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Magnus

Wakander (m) http://wakander.blogspot.com

Warning: failed state ahead, all lanes merge right



As news about the crisis in European economies is everywhere, it seems very few have taken the time to ponder on why this is happening. Of course, it might just be that difficult - or it might not. As I am no professional in these matters I have nothing to loose on trying to chisel out the basic faults that have landed us here. There are, or so it seems to me as a citizen anyway, some misconceptions in Europe as how strong Europe really is. For some reason this aging continent seems to believe that it actually is a global super power. What it is, is a continent that has built enormous and static welfare systems that no longer can be funded at the same time as the base for consumption is lessening. Our relevance dwindles in a global perspective. So why should we be any worse than everyone else, then? US has a large burden to bear as it has borrowed money to wage war. This debt can be drastically reduced in a short span of time should the politicians want to. And they want to, and they are about to. US is about to become a net exporter of energy, they are replacing their old cars with new ones, they are refocusing their international politics and so on. US is a flexible nation just because that they haven't locked their money into oversized welfare systems. US, therefore, are about to have us join the American era that Stratfor predicts to begin in 2014. China has some big issues. The coastal region is rich, the inland is not. The cities grow, their water supply does not. Their economy is locked down by politicians - but that is about to change as they look ripe to de-regulate the financial market. When that happens, a lot of big changes might follow. Brazil is slowing down, which India is as well. Russia has a pretty good time right now, but seems to be heading in a bad direction due to AIDS, alcoholism and an aging population. Their energy supplies, those that are easy to process, aren't infinite. Europe then. Europe has been riddled with conflict until the end of the Second World War. The geography of the continent and the amount of different nations and cultures makes it a difficult place to manage. When the Second World War ended, US forced Germany into NATO in order to bind them and thereby lessening the risk that Germany might once again form ranks with Russia - the number one threat to stability in Europe. EU was built on top of that. EU, then, is built on two things: the French need to stand tall on the world stage of politics and Germany desire to have a large and cheap export market. On top of that France made EU become an engine for subsidies for things like farming and the like. A system, that at its core, is a socialistic system and therefore hard to change. Once you have implemented a subsidy or a welfare action such as free healthcare, free universities or free eldercare - it is pretty much impossible to remove them (good things, how do you argue against them?). As we have democratic systems in Europe that means that if one side proclaims the need for austerity and reform - the other will offer a couple of new welfare actions. The last ones tend to win and they drive us even further down the drain. Our nations are thusly basically socialistic and so is the basic construction of the entire EU apparatus. This is the core problem. Socialism > /dev/null Sweden is still a pretty rich nation but that will all change rapidly during the coming ten years if we do not perform some fundamental reforms. The problems France has today will become our problems in a not too distant future. We too are aging and we too are dependent on a cheap export market. And perhaps worst of them all, we are as a people comfortably numb. There are other issues as well, of course, but these will sink this ship.

Magnus Wakander (m) http://wakander.blogspot.com


As France and Germany looks at the problem from two drastically different perspectives conflict have arisen. This conflict cannot be managed without both realising that they have to change. EU and the European economy are dependent on these two mini-giants. UK have never been this poor since the Second World War. Their situation is not helped by a weak liberal conservative government that seems at a loss. The new Labours borrowed a lot of money before Cameron time, who is now stuck with a very difficult problem. Nothing seems to be working. At the same time, London is the financial capitol of Europe. If, or rather when, things go bad, they will feel the bad winds in a very bad way indeed. The thing that politicians are doing, presently, is to play the blame transfer game and hope that the bottle won't point at them when it stops. However, the problem is the politicians that we have bred since the Second World War. We, the people, wanted this. And now we don't assume that we have responsibility for the consequences. Democracy is a fine thing, however, people tend to forget that it was actually them who elected those that are in power. We get the politicians that we deserve. It seems we get more stupid as our intellects grows. So, how could this happen? Well, one of the main things is that the world actually paid the price of our welfare systems in order to have us stop killing people. That is my personal reflection of course, but it seems to make sense. I can't for the life of me understand how it could be any other way. How will this end? Believing in the goodness in the world and such things is very nice and all that, but it is more likely that old chains of trust are being broken and nations are currently looking for new ones. I'm sad to say so, but it would surprise me if we don't see quite a lot of similarities between the alliances that are currently being built and those we used before the world wars. When everything fails, geography dictates your moves. So, EU now falters and falls into the abyss of bad memories. It might still be around as a name and some professional politicians still might go to grand meetings. But the politics will be handled bilaterally, well they already are, and not through EU. NATO is failing and US has pretty much abandoned the idea NATO was built upon. As US reclassified Europe to a "security provider" instead of a "security consumer" and withdrew a large portion of their troops from Germany they have clearly signalled that a Germany moving toward Russia is no longer a key concern in their foreign politics and that they are not worried of Germany being invaded. As Germany now actually is moving towards Russia, only Putin is there to stop that integration from happening. When Putin falters, Germany won't be as dependent on Europe as they are now and therefore does not have to take the rambling mutters of weak political leaders around Europe. Id hate to be Poland when that happens. In all this, the nation is failing as networks using social media etc controls more and more in our nations. Networks knows no national or market boundaries. They, however, create new ones: there are some people that just aren't welcome among certain networks. Large corporations can't deal with the dynamics of the networks and fails to change quickly enough. Take a look at the list of Fortune 500 companies and check how long they lived. According to AIG they live for an average of 15 years now, whereas they in a couple of decades ago lasted 75. Something is happening and the motion is clearly liberal and it is about to change the concept of nations. This is worrying from a democratic perspective, as elected officials are not driving the changes that are happening (I doubt they even can understand them). The journalists serve only one master now and that is money, their loyalties always dubious. We are at a loss our concept of a nation is becoming just a memory, but at the same time we have no other solution. Who will guard our territory, who will punish the unlawful and who will take care of us when were sick? We need welfare, now perhaps more than ever, but we need a new system.

Magnus Wakander (m) http://wakander.blogspot.com


So we know a few things: Europe carries the burden of an oversized socialistic system that clearly isn't relevant anymore. Fear is hindering change. EU and NATO are faltering as their relevance is dwindling. They are no longer strong vehicles for political processes. Nations are left to themselves. Networks control the developments; politicians, global corporate leaders and journalists react to what the networks are doing. There exist no political vision of what the European nation state in 2050 should be like. We have no direction and therefore can't make the difficult choices we need to make. Being locked down, we are now only following the events as they unfold. Whatever feeble actions are taken, they can never be enough. The static structures of the European systems stop us from adjusting to the new world. Cyber security, then, is about protecting the nation as the nation moves from a mechanical society into the above mentioned information society. But if you're going to protect your nation, you need to know two things: what are we protecting and from what? Today, it is pretty safe to say that there are only a few professionals in Europe that actually understands the implication of the above. The knowledge is spreading, but it is light years away from the political establishment. Most of the professionals are still locked down into papers and numbers; not realizing that the entire landscape has changed. We need discussions and dialogue, not definitions and hierarchies. Or as what William Gibson, the father of Neuromancer in which he coined the term Cyberspace, has to say about Internet: It will bring about the extinction of the nation-state as we know it... I think it will be as big a deal as the creation of cities. But I, and William, might be wrong. If the banks in Europe can survive twelve months from today, I will re-evaluate my posture. However, one has to ask oneself: has the nation state already failed? What kind of metric do you use for that evaluation, or is it all about gut feeling? When do professionals become irrelevant and not so very professional? I mean, who do you ask tomorrow? Well, problem is, do we have one reality and one truth? In mid-transformation the complexity of it all makes it all quantum, everything and nothing at the same time. [EOL]

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