Eso’s Chronicles 233/ 4
The HKG-RIX Axis 04
© Eso A.B.

Hong Kong-Riga axis: the first a part of China on the Europe-Asia south east end, while Riga is on the north-west end of the two continents that dominate the largest remnant of the huge landmass once called Pangaea. If one draws a straight line between the two cities, one transects Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, located perfectly in between.

This observer has been arguing for some time that the present capital of Europe, Brussels, has outlived its usefulness, for the simple reason that the business activity of Europe has moved eastward, from England and France to Germany—an eventuality that two world wars tried to prevent. At this time, no one questions the claims of Hong Kong, though by comparison Riga seems a small provincial city. But is this likely to remain so into the future?

Of course, the plans to make it so go ahead:  http://rt.com/op-edge/eu-us-pact-devastating-566/ But it need not.

If the leading nation of Europe in the future is Germany—as many signs cause one to believe—then Riga, arguably the city which Germans once may have planned to make their capital (see blog 228)—may soon revive. True, unlike in the past, Germany is no longer directly linked with Latvia by way of Prussia, what with Poland, Lithuania, and Russia occupying the middle distance http://www.harveypowers.com/eller/Kaliningrad_map.jpg ; but then Canada separates the mainland of the U.S. from Alaska, and that does not stop Alaskans from being Americans. Given the sell-out of Latvia by the current government of Latvia to Brussels and little good coming of it for Latvians, it is likely that Germany would find most Latvians ripe for the picking.

There is not only TAFTA, but some other geopolitical arguments, which insist that it is not Riga, but Russian Konigsberg that should take the prize of the dominant city in the area. But given the unhappy experience of Latvians with the Soviet Union in the not long ago, and the propaganda barrage against Russia by the Latvian government during the past twenty-one years, the people will feel safer and be less reluctant to consider their future if it comes to them with Germany as mediator. As for the Germans, they can choose TAFTA or an independent course.

The reason for this potentially sudden turn-about in the fortunes of Riga is not Riga of itself or Germany, but the fact that Riga is perfectly situated for a German-Russian relationship and has a similar past relationship to relate to. Moreover, the foreign policy direction of the Latvian government for the past twenty years plus has been a disaster when it comes to hewing a direction that can be considered as promising. Indeed, most Latvians are only superficially aware that there is such an institution as the Foreign Ministry. For the most part, the FM has been an arm of Brussels and/or NATO, which has no interest in the Baltics except as a frontier that abuts Russia it considers its potential enemy.

Russia has for a long time faced serious problems vis a vis NATO, which does not have economic well-being of Europe as its major interest, but subordination of Russia as its chief aim. As Zbigniev Brzinski wrote in his book, “The Grand Chesboard”, in discussing the Ukraine and the nations belonging to the Turkic languages groups (p148): “Russia is too weak to regain imperial domination over the region or to exclude others from it, but it is also too close and too strong to be excluded.”  Brzinski recognizes that the U.S. is “…too distant to be dominant”.

The very same words can also be used with regard to the north-east region of mittelosteuropa, where the Baltic nations are located.

The great danger in the present situation in the Middle East is that instead of acting as if is “too distant to be dominant”, the U.S. by supporting the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Turkey, Kurds, and others, has appeared to want not only to dominate, but to undermine the belly of Europe-Asia (Russia-China) with a pepper plaster compress so hot that similar to Soviet Russia, the nations so embraced would expend the greater part of their wealth in armaments, which—like in the case of the Soviet Union—would cause permanent discomfort to their people. One may hope that at this time the financial and economic situation in the U.S. has somewhat corrected American aggression and will cause it to reconsider its strategy.

For the last twenty-one years, the Latvian government has favoured a similar U.S. tactic in the Baltic region. While it has no support of its people for this strategy other than their fear of a repetition of Soviet style dominance, it can be easily seen that with regard to economic policies, this strategy is not only a failure as such, but has exposed the country to existential dangers, re: economic outmigration, demographic decline, chronic under education, chronic poverty, chronic amorality at all levels of society, chronic absence of a positive self-generated culture, and this is only the beginning of the list of compacted social ills, not to mention the  suffering of the people.

So, why not think of a HKG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hong_Kong_Airlines_B-KBE_taking_off_at_Hong_Kong_International_Airport.jpg -RIX economic axis? If at this time Riga http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/13/bc/0c/riga-old-town-in-the.jpg  is nowhere near a comparison with Hong Kong, then the industrial capability of Germany and the Scandinavian countries more than compensate for the yet undeveloped infrastructure.