EU Collapse
The EU is in complete disintegration, there is little doubt about that. While this will provide opportunities for EU member states, especially those in the periphery, to come back and negotiate a better relationship with Berlin and Brussels, it is necessary to understand why this is happening and what is at stake.

In short, the threat of an EU collapse is being pushed by the powers that be in Washington and Wall Street.

The end-game is to push the EU into conflict with MENA countries, Central Asia, Russia, and China. This is of course a suicidal move. But it's only the final move in what has been an imposed suicidal course.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that Eurocrats are hand-picked for being particularly weak-kneed, groomed for their lack of creativity, servility, apparently low testosterone levels for men and low estrogen levels for women -and in the leading positions - are people without children or extended familial obligations? It seems that having no family obligations extends outwards and outwards, the extended concentric circles of obligations are not there. Nations and peoples are little more than largely extended families comprised of concentric circles of distant cousins.

How is it, or why is it, that an entire post-war system was built up on the foundation of a bureaucratic class with the least capacity to raise pertinent issues, with the lowest ability to raise their hands at board meetings when obviously disastrous courses are being proposed? But let's not digress, shall we continue?

So in a number of ways, the present disaster was inevitable.

The US sabotaged the EU economy by spreading its 2007 virus to Europe through the derivatives scandal. The firewall that separated and quarantined the deregulated mayhem of the US speculative economy from the more prudent EU version of the same, came down 10 years ago. We've been seeing the wages of this play out ever since.

Even Eurocrats, even the most sinecure of them all, understood this fact. But their job was to stay quiet. But on the national level, European leaders of the various nation-states, began to become more vocal.

There are really two credible streams of thought about all of this:
  1. This was intentional long-game planning by the US, with the idea of furthering a crisis in the EU, by turning the cyclical down-swings of the capitalist economy into a geopolitical weapon, where the EU is pushed into a more robust mid-east policy, and even or ultimately some kind of confrontation with Russia.
  2. The natural cyclical crises caused by speculation driven economies of scale, resulted in a series of ad-hoc and pragmatic fixes, which were 'surfed' or 'maneuvered' in real-time to arrive at the same weaponization of the crises as described in 1. above.
At the same time, the EU was already facing a wall of its own - the EU can only expand so far before the elastic concept of Europe snaps. Turkey and Israel, for example, are 'stretches' in terms of EU membership for a number of reasons, not only cultural and historical.

But the EU's own speculative part of its economy, was premised upon the concept and policy of EU expansion. So this worked well through the 00's and 10's. In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, the EU came in economically and picked off these former Warsaw and Yugoslav states one by one, the US also got in on the game, and the US also played the role of supply-line security for the EU-US project to expand into former Soviet and Yugoslav space.

The EU's deal with Libya - real Libya, of the Green Jamahiriya led by Gaddafi - opened a very real and tangible opportunity for a sustainable EU on many fronts. Libya would become the growth engine of North Africa and the Mediterranean, working closely with France, Spain, and Italy. Ultimately this would have strengthened the EU bloc all together, but pushed it along a developmental/industrial rather than speculative/austerity based course of development.

Libya was creating a gold backed currency, terraforming the Sahara desert, and becoming a more attractive destination for both Maghreb and Sub-Saharan African migrants in search of honest work and a better life.

The 'suicide' move that the US pushed upon the EU by manipulating its Atlanticist puppets and plants, was therefore not only buying the toxic derivatives after 2007, but in destroying Libya.

The economic destruction of Libya only destroyed the EU's own future growth potential, along industrial/developmental lines (thereby forcing it to double-down on speculative, i.e. fictional 'growth', debt-driven GDP increases which are not)

Then after 2010 and more so after 2015, the US pressured the EU towards an ever more open, open-door policy with regard to MENA region 'refugees', lifestyle migrants, and the like.

Finally in 2018 the US sparked a trade war with the EU, Spain's prime minister, the fourth economic power in Europe, was replaced due to corruption, and Italy formed a government that wants Italy out of the EU and to abolish the Euro. Experts say that all this leads to a complete breakdown of the EU.

The political quake arose after the Spanish parliament voted lack of confidence, last Friday morning, to remove the Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from the People's Party. He has been in power since 2011, and has been removed due to the illegal financing of his party and its officials. The party received bribes, seized money and evaded the tax, which is why 29 businessmen and party officials were convicted in 2013. Although there is evidence that Rajoy took money, he always denied it.

Socialist Pedro Sánchez was elected to Mariano Rajoy position. He said he would try to stay at the helm of the government by the end of the current parliamentary term of 2020, but it is not certain how much his administration with only 84 Socialists in the 350-member parliament, will succeed. This is an additional problem for Spain and the EU.

Apart from this, the EU also faces a major problem in Italy, where the Eurosceptic government was sworn in Friday. After the March 4 parliamentary elections, the coalition of the Ultraright League and the anti-system movement Five Stars, came to power.

The head of the new government of Italy is Giuseppe Conte formed a government that advocates the withdrawal of Italy from the EU, as well as the rejection of the EUR, creating a major problem for the EU.

Political experts see the new government in Italy as the first populist government in Western Europe and think that it could break the EU. Interestingly, it is a coalition of the left and the right, previously unimaginable, which shows two things.
  1. The left/right concept is outdated.
  2. Euroscepticism is so high that it can unite citizens with otherwise seemingly very different views.
At the same time, the EU is confronted with a trade war with the United States.

US President Donald Tramp introduced customs duties on imports of steel and aluminum from the EU, which has so far been exempted. As of last Friday, taxes on imports of steel into America is 25 % and aluminum is 10 %. For this reason, Brussels has announced counter measures.

As announced, custom duties will be increased on imports on a lot of products from the US, from fruits and vegetables, jeans, footwear and alcoholic beverages to metal products, glass, paper, furniture and engines.

In the meantime, the well-known American products such as "Levis", "Nike", "Harley-Davidson" engines and the bourbons "Four Roses" and "Jim Beam" will be significantly more expensive due to customs increases.

Analysts say the latest developments in Europe could lead to collapse of the EU, which has been weakened for years.

Analysts are saying that replacement of the Spanish Prime Minister could lead to early elections in Spain and a new referendum on the secession of Catalonia. This is something Brussels is most concerned about, at this moment.

On the other hand, Italy could start an avalanche. One should not forget that there are already strong Eurosceptic movements in Europe and that their leaders, such as French right-wingers Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán Viktor, are increasingly popular. If another country moves acts like Italy, we can quickly count on the abolition of the euro and the EU itself.

When it comes to a trade war with the United States, experts say this could be just the beginning.

After the EU has introduced counter measures, it is not excluded that Trump will introduce additional customs duties on other products from Europe. He has announced several times that he is considering raising taxes on importing European cars to America. If that happens, the entire European automobile industry will lose its true fortune, and only Germany would lost six billion dollars a year - economists explain.

The United States is in a very complicated situation. It must face the reality of being a post-Imperial power, and unwind its obligations in the safest way possible. At the same time, it must try to leave the EU in a weakened position, and hostile to Russia. The second part of that task may prove unworkable.

Ultimately the US wants to push China and the EU out of Latin America, claim it for itself, and so the US will have to either continue to work through their present anti-Bolivarian or anti Pink-Tide vectors, or change that up completely, and make a strong 'pro-left' pivot in order to effect some sort of popular and apparently pro-sovereignty integration of the North and South American economies.

Finally, Russia does not want to see the collapse of the EU, for all the reasons above. Moreover, it sees itself as an important lynch-pin, energy and weapons supplier, and socio-cultural medium for a growing Eurasian integration project spanning from Beijing, through Moscow and Ankara, and ultimately through Berlin, Paris, and Madrid. England will likely remain as a remaining post-Atlanticist island, and forward deployed 'island fortress' of the US.