Eurasia note #91: What Is This EU That Georgia Would Join?

Europe lost its way in the ‘90s – Georgia-EU part 3

• Expansion is exposing EU’s unresolved contradictions

• A multi-ethnic, loose federation would have transcended nation states

• Yet NATO has used EU as a tool to ‘normalise’ post-communist Europe

• Franco-German model has adapted poorly to transition economies

• EU ‘conditionality’ slows the accession of Georgia and Ukraine

• Raises doubts about ‘the offer’: integration or domination

• EU’s corporatist origins augmented by the Net Zero carbon project

• This new colonialism would financialise the nature of Western Balkans

• AI project seeks to profit from depopulation and virtual nations

(2,400 words or 11 minutes of your company.)

This article is split, constituting parts 3 of this latest Georgia series — and part 4: Europe's Parallel Reality: C02 And Degrowth - Turning nature into currency is a plan for a mercantile feudalism (May 09, 2024).

See also:
Eurasia note #94 Dark Stars Align in Georgia, Slovakia, Ukraine (May 24, 2024)
Eurasia note #91: What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)
Eurasia note #90: Manoeuvres In Georgia; The Opposition’s Plan (May 3, 2024)
Eurasia note #89: Georgia, Beware An Offer Of ‘Ukraine 2014' (Apr 29, 2024)

Eurasia note #84: Georgia Warns U.S.-Backed Groups Plotting Unrest (Oct 04, 2023)
Eurasia note #83 - Tragedy As Armenians Flee Karabakh (Sep 26, 2023)
Georgia's Colourful Riot Not Yet Revolution (Mar 08, 2023)
Europe, Gas And The Endgame - Switching energy flow from East-West (Sep 30, 2022)

By the way, have you tried Substack’s improved search function - click on either magnifying glass, add a word or a phrase, and find any article or topic!

Tbilisi, May 7, 2024

We have focused, in parts one and two, on Georgia’s place in the European Commission’s plans to expand the Union from 27 to as many as 36 new members.

Naturally, many people feel drawn to the Georgian protests. There is no intention to rain on their parade.

There is a difference, however, between the people on the streets, who see European Union membership as their best hope of prosperity, and the protest organisers, who are perpetrating a fraud on the masses.

Georgia is already in the process to join the EU; political instability will only slow accession.

The foreign agent registration bill, which they call “the Russian Law,” is nothing of the kind. By exposing foreign funding, it would expose all foreign interference, Russian or American. Besides, it is modeled on the U.S. foreign agent law FARA, not Russian.

For Georgia, as Ukraine, there are much bigger issues than the pace at which it joins the EU.

These issues could determine whether Georgians get to keep their country and culture; and if you think that’s an exaggeration look at Ukraine, which is being stripped of its assets by the allied side – by the U.S and European corporations, from BlackRock to Swedish loggers. [1]

It’s much more complex than the NATO Fellas tell you — and by the way, they’re coordinating with the Georgian opposition.

Their tale of goodies against baddies is simplistic propaganda to manipulate the masses when compared with the matters at stake.

Key issues include:

• Corporate dominance in Europe;

• Finding fault and a missed chance in Yugoslavia;

• The EU’s internal crisis and the solution of expansion;

• What replaces European culture? The decline of the Franco-German axis;

• Migration no longer a taboo topic - now it’s the institutions you can’t challenge;

• Military redefines democracy - the relationship of NATO and the EC;

• Carbon as the new colonizer - carbon credits a tool of imperialism;

• Climate and migration as tools of change;

• Virtual nations.

We shall address each of these points. They sound technical but are very real and of immediate practical importance.

The following are not statements of opinion but questions prompting further debate: they are not nuanced, but brief and necessarily coarse.

What is Europe?

The European Economic Community (EEC) was set up by and for corporations, abolishing customs duty at the border, and giving companies the right to decide where they pay sales tax.

Individuals have no such rights. There is no European constitution in force as none has been ratified.

The European Convention on Human Rights is much weaker than a Bill of Rights. It does not guarantee liberties but establishes rights/obligations subservient to the community or “the planet”. Moreover, it is being merged into Agenda 21 and the Sustainable Development Goals, in which humans have no more rights than other forms of carbon.

The European Commission is a directorate, appointed not elected, that runs the European Union. The European Parliament is elected, but it is purely advisory.

The EU began as a mercantilist alliance for the benefit of Europe's biggest corporations, and it is evolving, with the efforts of the United Nations Agenda 21, from a liberal capitalist Fabian supra-state into a monopoly capitalist one.

Why not Yugoslavia?

Why did it find fault in previous attempts at integrated, multi-ethnic states such as Yugoslavia?

“Yugo” as holiday makers called it fondly, was an experiment in East meets West, split from the Soviet Union. It was not in the Warsaw Pact, and it experimented with capitalism; you could say it was the first transition economy.

Why did NATO bomb it instead of embracing it? Why did the West provoke ethnic strife instead of blending “Yugo’s” ethnicities into the EU?

It takes a high level of awareness to confront this reality: as with Northern Ireland, the Basque region of Spain, Operation Gladio across Europe, and Britain’s long-standing hostility to Russia.

NATO would confront Yugoslavia because its most populous state, Serbia, was mostly Slavic, and thus linked ethnically and religiously to Russia.

Like Russia after 1991, Yugoslavia was being subjected to shock therapy, forced into rapid privatisation of state enterprises in return for loans by the tool of Western bankers, the International Monetary Fund.

Rather than reunified, these countries and Europe as a whole were being “centrifuged”.

Europe, what have you done?

In a “what if” article for Carnegie Europe, Cornelius Abedahr suggests what might have been different had the EU embraced Yugoslavia as a member. The EU would have solved today’s problems much earlier: the problem of integrating transition economies like Georgia and Ukraine; the function of the single currency; the settling of frozen conflicts; and thus a less aggressive approach to security and defence.

The six republics of Yugoslavia would have strengthened the hand of Europe’s smaller members; those seeking independence such as Catalonia and Scotland. Europe would have been less centralised and more regional.

The EU would have been forced to adapt its rules from benefiting founder members like France and Germany, to the needs of more flexible, less stratified economies.

The single currency would be more fair to poorer members, and delivered benefits that would have provided an incentive to re-unify Cyprus, for example. Externally there might have developed a more peace-loving NATO and EU might have steered clear of conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, the Congo and later Libya. [2]

The crisis of expansion

Instead the EU has become a means of “normalisation” or pacification for nations formerly (in NATO’s view) in Russia’s orbit. In an odd way, membership of the EU is the carrot, NATO the stick.

Many such countries have dysfunctional economies and corrupt syndicates, while the EC demands convergence, clean up and conditions before full membership.

As just discussed, the EC is built on the Franco-German model and is poorly adapted to transition economies.