Pardon My French, But--Boo Hoo.

One of a few truly great exposes done by RT as of lately is based on the report (study) by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique. You can get to it through this link:

[CONVERSATION] Christian Harbulot, guerre économique : qui est l’ennemi ?

It is an important study which is utterly, absolutely... unsurprising. It merely confirms what I write about for years that European in general and French in particular "elites" are cowards. As RT reports about this study:

New research published by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique has revealed some extraordinary findings about who and what the French intelligence services fear most when it comes to threats to the country’s economy. The findings are based on extensive research and interviews with French intelligence experts, including representatives of spy agencies, and so reflect the positions and thinking of specialists in the under-researched field of economic warfare. Their collective view is very clear - 97 percent consider the US to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of Paris. The research was conducted to answer the question, “what will become of France in an increasingly exacerbated context of economic war?”. This query has become increasingly urgent for the EU as Western sanctions on Moscow’s exports, in particular energy, have had a catastrophic effect on European countries, but have not had the predicted effect Russia. Nor have they hurt the US, the country pushing most aggressively for these measures. Yet, the question is not being asked in other EU capitals. It is precisely the continent-wide failure, or unwillingness at least, to consider the “negative repercussions on the daily lives” of European citizens that inspired the Ecole de Guerre Economique report. 

A lot is packed into this summary, but we will start with obvious miscalculation yet again: sanctions DID hurt the US in a classic boomerang effect and this conclusion by French that they did not is utterly wrong. Another matter that unlike France, who, we can state it now confidently, is on her way of losing the remnants of her sovereignty and grossly, if not grotesquely, overvalued economy--that applies to the combined West as a whole--the US is simply larger than France in every metric and because of that, at least on paper, has more staying power than any EU economy. But that is the issue: Western strategic intelligence and strategic forecasting are, in effect, non-existent, because they have been so hollowed out by white board economic, military and social theories that one has to ask the only question which is warranted here. No, it is not about "competence" of Western establishment--it is not competent--but about a degree of brainwashing of different layers of this establishment. 

It is especially a poignant question when one considers the fact that those few people in France, such as Charles de Gaulle, who saw what Trans-Atlantic "Unity" was shaping out to be, never had a chance against the background of cowardice and lack of principles of the majority of French government bureaucrats, academe, creative class and politicians, who were selling their country left and right to the US. Now, the time of reckoning has come and France, together with Germany, and others will be consumed--a euphemism for de-industrialization and precipitous decline in standard of living--because America needs to eat too. But that also brings us to this important point: size does matter. France is simply not that big economically--both in absolute industrial capacity and demographically. Same applies to military, even despite France's own nuclear deterrent.

It is France's fate that she ended up, in the time of the yet another edition of the great power struggle, not being the great power and in the group of sacrificial lambs at the altar of globalism, yet another euphemism for US hegemony, which crumbles in a front of our very own eyes. I get some, fully justifiable, complains from French people that they are sick and tired of being portrayed in US culture as cowards and Nazi collaborators. I totally agree with them, those who insult France like this in the US are ignoramuses who wouldn't even comprehend the scale of Verdun in WW I or the heroism of French combat pilots of a legendary Normandie-Niemen in WW II. But that was then. Today is different--France chose her own fate and the collection of moral and physical midgets from Sarkozy (say thanks to this ass-hole for World Cup being held in Qatar instead of the US), to Hollande to the present day Oedipus tells everything one needs to know about France which continues her slide into irrelevance. 

But then again, I am not sure that those people in Ecole de Guerre Economique really understand what real economy and the role of resources--natural, human, military, technological--are. I really doubt it. It is true, Paris reeks of urine and is filled with filth and that is a sad end for once proud country which gave so much to the world. Today is the time of soumission and it was France's  own choice. There is nobody to blame for that but themselves, but as I am on record, combined West long ago lost the concept of cause and effect and it is... too bad. What else can one say in this case. C'est la vie.