European integration is a geopolitical process composed of two different vectors

Saturday, July 4, 2020

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European integration is a geopolitical process composed of two different vectors of increasingly conflicting development that have generated the current European crisis, but could yield a more geopolitically solid Russia, Alexander Dugin, leader of the International Eurasian Movement, told pro-governmental daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta. According to Dugin, at the initial stage in the 1960s through 1970s, the process of European integration was envisaged strictly within the strategy of Atlantism, that is, under the U.S. auspices and in the interests of NATO. The task was to consolidate the West against "the Soviet threat." It was a stage in the strategic plan in the dual logic of the Cold War: capitalist Atlantism against socialist Eurasianism. We are witnessing the elements of inertia of that NATO version of Europeanism, something that could be referred to as Euroatlantism. The U.S. and its closest ally in the Old World, Britain, as well as Eastern European and the Baltic countries admitted to the EU (not without U.S. pressure) are playing the key role in this process. Euroatlantism predetermines the continued eastward expansion of NATO and pursues the traditional geopolitical line of the Cold War, though without its ideological burden, Dugin said. Euroatlantists are trying to increase the number of "new European" members that are fully dependent on Washington and hate Eurasianism. Their goal is to strengthen American control of the EU and turn it into a zone of their direct influence, he said. But an alternative identity, Dugin believes, developed during the European integration around the Paris-Berlin axis - Eurocontinentalism. It views united Europe not as a satellite of the U.S., but as an independent geopolitical and historical entity. Eurocontinentalism rejects the logic of the Cold War and anti-Eurasianism, he said. This is why, he said, the French voted at the referendum not against Europe itself, but against a pro-American and anti-Eurasian Europe. The blow they delivered to Euroatlantism is beneficial to Russia. Its "orange" opponents in the CIS have been deprived of the chance to quickly integrate into the EU, weakening Euroatlantism and strengthening Russia's standing, Dugin said

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