The Struggle for Power in the European Union

"2024 will not be an ordinary election year. The time has come when the fate of Lithuania will be decided again for many decades, or perhaps irrevocably.

 

The period of relative security and prosperity that began after the Cold War and raised hopes for a better future is ending with a new geopolitical confusion. Just as thirty years ago, when the Soviet Empire and the global communist system collapsed, so now, in the face of the same scale of confusion, the situation of Lithuania is becoming more and more uncertain and is shrouded in uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty is increasingly penetrating the very core of the nation's and the state's everyday life, giving rise to a sense of growing danger for Lithuania.

 

But there is an Olympic calm in the country's political and academic circles. It turned into deadly silence on the most important issue for the European Union (EU) and Lithuania, even in the midst of ongoing presidential and European Parliament election campaigns. People live, think and talk as if nothing had happened or changed in the last five years. As if the first real conflict in Ukraine, the biggest in seven decades, did not occur in Europe, the global geopolitical confusion did not increase and the international security order did not collapse, the European Union would not stand on the brink of a deep crisis and inevitable breaks and transformations.

 

All this continues to be thought and talked about in worn-out ideological clichés that are hopelessly disconnected from the new realities, not daring or being able to even clearly and openly name the enormous challenges and foundational problems facing the EU and Lithuania. Against the background of heated and deep discussions on these issues taking place in almost all European countries, Lithuania looks like a frozen intellectual swamp and a politically disabled corner of the EU province.

 

A familiar sight. Three decades ago, when the state of the communist empire and future prospects were heated in the centers of the collapsing USSR, the same stagnation prevailed in the nomenclatural sanctuary of the former Soviet Socialist Republic, and it was grimly mocked that the "reorganization" stopped at Baranovichi. Now the only thing that is new is that it can be said that the winds of change moving towards Lithuania not from the East, but from the West, which can turn into real storms, suddenly stopped and stopped blowing, not in Belarus, but in Poland, somewhere near Białystok or Seinai.

 

The national unification stands at the start of the European Parliament elections, primarily in order to stir up the waters of the frozen and already beginning to swamp the Lithuanian intellectual and political quagmire. It is time to start talking fundamentally about the state and future of Lithuania and the EU as a whole, as it was managed to do, albeit much late, at that decisive moment in the history of the nation and the state. The discussed EU problems threaten the survival not only of Lithuania, but also of the Union itself, and its preservation from the collapse caused by ideological fanaticism and centralization is one of the most important national interests of Lithuania.

 

In the face of geopolitical transformation, Lithuania must rely primarily on itself

 

During geopolitical transformations of this magnitude, the former world and its order always collapse. From its ruins, or rather fragments, sooner or later emerges a new world with a different order. Some nations make through this not only alive, but often renewed and even stronger. Others do not pass the test of history and leave the arena forever. Lithuania is facing such a test and can and must rely only on itself. In such cases, it would be disastrous to unconditionally rely solely on allies and defense partners when looking for and expecting help from abroad.

 

It is necessary to understand and realize the most important lesson of the conflict in Ukraine. Lithuania's powerful allies do not want to allow it to lose and are helping Ukraine with restraint and delay. But even more they fear and seek to avoid the defeat of Russia. Even at the cost of the indiscriminate destruction of Ukraine and the possible loss of a large part of its lands. A strong and independent Ukrainian national state is not needed either by Russia or by the Western powers that are desperately trying to save it from disintegration. The cautious and carefully dosed Western support for Ukraine only once again confirms and reminds us that global geopolitical constants do not change.

 

The dependence of the Central European states, including Lithuania, on the EU and NATO does not negate the fundamental fact that this region essentially remains a gray zone between East and West. The danger of his countries again becoming an object of negotiations and exchanges between Moscow and the Western capitals is currently significantly reduced, but in principle has not disappeared anywhere. This means that if Russia attacks Lithuania, not only in Western political circles, but also in their societies, the question may be heard: "Die for Vilnius?" In the name of what?'

 

The importance of the European Parliament elections: to preserve the union of free nations and equal nation-states

 

Being ready to hear such a question at any moment - this provision must become the cornerstone of Lithuania's security and defense strategy. Lithuania can implement such a strategy only with one absolutely necessary condition league - while remaining a politically sovereign state.

 

However, the state of Lithuania still needs to be defended. The European Parliament elected this year will for the first time in its existence become the place where the fate of the European Union and even the entire European continent will be decided. For decades, the expansion of the European Union has been based on the desire to maintain a balance of power between the governing institutions of Brussels and the national governments of the Union's member states. 

 

In 2009 the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon created the conditions for violating this balance - the Brussels authorities began to increasingly usurp the powers of national states and unilaterally narrow even the rights granted to them by the treaty.

 

The quiet and outwardly almost imperceptible accumulation of power in the hands of the EU's political elite and the Brussels bureaucracy has regularly resulted in an attempt to destroy the union of free nations and equal nation-states in one fell swoop. Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasper - post-war Christian Democrats and great ideological visionaries and political architects of a united Europe, who are rightfully considered the real fathers and creators of the European Union, dreamed of and planned to establish such a union, politically organized on the example of the Swiss Confederation.

 

The EU is in danger of turning into a highly centralized superpower

 

November 22 last year. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament on the amendment of the EU treaties from the Union created by them leaves no stone unturned. The proposed amendments to more than 250 treaties aim to abandon the principle of unanimity in the EU Council in 65 areas and transfer the competences of the member states to the EU level, in other words, take them away. It also wants to significantly expand shared competences in favor of Brussels. In this way, all at least somewhat more important areas of EU activity are attacked, which would take several lines to list. If the planned changes are implemented, the current union of countries would turn into a bureaucratic monster - a strictly centralized superstate, in which the current EU members would become politically powerless provinces administered from Brussels.

 

This would be the victory of the "federal" Europe designed by the Italian Communist Trotskyist Altiero Spinelli over the vision of a united and free Europe fostered by the true fathers of the EU. The federalization of the EU is a huge deception of the Europeans spread by the current EU leaders. Creating a true and free EU federation - the United States of Europe - is impossible in principle. The nations and countries of the EU with a strong cultural identity and distinctiveness, a long history and old traditions of statehood are not the same as the same nations, such as German-inhabited federal states, which do not require self-government at the level of political sovereignty.

 

Free nations with experience of democratic self-government have always cherished the right guaranteed by state sovereignty to manage their own lives and decide their own destiny. And they do not want this right to be taken away. It is this and nothing else that can explain the wave of the "spring of nations" rising throughout the EU and the growing popularity of national political forces on the eve of the upcoming EP elections.

 

Aim to fundamentally change the demographic and cultural face of the EU states

 

The designers of the neo-Marxist European superstate understand this very well. They are desperately trying to break the resistance of EU nations seeking to preserve their freedom and cultural identity. For this, the only weapon at their disposal is the deliberate tolerance and even encouragement of massive illegal immigration to the EU and the colonization of the entire continent. Mandatory permanent redistribution of the current flow of millions of arrivals among the countries of the Union is foreseen.

 

Tens and, as expected, even hundreds of millions of newcomers from poor and culturally alien third world countries must overwhelm the old European population and guarantee the desired "multicultural" folk diversity of the new Europeans. It is expected that the newcomers will repay the "open borders" policy implemented by the EU leaders and providing a richer life with absolute loyalty to the creators of the European superpower and become a strong support of the Brussels government in the colonized lands of the European nations.

 

Efforts to fundamentally and unrecognizably change the demographic and cultural face of the EU countries are masked by the need to take care of the missing workforce. In order to destroy nations and states at any cost, the EU is silent not only on the political goals of the ongoing mass immigration and colonization. The numbers of newcomers actually entering the labor market are hidden. The economic and social evils created by immigration are glossed over. It is even ignored that the burden of supporting immigrants has fallen on ordinary EU citizens and is becoming unbearable.

 

The "federalization" of the EU and the abolition of nation-states is Europe's most direct path to inevitable doom. With the disappearance of sovereign states and especially with the consolidation of the centralized redistribution of migrants according to mandatory quotas, the creation of "post-Europe" would only accelerate and inevitably turn into an avalanche collapse.

 

Having lost the last remnants of sovereignty, these EU states would become politically powerless "multicultural" provinces of Brussels and would have no leverage to control their own destiny. The geopolitical and security situation of Lithuania as a relatively small border country would be particularly difficult. Once the North-West region of the Russian Empire, Lithuania would become a peripheral province of the European superpower - the North-East region.

 

In cases of serious geopolitical crises and the threat of a major military conflict, surrendering to the mercy of an aggressor and allowing him to quietly seize a sovereign state is much more difficult than sacrificing the peripheral territory of an imperial entity for the sake of long-term peace or other noble goals.

 

That is why it is so important to defend and preserve the state of Lithuania in the European Parliament. The slogan of the fight for it can only be this: Lithuanians without a state - Lithuania without a future. And first of all, it is necessary already during this election campaign to clearly formulate and raise the most important, indeed existential, question, what our country can and must be: remain a sovereign state of the European Union or become its North-Eastern borderland? We must do everything to remain a sovereign state in the Union of European States and preserve the Union itself through reforms.

 

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Vytautas Radžvilas is a professor, one of the creators of Sąjūdis, the chairman of the National Association."

 

 The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. Times are really turbulent, so the big powers are centralizing. Americans spread central government subsidies just as well as the Chinese. Without those subsidies, it is impossible to switch to clean electricity as an energy source. If we Europeans do not pool our resources for such a goal, we will quickly become poor and no one will come to us. We will not be able to defend ourselves though.