Georgia is Russia’s legit area-of-interest: what is the EU trying to do there?

Perhaps fully 98 per cent of the population of the EU is unaware that the plan to admit the former Soviet state of Georgia into the union is proceeding, just as the hideous Flanders-style meatgrinder of the Russia-Ukraine war enters its third winter. Even a tadpole with learning difficulties knows that the only human entity that can benefit from extending the rule of Brussels so deep into Russia’s legitimate area-of-interest are medical surgeons specialising in fragmentation and gunshot wounds. I do not say “legitimate” with any approval, any more than I applaud hurricanes in Florida or earthquakes in San Francisco by suggesting that it is unwise to live in bamboo shacks in the former or in 100-storey skyscrapers in the latter. Facts are facts, no matter how unpleasant, even for the EU. 

It is quite clear that Russia is a multi-generational rogue-state whose criminality is so deeply-imbued in its culture, its institutions and worst of all, in the minds of its ruling classes, that it must still be treated with the caution historically accorded it. Barely had it ceased to be the Soviet Union than Russia fought a war with Georgia over the tiny province of South Ossetia, which if it didn’t exist someone would have to invent. South Ossetia personifies the nightmare of the Caucasian chalk-circle, in which an abstract and incomprehensible principle, in a land that no-one has heard of or could find on a map, could become an issue for which a generation of foreign soldiery perishes. Bismarck once said that the Balkans was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier, but that was probably because he never dreamt that a German successor would be so rash as to contemplate an adventure in the Caucasus, which almost makes the Balkans seem like a Bach motet. 

Similarly, most EU citizens were probably unaware that the EU is now close to achieving a trade agreement with the western half of South America, a five-state bloc known as Mercosur. This consists of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, while Venezuela is an associate member which (almost uniquely) also recognises South Ossetia as a lawful state (as did the government of Syria, RIP). This is a loop of utter insanity, the equivalent of the Consistory of Cardinals in the Vatican opening a vegan Halal pole-dancing club.  That aside, the EU imperialists insist that the Mercosur deal goes through, despite the fevered opposition from France. If 90 per cent of the population of the EU are largely unaware of the great imperial spread being negotiated by the Brussels panjandrums, there can be no sentient human being from the Dnieper to the Amazon that is unaware that France is falling apart constitutionally, politically, culturally and economically. Again, I do not say this approvingly: quite the reverse. It is a catastrophe. This is an existential issue that should be a central preoccupation of Brussels. 

But it is not because Brussels looks to its horizons, not to its heart, as its ever-growing imperium now washes on the land-girt shores of Caucasian Georgia as well as the great Atlantic states of the Andes, with apparently almost nobody crying stop, or asking why.  Admittedly, this is a new form of empire, or certainly presents itself as such, one that is based on democracy, statute and consent.  Events in Poland, where Donald Tusk’s ardently pro-EU Civic Coalition Party has been systematically corrupting the judiciary and blocking EU-critical initiatives, suggest that the EU’s devotion to democracy, statute and consent is dependent on all three being pro-EU. When Tusk was President of the European Council, he was not merely a ferocious opponent of Brexit, he was similarly a fierce enemy even of civility towards the country that had once gone to war on Poland’s behalf. Like all ideologists, Tusk has no moral memory, merely an ambition to serve the interests of the European Empire, which is of course led by The Great Imperatrix, Ursula von der Leyen. 

If these people don’t scare you, they should. Theirs is an empire ruled by a ruthless weights & measures inspectorate and supervised by that diseased organ, the European Court of Human Rights, part of the Council of Europe. Though this latter confection administers a body of law that is often the imaginative creation of its own judges, blessed with an insight into “human rights” that they alone possess, its rulings are superior to the laws created by subordinate parliaments. For example, in Poland, though the Constitution specifically excludes the Sejm (the Parliament) from being subordinated to edicts of the legal mandarins in Strasburg, prioritising the latter’s authority is precisely what Tusk’s handpicked judges have been doing.

Both in legal detail and geographical spread, the EU has been intensifying its authority, though naturally without seeking a mandate from its citizens, who – unless they are especially literate in the arcana of Brusselsology – are completely unaware of its insaner ambitions. It was often said that the British picked up an empire by accident, but that was less true than the method by which the empire was acquired which was largely outside the purview of parliament. But least the British had the world’s largest navy, while also raising informal armies from native peoples in India, to protect the British imperial interests. Contrariwise, the EU can provoke militarily but without being able to respond in any degree, which is an exercise in both stupidity and childishness. These are qualities that have almost defined the EU from its outset, and which were only possible within the absurd military protectorate created by the US. 

The protectorate formally comes to an end next month as President Trump accedes to power for the second time. His eviction from power four years ago can now be clearly seen by all for what some of us saw at the time – a global calamity. In every single metric, the world is in a far worse state that it was in 2019, when the Chinese government chose to infect the world with COVID. Far-seeing though the Communist Party of China clearly is, it could not have expected to have overthrown President Trump, so resulting in the presidency of a senile imbecile. Nonetheless, China has made enormous gains in the past four years, most particularly at the expense of the EU, whose two main building-blocks, Germany and France, are in political and economic disarray. Brussels Signal has dutifully reported the EU’s many delinquencies towards China, which (as we learnt yesterday) last month burnt more coal than ever in its glorious history, completing a year of even greater coal-burning glory. However, I suspect I was not alone in being completely unaware until last weekend that poor little Mayotte, a sort of Ossetia-sur-Mer (the Indian Ocean, actually) and therefore being part of France was also part of the EU, and tragically adding to all our woes.

The year 2024 ends with witless hubris still being the dominant mood of the Brussels nomenklatura, who are almost Bourbon-like in their refusal to learn or remember anything. Is this stupidity feigned or genuine or, worst of all, driven by sheer zealotry? Feigned stupidity can be unfeigned by fact: those who are genuinely stupid can be ignored: but the schemes of the purely zealous cannot be defeated by logic or studied neglect. It is now clear that von der Leyen and Tusk and their ideological cohorts are driven by dogmatic zeal and so must be dethroned. It is now not the turn of Georgia to take centre stage of EU affairs, but rather Giorgia:  Meloni, thine hour of glory has arrived…..!

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.