Fresh from the newest (edit: actually, an older - its just that the videos were recently published) gathering of the friends of the Brookings Institution, which was actually founded to ensure US foreign interests are served as well as enacted around the world -- we present to you
Europes only chance is to --
become the leader in the green transition, by virtue of taking on huge amounts of public debt, against a backdrop of China which is set on also mass producing that stuff, against the backgdrop of a US that actually will not buy your stuff, once it comes to market, but will gladly take your talent and your entire precision manufacturing industry and onboard it --
and you have to do it while you do a military buildout, that doesnt benefit you in any way - and only adds sunken costs, because contrary to popular believe, you will never become a global military power, partly because of your demographic structure, and therefore will have none of the benefits of having globalized your entire investment industry backed by the worlds biggest military and reserve currency, but if you innovate in your military sector development (while not buying from US manufacturers), you might still benefit from cross sectoral efficiency gains!
Oh and “if you are too slow” (with china actually having slowed down production forecasts, and pivoted towards the next “century of the self”, but trust me, your are still in a race here!) you loose anyhow.
Oh and your energycosts quadrupled. Oh and your material import routes arent set up yet.
Oh, and of course, after you became green innovation leader, with no one actually buying that stuff (the US not because as an “island” it will transition later, and China not - because it still will want to bootstrap its own domestic economy, ESPECIALLY since you played this out as a “systemic competition” not that they would have many buyers anyhow - but at least they have the materials, just not the energy), the US will buy out your talent and create the second generation of green transition products in the US (near actual population centers), while you are now paying for the humanitarian fallout (excuse me) of the Ukraine crisis in terms of food and fertilizer production not to get across european borders.
While BRICS nations will live on on the natural gas you actually needed as a transition fuel, oh and the 300 million barrels per day from the newest US well tapped in the antarctic.
But that only offsets the crude that is now shut in in the russian permafrost.
Such a win!
And you have to do it, otherwise you become entirely sidelined in terms of international importance.
And if you do it, you’ll get entirely outplayed in terms of international importance within a decade.
Still paying off your loans over what was it 30 years? Yeah - wishful thinking. As if those kinds of loans are ever “payed back”.
The US can excel in deficit spending, because it has the worlds largest military, so it could always invest in the military industrial complex (as an innovation driver), because the side benefits of that alone benefited its investor class.
Europe gets none of that. So be brave, tough it out, and take the plunge already! Now that your main source of crude and (foreign) natural gas is the US!
Go fuck yourselves.
Its amazing, that they still find PR people to cheerlead that scenario.
Sponsored by McKinsey. Well at least one of the speaking engagements at that event.
edit: Well, thats all fine and good, but can the Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation please tell me as well, at the same event, how important and without any alternatives this all is - because the area where Europe could lose out the most is in public value projection, sorry I mean proclamations of western international order.
Trade law? Oh no - of course not, with the US unilaterally terminating WTO agreements these days - DEMOCRACY!
