This is a major speech by the absurd von der Leyen to the European Parliament in the context of celebrations of the end of WWII. [1]
Von der Leyen says:
Eighty years on, we stand at another decisive moment in the history of our continent. The war in Ukraine will eventually come to a halt, and the way the war ends will shape our continent for generations to come. The future of Ukrainians is at stake – but so is ours. A bad deal could encourage Putin to come back for more. It would be a recipe for more instability and insecurity. Instead, a just and lasting peace could usher in a new era of prosperity for Ukraine and help us build a new security architecture for Europe. A just and lasting peace, that ensures Ukraine’s sovereignty, respects its territorial integrity, and upholds its European aspirations. This is the crossroads we face, and Europe has a huge stake. So we must do our utmost to strengthen Ukraine’s hand. [1]
The part that caught my ear was “upholds its European aspirations”. This shows just how crazy – I mean, really, insane – these people are. Firstly; there is no block on Ukraine joining the EU. Putin has said this; before the Russian operation and since the war started. No one is stopping Ukraine joining the EU accept the European leaders who are prolonging this war! if they stopped the war Ukraine, less the lost Eastern territories, (which surely, no one thinks are going to be retaken?), could join the EU tomorrow! Of course; the second factor which would complicate this is, once again. von der Leyen! – in this case with her project to militarise the EU. The part of Ukraine which is already lost, in the main, at least Crimea and the original LDNR, do not want to join the EU anyway! It is really insane that people are dying over this.
Von der Leyen seems unaware of the history of Ukraine and the distribution of support for joining the EU in Ukraine. We have covered this topic extensively on this website. In essence; for historical reasons, support for joining the EU is much lower in Eastern Ukraine than in Western Ukraine. The same applies for NATO membership. When von der Leyen in the same breath talks about “Ukraine’s European aspirations” and maintaining its territorial integrity she is doing nothing other than restating and recreating one of the major casual factors for the war. The reason for the rebellion after Maidan in what became the LDNR was because in that region of the country the population is provably more Russian (ethnically), and far less keen on joining the EU than people in the West, based on Ukrainian demographic reports and Western polling. The 2014 Gallup poll [2] gave a figure of 19% for the East and 84% for the West! Von der Leyen shows no understanding at all of the situation. Either that, or she is covertly backing the position of Ukrainian nationalists, knowing that it is unreasonable.
Von der Leyen’s position is aligned with the Ukrainian nationalists who want to have their cake and eat it. They want a mono Ukrainian nationalist culture and at the same time, they won’t give an inch to the desire of people in the East to have cultural autonomy. Von der Leyen is supporting the cultural oppression of the Russian-leaning population in the East. This means that as long as Russia is still able to fight; they will. All von der Leyen has to offer is eternal war.
And; we haven’t even talked about the idea of Russia being a threat to “the whole of Europe” which von der Leyen claims. This shows just such a total lack of understanding of the situation that it is amazing. If you consider the history of the situation one can understand, easily, it isn’t hard, that Russia’s position is, in the main, defensive. Why would they not be concerned about the coming right up to their borders of the military alliance which was the principle opponent for their predecessor state, the Soviet Union? They are supposed to simply believe assurances that “NATO is a peaceful alliance”? No military planner would simply accept some kind of verbal assurance of a heavily harmed opponent “not to worry”. Their operation was, obviously, designed to capture, at that time, Donetsk and Luhansk, and engineer a political change in Kiev so as to get a regime which would agree to drop the NATO aim. They did not even try to take the whole of Ukraine, let alone “the whole of Europe”! There is simply no rational and evidenced case that Russia is a threat to Europe. But; von der Leyen will still say it. And; does any journalist in the West ever ask her for the arguments and the evidence?
Von der Leyen enunciates her words carefully. She sounds like she thinks she is making an important, historically significant contribution. (If you can find extracts of the audio you will see what I mean). But what she says shows no evidence at all of any thought, of any analysis, of any understanding of history, of any attempt to understand the point of view of the other. And, while von der Leyen is a particularly egregious example of the tendency to be without thought of European leaders, she is by no means the only one. Indeed this is the norm. The proof of this is; even if you disagree with Russia’s position and want to argue that Putin should not have launched his operation, and so on, it would be possible to do this, while acknowledging the Russian positions; the situation around Donbas, the issue of NATO expansion, the history of Crimea, and majority Russian ethnic population in Crimea and so on. But you never hear these points considered and refuted or considered and evaluated differently. They never even mention the Russian point of view. They simply expect you to believe that Putin is a multi-headed and irrational, evil, monster who, one day, just woke up and decided he wanted to “recreate the Russian Empire” just for the sake of it. That is thinking at the level of cartoons. (Very occasionally; someone will say something like “Putin does not need to worry about NATO; NATO is a peaceful alliance”; but that is not a credible argument; by the same token the Soviet missiles in Cuba were benign and no one should have got in a flap about them).
How did it get to be like this? In fact; the question is not simply rhetorical. It can, to some extent, be answered. Part of the answer is linked to the media. These people are politicians. The day after they make these speeches, they check the front pages of the main Western press to see how they came across. Will it help or hinder their careers? And, the media, itself, suffers from two fatal flaws. Firstly; Western media is, in general, owned by finance capital. They push the political agenda of finance capital. They want to hear and reproduce messages which are aligned with the Western finance, corporate and corporate-military sectors. Secondly, there is simply a monetary and built-in dynamic which determines and shapes content. The imperative to boost sales to the maximum, (and thus gain more advertising revenue), leads to a “race to the bottom”. Sensational headlines invariably win out over careful analysis. It takes one second to read a headline “Russian threat; Putin kidnaps children”, and it gets the blood up; the reader is hooked and wants to come back for more. On the other hand, it takes time and effort to read a piece discussing the history of Ukraine and Russia, demographic figures, recent political events, what Russian political discourse is saying, and so on. So; in order to reach a mass market and keep them coming back for more the tendency, even in the “serious” press is towards a simplistic, sensationalised, cartoon-like narrative. Politicians like von der Leyen, have risen to the top in their profession, precisely, because they know how to perform for this media and “write the headlines for them”. All the various “think-tanks”, sponsored as they are by the Western corporate and finance world, also have the same dynamic. To rise to the top, one must repeat what has gone before and what the funders approve of. It is a spiral into the abyss – with the media largely responsible.
Notes