The Munich Lesson: Europe Between the American Awakening and Its Illusions

If one were to take into account the time span of recent events, the millenarian idea of ​​the unrepeatable astral conjunction would be entirely valid.

Beyond esotericisms, politics has lost its balance with the rise of some actors and the simultaneous nosedives of others. The discussions held in Munich have certified new scenarios, moreover reiterated shortly thereafter, where the theme, security, has contributed to making the context tense and absolutely not cohesive, perhaps conditioned by the past of the German city, remembered for its beer halls and dangerous Appeasement not too far back in time.

But it's a joke, since between cancel culture and cultural backgrounds of particular lability, the memory tends to dissolve like mist. And this is of unprecedented relevance, given that the entity most involved, Europe, must inevitably be considered more geographically than politically, a dramatically evanescent dimension that raises the stakes, unless the defense budgets are revised upwards, an eventuality that for some is at the very least chimerical.

Beyond subjective beliefs, continuing to look at American politics without evaluating how it is the expression of various complexes of contingencies, gives the sensation of looking at the finger rather than at the moon, where the current European scaffolding, which intends to support a liberal order, feels the Republican earthquake in Washington which, in fact, can test the other international infrastructure, the one on which NATO is based.

If Europeans were looking for reassurance in Monaco, Vice President Vance brought a further element of reflection for some, of shock for others, even if it was not what they were hoping for since tension of any kind is better to release rather than suffer. Not only duties or trade wars therefore, but also a political and apodictic catechesis deployed to illustrate how the worst threat remains the internal one, that of the retreat from the founding values ​​of the West shared with the USA.

A disconcerting speech, unprecedented even for the Republican tradition, which does not reduce the relevance of Vance, holder of political-ideological references deeper than those of Trump, so much so as to allow him to take on the aspiration to change the post-liberal globalizing order and political correctness.

Vance must be listened to carefully and above all understood without preconceptions, because nothing prevents him from ascending to the White House in a not too distant future.. Vance will also be a hillbillies, the man who emerged from the poor and marginalized realities of Appalachia, but he is also a Yale graduate, he is the former soldier who served in Iraq; he is the one who believed in venture capital, in the investments needed to finance start-ups in high-potential but high-risk sectors. Vance is the one who established a relationship between Musk and the right-wing populist movement.

Be careful, in short, because Vance could be the future of the GOP (Grand old party, the Republican Party), is the forty-year-old who did not fear traumatizing an all too formal and rigid European Union, accused of limiting freedom of opinion and of not knowing how to manage immigration policy in the same days in which Germany itself was hit by new bloody attacks.

It is understandable then why Vance, messenger of MAGA and traditional values, left the assembly in stunned silence, with an audience torn between surprise and blame, struck by the references to the Romanian elections, annulled due to alleged external interference, and by the interventions of the former commissioner Thierry Breton, who intervened forcefully on the German consultations.¹ obviously defended by the outgoing Chancellor Scholz, now refractory to external interference; a frankly unpleasant political posture, capable of arousing the grotesque memory of the Sarkozy-Merkel curtain, or the statements of Minister Shauble, all addressed without any diplomacy against Rome.

Perhaps the key to understanding lies in both I don't share your idea, but I would give my life for you to be able to express it, the thought of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, at the base of an archetype that harks back to the original Anglo-French liberalism to be rediscovered without giving in to Orwellian temptations from 1984, as well as to a lack of knowledge of the intellectual context that formed Vance, whether one approves of it or not.

After all, as an enlightened Master has pointed out, we have seen many things already said politely in the past and thrown in the face more rudely now, like a mountain man. One may not agree on the substance, but certainly not on the shock transmitted, on generic fears, interferences, on the presence of personalities politically incorrect, there democracy cannot and must not fear anything.

It is more than evident that the real issue at stake is the stability of the EU according to the current architecture put into traction by the current Washingtonians, who still do not understand whether it is the case to give up or to please, just to avoid worse catastrophes in a continent too rigid to invent a new image of itself.

Of course, Vance was harsh here, but it shouldn't have been so surprising after The Donald's inauguration speech, which, moreover, did nothing but confirm his electoral promises with the downward reconsideration of woke culture and a green economy which, in the terms in which it is expressed, relaunches China, which is well known to pollute, and sinks the West.

But be careful, because the President must also be able to act in harmony with the powers that surround him: alone in the end, without deep state, it cannot do much more. What is certain is that, given the Chinese hostility, the bitter pill remains for the former great Russian hegemon that cannot be handed over to Beijing.

What to do with an empire short on power projection? Probably the only way forward is to have the weakest attract the attention of the other party so that it does not align itself with the rising hegemon, with the awareness that, even if the Dems had won, maybe the narrative would have been different, but the problems, well, they would have remained substantially the same, with the Russians not even so sorry to resume a semblance of Liaison with an interlocutor who is all in all more appealing than Xi, always focused on reconquering Siberia and reassuring the EU.

We always remember Vance in Munich and the widespread echo of Trump from Washington: If the Russians secede from China, Beijing will remain isolated and less likely to reconquer the rebel province of Taiwan.The problem is on the one hand the Ukrainian counterpart, and on the other the hypothesis of a Sino-Russian seduction which, marking the failure of the attempts at rapprochement, would force the Americans to face two enemies, not just one.

Meanwhile, Europe continues to be persuaded that it possesses a subjectivity that in fact, politically, does not exist or, at best, is very weak, as is political memory, which does not remember that Putin was the first Russian leader to speak at the Munich Security Conference which, perhaps because of the very pleasant air of Bavaria, saw the attack on the unipolar world and the USA, guilty demiurges of a reality harbinger of conflict.

The lessons of Munich are those that suggest not to underestimate the despot who speaks because he could be pernicious, and that peace, like the one that could have been generated in '38, comes through force. In short, the story of Munich cannot be forgotten, especially now that Europe is chasing international politics driven by the solicitations produced by the grandeur of a single country. Vance's speech must therefore be associated with Trump's initiatives, addressed to Russia and Saudi Arabia, which Biden imprudently downgraded to pariah, and related to the lack of concrete results in a European context, never so devoid of unitary political lines.

Trump would like a Europe more in line with the USA, with Beijing however tugging at Brussels' jacket from the other side to preserve a status quo that privileges a heavy economic dependence useful for taking advantage of internal fault lines; this is the perspective of the policy pursued by the timeless Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, generous with reassuring reassurances, based on a multipolarism in which the CCP will guarantee certainty and constructiveness, connecting to the BRI at the price of two measly mere pennies (cit. Mary Poppins).

If even Draghi, former Prime Minister and Governor of the ECB, has called for draconian reforms within the European Union, perhaps in these terms Europe is truly a prisoner of its bureaucracy and of itself with competitiveness and productivity seriously at risk, both in the face of the USA and the Middle Kingdom, given that internal trade barriers and regulatory obstacles can become worse than any Trumpian tariff.

While trying to hypothesize a political line, Europe is forced to deal with Russian expansionism to the east and with an American hyper realism to the west that leaves a Brussels sullen but inane and without concrete plans, especially for the military component which, as far as the Ukrainian quarrel is concerned², as mentioned by Lucio Caracciolo, poses the dilemma of the difference between a just peace and a possible peace, where on average all conflicts end with the latter. In short, the Yankees are less popular than before, but their disengagement, feared where related to the risk of the Siberian Burian, gives hope that in its convolutions American politics will not abandon the very complicated cousins ​​across the Atlantic horrified by the unpopular Vance, like the diners at the restaurant Chez Paul in Mr Fabulous with the Blues Brothers.

Be careful, because there is no alternative to the American security guarantee at the moment and presumably for a long time to come.; so, let's get on with the bitter chalices, already anticipated in '63 by JFK who urged the Europeans to a greater defensive responsibility, in anticipation of the fact that the long-awaited new order might not be as pleasant as hoped, unless the current USA intends to proceed with their own Divide and conquer, like Beijing; it is worth remembering, without prejudice, the proposal for the acquisition of Greenland, which is not entirely new in US politics, and therefore cannot be counted among Trump's gratuitousness.

Let's be honest, it is a set of positions that are conceptually difficult to accept, but which must be rationalized, leaving aside prejudices and performing an exercise of inductive connection. The problem is to understand whether, in the old continent, this is possible or whether, on the ridge on the left under the view of the trees, there are still colonels who look at the Americans only as cheeky young men (easy to guess quote)