In his most recent public statement, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announces a true era of lean cows starting in the winter of 2022. Without saying so, he equates the reality we live in with the one that preceded the Second World War. For him, the social pact on which European democracies are based is leaking while the world economy is undergoing a process of transformation that does not seem to have a clear destination. And, of course, Europe is constantly exposed to the arrival of waves of immigrants from Asia and Africa that, although they have made it possible to have cheap labor, aggravate the crisis in public services and housing. For Macron, the coincidence in time of massive innovations that impact the modes of global production;
Since President Macron has always been the vanguard of optimism, these reflections lead us to examine the current situation in the world and in particular in the Western Hemisphere. In Europe the already strong tensions created by immigration from Asia and Africa are likely to increase. Because as recently warned by the director of the United Nations Food Program, he pointed out that the report presented in conjunction with the FAO on the critical regions of the world where there are already famine conditions are Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen with Afghanistan and Somalia joining to this of 2022. These conditions are going to force an increase in immigration flows to Europe. And this intensification will coincide with a slowdown in the economy and significant increases in energy prices. There will therefore be popular discontent like the one that manifested itself in France last year with the Gilet Jaunes rebellion. These massive protests that shook France at the end of last year erupted like the fires in California, spontaneously without a clear leadership or political institution such as political parties or unions behind it. It is about the working middle class that via social networks decided to express their rejection of the government’s policies regarding energy taxes. But if migratory flows increase within adverse economic conditions, a wave of protests can become a social explosion. The same happens in Germany and in the rest of Europe. The war on the other hand does not seem to have a solution other than the annihilation of the Ukraine by Russia, event that the countries of Europe say they reject. However, maintaining Ukraine’s resistance drains fiscal resources even more and can cause an inflationary wave in Europe like the one experienced by the United States as a result of excessive economic stimuli.
And to further complicate the situation is China and its policy of reducing economic ties with the West, which has the effect of reducing financial flows from that nation to Europe and the United States and making manufacturing more expensive for the entire world.
In short, Emmanuel Macron perceives the imminence of a major crisis that could blow up the foundations of the international order built on the ashes of the Second World War and that has guaranteed Europe and the United States 45 years of peace and stability.
The curious thing is that neither Joseph Biden nor his European colleagues share this reflection since they all continue to act as if the situation were normal and not exceptional. Therefore they do not pick up Macron’s message and much less adopt public policies to confront the crisis. Not to mention the nations of Latin America whose electorates insist on going back to the past or favoring leaderships that claim to represent failed ideologies that cover up the return of 19th-century caudillismo.
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