020, including the strongest sanctions against the Russian gas pipeline under construction. The question may arise: what business is it of the Pentagon what is going on in Northern Europe? Has the American parliament decided to declare war on Russia?
However, the picture that follows from the words of the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, is not so comic. Although the practical content of the new sanctions remains secret, their essence is nevertheless revealed. The United States does declare war. Not against Russia, but against the European Union.
The aim of the announced measures is the direct physical destruction (through ruin) of all European companies involved in the implementation of the Russian gas project. Free market, you say? No, you misheard. Democracy? No, the Pentagon.
The shooting of objectionables will go through the complete closure of direct or even indirect access to any markets and/or orders in one way or another connected with the Pentagon or the US Department of Defence. Plus using the capabilities of the Treasury Department as a tool to ensure pressure in the financial and credit sphere. American lawmakers do not hide it – objectionable firms should die. Period.
As the deadline for the formal legal adoption of the 2020 US military budget approaches, the moment of truth is approaching for the EU too. If before Washington masked its expansion into Europe at least somehow for the sake of decency by the desire to protect the common interests of the collective West, now it has dropped the mask completely. “Friendship” is only possible through a) exploitation or b) through direct subordination. And those who refuse to be friends like this simply don’t live.
The question is rhetorical – and is this democracy? No, it’s a colonial approach. Only not to Third World countries, but to Europe itself by the US.
And it isn’t at all for the sake of beautiful words. The well-being of the economic system, and thus of the American state in its current form, depends directly on the ability of the Americans to maintain their colonial system. Except, unlike the times of the greatness of Britain, it works according to a more primitive scheme.
Classical colonialism was based on the scheme of withdrawing from the colonies the maximum cheap raw materials and selling there the expensive industrial goods of the metropolitan area. There is no objective thing to export from Europe to the United States. It is poor in terms of raw materials. But Washington can export its liquified natural gas there.
Especially since its own production in the North Sea is falling there, and traditional sources in North Africa are also gradually being exhausted. One problem is the Russians, whose gas is at least 1.5 times cheaper than America’s, and which they have a lot of.
It is impossible to stop cooperation through political intrigues in the European Parliament and the machinations of the Eastern European limitrophes. Moreover, the measures start to have the opposite effect. Still being aware in the recent past who was the master of the house, the Europeans gradually started to be convinced in practice that it’s possible to do things in another way. From here it is not so far from the realisation of the possibility to regain geopolitical subjectivity. With all the resulting consequences of an independent foreign and domestic policy, this is highly undesirable for the United States.
It was on Capitol Hill that they realised that the time for handling Europe with white gloves had passed. The famous words of American General Philip Sheridan spring to mind: a good Indian is a dead Indian. Will Europe, which itself has a distinct colonial age-old tradition, accept such logic? This is the big question.
Aleksandr Zapolskis
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