When we look at desperation as a factor (real or created) - it has an amplified impact on resource dependent Europe. The European Environmental Agency claims that 60 to 70 percent of their soils are degraded. Energy costs are now double the costs in the US and they have had to pay a debt that amounts to a trillion dollars in extra spend since 2022, manufacturing is now just too expensive to deliver a sale-able product to the normal population. So agriculture and manufacturing are feeling real pressures. The knock on effects are making wider populations feel real pain. Manufacturing pain if you will... that along with the constant humming of propaganda everywhere. Looks like a re-run of an old script.
This situation appears to be the arrival of a long predicted storm which places the EU at a crossroads in my humble opinion. Locked into a backwards looking paradigm the options are running out.
Sun Tzu had a name for the extreme case, "Death Ground." The place where no retreat was possible because there were no options left. In this fight for survival all resources were committed to a fight to the end. You didn't get a choice or a voice in the matter. Are we really there, or are the powerful so invested in old ways that they are convinced there are no options?
Are all of the options really exhausted? What about a return to normalcy with its power to the East? What about integration to a rebalanced system of trade? It seems like trading the internally generated threats of vulnerability to geopolitical manipulation read: my brokers don't like it, for the collision of a very real conflict which could escalate into profound losses is the question at hand, and nobody seems to care about what the people caught in the middle of this really want. By the way, whomever is the provider of resources to enable such a dependency will always be capable of lording that over your head. So this is a specious argument based on who stands to benefit or is too frightened to risk exposure financially - again my simple minded view of the way things work.
Meh, Nothing new about this show down except one should be careful to realize through whom's lens you are viewing this situation. Watching events unfold around the world has suggested that there are many miscalculations afoot and the recalcitrant resolve demonstrated suggests that all of the combatants have read Sun Tzu and understand what is at stake. The worlds stockpiles of once and done stuff is indeed running low. Adaptation, conservation and perhaps new ways of dealing with our realities are what is required. That would be evolutionary, but alas it seems we are on track to be historical instead.
Sun Tzu did say "The Supreme art of war was to subdue the enemy without fighting" that is another way of saying diplomacy and intellectual discourse aimed at getting along made more sense than wasting lives and resources in a physical contest. In our time there are many ways to accomplish either option that don't involve conventional approaches. That is both the danger and the promise of our times.
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