The Duran Podcast - Europe's Growing Irrelevance - Karin Kneissl, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

Europe's Growing Irrelevance - Karin Kneissl, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Good everyone. My name is Glenn Dyson and I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and joining us from Rieszen Oblast in Russia is the former foreign minister of Austria, Karin Knaisel. And I guess as a background for a viewer, Karin Knaissel belongs to a, I guess, a previous generation of diplomats from a time when diplomacy entailed to speak with your counterparts. That is, again, some mutual understanding and look at ways for little. living peacefully on our shared European continent. And when Gnysel served us the foreign minister of Austria, she even invited President Putin to her wedding and it's very well known in Europe that they dance together, something which should have been seen as a great diplomatic moment,

but instead created an uproar in Europe. So I guess largely due to the fear that showing respects to our counterpart risks legitimizing them, which is a big no-no these days in the game of narrative control. And anyways, Karna Knaisel was eventually chased out of Austria and now works in Russia on topics such as sanctions, countering sanctions.

And I personally find this extremely interesting as the efforts, not just in Russia, but China and other places around the world to counter sanctions, really intensifies this push away from the Western-centric international economic and financial system. And it also lays the foundation for the new multipolar system. But anyways, before we get to these issues, I was hoping that the two of you could maybe share your perspectives on what's happening in Europe. And I apologize for opening with such an open-end big question.

But how are you interpreting, I guess, the panic in Europe now? Is it the military defeat of NATO in Ukraine? Is it economic decline in Europe? It's a fragmentation of the West, the political instability in Europe. geopolitical insignificance of Europe. How can we make sense of everything that's happening so very, very fast at the moment? Good afternoon, Professor Dyson. Good afternoon, Alexander Mercuris. Thank you very much for inviting me again. And thank you for this very nice introduction.

You nailed it, and there we are. My first thoughts on your question the following. There has been this alternative loses denkin, as we would say. in German, there is no alternative. Tina, we know it from Margaret Satcher, this acronym. There is no alternative. There's only one option. And this we have heard from Chancellor

Merkel, for instance, when it came to the Euro saving scheme, there is no alternative to the Euro, which is nonsense. And now it looks as if there were no alternative, they're going to war to defeating Russia on the battlefield instead of talking to each other. So this thinking without

any alternative, that has every EU cabinet high up on the tree and now they don't know how to climb down the palm tree to be on speaking terms again. And this I think is the fundamental issue that thinking in scenarios, thinking through your action of today, your wording of today to the very end, what Max Weber called for antoldens etique, the ethic of responsibility that you assume every consequence of today's action as opposed to moral ethics, the ethics of moral.

You're screaming, you're shouting, you are standing with Ukraine, standing with Israel, standing with Taiwan, whatever, what I call this emotional activism that teenagers do, but adults shouldn't do. So this we have seen in 2015 with the opening of all sorts of gates when it comes to irregular immigration. We have seen it with the pandemic and we see it now, once again, in a news situation, not so new today, 24th of February, three years of the starting of another chapter of military conflicts between Russia and the West. I completely agree. Can I say that what I think is disorientating the European political class is obviously there's

a lot of things going on. The war in Ukraine is being lost. There's issues about what the United States is doing, things which are in some ways being overstated, because it's important to stress that all that's happening at the moment is that the Americans and the Russians are talking to each other. But there are two things that I think have shocked the Europeans more than anything. The first is the point that Karen has made, which is that the rhetoric has become so important that it has taken over from politics, from policy, from strategy, from anything. So suddenly, this whole rhetorical structure that has been created over such a long time is disintegrating.

And this is horrifying because it takes away their words, you know, getting up, making speeches about how we're going to stand solidly behind Ukraine and support Ukraine forever and defeat Russia and all that kind of thing. and the Russians or the new Germans coming with their panzers to take over Europe and establish the new Russian empire across Europe. All of that is suddenly, all that language or that rhetoric is suddenly being stripped away. And the second, and this is where I think Karen is perhaps particularly well positioned to discuss, is that they've been able to hide behind their rhetoric and not. not engage in diplomacy. They can't do diplomacy anymore, not with the Russians, not with anyone.

A foreign minister like Annalina Babok, who probably won't be foreign minister for much longer, who turns up in various countries and lectures to people at the other side, is not conducting diplomacy in any meaningful sense. Now, suddenly diplomacy is returning. The Americans' and the Russians are talking to each other. They've had a productive meeting in Riyadh. The presidents of America and Russia are talking to each other. And the Europeans who have allowed their skills and their traditions of diplomacy,

which, of course, they were instrumental in creating in the first place. All of the ideas about diplomacy that we know in the modern world would develop originally in Europe. Anyway, the Europeans have lost those skills and they don't know what to do. And we see that with how Britain and France, two of the great traditional diplomatic powers of Europe, are responding to these latest events. They are not there complaining angrily that they've been excluded from the discussions between the Americans and the Russians. They're not, however, themselves doing what they could quite easily do in this situation, send their own foreign ministers or their own ambassadors to talk to both capitals.

There's no thought of Stama and Macron going to Moscow, which they could meaningfully do, where they could have a serious discussion with the Russians in parallel to the one that the Americans are concerned. Instead, they're scuttling off to Washington, trying to persuade the Americans to reverse the course that the Americans have already said they will be taking. So there it is. And Professor Dyson, if I may add one momentum that I have always tried to share with my Russian colleagues here who saw the Europeans as exclusive vessels of Washington. I said, no, they are doing it by themselves.

I personally, in this short period of serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I never ever had a problem with Washington. It was, I managed to talk also to Mike Pompeo. The problems I had on whatever initiative I tried to take, whether it was a demining project or Syria, whether it was a structured dialogue with Russia, any topic I tried to advance, I got the Niette from Brussels. It was always the higher representative, the so-called foreign minister of the European Commission.

And this made my life difficult in trying to advance things. And I think it has now been clear to the rest of the world that there is something like a symmetry between Washington and Moscow, which you don't have between Washington and Brussels or Moscow and Brussels. And this symmetry of two big countries. which also even might say the longer I live here now in Russia, I discover so many parallels between the Americans and the Russians. One thing that struck me most in the beginning here is this kind of informal approach by Russians,

by calling each other by first name, of course, in the Russian way of calling each other by the patronage of the father, Ivan Ivanovich. this is more formal than the US-American way of call me Bob. My name is Robert, call me Bob and let's be friends. But it's this informal way which has never existed on the European side to that extent. And it's above all its geography. It's big, big countries.

And if I may bring up here one anecdote, in June, 2000, So 24 years ago, I had the privilege to attend the first encounter between then U.S. President George W. Bush and President Putin in Slovenia. It was Bush's first trip to Europe, and I think he visited about half a dozen places. Finally, he arrives in tiny Slovenia. Finally, he is in front of somebody who is somehow symmetric to him, you know. and I was under the impression that he was relieved that there was one person to talk to and not this then 18 EU members. So what I wanted to say is that between US and the Russian Federation there is something like a symmetry.

And this symmetry falls now, comes back into weight. and this is I think also very frightening to the Europeans because geography is back, history is back and they feel it now with every sense of, in the literal sense, they feel there, the irrelevance. And even so Alexander mentioned, they could just send the ministers of foreign affairs, they could dispatch the ambassadors, yes, you're fully right.

But they are what can they offer? The neutrals are not anymore there and the neutrals could offer to facilitate the dialogue. I always said there is no mediation needed. The Russians and Americans are grown up enough. They have a huge apparatus. They can talk to each other direct.

They don't need this intermediary. The Saudis were not facilitating the place where to meet, yes. but this could have this would have been done in the past by the Finnish or by the Swiss or Austrians but we know that they are not anymore the facilitators because there is no such thing as neutrality left

on the European continent Yeah I was curious Yeah the part of the problem here is that It seems to some of the problems we had after the Cold War That is to overcome the bloc politics This is what seems to be, I guess, unraveling against the will of the Ukrainians, because as long as there was some tensions with Russia, the way the alliance system would work is the Europeans, at least are reassured that the United States would be committed to Europe, as long as Russia is standing next door. And for the Americans, they knew that if there's some tensions with the Russians, the Europeans would be economically and politically more obedient. But I think this is the big time we're living in this.

Europe is becoming much less relevant. The US is recognizing that in the multipolar system has to start to harmonize some of its security interests with the great powers. And that's simply not that much Europe anymore, but instead Russia. But instead of adjusting to this, it feels like we're getting trapped into this rhetoric.

Everyone has to sign up for the same slogans. And once they signed up for it, there's no room for, there's no alternatives anymore. as you said. So we say these things like, you know, stand with Ukraine and what exactly does it mean? And we treat it as a fixed concept. Well, it means that we don't talk to Russia. We continue to send weapons irrespective what's happening on the ground. So we can come with all these slogans that NATO has to be allowed to expand. Russia can't say anything. Even though it cannot be achieved, you know, Ukraine has to get all this territory back, even though we know it's not going to happen.

And often it's standing by the Ukrainians. It often translates, students, ideas that, you know, even as most Ukrainians now want to start to have peace negotiations, even willing to give up territory to get peace, the EU still considers this to be a betrayal of Ukraine, that this is something which is unacceptable, something we can't even discuss. And indeed, standing with Ukraine, we can't even speak to the Europeans, to the Russians, sit down, have basic diplomacy, because mayor diplomacy now is also seen as a betrayal. And I think this is where the narrative.

are conflicting with reality because I just saw Alexei Arstowich, the former advisor to Zelensky, who's now, by the way, candidate for presidency, at least that's how he labels himself. And he's now pointing out that the Europeans are the one trying to sabotage peace, that Americans and Russians are trying to push for a peace agreement while the Europeans are getting in the way, and they don't have any alternatives. Indeed, I just saw a headline by the Danish prime minister saying that war might be better than peace in Ukraine. It's like, yeah, but what does this have to, this, it's no longer in the benefit of the Ukrainians. And as we just saw now, the German election passed by, I saw the same debates

there, which was, you know, we have to send 700 billion euros to Ukraine. If you don't, you stand with Putin. If you support sending all the weapons and money, then you stand by Ukraine. And they create this simple binary, artificial binary alternatives. And it's impossible to have any sensible diplomacy, it seems. I just don't understand how the Europeans are going to come around. One thing that I have been

elaborating on in my book, Requiem for Europe, which I published last year. I started writing it in 2022. And for the first time in my life, I had the title of the book before I had started the book. Usually, you know when you write a book, sometimes you'll find a title only

at the very end before going to print. And in that case, I really had the title in the back of my mind from day one, requiem for Europe. Because for me, it was cleared and in 2022, Europe had formally passed away. And when I speak of Europe, for me, it's the Europe of rule of law and the Europe of freedom. I am not thinking so much about the Europe of now the Judeo-Christian values, et cetera. It's really about, it's all about this Europe of the, let's say, revolutions of the 19th century, the Europe of 1848, it's all about freedom and rule of law.

For me, that was Europe I was creating for. Now, that Europe has passed away, and maybe we saw just for a little period of time, we saw this Europe that adapts, that wants to create prosperity and kindness. But when you go down, into European history and you look in particular into the long section of

inter-religious wars, Catholic Protestants and beyond that, you will always find the black and white thinking. And this struck me so much because we are back to this black and white thinking and I thought for 40 years of my life that Europe was about subtle,

rational thinking. But no, it's, it's, This old antagonism east-west. It was 2,500 years ago. It was about the Greek city-states versus bad Persia. Here, the little wonderful market economy, democracies of Delphi and Athens. And over there, the authoritarian, bad, dark, Persian east. And we had seen this antagonism with the Arabs, with the Mongols, with the Ottomans.

And this antagonism now is back east-west. and the West defines itself by demarcating, but distinguish itself from the East. And this is something that we had not in the US to the same extent. The US was created because they wanted to get away from the authoritarian Europeans. They wanted to have the churches of freedom and so on. But what we see now in Europe is going back to a very, very deep, deeply deep, it's black and white thinking.

And this, I don't want to use an inflationary term, but it's really, it breaks down to neo-colonialism. And this is what they are doing by telling the rest of the world how to behave, how to act in terms of climate change, how to follow certain rules. And when it comes to Ukraine, it is the old buffer zone in this east-west antagonism where it's now all about where will the old and new frontiers pass

or will there be a chance to create something like truly mutually recognized borders that you have arenities that are clearly separated from each other because what we have seen in Ukraine and Ukraine as a semantic notion, it's the Kri, it's the region, it's the frontier, as opposed to the Graniteza, to the clear-cut border boundary. I would agree, I mean, I would say that if you're talking about this attempt to divide, to say we're good and the others are bad, well, the former high representative of foreign policy of the European Union, Mr. Borrell, talked about Europe as the garden and the rest of the

world as the jungle. It's exactly what Karen was just saying just that. I mean, he said it. And the extraordinary thing about that was that there was no pushback. None of the European governments came back and said, no, no, no, you can't talk this way. There was no attempt made to persuade Mr. Morel to apologize or to retract those words. And he spoke about it being a colonial imperial mindset. Very few people know that this expression, contrasting the garden and the jungle was originates in fact with the British poet Kipling who was of course the poet of empire the poet of colonialism and of empire so you see we are actually clinging on to these things but talking about something else which is going back

about the fact that Europe's irrelevance has been exposed its weakness has been exposed if you don't talk to people, if you either lecture them or refuse to talk to them, then of course you will lose relevance. Inevitably so in the modern world. You had talked to the Russians who are your biggest and most powerful neighbors, then obviously that makes you in the general world less meaningful. If you're not going to go to other countries and take them, you know, show proper respect to them, listen to what they're saying, engage with them in the kind of way that you should. That of course you're going to lose relevance. It's not just about physical power, about armies and fleets and those sort of things that people are putting altogether too much weight on. If I can just go back to a person whom I'm sure you remember, Bruno Kreiske, he was the Austrian Chancellor.

he led a country that was not, let's put it like this, a superpower, and yet he carried enormous international weight, as I remember. I can remember he was going around people in all sorts of places, were interested in him because, well, he was a charming man, he listened to what people said, maybe there were criticisms that could be made of him within Austria. But no doubt at all, people took him seriously and judged him as important. And we could do the same in Europe.

We could work on the many things that we have working for us, our culture, our civilization, our cities full of great artworks, the enormously pleasant things that we can offer people, attractive and beautiful things that we can offer to people. But no, we come, we talk shrilly, we lecture, we, and then when diplomacy begins, we can't engage in it. And I just want to say one very last thing. and this is about my own country, which is Britain. We have in Britain this horrible, it's not horrible, it's a tradition of debating.

We have all these debating societies. I've attended many of them. I used to be very good at it. We do it at school. We do it at the university. We do it at the ins of court. The House of Commons is essentially a debating society in which we spend all our time scoring points of each other. that is not how diplomacy is done.

There is no point in going and scoring points against Vladimir Putin. He's not going to be impressed if you do that. You're not going to win anything, achieve anything by doing that. And in Britain specifically, we need to bring this whole habit, which has become compulsive. As I said, it permeates large parts of our educational system. back under control because it is doing a huge amount of damage. It's shifting everything from the point of rhetoric, towards rhetoric, away from the practical business of trying to create consensus.

I was wondering that I saw Geoffrey Sachs recently visit the European Parliament and it was strange to me to see, I guess, an American having to tell the Europeans to, I guess, snap out of it and start really restoring some autonomy and strategic thinking. I guess a key part of this argument, I guess, could be summarized as Europeans have been made, it's been so dependent on the US for so long to the extent to outsource the foreign policy, that they ended up essentially not doing strategic thinking anymore. But I was also thinking that perhaps the problem is much wider, that is all these European countries that the country really unite based solely on common national interest,

has to have very divergent interest. So they became maybe too dependent on this moralistic, virtue signaling politics, where they just scream out, you know, what is right, what is wrong, and effectively shaming all opposition. And I guess this goes back to what both of you were commenting on, which is this history of Europe where everything is black and white, that is historically with the civilized

and you have the barbarians so obviously there's no alternative you have capitalism versus communism there's again white is white black is black

and there's no grey then we have the comfort of a liberal democracy versus authoritarianism is always good guys versus bad guys and I guess from the 90s when the West was

unchecked the collective hegemony was seem to be absolute this could take the form of a benign relationship that is between the teacher and the student, between the sovereign and the less so sovereign. But of course, when you now end up in a situation with conflict, it plays out more, I guess, very ugly, because if you do believe that the world is simply good versus evil, they can never be any compromise, they can never be any understanding. It's always just defeat,

where you end up in this situation where you won't talk to the other side. We're watching these hundreds of thousands of young men perishing on the front line and your only reaction is to send more weapons because this is the path to peace. But I'm also curious that now that we see some of this moral

arguments are falling apart does this what also leads to the I guess fragmentation of the West because suddenly we see the United States changing its entire rhetoric and

it punches a hole very clearly within Europe. And the Americans, they also suffer a little bit from the same thing. I saw Trump's top negotiator, Witkoff. He was giving an interview on CNN and, you know, I think it was CNN. And they were going, well, how people are confused by Trump administration because Ukrainians are obviously the good guys, the Russians are the bad guys. It looks like you're taking the side of the good guys. So this is kind of the very simple mindset, which they're pushing on them.

He effectively answered, well, it's not that simple. We kind of provoke this war. We provoke the Russians to invade by threatening to expand NATO. And suddenly, with this truths coming out and recognizing the nuances, we're no longer united by this black and white moral slogans. And as a result, we're seeing Europe fragment. But even acid fragments, we still have to portray as if we still have unity. It's just that we have unity in Europe, only that we have right-wing radicals like Hungary and Slovakia. I don't know why they're right-wing radicals, but essentially delegitimizing any real alternatives in order to preserve the illusion that among the sensible and normal people, we're still all united.

Where is this really going? Because it seems to, they don't seem to be able to reverse this. This is definitely falling apart very quickly. Yes, thank you very much, Glenn. I think we are still conducting here a luxury academic debate because all that might be secondary in a very short range future, given the economic, let's say, abyss that the many European countries will fall into. I mean, they are slip sliding into it already. The last book I published in Austria in 2020 was about mobility and transition,

and since I've been working a lot on oil and gas topics, I always kept an eye on what's going on in the automotive industry. And the German automotive industry is the backbone of the German economy next to its petrochemical industry. All the rest has been outsourced, steel, textile, etc. So the automotive industry has been slip sliding into a crisis ever since the diesel gate, for those who don't remember when the Germans, so to say, made a big fraud, which the U.S. authorities discovered.

And it was mismanagement by huge German car companies. And what's going on right now in Germany has happened before in Italy to fear. It has happened to Renault. And it's now happening to Volkswagen and BMW, namely factories turning into museums. You will soon see huge production plants being closed down. and maybe people will go to Wolfsburg in neither Saxon to visit the once upon a date biggest German car company, Volkswagen. Like you can visit today in Turino, Fiat, which I didn't know it until I went there,

before World War I was the biggest and most innovative car company on a global level. Later, being taken over by Detroit. In Detroit, you also have a car museum. But what I want to say is that the essence of European industry is going away. De-industrialization, when I used it in articles in 2022, I was attacked for doing, of course, Russian propaganda. Now, this term is used by everybody. It's used by the people who had the chambers of industry.

So the de-industrialization, in combination with a welfare state that is not any more affordable, with a middle class that is losing its power of purchasing, the migration issue of ending up in a society that is incohesive, where uncertainty is the name of the game. All that, I think that our debate about where will Europe diplomatically geopolitically stand in two, three years, it might really be a little bit academic, because I fear that Europe is going into a challenge.

dramatic economic, social economic situation. And here, add to this also the black market of weapons, small caliber weaponry in Ukraine. A lot of people have been talking about it. Maybe you also in your program previously, but this is something that is not at all taken note of by most EU capitals. But the daily violence that we see will only be worsened by this black market of weapons.

I've seen it with Bosnia and Serbia in the 1990s, and it could still be somehow under control, but organized crime worsened with all those people who came back from the war in the Balkans. Now, with those coming back, all those mercenaries, all those weapon dealers coming out of Ukraine, this will add to a drama that is already taking place in the European Union. So de-industrialization, daily violence, and add to that uncontrolled transfer of arms. So I fear that in two, three years, we won't speak about where does Europeans geopolitical stand, what kind of relevance or relevance. I think we will have a very gloomy scenario in Europe just around the corner.

not to have a very positive no but I probably not a great look for but it does appear to be going in that direction which is I guess why I find it also a bit strange the actual discourse which is being had because at the moment now the EU they're talking about how to become a great geopolitical actor militarized actor and yeah the Germans now of course after the election, talking about, you know, the big three, the British, French and Germans really coming together to be a force for power in the world. All of this is all this idea of building up the EU, not just as you're political but military actor, it's all happening at the time of, as you said, the industrialization and economic decline. So it doesn't, something doesn't really add up here. And then in the midst of all of this, now going to send what remains of their money to continue a war on the European continent, which will only, well, again, make Europe less economically competitive and more dependent.

And I remember I made a similar argument as yourself back in 2022. I was arguing that from the first day that the sanctions would likely fail because I had been working in Moscow. We did look to work that is a greater Eurasian initiative, where it looked at how Russia was diversifying its economy. to make itself more, not just protected from sanctions, but also in general, just reorganizing its economy to the east to become less dependent on countries, which, well, it looked like it would have some conflicts within the future.

And my basic argument was that the Russians can diversify. The Europeans cannot. And we've seen this as well with the relationship between the Americans and the Chinese. The Chinese seem to be able to diversify. The Americans do not. But again, this was where the narrative. comes in again. It was immediately branded as spreading

Russian propaganda and asked, but why? What did I say that was wrong? And it's the same thing. Well, Putin is saying that the sanctions won't, well, EU is saying that it will. And you have to pick aside. And if you're not chairing on this narrative, that means you've chosen the wrong side. So now you're a traitor.

I mean, this is the kind of really dumb, simplistic thinking we have. So not only are broke, but we don't even have critical discussions anymore. So I just don't see how Europe can recover from this. I don't see Europe recover from it because right now these days, on the 2nd of March, there will be the Paris of 25% introduced by Washington. It's truly sandwiched between the unilateral sanctions,

the EU today on the 24th of February only reaffirmed, the 16th sanction package with aluminum and video games. So this is today 24th of February, 16th century section package doesn't work. They lost a huge market. The automotive industry lost its best market just in front of the house door, and they will not be able to regain it, even if they started in this year, which they won't. And on the other side, they have the tariffs. So it's the worst scenario you could imagine that Europe is in.

And in 2018, I already expected this. Trump then to put the Europeans in front of, especially the Germans, in front of a decision, either you close down North Stream 2 or there will be the car tariffs. That was the talk in Washington. And I expected them to do something like that, but then came miraculous Jean-Claude Juncker and so to say, softened everything and could obtain something like a ceasefire on a trade war with Washington. turn and then things change in 2019, once again, with a new administration. But this time, Europe is really squeezed between the sanctions,

and that in particular the German industry and the huge supply line for the Germans, which is Austria, which is Czech Republic, which is Slovenia, and for good reasons, countries like Austria and Czech are on the very, very low list, on the bottom of the list. of economic figures and according to EU statistics. So it's the worst time ever for the Europeans and all that

is homemade. It was not done by by anything from doubt right. It's really their own disaster they created themselves and it's not only the sanctions and the

tariffs but at that the bureaucracy they have created themselves and energy transition that simply does not work. And so this mix of red tape, green energy, I think Europe is really on the past, especially Germany, of an economic disaster. I have to say, has a very, very bleak future,

but I agree, and I've seen it. The first type of work that I did back in the 1980s was, of course, in Britain, and it was legal work, in which, amongst other things, I was doing quite a lot of work for industrial companies in and around London. And I visited their factories at that time. And I remember being absolutely horrified by what I saw there, British factories in London, engineering factories at that time. I mean, quite often, machine tools that dated from the pre-World War I period. I mean, it was, you mentioned an industrial museum. That is what it had, to a great extent, become. And the trouble is, when a process of deindustrialization starts and begins to gain momentum,

it is very difficult to reverse. because the economy, such as it is, starts to reorient in a completely different direction. And the factors that work in the economy prevent re-industrialization and indeed tend to work to intensify de-industrialization processes. I've seen that play out very, very clearly in Britain. And the only way to do that, to change things round would be to have, I think, a very strong, very, very purposeful government, which is prepared to plan over very long horizons,

but impossible to imagine in Europe today, especially given the very fragmented political situation in Europe today. And above all, if you really want to reindustrialize in a way that makes sense, and, you know, achieves the kind of economic resilience that people are talking about. You need stability, and for stability you need peace. All of these things are connected with each other. If any part of it isn't there,

then this is a very difficult thing to do. You need to train a skilled workforce. You need to build up your engineering schools. You need to set up proper planning institutions or agencies because industry requires at least elements of planning, which are not, by the way, incompatible with market solutions, contrary to what people consistently think. And I don't see any sign of that in Europe today.

I don't see any sign of that in my own country in Britain, but I've been listening to what the various parties in Germany have been saying. And they're not addressing these issues at all, Not the CDU, CSU, not the SPD, obviously, not the Greens who have their own vision, which, as far as I'm concerned, is completely utopian and unrealizable. And I'm not even sure that it really believes in industry anyway. The FPD, the FDP are basically all about keeping budgetary controls. They're not really looking beyond these things. even within the IFDA, which some people think it was the more interesting and divergent party,

there are some people who do talk to some extent about these things, but the party as a whole is not focused on them. And the same is true right across Europe. So I don't really see any basis for thinking that re-industrialization is going to happen. No, no, and what is fascinating that here in Russia, from day one, Russians who are fast learners, as I could witness myself, were able to adapt to new situations in a very impressive way. And this, I would not see happen in Germany or France. There would be panicking. There would be collective suicides or whatever.

but here people simply moved on. There was one de facto in diplomacy, one diplomat from the Russian mission to Geneva left, but all the others who were even lured by, I think, in London the Russian ambassador, he recently said in the interview, the MI6 tried to make him quit his service. And that happened across the globe, maybe.

But people simply stuck to the country and went along. And this for the last three years, and yes, it came along with certain sacrifice. The military dimension is one big, big sacrifice that has hit not the entire society, but it has come as a disaster to those families who lost their beloved ones. But when it comes to the GDP as such, the country, not only that it survived, it could even improve, because ever since 2014, when the first huge sanction package was done against Russia, you saw this pressure for diversification. And Russia has ozone and whiteberries.

Europe has only Amazon when it comes to delivery services. China has its own delivery services. When it comes to social networks, Russia has already its own network. Some of them are less popular, more popular, people would like to stay on X or Facebook or whatever, but they have VK, they have the alternative. What you don't have in the EU, they are now discussing to create their alternative to X

because they don't agree with Mosque. So the Russians have already created over the last 15 years their plan B from social media to industrial aspects, to artificial intelligence, a lot is going on here. So they are not 100% reliant on one provider. And where they were, they tried to create parallel structures, some of them, as effective and some of them more effective. But they managed.

They managed through these last three years. And for this, I would, I can simply say, respect, you know, amazing how people managed. And if I put myself into the shoes of the Arorich German head of company, they would really crack. Psychologically already, they don't have the resilience to manage it.

And they don't have a plan B. So here, the Europeans, again, they are sandwiched in between what they themselves imposed on others and what the Americans are now imposing on themselves. And they are unhappy with what's going on in the social media and they're unhappy with who will buy their cars

because nobody is anymore in need of German cars. This was a lesson though, especially from the early 19th century and onwards, that industrialization was intrinsically linked to nation building. It is from the US, Germany, France, they all recognized that if they had excessive dependence on the British, their access to, to their technologies, their industries.

Even the Germans could have their ports shut down any time with the British ships, access to banks, everything would be dependent on the power, which might not be friendly to them in the future. Now, I guess this has been the benefit if you're considered to be an adversary by Washington. You maintain some resilience in your economy as definitely China, but lesser extent Russia as well. It developed a very, it's been developing a very autonomous digital ecosystem, one that is more self-reliant.

And yeah, this is something that has allowed them to not be sunk by the United States. I guess this is a problem in Europe. It's a strange problem to have, but given that we've had two good relations, perhaps with the Americans over the past eight years, too much trust. It meant we didn't really build up the same resilience. Now, of course, the Europeans are very upset with Elon Musk, and they're discovering all these tech billionaires once they're on Team Trump. But when they weren't team Biden, no one seemed to care.

But does this have to be part of the European recovery? I'm wondering, because the European problems, they go very deep. If one of look at Germany as the case study, the death of the car industry, obviously, also because they fell back on the digitalization, which is a key component of this fourth industrial revolution. They didn't really develop that much technological sovereignty in these new technologies. And of course all these problems were amplified further by severing their own connections to energy, by cutting themselves off the Russians, and of course the Americans,

by taking out Nord Stream, severed the rest of it. Also, yeah, political stability, as you both mentioned. But can any of this occur within the format of the European Union? I guess would be my question because for the Germans, the main logic after World War II was they would build Germany on the two pillars of the European Union and NATO.

This is where they would have a comfortable rise. But now suddenly we see Mertz talking about perhaps NATO is under threat because the Americans aren't with us. We need alternatives. And can the European Union exist? I mean, this is the bureaucratic monster that has been created.

I remember in the academic literature only 20 years ago, I read books, which had the title, Why the EU or why the 21st century belongs to Europe. And now it seems like comedy, of course. But can this be done within the EU? The amount of reforms we need entail that eventually the EU will have to go as well.

But you see, there was... local Lisbon strategy 2020. I think it was designed in 2005 in Lisbon, and the bottom line of this utopia was, by the year 2020, the European Union would be the most innovative space in economic and digitalization, etc., etc. So it was 25 years ago.

We know where Europe stood in 2020, where it stands today. There was no innovation done whatsoever for various reasons and the problem that I have always had with the European Commission is their way of recruitment you know there is

it's all about political scientists nothing against political scientists as such but you cannot have too many of them there were never people with background in natural sciences there were never geographies you know if you want to do geopolitics invite some

geographers invite some historians It was all about political science. It was all about people who had graduated from gender studies or some other sociological discipline, but no natural science. And add to that a figure that I like to quote because it tells everything, nine out of ten German stocklisted companies were founded before World War I, nine out of ten. So all the innovation, internal combustion engine, fertilizers,

All the big names that you have had in Germany, they are the legacy of this amazing period of innovation between 1870s, when Bismarck created United Germany and World War I. It became a little bit more sophisticated, but Carl Benz, Diesel, Bosch, Siemens, you name it, you have it, all those a findergeist of Germany, all those innovators. inventors or they

died a long time ago and Germany could live on that legacy for a long long time but it doesn't work anymore and the education system and selection for recruitment is not meritocratic not in Germany where you see now

all this kind of affirmative discrimination that didn't work in California they stopped doing it a while ago but you have have it still going on in Germany, in Britain and elsewhere. And I don't see this cure, this remedy come under the current circumstances from within the EU bureaucracy, which is full of political scientists, people who have never ever been employers themselves

or who have to do any sort of innovation. So I apologize for being again a little bit clummy, but I think, that Europe was always at its best when it was really fragmented. When you had the many, many different how do you say, the little sovereign entities

around in 18th century where each head of a sovereign entity tried to attract the best heads, whether it was for culture, whether it was for, science, literature. And there was this high spirit of competition that does not exist anymore,

that stopped existing already in the United Germany of the 19th century. And I think that if Europe goes fragmented again, if there are a series of small entities, then maybe there will be more competition. I completely agree. I think one of the great changes that's happened in Europe over my life does.

is not just the centralisation of Europe, which we've seen take place, but the homogenisation of Europe. I mean, you go from, you know, a country town in England to a country town in France, to a country town in Germany, once upon the time, they were profoundly different from each other. Each had completely different habits and lifestyles. And they're all European, by the way.

They were all completely European, but they were nonetheless different, and each produced amazing things in their own different ways. Now, they are starting to look incredibly alike. Even the cuisine, if you go in French country towns, tastes very much the same as what you would find in our country towns in England. It's all the sort of same sort of bistro type things. Just just saying, that's a small thing. But I completely agree. It is this enormous drive that we have seen over the last.

last 30 years especially to centralise has come with an awful lot of homogenization very little in the way of the kind of industrial planning that we were discussing before because that doesn't seem to be something that the people in Brussels really understand or are very interested in at the end of the day. So we're getting the worst of both worlds. We are losing that competitiveness that used to come from our diversity, you know, the diversity that existed within Europe so that you have the Germans doing one thing, French doing something else, the Austrians doing something because Austria was different from Germany in many ways. All of these, the Scandinavians, they were doing their things in their own sort of ways. Very difficult to

imagine companies like Volvo, which was so Swedish, that nonetheless achieved so much, or fear to come to that, emerging from the Europe that we have now. So we've lost that. And at the same time, we have a kind of sameness, which is unpleasant without the kind of industrial, if you like, technological, technocratic, centralized, purposeful direction. that the Americans could still do up to a certain point and the Russians are certainly able to do

and the Chinese do to a very great level. We've got into the worst of all worlds and it's very difficult to see how we're ever going to get out of this. What I would say is that that which is not sustainable cannot be sustained. There will come a point when this structure will fail. we will perhaps at that point as Europeans have to re-engage with each other and with the rest of the world. The problem is what happens until, you know, between now and when we reach that point, a very, very difficult time.

Well, it's very strange that we now look at because of more Europe unity. It's always held as, again, being no alternative. to use this phrase again. But this idea of some fragmentation being a positive thing, it has a deep root in Europe. This was a key idea behind the Greek city-states as well, that if you had all the separate cities operating a bit individually, this would allow for experimenting with different forms of governance, economics, politics, and indeed, this was also translated into the US political system where the states would have a lot of powers, so they would try out different ideas,

different economic models and effectively compete with each other to stay vibrant, to stay resilient. And as opposed to when you centralize excessively and it begins to stagnate and you take some of this energy out of it, people often get things, I think, on the head. They put things on this head by suggesting that, well, in the West it is decentralized. And we often contrast ourselves with the, Chinese, but in China, they actually do have a very decentralized economy where there's a lot of local governance, the economic regions can compete with each other. And I just, I don't see this to the

same extent in Europe anymore, not just the competition in terms of economics, but also in terms of political ideas. And that's why it's always fascinating that we have Hungary in Europe, because look what happens when they break out. They suggest, well, we want a bit conservative policies. You You know, we're going to focus on preserving the family as an entity. Well, perhaps diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine would be good to have an end to the war. And they're saying all these things which they're not allowed to, and they immediately get punished. And you see how stifling, I guess, this centralization release.

Well, thank you for bringing in Hungary because it's a country, culture that is very dear to me. And I used to live very close to Hungary in terms. terms of geographic distance. And one dog just joined me here on the sofa. The Hungarians have been scolded over the last 15 years for not being European enough. But this is just an illustration of this ahistorical thinking that you have in Brussels when it comes to Europe as a whole, because it was the Hungarians,

And it was also the Polish who paid a very high price for European values, such as freedom and rule of law. And this is simply forgotten in Brussels. And the Hungarians are the Hungarians. I happen to study a little bit of Hungarian language. And the Hungarians have simply nothing to do with their immediate neighbors. They're closely to the folk people in Central Asia in terms of ethnic and cultural legacy. So this is definitely an interesting example. And Viktor Orban, he himself is a political phenomenon.

But that's what Alexander mentioned about homogenization. We have seen it with agriculture. We have seen it with education, with the Bologna process. and here certain countries try to step out. I would say the country that within the EU tries and managers maybe to step out is France because they have always tried to keep their agricultural topics apart and their cinema production and so on. And here in the Russian Federation,

in 2003, the joint Bologna process and they joined this dual, system of a bachelor and master, now you have a total switchback. So as of next year, 1st of January 2026, there will be only one certificate. You will not anymore have a bachelor and master program, but only one certificate for law, for engineering, whatever. And I've been involved in some of these roundtables, all under the heading of academic serenity. And I subscribe to it because the overall idea behind it is to create again something like excellence, something like uniqueness in certain topics. And we will see this cycle of history from globalization, going back to regionalization, to local, to historic root,

whatever we have seen it in Yugoslavia with Yugoslavia with ethnic tribal ideas in the worst but it can also go for better and here I do hope that there will be again something like an original

humanistic and well based thinking but for that you need heads and you need backbone so it takes courage and Auburn has definitely

courage. When he made it in June, 1989, scolding the Soviet Union, nobody knew what, like, in which way in 1988 would end. It could have also ended in different ways.

He definitely is a courageous man. But he's not pro-Russian. Certainly not. Otherwise, he could have voted against the sanctions a long time ago. And for Europe, it needs people

with a backbone and they cannot do it themselves. You need something like a popular support and you need an administrative apparatus to close along with it. What Trump is doing right now by kicking out so many parts of civil servants, my first thought when I saw the figures and this activity

to remind me a little bit, a little bit I don't want to make any analogy but with Mao's cultural revolution. It's like, you're really kidding. out the existing civil service and you pray something new and this is definitely needed in Brussels it's needed in each and every EU state I just just finished one one one final point from me which is that I was actually in Hungary a few weeks ago back in November and the thing that struck me I've never been there

before first time ever and I was in Budapest and I said this to the many Hungarian people, you know, mostly officials that I met, it reminded me very, very much of the Europe that was. It's, it's, it's still retains a lot of that, you know, uniqueness, that particular character. It's actually, it's an intensely European place. Hungary is as European as anywhere. But it, it insists on its own personality, its own identity, its own way of managing things. and it's politics, it's a whole way of operating. As I said, it took me back to another time, and time which I remember when other European states were like that.

And so many of the things that you heard people say in Hungary about how things should be done, how this should be managed, once upon a time elsewhere in Europe, they wouldn't have been particularly controversial. People would have taken them quite calmly because they were part of the accepted language of political discussion and debate. So it was very, very interesting to go back to the Hungary of that time. And again, and coming back to the point that each of you were making,

the interesting thing about Hungary was that it's a relatively small country, but the various departments and the ministries and all of that, As a result, they know their economy and their society and the workforce and all of those things extremely well. And they build on that. So there isn't this sense that you don't have this kind of connection with the grassroots of your society that you so often find across Europe nowadays. So, you know, when they develop particular industries, when they work in agriculture, they develop agriculture, they develop their energy system, they know how to do it in a way that is specifically, Hungary-specific,

and plays to their strengths. That you also used to get in the little German states that Karen was talking about. You know, the government there would be very, very close to the people of the community that it governed. That was the strength that Europe used to have, and it's the strength that we've thrown away. I had a lunch actually last week with the Hungarian ambassador in this country. And it reminded me a bit of when I visit the central bank there as well, which is this, yeah, very, I don't know why it's labeled far right now. It used to be the classical European, I guess.

And this is also, yeah, Orban also lately gave an interview, I think was to Tucker Carlson about, yeah, Hungary's position. the world and because as when they don't fall in line with the EU they're said to be as yeah car I said pro-prussian you know whatever that might mean but he was pointing out you know I'm pro-Hungarian but throughout our history we have the Turks the Germans the Russians and all sides we've been crushed every now and then and he revisited the meeting with Putin where they effectively said you know we have some bad history between us let's just you know this let's leave it in the history books and at least we can have good relations between each other

and do some trade have predictable political relations and Orban pointed out that the Russians have done what they promised and and there was why why why throw this out it's it's so strange to me and it reminds me a bit about the recent Munich meeting as well where the the They had, also the Chinese, I think, they had a Chinese guest there, and they were asking, you know, why, why are you still keeping relations with Russia? You know, you're a strategic partner, your, you know, main energy supplier. And he had to explain himself. For me, this is so very, very strange. Again, no one explained to Orban why severing relations with Russia would be good for Hungarian security, why it would be good for Ukraine for that.

sake, why it would be good for stability, economics, trade, so I never see any arguments. And this is where we go, I guess, full circle back to this good versus evil thing. It's only, you know, follow the line of the European Union and then you're on the good side. Or if you don't, then you're anti-European, you're pro-Russian and, you know, all these labels, which we never really clearly defined. But it all effectively goes down to saying, yeah, you're supporting the wrong team. But it's, no, I think, yeah, the reason I brought up Orban is because I thought as Europe goes into deep trouble, we have to find some way to navigate out of this mess we made.

And perhaps the Hungary, which has developed, is not such a bad model for Europe, something, you know, we don't have to emulate it. We can still have some differences, but at least appreciate what they're trying to do differently. Anyways, before we wrap this up, any final words from you, Karin? Europe will resurrect, but it will take a while. I mean, Europe has been considered that at various instances in its history. First question, of course, one should ask is,

where is Europe? Is Armenia Europe? Is the British Islands Europe, etc., etc. and we see now also a reshuffling here on different concepts. London wants to get back to the continent to a large extent and still a year ago. And we have a rearranging of where this Europe is. But when it's all about EU Europe, I'm not very confident that the way it is functioning right now

will be sustainable for many years to come. first of all, it's economic financial reasons. The budget is already exhausted. They are working on some sort of urgency measures to keep the budget going. And this Europe, this bureaucratic Europe, is most probably due to fail. And the Europe as such, the legacy, this... mysterious destination of utopia for many, and I speak here with my shoes in Russia and in West Asia, because I know this romantic illusion that Russians and people in Lebanon, in Syria, in Egypt,

would have of Europe. And this is how I often discovered my own Europe, through their own eyes and here in Russia there's a big romantic illusion about what Europe is so if that Europe wants to come back and if that Europe can serve as a destination for

academics can serve as as the new creativity for the next big symphonies and literature works of literature then something has to happen you have to move out of this bureaucratic monster that is there.

And I hope that it will come back. It will certainly come back. Only that I think, I've just turned 60, I won't see it in my lifetime, come back. I once upon the time I knew Europe. I was not proud of it. I was grateful for it. I had not fought for it.

I was not in 1848 fighting for freedom. I was not in 1945 building it up. So I got the best of this Europe in the 70s, 80s, and I was grateful for it. But now it's gone. Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree. It will come back, but probably after our lifetime. And there has to be a massive relearning process for that to happen, and that will not come without traumatic change.

I have nothing further to add it apart from that, very bleak. point, but yes, I agree we will see a Europe return eventually, but what form it will be, we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, our political leaders are seen to be intent on making the situation even worse. Well, I guess discussing the future of Europe, especially EU-centric Europe in this specific time in history, I think finishing on a very gloomy note is quite appropriate. So thank you, Karin. Thank you, Alexander. I very much appreciate being so generous with your time. Thank you.