Motus Mentis

The latest issue of Chronicles offers an excellent analysis, by Srdja Trifkovic, of the sorry state of Europe, and of the calculus behinds its bellicose response to the war in Ukraine.

In particular, Mr. Trifkovic explains that Western Europe, whose dilapidated political class has dug itself into a deep economic hole, is using “ludicrous” claims about Russia’s military ambitions to justify aggressive military expenditures on borrowed money:

It may appear reckless for [German Chancellor] Merz to expand military spending on a grand scale while the country is in economic decline, but there is more to that decision than meets the eye. Germany and other EU countries benefit from the prolonged war in Ukraine because it offers a rationale for a massive injection of borrowed cash into their economies. Market demand is not an issue for European arms makers, who are experiencing an unprecedented windfall. There is hardly any competition, thanks to no-bid government contracts. Pricing is arbitrary, and the high cost of energy and labor that is killing other sectors is more than offset by sky-high profit margins. 

In other words, EU leaders are using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to apply Keynesian stimulus to increase aggregate demand, and thus to ameliorate the historic economic downturn. The formula is reminiscent of the way Hitler’s deficit financing made a massive rearmament program possible in the 1930s, eliminating unemployment. This also may explain why the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing have a powerful incentive to claim that “a militarized Russia poses a persistent threat to European security for the foreseeable future.”

There are other motivations as well:

For the same ruling elite, it is equally heretical to claim that a community must possess a high degree of ethnic and cultural homogeneity to be able to aspire to “democracy” of any kind. European elites demonize any attempt to encourage and maintain social cohesion based on a common ethnic origin as a “racist” relic of the past. Their visceral hatred of Russia is at least partly due to its refusal to submit itself to the Western ethos of demographic and cultural self-annihilation. 

In the task of erasing ethnic homogeneity, Eurocracy has defined two main enemies. The first is the traditional family, the basis of biological and cultural survival of every nation, the transmitter of collective memories, emotions, and loyalty. The second is resistance to unfettered immigration. The essence of politics, as differentiating friend from foe, is demonized as “racism.” Brussels encourages the disappearance of national communities in favor of groups of citizens as consumers of goods and atomized lifestyle-based “communities” promoted by powerful lobbies. Any criticism of the EU from the standpoint of a nation’s interests indicates “right-wing populism,” ergo fascism.

It is in the American interest, and in the interest of the endangered European nations and their wounded civilization, that the EU project collapses over Ukraine.

Read the whole thing here.