The EU’s megalomaniac expansionists should have heeded Kipling’s prophecy that “never the twain shall meet”.
Their rush to admit Eastern European countries brings the Trojan Horse to mind, and we all know what happened to Troy. Then again, like all wicked contrivances the EU has a knack for digging holes for itself.
The depth of this particular hole has just been emphasised by Bulgaria’s presidential election, won by Putin’s stooge Gen. Rumen Radev. As a result, Boyko Borisov’s government has resigned, leaving the field open for other Russian puppets.
Gen. Radev’s election is a fruit fallen off the tree of the Russians’ systematic campaign to undermine the West, whose part they mistakenly think the EU is. It isn’t.
The EU is an ideological construct and, as such, it transcends geography, along with every other academic discipline: history, economics (and its mathematics), political science. What the Eurocrats don’t realise is that its ideology is self-refuting.
Admitting Eastern European countries means admitting their high officials into the inner sanctum where key decisions are made. But these countries were corrupted by two generations of Soviet rule, while most of their leaders – especially those from a security or army background – are either run by Moscow or are at least receptive to its friendly suggestions.
Gen. Radev’s first post-election pronouncements made no secret of where his heart is. “I will closely work with the government and EU colleagues to achieve the lifting of the sanctions [against Russia],” he announced. He also praised President-elect Trump for “seeking more dialogue with Russia”.
Perhaps I’m unfair to the EU. Its chieftains are driven not only by ideology but also by their ignorance of some basic facts of life.
FACT 1. Communism corrupts. Everyone knows that communists kill millions. Fewer people realise that they also kill civilisations by severing their moral, religious and social roots.
FACT 2. Once the roots are severed, the civilisation dies. It can be replanted and may in due course regrow to its past luxuriance. But that takes time.
Conservatively speaking, I’d estimate that period to be at least the length of the communist rule – longer in places where the civilisation wasn’t particularly strong to begin with, or where regeneration efforts are bogus. Hence I’m more optimistic about, say, Hungary than about Bulgaria or indeed Russia itself.
FACT 3. Russia hasn’t been a communist country for the last 34 years, in the sense of being run by the communist party. That stopped not in 1991, as is commonly believed, but in 1982. KGB head Yuri Andropov became dictator in that year, setting Russia on the way to becoming a KGB fiefdom.
FACT 4. Gorbachev’s glasnost in 1989 and Yeltsyn’s perestroika in 1991 completed that process de facto, while Col. Putin’s 2000 ascent did so de jure.
FACT 5. Other than suppression at home, the KGB’s principal job has always been and still is to destabilise the West, whose desiderata the KGB correctly sees as being incompatible with its own.
FACT 6. Until 1991 de jure, and ever since de facto, much of the Eastern European elite has been made up of Russian agents or at least sympathisers receptive to KGB cajoling.
FACT 7. Therefore admitting these elites into the command structures of organisations like the EU and NATO is tantamount to injecting a patient with cancerous cells.
FACT 8. Neither the EU nor especially NATO can afford to have poisonous discord at a time when the KGB/FSB-run Russia represents what the Americans call a clear and present danger to the West.
Perhaps ignorance of these facts plays even a greater role than ideological proclivities. NATO, for example, is a non-ideological defence alliance, but it too is capable of shooting itself up with KGB poison.
For example, in 2008 the Hungarian Sandor Laborc was appointed head of the NATO Committee for Security and Intelligence, whose function is to coordinate the intelligence efforts of 28 countries.
Now Gen. Laborc is an 1989 honours graduate of the KGB Dzierjinsky Academy in Moscow. In order to study there, the aspirant had to demonstrate not only the requisite ability but also the kind of loyalty to the KGB cause that couldn’t have been faked.
Hence Gen. Laborc sold his soul to the devil, and this kind of transaction can never be reversed. Such was the man who acquired unrestricted access to NATO secrets, and he wasn’t the only one.
Now Bulgaria – a member of both NATO and the EU – has re-entered the KGB orbit. In the old days, it wasn’t so much a satellite of the Soviet Union as practically its member. In fact, Russians used to quip that “a chicken isn’t a bird, Bulgaria isn’t abroad” (a paraphrase of the old saying “a chicken isn’t a bird, a wench isn’t a person”, a misogynist sentiment I, as a lifelong champion of equality, disavow unreservedly).
If Bulgaria again starts to revolve in that orbit, and especially if it’s joined by other former Soviet satellites, it won’t be just sanctions that’ll bite the dust, but the consensus to resist KGB aggression against its former slaves. A catastrophe beckons.
Ideally the West should introduce a quarantine period before admitting Eastern Europeans into the fold, until they can be pronounced free of infection. But we all know that ideals aren’t achievable in this world.
Score one for Col. Putin, who outranks Gen. Radev.