Germany is about to lose World War III, because this Third World War is over for Europe, and the defeat could not be more complete.
In the First World War, the Second German Empire was destroyed; in the Second World War, the Third German Empire was destroyed; and now in the Third World War, the Fourth German Empire, known coyly as the European Union, “dressed up as Europe,” is also falling. Although the Second World War destroyed Germany materially and physically, it mobilized it spiritually, morally, and intellectually; it was the “German economic miracle,” which was a miracle of the soul.
Although Germany is now much better off materially and physically, it is much worse off spiritually, morally, and intellectually — helplessly tolerating the destruction of its spiritual identity. It has failed to recognize that the material and physical foundations of its prosperity were being destroyed by a far more fatal war. The tragi-comedy of this ritual suicide was underlined by last year’s story of the German security forces’ use of 3,000 commandos and a Hollywood spectacle to crack down on an anti-state conspiracy.
In an article in Foreign Affairs, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz writes that what former U.S. President George Bush once called a “partnership in leadership” during German reunification in 1990 — which Bush saw as Germany and America sharing the role as the world’s leading powers — is now coming true. Reading this, it is hard to decide whether to laugh or cry, but I would opt for the latter. When the American empire, with the Third World War it has provoked, is now quickly, easily — and above all, cheaply and with Germany’s obliging cooperation — destroying the foundations of the world’s most sophisticated high-tech structure of the last century and a half, and pushing Germany back to the level of a third-rate regional middle power, the German chancellor is envisioning a historic victory.
The truth demands that, although the empire can easily, quickly, and cheaply liquidate Germany, it still had to deploy serious forces for one action, and that was the blowing up of the German-Russian Nord Stream gas pipeline. This action, which was more of a pedagogical one, was necessary to give a symbolic signal to the somewhat difficult German public that an era was really over, that a deep change was really taking place. But the main feature of this change of era will not so much be Germany’s emergence as a global power, but rather a far more dramatic decline than ever before in the global power space.
