It would appear that the European Union — or at least Germany anyway – has, finally, found something they and much of the rest of the world can agree upon:
The US-led Western rules-based order “no longer exists.”
According to the German Chancellor, the EU needs to rapidly arm itself as the world is entering a new era of great-power struggle. Mr. Merzsuggestedthe Trump administration’s actions over the past year meant that the United States’ claim to global leadership “has been challenged, and possibly squandered.”
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“In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said, speaking in English.
European nations must come to accept that the post-Cold War liberal“rules-based international order”is no more, GermanChancellor FriedrichMerztold the Munich Security Conferenceon Friday. The EU and its member states must, in earnest and without delay, adapt to this new reality, and they must do so by arming themselves, he claimed.
His comments come as Berlin seeks to side-step European Commission rules governing budget deficits and competition in an effort to save Germany’s flagging economy through a proposedmassive rearmament program. The bloc’s largest economyplans to spend$582 billion on defense by 2029 in the midst of an ongoing almost three-year recession. The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank,warned last yearthat the government is on track to record its largest budget deficit since the early 1990s.
“The international order based on rights and rules… no longer exists,” Merz declared at the Munich forum. “The United States’s claim to leadership has been challenged and possibly lost,”he stated, pointing to what he called Russia’s “violent revisionism” and China’s desire to “be a leader in shaping the world.”
The European Union, he added, needs to “accept this new reality today” which involves “a battle for spheres of influence” and where “natural resources, technologies and supply chains are becoming bargaining chips in the zero-sum game of the major powers.”
Source: Global Research
