Sergey Karaganov: Russians are the real Europeans, the West of the continent has lost its way

"German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said: "The European Union must be ready for war by the end of the decade." Berlin has started talking about the return of universal military service and preparations for a confrontation with Moscow. There are similar sentiments in Poland. But is it only because of the events in Ukraine?

Evgeny Shostakov: Mr. Karaganov, given the current difficult foreign policy situation, is there a need for a conceptually different theory of deterrence against Russia's enemies in order to stop the growing confrontation at an early stage, and to discourage our adversaries from fueling conflicts?
"The elites of Western Europe – and especially in Germany – are in a state of historical failure. The main basis of their 500-year domination [of the world] was military superiority, on which the economic, political and cultural dominance of the West was built. But this has been knocked out from under them. With the help of this advantage, they manipulated the world's resources in their favor. First they plundered their colonies, and later they did the same, but with more sophisticated methods.
Today's Western elites are failing to address a range of growing problems in their societies. These include a shrinking middle class and rising inequality. Almost all their initiatives are failing. The European Union, as everyone knows, is slowly but surely sprawling out. That is why its ruling class has been hostile to Russia for about 15 years now. They need an external enemy; Josep Borrell [the EU’s top foreign affairs official] called the world around the bloc a jungle last year. Indeed, in the past, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the sanctions adopted by the EU [against Russia] were necessary first and foremost to unite the European Union and prevent it from collapsing." RT