Two high-ranking gravediggers share their Reddit-level advice on resuscitating the bloc

In the world of Western mainstream media political commentary, not everything is fun. In fact, mostly, things are grimly serious, the sort of seriousness that comes with solid, never-questioned self-importance. But sometimes that professional pomposity reaches a tipping point when strenuous efforts to be very earnest involuntarily produce priceless outcomes.

That is the case with a recent elephantine op-ed that has surfaced in Politico under the illustrious names of Gabrielius Landsbergis and Garry Kasparov. Its one, relentlessly reiterated argument is touchingly simple as well as out of touch with the world we really live in: The EU, this fantasy goes, is too consensual, peaceful, and nice (tell the migrants drowning in the Mediterranean or traded as slaves in Libya with de facto EU support). It must become tough, decisive, and fierce, with plenty of arms and gritty oomph. Because otherwise it won’t survive in a world shaped by the big bad “global network of authoritarians” (I won’t enumerate them here; it’s just the usual suspects of every Centrist’s fever dream) and, for good measure, terrorists, too. (Surely, the latter, at least, do no longer include Mr. Jolani, the former leader of the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria who has recently been reborn miraculously as an avatar of diversity now going by Al Sharaa?)

Landsbergis is a political nepo baby, enthusiastic NATO sectarian, and the former foreign minister of Lithuania. While popular at international meet-ups of adult – so they say at least – Europeans calling US presidents “daddy,” a 2023 poll back home in Lithuania saw him fail to breach the 2-percent threshold. If that sounds like perfect material for a blind date with Kamala Harris, Landsbergis certainly has time on his hands after losing his constituency last year and announcing he wanted to take a break from politics. No less, it seems, than his voters clearly needed a break from him.

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Kasparov is, by comparison with Landsbergis, at least an original phenomenon, the idiot savant of chess. A former world champion, he has now spent decades proving that one can be a chess genius and a perfect dunce in every other respect, especially politics. Since he has combined this obstinate – and almost brave, if that is the word – playing to his worst weaknesses with an equally stubborn obsession with going after Russia and its leadership he still has his fans, in the West.

Together, Landsbergis and Kasparov have signed off on a gargantuan effort to produce another Long Telegram . Clearly, they are driven by a comically misplaced ambition to best American diplomat and Ur-Cold Warrior’ George Kennan – a complex, dour, and vain man, but certainly no fool, as his later fall from official grace and opposition to daft Western expansionism showed – who issued the renowned call to arms against the Soviet Union in 1946/47.

What early Cold War Kennan did for the US – and by extension, its postwar empire – Kasparov and Landsbergis would very much, desperately like to be able to do for the EU. And they have striven mightily. Yet they have strutted into the classical trap of the epigone: think of their imitation clarion call as a mix between embarrassingly poor-but-eager fan fiction, a bizarre alternative history of the EU, and a rambling and rather dull party speech masquerading as an op-ed.

Yes, that is how bad it is. Indeed, the screed by the Lithuanian has-been and the chess master who went full blockhead is so self-defeatingly shoddy that it’s difficult to know where to begin. So, for starters, just for a rough sense of what we are dealing with, this is a text asserting the EU systematically promotes politicians who are “excellent negotiators.”

Such as Ursula von der Leyen, we must assume? The one really in charge (although no one can coherently explain why) in the EU who has just “negotiated” a grotesquely disadvantageous anti-”deal” – really an unconditional surrender without a fight – with the US, built on the elegantly simple principle “You get everything, we get nothing, and we’ll pay you for that as well.”

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This claim about the EU producing excellence at the negotiating table, is all the more curious (Is “curious” the word? Would “symptomatic” be better?) since Landsbergis and Kasparov do mention that recent fiasco at Trump’s Turnberry Golf Berghof as well. Somehow, between the former foreign minister and the former chess champion, no one noticed the contradiction.

But then again, these are the same bright minds who believe that the EU is a beacon of “free trade.” In reality, one purpose the EU was built for – apart from suppressing national sovereignty and whatever faint elements of democracy postwar European states actually have featured – was to not allow for free trade. In reality, the EU permits something resembling free trade only when it is perceived as advantageous to its own agenda or that of specific states and pressure groups – or, of course, when it is forced to do so.

In all other cases, it practices a whole plethora of protectionist policies, from the classic Common Agricultural Policy to so-called anti-dumping rules that it uses as geopolitical weapons. It also runs an enormous redistribution scheme between its member nations, something that Landsbergis from Lithuania certainly knows from its most cushy side. While not directly a trade issue, that, too, is far from the pure doctrine of free markets and invisible hands.

Finally, it was, obviously, precisely the EU’s – not Russia’s – refusal to even consider “free” trade for Ukraine with both itself and Russia that played a key role in triggering the original Ukraine crisis of 2013/14.

More examples of painfully under-informed and under-thought (both polite expressions) statements could be added. But why torment ourselves? You get the gist: Details – though by no means minor – are not Landsbergis and Kasparov’s forte. What about the grand argument then? It is not merely ignorant but positively toxic.

For Kasparov and Landsbergis, it is certain that the EU and “Putin’s Russia” can never “peacefully coexist,” and while hedging a tiny bit with regard to China, they say essentially the same about the bloc's relationship with Beijing as well. As card-carrying members of the “daddy” -saying club, they let the US off lightly, bending themselves into submissive pretzels by, on one side, noting that it is abandoning its EU vassals and, on the other, saying that that’s okay, daddy, and, anyhow, we Europeans need tough love.

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In effect, they paint a picture of an EU that can rely only on itself. And that is the madness of their article: They are right – even if cowardly – about the fact that it cannot rely on the US. But they are wrong, in fact, deluded, about two key things.

First, they are dishonest about “going it alone.” Because they are, of course, not ready to be consistent and encourage the EU to, in that case, actually put its own interests above the demands of the US. The obvious test here is Ukraine. If Landsbergis and Kasparov were ready to face the fact that the EU must end, instead of increase, its support for Kiev, then one could take them seriously to an extent. But the opposite is the case.

Second, there is no need to “go it alone,” and, in fact, there is no such option. If Kasparov and Landsbergis could free themselves for a moment from their ideological obsessions, they would easily realize that the way forward for the EU in a world where the US has become an even more damaging “friend” than before is to seek normal relationships with others, in particular with China and Russia. In terms of both security and economics, these are the relationships that would allow the EU to perhaps escape decline. Yet driven by provincial phobias and petty personal grudges, Kasparov and Landsbergis miss the obvious.

What is profoundly disturbing about their rant is not that it exists: someone will always be full enough of themselves to produce flimsy, atrocious ideas and mistake them for advice to share. Yet in a halfway normal environment, such things would stay on Reddit. That they are treated as worthy of a mainstream platform is a sign that, indeed, the EU has severe problems and needs radical change. Just not along the lines suggested by Landsbergis and Kasparov.

Lithuanian

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