Crashed

In the Maidan demonstrations of the winter of 2013–2014 Ukrainians enthusiastically waved the blue banner of the EU. After the grinding battles of the eurozone it was something of a relief for Europe to be celebrated by anyone anywhere.

he Russia that emerged from the Ukraine clash was above all a nationalist regime whose citizens were called upon to pay whatever price was necessary for their nation’s reemergence on the global stage. It was tough, but it was a role that came easily.

losses the banks incurred would bankrupt the Irish state. They would become the telltale link connecting the banking crisis of 2008 to the eurozone sovereign debt crises of 2010.

Ignoring the evident risk that Ukraine was too weak economically, too fragile politically and too exposed in geopolitical terms to stand the pressure generated between Russia and the West, Brussels pushed forward.

Under the anodyne labels of association, cooperation and convergence, a heavy geopolitical weight was being imposed on a fragile region under considerable economic and political stress.

The same Western powers that had shamelessly courted the Libyan dictator had turned on him, bombing his military and delivering him to the vengeful mob. One would be a fool to trust them. Medvedev’s appeasement would only invite further aggression. Putin would have to take back control.

was America’s most important ally, the Europeans. The EU would later claim that it “sleepwalked” into the Ukraine crisis. This was part of a piece with its guileless insistence that “the EU does not do geopolitics.”16 That perhaps described the naïveté of some officials in Brussels, but it never really rang true.

Less charitably it might be said that since the 1990s, New Labour, like the Democrats in the United States, had entered into an enthusiastic partnership with the City of London. It was, therefore, no coincidence that it was now Labour in Britain and the Democrats in the United States who were showing such energy in the struggle to fix the banking crisis. It was a monster they had helped to create.

The Chinese might be excused their confusion. The political theater being played in Washington, DC, was new and strange. A conservative, free-market administration led by businessmen was proposing unlimited state spending to nationalize a large part of the housing finance system.

And as minority home ownership collapsed, the result was resegregation along racial lines.