Headline: Emmanuel Macron lays claim to the mantle of de Gaulle
Sub-headline : Like the general, the French president aspires to rule above conventional politics
As always the headline and sub-headline at The Financial Times, are the all important rhetorical/political framing for its Neo-Liberal Apologetics, Mr. Jonathan Fenby’s Macron Press Release being its latest example. It will not disappoint the regular readers of this newspaper! His essay makes all the requisite historical comparisons with de Gaulle: the commonality between both leaders is in the exercise of megalomania, with the proviso that de Gaulle had an actual record as War Hero, and political leader. While Macron’s particular politics are defined by the exercise of the arrogance of a political arriviste. The proof of that statement, the idea and practice of a Jupiterian Politics. Note, that one of the cornerstones of Neo-Liberal political fraudulence is the idea/construct that the Left/Right divide cannot just reach some consensus, a modus vivendi, but can be subject to a political/economic emancipation. The Civic dimension is consigned to the scrapheap of the Neo-Liberal Counter-Revolution: The Free Market determines the whole of the human aspiration and endeavor!
Absent from this celebration of the arrival of Neo-Liberalism à la française is the record of spoiled ballots and abstentions- for a full report on the unaddressed questions of Fenby’s unsurprising hosannas to Macron, read this enlightening report from CNN’s on the French vote (Updated May 8 2017):
Headline: A record number of French voters cast their ballots for nobody
(CNN) Emmanuel Macron’s triumph over Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election has been hailed as a landslide victory for the centrist candidate and a widespread rejection of his rival’s far-right platform.
But Macron’s mandate may not be as overwhelming as it seems. A record number of French voters were so dismayed by their options that they either skipped the election or cast their ballots for no one at all.
The so-called “ballot blanc,” or white ballot, has a long history as a protest vote in France, going all the way back to the French Revolution. This time around, nearly 9% of voters cast blank or spoiled ballots — the highest ever since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958.
For now, the votes, which are counted towards the turnout, are largely symbolic. But there is a movement underway for the blank ballots to count as a share of the overall election vote. According to a recent Ifop poll, 40% of French voters said they would cast a blank vote if it were recognized under French law.
In the graph that CNN provides, that I cannot reproduce here*, the percent of both ‘white’ and ‘spoiled ballots’ stands at 33.4%. Nothing like a mandate for ‘reform’ ! Except to the editors and writers of The Financial Times.
Mr. Lawrence was Representative Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff from 2005 to 2013.
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Editor: How much APIAC money did Pelosi take?
Representative Nancy Pelosi received approximately $618,120 from pro-Israel sources between 1990 and 2024. These funds are a combination of contributions from various pro-Israel groups, not solely from AIPAC, and have been disclosed through campaign finance filings.
Total amount received: $618,120 from 1990-2024.
Source of funds: The funds are from various pro-Israel sources, not exclusively AIPAC.
Time period: The data covers the period from 1990 to 2024.
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Pro-Israel Recipients – OpenSecrets
Representative Nancy Pelosi received approximately $618,120 from pro-Israel sources between 1990 and 2024. These funds are a combination of contributions from various pro-Israel groups, not solely from AIPAC, and have been disclosed through campaign finance filings.
Total amount received: $618,120 from 1990-2024.
Source of funds: The funds are from various pro-Israel sources, not exclusively AIPAC.
Time period: The data covers the period from 1990 to 2024.
Editor: Recall that The Mahattan Institute wasn’t just ethisiastic advocates of Eric Adams and his Restaurateur Cadre! Posted below is some valuable information as what this ‘Institute’ stand for!
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research – Bias and Credibility
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.
Overall, we rate the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Right Biased based on editorial and policy positions that routinely favor a conservative perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a lack of transparency with funding, the use of poor sources, and a failed fact check.
Bias Rating: RIGHT Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Organization/Foundation Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY
History
Founded in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey, The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative American think tank established in New York City. The primary focus is on economics and law enforcement. Its message is communicated through books, articles, interviews, speeches, op-eds, and the institute’s quarterly publication City Journal.
In review, the Manhattan Institute’s website links to research topics, publications, and projects. News items provide a snippet from an external source a member has contributed to and then a link to their site. Some sources they link to are mostly right-leaning, such as The Dispatch, City Journal, and the New York Post. Under the category of research topics, they cover Urban Policy, Education, Energy & Environment, Health Policy, Legal Reform, Pubic Sector, Economics, and more.
Editorially, the Manhattan Institute favors free-market capitalism such as this Saving Capitalism. Regarding science, they do not outright deny human-influenced climate change but disagree with government solutions: Empty Theatrics on Climate Change. Reporting on President Trump and his handling of the economy is often favorable such as this Trumped-Up Budgets.
Overall, we rate the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Right Biased based on editorial and policy positions that routinely favor a conservative perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a lack of transparency with funding, the use of poor sources, and a failed fact check. (D. Van Zandt 7/16/2016) Updated (03/24/2023)
Editor: The Clinton Dynasty confronts the fact that the old corrupt order of Pelosi, and Schumer, to forshorten the facts, of the corrupt and sclerotic Neo-Liberal Order, of pruchased AIPAC cronies, is teetering? Does the purchased loyalty of the hysterical Zionist Adam Schiff represent possible new life for Clintonism!
Editor: The first consideration to make with regard to Stephens, is that he was a former employee of the Jerusliam Post: A paid propgandist for the State of Israel! Yet he still managers to write for The New York Times that employes David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, David French, all Zionist ! Not forgetting the very fact that Mamdani is a Muslim?
Editor: Stephens introduction makes way for a ‘Self -serving ‘History’ of bad political ideas:
America First? The slogan of Charles Lindbergh and other pre-World War II isolationists should have been buried forever on Dec. 7, 1941. Instead, it emerged from its grave some 75 years later.
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But it isn’t just the Trump administration that is reawakening the moral and intellectual zombies of the past. Everywhere one looks there are policy necromancers.
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The platform of the national Democratic Socialists of America calls for a 32-hour workweek “with no reduction in pay or benefits”; “free public universal child care and pre-K”; “college for all”; the cancellation of “all student-loan debt”; “universal rent control”; “massive public investment to transition away from fossil fuels”; “guaranteed support for workers in the fossil fuel industry,” and “expansive paid family leave.” Not only would American workers stand to benefit, but so would everybody else, since the D.S.A. wants to offer these benefits to anyone who wishes to come to United States through an open-borders policy.
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Oh, wait — many did. “Bolivarian socialism,” welcomed by the Jeremy Corbyns of the world, took Venezuela from being South America’s richest country to a humanitarian catastrophe. Sweden attempted a form of socialism in the 1970s and ’80s, only to reverse course after it experienced massive capital flight and a financial crisis during which interest rates hit 75 percent. France’s Socialist government imposed a 75 percent tax on earnings over one million euros in 2012; it dropped the tax two years later as the wealthy packed their bags. Britain’s National Health Service, whose advocates chronically complain is “underfunded,” is in a state of perpetual crisis even as health care, according to the BBC, gobbles up roughly one third of government spending.
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“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” Margaret Thatcher once observed. To put it another way, you can’t abolish billionaires, as Zohran 1,036,051 the D.S.A.’s poster child, would like, and still expect them to keep footing your bills.
If socialism is foolish, there’s something worse: the “socialism of fools,” antisemitism, now rapidly ascendant on the MAGA right.
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Editor: Mr. Stephens is a Zionist of the most toxic kind! Here he produces a simulacram of a critique, that should have roused the sleeping majority ? But the victory of Zohran Mamdani at 1,036,051 votes, renders Bret Stephens political commetary into a nullity!
Editor: Here is a a selection from the FT‘political report’: The Billionaire Class that the Financial Times, just doesn’t cater to but coddles, like a new born infant, in need of succor! And the cadre of political opportunists who hope to feed on the remainders! Note the appearance of the highlighted first sentence of this paragraph as evidence of an ersatz objectivity!
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However, many on Wall Street remain sceptical. In July, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon described Mamdani’s policy proposals as “ideological mush”. Financiers such as Third Point founder Daniel Loeb, billionaire Ronald Lauder and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pacs opposed to Mamdani’s candidacy.
Mamdani has also had mixed success in his efforts to win over the Jewish community. He has said that antisemitism has “no place” in the city and said he would discourage use of the term “globalise the intifada”. But last month more than 850 rabbis and cantors from across the US signed an open letter opposing his candidacy, saying his rhetoric on Israel would “encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews”.
New York’s near 50,000-strong police force has also been subjected to a charm offensive. Over the summer he met a large group of rank-and-file police officers in a closed-door session, during which he apologised for the June 2020 tweet.
He has also said he intended to ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as New York police commissioner if elected. Tisch, a billionaire heiress who was appointed by Eric Adams, has been a bugbear for some on the far left, despite her wider reputation for competence and professionalism.
By keeping her on, Mamdani signalled that he “wants the best and brightest”, says Wylde. “Diverse viewpoints. It’s the Team of Rivals concept.”
His lack of government experience remains a vulnerability. In the second TV debate on October 22, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, told him his “résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin”. Cuomo said he had “never had a job”, and would struggle to run a city with 300,000 employees and a $115bn budget. He would also be no match for Trump who “thinks he’s a kid”, the former governor added.
Mamdani himself has brushed off that criticism. “What I don’t have in experience I make up for in integrity,” he said in one debate. Turning to Cuomo he added: “And what you don’t have in integrity you could never make up for in experience.”
Mamdani remains a tough sell to many moderates. But there is no doubting his ability to connect with groups that Democrats have lost touch with — young and working-class voters and ethnic minorities — and who will be crucial to its hopes of regaining control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms.
Their enthusiasm was on full display at last month’s rally in Washington Heights, held in a famous vaudeville and movie house built in 1930 that was filled to capacity with volunteers and fans.
“Fundamental change only comes from the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future,” Mamdani said. “Together, that is exactly what we have done.”
Among the attendees was Ergene Kim, a recent arts graduate. “Since the elections last year there’s been a lot of cynicism and pessimism,” she says. “A lot of my friends want to leave the country.” Mamdani, a “symbol of change and optimism”, was turning the mood around.
“It would be a huge symbolic victory for the left in this country if he wins,” she adds. “It will show we’re still fighting. It will show we’re still here.”
Editor: I can’t claim anything that might resemble objectivity, but the evidence is clear: that the political ascention of Mamdani, has precipitated not just the Financial Times, but The Economist, to levels of hysterical fear mongering of politician who is a Social Democrat and a Muslim. The Other keeps manifesting itself from within!
Newspaper Reader.
The Economist is late to the game of one–upmanship against Zohran Mamdani?
Editor: Zanny Menton Beddoes and her Oxbridger Cadre seems to have weighted too long to begin its assault on Zohran Mamdani! Reader recall this from my comment of Oct 29, 2025?
Editor: Don’t call me anti-Semitic, call me Anti-Fashist !!!!
Larry Ellison: Co-founder of Oracle Corporation and consistently ranked among the world’s wealthiest individuals.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Co-founders of Google (Alphabet Inc.).
Mark Zuckerberg: Co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms (Facebook).
Steve Ballmer: Former CEO of Microsoft and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.
Michael Dell: Founder and CEO of Dell Technologies.
Michael Bloomberg: Co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., former Mayor of New York City, and a major philanthropist.
Miriam Adelson: Physician and publisher, who, with her late husband Sheldon Adelson, built a casino empire (Las Vegas Sands Corporation) and became a significant political and philanthropic donor.
Leonard Blavatnik: A Ukrainian-born, British-American investor and the founder of Access Industries, with significant stakes in chemicals and media companies like Warner Music Group.
George Soros: Investor, business magnate, and founder of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations.
Jan Koum: Ukrainian-born American co-founder of WhatsApp.
Marc Benioff: Co-founder of the software giant Salesforce.
Jim Simons: Renowned hedge fund manager and founder of Renaissance Technologies.
Bill Ackman : founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, an investment management company.
Political Observer marvels at ever bumptious Neo-Con Zanny Menton Beddoes, who has never fought in a War. Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel (1920) provides a fractured but usable model?
Editor: What can the reader make of this Economist call to arms?
Editor: Its fitting that I’ll frame the text of this Economist political impertive, via a qutations from Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel (1920).
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The villages we passed through as we marched to the front line had the appearance of lunatic asylums let loose. Whole companies were pushing walls down or sitting on the roofs of the houses throwing down the slates. Trees were felled, window-frames broken, and smoke and clouds of dust rose from heap after heap of rubbish. In short, an orgy of destruction was going on. The men were chasing round with incredible zeal, arrayed in the abandoned wardrobes of the population, in women’s dresses and with top hats on their heads. With positive genius they singled out the main beams of the houses and, tying ropes round them, tugged with all their might, shouting out in time with their pulls, till the whole house collapsed. Others swung hammers and smashed whatever came in their way, from flowerpots on the window ledges to the glass-work of conservatories.
Every village up to the Siegfried line was a rubbish-heap. Every tree felled, every road mined, every well fouled, every water-course dammed, every cellar blown up or made into a death-trap with concealed bombs, all supplies or metal sent back, ail rails ripped up, all telephone wire rolled up, everything burnable burned. In short, the country over which the enemy were to advance had been turned into an utter desolation.
The moral justification of this has been much discussed. However, it seems to me that the gratified approval of arm-chair warriors and journalists is incomprehensible. When thousands of peaceful persons are robbed of their homes, the self-satisfaction of power may at least keep silence.
As for the necessity, I have of course, as a Prussian officer, no doubt whatever. War means the destruction of the enemy without scruple and by any means. War is the harshest of all trades, and the masters of it can only entertain humane feelings so long as they do no harm. It makes no difference that these operations which the situation demanded were not very pretty.
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Editor: Beddoes and her minions have refined the call to battle, as a necessay imperative for Europe. The very thought of an Oxbridger, or its equiveilent, serving in any Army, offers a certain puerile potential? ‘Europe’ seems to have reached an Age of Fracture: Macrons wayward politics is the paradigm?
Wars are fought on the battlefield, but they are also trials of financial strength. In prolonged conflicts the ability and will to marshal resources and find new ways of raising cash are critical in determining who wins: sometimes they are the decisive factor. That truth is about to become all too real for Europe. Ukraine is facing a savage cash crunch. Unless something changes, it will run out of money at the end of February. This cliff edge is fast approaching, now that President Donald Trump has cut America’s financial support for Ukraine, hopes of a ceasefire fade and Russian drones smash Ukraine’s energy grid in an attempt to break its will.
Indebted, fractious Europe needs to find the money to keep Ukraine in the fight. But it would be a terrible mistake to see this cash call as merely a painful exercise in annual budgeting. Instead, it is a historic opportunity to shift the balance of power between Europe and Russia by exposing the Kremlin’s financial frailty and altering Vladimir Putin’s calculus about war and peace. It is also a chance to speed up Europe’s efforts to establish its military and financial independence from America. The bill for Ukraine is higher than most Europeans realise, but it is also a bargain.
After almost four years of war, the cost of fighting is huge. By the end of 2025, Ukraine’s military effort, defined as its defence budget plus foreign gifts of weapons and military grants, will have cost a total of roughly $360bn. This year the war effort will require $100bn-110bn, the highest sum yet, equivalent to about half of Ukraine’s GDP.
Two of the three sources of funding for Ukraine are now drying up. In February, after Mr Trump entered the White House, monthly American financial allocations to Ukraine stopped. Meanwhile, Ukraine has now borrowed as much as anyone will lend it. It has an official fiscal deficit of about a fifth of GDP; public debt has doubled as a share of GDP since before the war, to about 110%. Its ability to borrow from war-scarred households and firms at home is limited.
That leaves Europe. The prospect is exposing divisions inside the European Union. On October 23rd its leaders failed to agree on a loan to Ukraine that would be collateralised by $163bn of frozen Russian assets held in the EU’s main clearing house. Objections from Belgium, which hosts the clearing house, threaten to derail the plan. Northern countries fear that agreeing to more EU fundraising by issuing common bonds could undermine fiscal discipline across the currency bloc. France fears that fresh European funds will be spent on overpriced American weapons to please Mr Trump. Everyone worries that a blank cheque could worsen Ukraine’s corruption.
Editor: The BBC provides the necessay reality check on the War Mongering of Beddoes, and her political cadre, in their comfortable home offices!
BBC
Headline: Key town faces ‘multi-thousand’ Russian force, top Ukraine commander admits
James Landale Diplomatic correspondent, in Kyiv
Ukraine’s top military commander has admitted his soldiers are facing “difficult conditions” defending Pokrovsk – a key eastern front-line town – against massed Russian forces.
Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said Ukrainian troops were fending off a “multi-thousand enemy” force – but denied Russian claims that they were surrounded or blocked.
He confirmed that elite special forces had been deployed to protect key supply lines which, army sources said, were all under Russian fire.
The defence ministry in Moscow reported that Ukrainian troops were surrendering and 11 of their special forces had been killed after landing by helicopter – something denied by Kyiv.
Gen Syrskyi said in a social media post on Saturday that he was “back on the front” to personally hear the latest reports from military commanders on the ground in the eastern Donetsk region.
In a short video, Syrskyi is seen studying battlefield maps with other commanders, including the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov.
It is unclear when or where the footage was recorded.
Ukrainian media earlier reported that Budanov was in the region to personally oversee the operation by the special forces.
The deployment of special forces suggests officials in Kyiv are determined to try to hold on to the town, which Russia has been trying to seize for more than a year.
Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops “have improved [their] tactical position” in Pokrovsk – but the situation remained “difficult and dynamic”.
Late on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that the defence of Pokrovsk was a “priority”.
There have been growing reports of Russian advances around the strategic town to the west of the Russian-seized regional capital of Donetsk.
Images shared with news agencies late on Friday appear to show a Ukrainian Black Hawk helicopter deploying about 10 troops near Pokrovsk, although the location and date of the footage could not be verified.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had thwarted the deployment of Ukrainian military intelligence special forces north-west of the town, killing all 11 troops who landed by helicopter.
DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source monitoring group, estimates about half of Pokrovsk is a so-called “grey zone” where neither side is in full control.
A military source in Donetsk told the BBC that Ukrainian forces were not surrounded but their supply lines were under fire from Russian troops.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Ukrainian forces had “marginally advanced” during recent counter-attacks north of Pokrovsk, but that the town was “mainly a contested ‘grey zone’”.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014.
Moscow wants Kyiv to cede the Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk regions – collectively known as the Donbas – as part of a peace deal, including the parts it currently does not control.
Pokrovsk is a key transport and supply hub whose capture could unlock Russian efforts to seize the rest of the region.
But Kyiv also believes its capture would help Russia in its efforts to persuade the US that its military campaign is succeeding – and, therefore, that the West should acquiesce to its demands.
Zelensky has publicly agreed with Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire that would freeze the war along the current front lines.
Putin is refusing to do so, insisting on his maximalist pre-invasion demands that Kyiv and its Western allies see as a de facto capitulation of Ukraine.
Additional reporting by Jaroslav Lukiv
Editor: the final paragraphs of the Economist War Mongering chatter from a cadre of writers , who mold the work of stringers, that meets many levels of usable political winnoning, to meet political ends!
This newspaper supports the seizure of Russian assets, but they are $230bn short of what is needed. Given the size of the challenge Europe collectively faces, some sort of joint borrowing would be justified. Far from undermining the euro’s international status, for the EU to issue bonds collectively would create a bigger pool of common debt, deepening Europe’s single capital market and boosting the role of the euro as a reserve currency. A multi-year horizon for weapons procurement would help Europe sequence the build-up of its defence industry. In the short term Europe should have no qualms about buying the American weapons that Ukraine needs, including air-defence systems. Later spending should favour European defence firms as they develop their own systems, as well as Ukraine’s own cutting-edge defence-tech industries.
Bring it on
Grave problems lie ahead. Inducing despair in Mr Putin, a noble aim, might be complicated if Russia can tap China for funds. Decision-making between the EU and NATO, which includes Britain, Norway and Canada, needs to be nimbler. Safeguards against corruption are important, but must not erode Ukraine’s—and the Kremlin’s—certainty that, one way or another, the money is coming.
Europe should take heart and recognise its own strength. Its military budget is already four times larger than Russia’s; its economy is ten times larger. Far from shying away from a financial contest with the Kremlin, Europe should embrace it—and win the war.
Editor: The final paragraph of this of essay, places Europe in a position of power when compared to Russia. How might the Russia’s Oreshnik missile weigh in that balance of power?
Robert Greenall and Chris Partridge
BBC News
Russian missile reached speed of more than 8,000 miles per hour, Ukraine says
By Reuters
November 22, 20246:35 AM PSTUpdated November 22, 2024
KYIV, Nov 22 (Reuters) – The Russian missile that struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday reached a top speed of more than 13,000 kph (8,000 mph) and took about 15 minutes to reach its target from its launch, Ukraine said on Friday in its first public assessment of the new weapon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik” as a warning to the West against supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
The attack took place with fighting in the war nearing the three-year mark and Ukraine firing longer-range missiles supplied by its Western allies at targets inside Russia.
“The flight time of this Russian missile from the moment of its launch in the Astrakhan region to its impact in the city of Dnipro was 15 minutes,” the military’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said in a statement.
“The missile was equipped with six warheads: each equipped with six submunitions. The speed at the final part of the trajectory was over Mach 11.”
Mach is a measurement of supersonic speed. Mach 11 equals about 13,600 kph.
HUR added that the weapon was likely to be from the Kedr missile complex, which deputy head Vadym Skibitsky told Ukrainian media is related to the Oreshnik system and was first tested in June 2021.
Skibitsky said Russia could have at least 10 more such missiles to test before they enter mass production, news agency Ukrinform reported.
Kyiv initially suggested Russia had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, but U.S. officials and NATO echoed Putin’s description of the weapon as an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Thursday urged the international community to react swiftly to the strike.
NATO will hold an emergency meeting with Ukraine at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss Moscow’s strike, a NATO source said on Friday.
Judy Dempsey offers this analysis/evaluation from May 21, 2024. Dempsey is an itergral part of the American National Security State Apparatus of Experts, based in Europe !
Headline: Europe’s Inability to Manage Instability
Sub-headline: Turbulent developments in Europe and beyond are eroding the premises upon which the EU was established. European governments must respond strategically to protect democracy.
This economic shock was not new. The collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank in 2008 and the ensuring eurozone crisis triggered a deep lack of confidence in the EU’s perceived ability to provide continuous growth and prosperity.
On top of that, the war in Syria and Germany’s decision in 2015 to give refuge to nearly 1 million people fleeing the conflict also challenged the EU. The impact of globalization, wars, and migration sat uncomfortably with the EU’s founding premises.
What all the above means is that Europe needs to strategically acknowledge how such premises no longer apply.
First, the EU needs to move toward greater economic integration. This would entail agreeing a functioning banking union and a capital markets union. Both would strengthen the eurozone.
Second, since Europe, at least for now, is not going to be a defense player in the sense Macron proposed, it should strengthen its role in NATO, regardless of who enters the White House in January 2025. Deterrence, enhanced capabilities, and further enlargement need to be priorities.
Third, since EU member states cannot agree on treaty changes that would reduce the use of unanimity in decisionmaking—thus making EU foreign policy more cohesive and effective, coalitions of the willing could be an option. If this requires financing for special civilian missions, those countries that don’t want to join should contribute financially.
Finally, leaders need to speak out about why Europe’s democracy and values need to be defended. If that way of life didn’t matter, why are Ukrainians and Georgians waving EU flags?
