Thomas Fazi

THOMAS FAZI—More to the point, European elites have allowed themselves to be dragged by Washington into a disastrous proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, condemning their citizens to collapsing industry and rising prices. That’s even as the conflict in Eastern Europe exposes the continent to unprecedented military risks, including the genuine possibility of nuclear war. Yet despite all these sacrifices, all that eagerness to do the Pentagon’s bidding, Trump’s isolationist bent means it could ultimately all be for nothing.

For the past few years, the EU’s leaders have framed their entire foreign policy in American terms. Nato expansionism; economically decoupling from Russia; supporting Ukraine’s victory-at-all-costs strategy — each has been justified in the name of preserving the transatlantic alliance, even at the expense of Europe’s actual interests.

THOMAS FAZI—Germany’s policy vis-a-vis the European Union for a long time fit the pattern [discussed in part 1 of the interview] of national governments and national elites using the European Union to their own advantage. Germany is probably the most clear example of this, in terms of a country using the European Union and the narrative of “Europeanising Germany” and supposedly getting away from Germany’s hyper-nationalist tendencies of the past to, in fact, promote the national interests of Germany, or more precisely those of its capitalist elites, and pursue what could be described as a form of economic nationalism. For a long time, Germany’s relationship with the European Union could be described as one of “nationalism through Europeanism”.

THOMAS FAZI—Democracy has only existed — and, I would argue, can only exist — at the national level. And so, when you start to look at things from this wider historical perspective, you realise what the European Union’s project was all about: it really was a way of responding to the crisis and a way of implementing neoliberalism on an unprecedented scale, by essentially hollowing out national democracies and national sovereignties by creating this supranational institution that would prove impervious to any form of democratic pressures.

THOMAS FAZI—The Wagenknecht phenomenon is fascinating — and unique — for several reasons. Not only has she managed to establish the BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months, but she’s also running on a platform that is unique in the Western political panorama, at least among electorally relevant parties. Though Wagenknecht tends to avoid framing her party in tired Left-Right terms, its platform can best be described as left-conservative.

THOMAS FAZI—[Quoting Jeffrey Sachs]—”[Saying that Russia’s invasions of Ukraine was unprovoked is] very dangerous because it’s wrong. It gets the whole story completely wrong, and it misunderstands the trap that we set for ourselves as the United states to push Ukraine deeper and deeper and deeper into this hopeless mess that they’re in right now.

Basically, it started very simply, which is that the United States government — let’s not call it the US people, they had nothing to do with this — but the US government said: “We’re going to put Ukraine on our side and we’re going to go right up to that 2,100 kilometre border with Russian. We’re going to put our troops and NATO and maybe missiles, whatever we want, because we are the sole superpower of the world and we do what we want”.

And it goes back, actually a long way. It goes back 170 years. The Brits had this idea, first surround Russia in the Black Sea region, and Russia’s not a great power anymore. And that was Lord Palmerston’s idea in the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856. And the Brits taught us what we know about empire, and they basically taught us the idea…”