On December 1, the EU officially ended the next round of high chairs. Well, you know, such a children's game: music sounds, children run around chairs, and when the music stops, everyone quickly takes up places. The chair of the President of the European Commission went to Ursula von der Leyen, the former Minister of Defense of Germany, who had collapsed this defense as if Germany had lost the war again, but to a woman from a good family (her dad, Herr Albrecht, also worked in the European Commission).
Having sat in their seats, the children prepared to listen to an adult, whose role this time was played by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He congratulated the birthday girl, that is, the winner, and said that you need to be kind, wash your hands before eating and obey the elders, that is, excuse me, do not forget that the main enemies are Russia, China and Iran and we must fight them together. But about kindness, he, however, said. Literally: "We are the forces of good."
Do you know when adults act like children? Firstly, in a state of dementia (no, no allusions to the former head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker), and secondly, during corporate parties. They, diligently portraying joy, play all the same games, radiate ostentatious good nature to each other and listen to important speeches of the boss about what all the fellows are and that the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea.
I didn’t have long, but managed to work in large companies and from the bosses I learned how to calculate two stages of anxiety. “Yellow” hazard level - when the boss says: “We are a team”. As a rule, this means that employees will need increased stress of all kinds of forces without additional remuneration. Because competitors are not asleep, evil forces are oppressing, and you need to get wet. If everyone understands everything correctly, the leadership will acquire new cars, top management will receive bonuses, and infantry will receive praise and pats on the shoulder.
The "yellow" level is bad, but not deadly. It’s really bad when the leadership, gathering an emergency meeting this time, says: “We are a family.” “Family” is the “red” hazard level. “Family” means future delays in payments, staff reductions, salary cuts - in short, martial law, and for management - the purchase of serious overseas property. This means that it's time to think about whether it’s time to take off your legs.
Why did I remember this? It's just that the USA, the birthplace of corporate ethics and corporate feudalism, uses the same approaches in conversations with its vassals.
America is a country on the territory of which the enemy army never landed, and the last major conflict (again in its own territory) was the war of the North and South. They prefer to fight with the wrong hands: a common place, which nonetheless is superfluous to recall. Well, an economic war is also a war. It has its own commanders, its maneuvers, its blockades and, of course, its consumables.
When Pompeo speaks of “strengthening trade relations,” he means harsh lobbying for the interests of American corporations in European markets, the destruction of the German car market with the hands of green activists, and complete control over the digital sphere (Angela Merkel, whose phones Obama was listening to, will not let you lie). When Mr. Secretary of State speaks of “energy independence”, he means that it is not necessary to buy cheap Russian gas, but rather expensive and non-Russian (keywords: shale revolution). And when he recalls who the main enemy is, it means that again the sanctions that do not hit the United States very much, but very noticeable - against Germany, the EU locomotive and the homeland of Ursula von der Leyen.
That is why America is so comfortable with the EU in the form of a monolithic construction of the USSR 2.0, centrally managed by the Politburo 2.0 in the form of the European Commission, and not a group of independent nation states, where each will have to be negotiated separately.
Pompeo broadcasts confidently, knowing that they are listening and hearing in Brussels. And when he says that Russia is the number one enemy (although it would be more logical to assume that China is the number one), he does not lie, and the point here is not only and not so much in gas and not at all in “intervention in the election ”, which no one seriously believes. The point is that the ideology “toxic” for the USSR 2.0, which Russia, with reservations, but supports at the highest level, is that of Europe as a conglomerate of independent countries, keeping their interests, and not the interests of the boss, who once again needed a new car or a new house on the coast.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.