Stratfor has released an article today that suggests that German and Russia have more to offer each other than does the rest of Europe. Russia has intelligent labor, and resources, but it has a terrible capital structure and little technology. Germany has technology, a terrific capital structure, but needs resources and labor. Better yet, the labor can stay where it is: in Russia, rather than immigrating into Germany and further burdening its infrastructure and creating additional civil unrest.
France will have little chance but to follow germany into the relationship, because it is not powerful enough on its own to unify the Club-Med states (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the Pigs).
What I find most humorous about this pairing, especially given the pro-german position I’ve taken in the Anglo-German European civil war, is that despite being defeated by the Anglo coalition, Germany once again has proven that it is a more prosperous and hard-working and innovative culture than its local competitors. It has risen from the ashes so to speak. And left England in the distance.
I can’t think of anything I find more attractive: a unified germany and russia. After all, the south and west have contained Germany for two and a half millennia. The world wars were only the most recent instance of german containment.
Now, this has broader implications for Byzantine civilization. Germany and northern europe are protestant christian civilizations with a positive ethic. Byzantine civilizations are nominally christian, but have a nihilistic ethic. How will cooperation change either of these ethics? How would europe change if the PIGS are left to their own devices?
Stratfor has suggested in the past that Turkey is in the likely heir to islamic power, but not byzantine power. A German-Russian alliance that built byzantine power would be superior at keeping the mandatory-ignorance of Islam at bay, and might resurrect Byzantine civilization, and restore Russia to a leadership position.
This kind of talk would have been heresy during the cold war and the possibility of communism. But post-communism, in a world of universal capitalism, it seems like a win for Germany, Russia, eastern Europe, the rest of Europe by consequence, and humanity by implication.