RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/03/04/china-is-gearing-

On February 18, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that a “sophisticated state-actor” had launched a cyber attack on Australia’s major political parties and parliamentary computer system. The Australian government has not yet identified which state-actor is responsible but suspicions almost instantly fell on China. The Chinese military maintains a dedicated unit (the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398) for cyber attacks. While several other nations maintain the capabilities for this kind of attack, they do not have China’s record of interference in Australian politics. The Chinese Communist Party puts significant resources into neutralizing opposition to its interests within Australian politics and society. Its increasingly flagrant acts of interference prompted the nation to pass sweeping foreign interference laws in 2018.

If China is responsible for the cyber-attack on Australian parliament, it fits a very clear pattern of increasing antagonism by China against the West. This points towards a worrying and unstable future for Western middle-powers with high economic exposure to China. Moreover, China’s increasingly threatening posture suggests that it no longer believes that it can radically reshape the international order without waging a long-term strategic conflict with the West. Until recently, China was careful to maintain the West’s support for the nation’s rise by refraining from activities that would trigger too much anxiety. Not only is China now engaging in these activities with little pretense of restraint (including militarizing the South China Sea) but it has gone one giant leap further by directly threatening the autonomy and stability of Western societies with extensive interference operations.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/letter-from-brussels-the-belly-of-the-eurobeast/

Visiting Brussels is like visiting an acquaintance who is well informed but whose company you don’t enjoy. It is not fun but it can be useful. The European Union is in a state of latent crisis which has the potential to turn acute at any moment, but the massive bureaucratic machine in its capital pretends it is business as usual. Moscow felt this way in the late 1980’s.

The mandarins at the top are aware that the peasants are restive. Their current line is that the European Union is under threat from “populists,” evil people who first spread and then exploit supposedly irrational phobias on immigration, economy, sovereignty etc. These “far-right, racist nationalists” risk making the EU “ungovernable” if they win big at the European elections in May, but voters may yet turn to them in revolt against the mainstream European politicians, economic commissioner Pierre Moscovici warned a week ago. “Europe is strong but the European idea is under threat,” he said, adding the EU was “threatened by political disagreements between member states on the meaning of the European project.” The challenge, Mr Moscovici said, isn’t’ just to save Europe but to “remake” it: “We need to give the European idea new meaning and ambition . . . There is tension between those who want to continue the European adventure and those who are fighting it, and it’s a frontal battle.”

To refresh my understanding of “the European adventure” as defined by M. Moscovici and his ilk, I walked past the project’s headquarters on Monday morning. There is a strange statue outside the soon-to-be-contested European Parliament. A heroic female figure (supposedly “Europa Goddess,” according to the official EU guidebook) is triumphantly holding high the euro sign; a man and a woman, emerging from the lower folds of her tunic, vainly reach up with their arms. Whatever the meaning of this eerie image, it is unlikely to inspire the masses with “new meaning and ambition.” The statue, albeit on a more modest scale and grimmer in spirit, exudes the temperament of the 1937 “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” in Moscow. This is unsurprising: the essence of the EU has always been socialist and (velvet) totalitarian.