For aficionados of irony, this weekend’s Bavarian (Lovely place!) G7 Meeting of the Mighty is a prize. God (dead or otherwise) must be laughing His head off. The two primary participants, a Greek Prime Minister and a Russian President, aren’t there though they control the agenda. And those in attendance are not in control. What a well-earned contretemps for human politicians who have had some two millennia to learn from ancient politicians without having accomplished that.
The official agenda is a trivia list; the world wants to see what will occur with Greece and Ukraine. They matter. They attendees know that of course, but they are only politicians. They provide promises, not results. What, for pity’s sake, do we expect of them?
Greece is a stand-in for Europe and the U.S; head over heels in debt incurred to fulfill impossible political promises of easy living, debt that cannot be repaid but by decades of penury. Those decades are now in the offing; no politician will own them but the bill is due. And the penury is all too visible.
Prime Minister Tzipras was elected promising to avoid such reality; he needs the E.U. to assume his debts for him. As that has already turned out badly for the E.U, it seems unlikely. The Greeks can blame only themselves, but of course, they won’t. There is nothing for the E.U. to do, but support Greeks for the rest of their lives, an unlikely prospect. Will the G7 own up to this? Yeah, right. How do you say: “obfuscate” in Eurospeaki?
Then there’s the empty Siege Perilous, the unlabeled chair with a model T90 tank on its escutcheon. Putin. He is stirring up the dogs of war in Ukraine and more people are dying, even a troubling (for Putin) number of Russian Army casualties whose parents have to be told to shut up about where their sons died.
A lot of Eurofolk are low on military and need Russian heating gas in winter; they don’t want to annoy Putin. They prefer to recycle Neville Chamberlain if they could find him. The U.S. being farther off, is a bit braver, though not much. Its leaders, if one wishes to title them such, know what is coming financially and are more interested in finding ways to blame each other. Ukraine too will be finessed at G7.
Well, it will have been a lovely weekend for busy people who have appointed themselves in charge, … so long as they needn’t deliver results.
Das wird ja wirklich fabelhaft!
U.K. less EU happy
